The castle feels like a cage around her. When she tilts her head up to look at the curving walls of brick and wood there are only bars wrapping themselves around her like snakes. Shivers run down her spine electric and furious. She quivers as finely as sand with the need to run, run, run (and then the monster in her belly wants to kill, kill, kill).
A drunk horse bumps into her and she cannot help the way her horn swings an arc towards him. The hollow curls of it sing even here, a low throbbing song that sits below the chorus singing in the corner. Although Thana thinks that if this is what they call music, her horn must only sing of battle songs and blood-lust. The stallion jumps back and her tail aches with the need to swing like a note of a harp towards the cup held clumsily in his magic.
Thana watches him retreat. She's feeling more and more like a wildcat and less and less like a unicorn who belongs in a castle.
The colorful rug at her hooves is growing paler and paler the longer she's standing there deciding if she wants to run or stay (or devour). Threads that once were red and brilliant blue are now nothing more than gray threads as brittle as dragonfly wings. If she looked down she might feel bad, but she's only looking up at the tables spread out around her like grave-markers.
A crow flying overhead is the first thing that truly catches her interest. Maybe it's the way the bird is as black as the slick rot she makes when she walks through wildflowers. Or maybe it's the way the bird flies as straight and true as death that makes Thana walk through the tables to see where it lands.
She follows the bird like a shadow and the horses drawing and drinking look at her as if she is the strangest thing in the room (she is, she is). Wen the crow lands she listens to the way the mare talks to bird as if they are friends. Thana closes the distance between them, curious despite that low ache to run, run, run beating in her bones.
“What are you doing?” Caught lightning makes her voice as dry as a dead leaf, heavy with all the things she has no choice but to be. Her eyes though are looking at the papers spread around the table as if each is a bone telling her some story she cannot quite understand.
@Corrdelia
