Yana hadn’t sought out the gossip herself; the whispers had filled the halls as soon as she closed the library’s door behind her. Her eyes grazed across the tapestries adorning the walls, unable to recognize the images and symbols woven into them for she was too focused on eavesdropping.
It’s back, and it’s changed.
She wasn’t sure what it was, but each step towards the exit was met with a new tidbit of information, and the hag was eager to sink her teeth into them.
Do you remember the island to the East? The one that sank to the ocean floor?
Yes, and I heard it has fairies!
A dozen questions immediately took flight, battering at the insides of her skull like a flock of frightened birds: What else lies East? When did the island sink? How did it sink? What was it like? How deep is the ocean? What are fairies like? and last but not least, could they really be telling the truth?
Her brow furrowed. The witch had never heard of such phenomena, and she doubted the integrity of such a rumor, despite having no former experience with this island herself. Instinct told her to ignore the excited murmurs of an unknown source, but she didn’t know anyone else well enough to verify this information. She was apprehensive about the fairies, but she wrestled her suspicions into submission; this was something she would have to see for herself.
The girl’s incessant desire to study the world has completely over-ridden her common sense; she couldn’t have picked a better season to abandon the temperate comforts of her swamp than Winter. Misty breath envelopes the witch as she pushes through the snow, making note of the number of tracks that funnel from the mainland towards the bridge. A popular place. A cool gust of wind slaps hair across her vision and she lifts her head to clear it, tracking her gaze across the bridge. It is not the threat of a confrontation that makes her hesitate (a reasonable response that any grumpy swamp hermit should have) but the snow-covered island – and the dark stone beneath it.
Her breath melts the snow when she touches her nose to the ground, a series of coughs erupting at its cool touch. It appears to be the same material that the Obelisk is constructed of. Obsidian. The frozen air seems to want to tear out her lungs and she tries to suppress a hack. She is unsuccessful, and Yana closes grey eyes as dry, bellowing breaths erupt from her maw. When they open, a small, dark figure with a mask the color of dying embers is seated at the far end of the stone causeway.
The girl wonders if the thunderous volume of her heartbeat might be enough to cause the bridge to crumble, but the figure nor the stones nor the snow starts to stir as she stands stock still, wondering, waiting, for something to force her into action, but nothing comes. The shadowy figure continues to sit, cross-legged and with its head cocked, as if imploring Yana to follow it.
She leans her bony frame into the wind, trying to ignore the resistance of her frozen limbs incited by the chill whilst weighing her options.
A bone-chilling trip home to a court she is no longer familiar with, but that promises safety-
Or a lead that can bring her closer to the origins of the monument.
The witch bites her lip, reflecting on her aunt’s favorite phrase that she substituted for a proper explanation whenever her niece would question her – and especially when she caught the girl eavesdropping,
Curiosity kills you quicker.
And, ever the defiant child, Yana would silently reply,
Then may my death be swift.
Yana follows the sprite-like creature, filled with a stubborn resolve to seek answers to questions she is not even sure she knows how to ask.
"All you want to do is dance out of your skin into another song not quite about heroes, but still a song where you can lift your spear and say 'yes' as it flashes."
"Leave me alone," Andras says, to no one in particular.
(It had been someone in particular: one of these things he has come to understand is a 'faerie,' a small creature as black as he is, something that looks both too much and too little like a spider with three large, yellow eyes and four small, feathered wings. It had come to him on a sigh of the wind, some cold gust that blew in from the north end, from the bridge, and it had been following him for what feels like days but must have been no more than an hour or so.
"What are you doing," it had said to him, not so much in words but in the tilt of its infinitely small head and the chittering of sleigh bells.
Andras, to his eternal credit, had walked in silence through first a stand of winter trees that dumped snow on his back, on his outspread wings, and then back toward the bridge--all with this thing literally following in his footsteps, hopping in diagonals from one print in the deep, white snow to the next.
Always, the sleigh bell laughter.
Always, the what are you doing? repeated until it is all he can hear in the soft crunch of snow underfoot, in the howl of the winter wind that is even louder here than it has ever been back home in the woods.)
So Andras had said, Leave me alone. It was not a suggestion. It was not a command. When he says it the words bounce off the trunks of surrounding trees, and on their way back to him they sound... desperate, or panicked. But the second he had opened his mouth to speak, there was no winged spider, there were no sleigh bells, only Andras and his clenched teeth and his outspread wings, and more footsteps in the snow.
Andras does not sigh as much as he huffs. I hate this island, he thinks. "You better not be a faerie or whatever," he warns, before the girl seeps into the clearing like a star-freckled ink, spread against the white snow and the white trees like he imagines he must be.
The warden does not smile, and does not greet her as she stumbles upon him.
He does say, "Oh." And it hangs in the cold air like snow.
(Somewhere a faerie like a spider with four tiny wings and three big, yellow eyes is laughing.)
The hag’s legs sink knee-deep in the snow as she follows the faerie. Her eyes track its movements, noting a distinct lack of footprints as it flits across the powder. Those with a more cynical mind might be weary of a creature that appeared out of nowhere, beckoned them to follow it, and left no trace of its existence as it led them further onto an island that had no regard for the natural order of things. Yana would argue that no great discovery was ever made by listening to the little voice that pleaded you might get yourself killed if you go too far.
Thus, the dark girl presses onwards, abandoning her reservations and taking up conviction in its place.
She ignores the cold that seeps into her skin, sending tremors across it like ripples on a starlit pond.
She ignores the harsh cough that climbs up her scarred windpipe, forcing its way out to mingle with the chilly air.
What she cannot ignore is the sudden appearance of the bespectacled man – and that the masked spirit vanished as soon as he arrived.
Green eyes lock onto blue ones, matching the furrowed brows and harsh scowl that line the stranger's face. Misty breath engulfs her as she examines him, her expression revealing nothing save her annoyance at the man who has cost her quarry. To an onlooker it may appear as if they were angry reflections of each other, but to the hag they were simply two beings caught out in the snow.
Though she certainly doesn’t trust him, the witch is compelled to burden this ruffian – for who else could a bumbling fool of a man be than a ruffian? – with her best attempt at conversation. Perhaps to someone else, someone with a trained eye and penchant for reading people (or to literally any soul who ever bothered to step foot outside of their waterlogged home), the stout man with the stern expression could be more than just a random encounter; he could be an ally, a friend, or, for someone with purely analytical reasons, an untapped source of knowledge with secrets about the island. At least this way her voyage will not be in vain.
When at least she speaks, her words are gravelly and low, “Who is this, who has cost me my prey? And what are those things doing on your head?”
someone says: i have forgotten how to pray; this is not to say that there is no divinity between us, in this; merely that i do not know what to do with it.
Snow is falling, and not the thick wet snow falling everywhere else. The air around him is too cold for wet snow, so each flake that lands on the black of his body (met by tiny threads of electricity that hiss quietly as they touch) is as cold and as perfectly formed as a flake in a storybook. And they, Andras and Yana, are two dark spots in the white so bright it hurts his eyes, scowls mirrored across the space between them.
Who has cost me my prey? she growls, a sound that rolls out of her like thunder. Andras sees his eyes close, tucks his chin against his chest for a moment, and breathes. He can't stop the thing that rises in him like a balloon, suddenly so full he feels he might pop, and he can't stop the way his mouth tucks into a grin so tight it hurts his jaw. He takes just a moment to bask in it, the stink of danger that seeps into the clearing, the unholy hush that follows it.
What are you doing? says a voice in the distance, maybe multiple voices now, and the laughter like it is him laughing, like Andras himself is the wind in the trees and the crackling of his own electricity. What are you doing? What are you doing? Being an animal, he thinks. For better or worse.
Andras opens his eyes, slowly. He is still smiling, like a rabid dog, full of teeth and poison. He hopes, he hopes, he hopes. It is leaking out of him as he speaks, like steam, releasing pressure. "Andras," he answers, "Warden of Delumine. Not that it matters." For a moment he stares at her in expectant silence -- but she, almost tragically, does not erupt in a storm of claws and teeth, or burst into flames, or continue to threaten him at all. It discharges off his wings in waves of shuddering blue light, popping as it does.
"For someone on the hunt, you seem awfully worried about what I'm doing." Andras grins with too many teeth and lungs so full of hope he could die. "What are you hunting?"
all you want to do is dance out of your skin into another song not quite about heroes, but still a song where you can lift the spear and say yes as it flashes.
