Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
And the unicorn evils run them through;
The twilight seems like such a thin thing against the wrath rising in her chest like a molten ball of light. Her skin feels too warm here, in the forest with the dead-bird and the mare fallen to madness, and she wants to shed it like snake-skin. The quiver of her spine has nothing to do with the chill of an early summer-night, or with the way Corrdelia seems to look more into the edges of her than the soul of her.
It has everything to do with hunger, and death, and the magic whispering like vines around her rib-cage for her to step closer and lay her lips against the corpse.
“Dead things do not speak. Not even though bonds.” She does not step closer, although the need to dissolve the bird and lay it to rest rises and crests in her like a wave in a hurricane. Later she'll say it was the smell of the meadow, and the forest, clinging to the mare that stopped her.
Later she will dream of dissolving flesh, feathers and bones.
Thana tilts her head towards the lights, trying to find beauty and wonder in the colors. She can still only see the char-dust clinging to the roots. She can still feel the worm and the bones trembling, and begging, beneath the trail. Darkness pools in her vision and she closes her eyes so that there might be a white sting of lightning to dim this roar in her chest. It feels like she's coming apart bone by bone, inch by inch. Like she's shedding this form she's tried to take. Ipomoea should have known that she would be more reaper than regent, more monster than unicorn.
Eligos lays his cheek against her shoulder. He starts to purr. The vibration settles her in a way nothing else does anymore.
There is still that banked hunger and wrath when she looks back at the mare and her dead bird. It's nothing more than a bit of ember in the purple (and nothing more than a silent please). “I've been hunting.” There is not a smile in her voice. But is still a flash of teeth. Perhaps the polite thing to do would be to close the distance between them and welcome her as leader to citizen. Perhaps it would be better to do anything but carry on with this banked and hungry glare.
Thana tries to do neither. And evens whens he asks, “Have you continued painting?”, there is still a low snarl in the belly of her voice.
The need to unmake, and consume, and destroy is still ringing in her bones like warsong.
