In the gloaming darkness she counts each pillar of smoke rising up and dissolving into the black space. An itch rises her in, creeping along her spine like it's a branch of dry, dead wood. Every inch of her skin feels like that blackness, a thing to swallow smoke, and soot, and wishes. Every inch of her feels like dead wood. Thana is brittle and looking for a fire.
She wonders what would be left in the coal and embers of her. She thinks it would be nothing but ash waiting for a breeze.
The horses drinking and dancing seem strange, un-tethered where they should be cautious. Her eyes follow them like wolf follows the track of mice through the thicket. At first she doesn't want to move closer. At first she only feels the way all the dead winter branches sigh and learn towards her in the night. The horses dancing around the fire seem to alive for the likes of her. But then she hears them talk of wishes and her hooves cannot help but to move slow and oddly through the snow.
Thana wishes. She wishes for a hundred things-- a hundred feelings other than 'cold', a fire other than 'consuming'. The red unicorn wants a skin that is not red as blood and heavy with weaponry.
She wishes, wishes, wishes. And when a horse presses paper and ink into the fragile hold her of magic she cannot help the way her young heart trembles and aches in her chest. I wish, she writes. Each word drips wet down the paper, as if the paper itself refuses to hold the wishes of a monster. Thana pauses when a cluster of stars shines, as if fallen, in the corner of her gaze.
The ink is still running wet, like blood, on the paper even as she forgets it.
“Asterion.” She whispers and it doesn't sound like anything other than a name dipped in smoke when the syllables of it fall from her lips. Upon her brown her horn trembles. That too whispers in the smoke and it sings songs of war.
Thana reaches for him as he reaches for her. The forgotten paper falls from her magic into the fire. I wish, burns and burns until only embers and soot are left of it.
But perhaps, if she was not caught wishing on fallen stars instead, Thana would have written in dripping ink, I wish I did not want to kill him.
@Asterion
