Teeth clip short dry blades; the charcoal hellion wanders in an idle path as she grazes, fore-hoof occasionally scraping away at the crust of snow to expose the bitter yellow grass beneath. She eats to keep up the strength in her wearied muscles, to keep the padding of fat thick over her thinning hips. It would not do help in her plans and plots, wasting away to a thin slip of a mare, and so she ate. There was a peaceful boredom to the mundane act; it tied her to mortality, to simplicity, gave her a quiet in the mind that she did marvel at. Hooves creak and crack through the frozen snow as she moves- despite the frigid cold of winter, she is fluid, liquid shadow dripping over minuscule, creamy flakes. At her feet, her mongrel slithers over rock and stiff, unyielding white, creeping in the manner of a scuttling spider. Together they strike an imposing picture, midnight silhouettes cutting sharp against the pale robin-egg sky.

They swim, languid, in one another's thoughts. Their ideas are the melting of North Atlantic to South, where it is impossible to tell one from another; the tides whisper of death and decay, rot and ruin, but also of less negative connotations, family individuals named October and a Dragon King named Tyradon, of a jigsaw smile and the round curve of her impregnated belly. She never ended up talking to her half-sister; surely she must have born her foal by now? Her ears flick in her grazing to betray her vague discomfort. The strange harlot had always been inclined as broodmare rather than queen; perhaps that was not surprising, that she had been fucked by whoever was brave enough to take a demon-daughter. But what of the foal? Could she even handle that sort of... responsibility? A mental shrug ripples through their minds. Why did she bother herself with such thoughts? October was October, she could raise an Oblivion relation properly.

Their thoughts turn slowly towards Sheba and Veil, Morir and whomever he might have found by now. Of companionship, she did not need nor want; admit it she would not, but the practice of deceit and trickery, of luring and beguiling, was a tiresome matter, and for someone to show up meant yet another to persuade.

Confutatis exhales quietly, lifting her painted skull. Eyelids flicker over amber orbs; she flicks her ashen tail over onyx coat and gives a shiver. In silence she watches as her kitsune flits away, dancing over white drifts, chasing after scrawny mouse and scurrying critters. He has thinned out since emerging from the caves as well- she did not like to admit it, but the feed had been far better in the Heart's sanctuary than up in the light of the surface. It does not matter, she thinks to herself. Here she was, and she was not going to go digging beneath the surface of the earth again.