CIRCUTA

on we march
with a midnight song,
until we meet the dawn
with our lanterns on

Brume rises in the air, drawing into stretched nostrils and causing poisonous hued pearls to burn and sting— akin to salt rubbed within open wounds, firelight to flicker and turn onyx sinew into cardinal hues; giving her merely enough time to grasp the fawn and aureate amulet within her ivory teeth and pirouette away from the shrine before a steadily growing pyre, and as the first time she had seen the mighty Lord's sovereignty and carnal strength she gazed upon it with childlike splendor, glee, reverence (he is as alluring as the nighttide stars, as marvelous as the entrapment of a cerulean expanse, he is as elegant as the rain and as scalding as the Sun).

When the resplendent frame of the Lord steps forward, aureate and cream wings outstretched to mime their full glory (she refuses to tremor in his presence, he is the only God she has ever seen with her two eyes, and so he is primal as the hearth, as gleaming as a diamond within a limestone grotto, and she would worship him on a bowed knee, for he is the only Lord in which she has found and the only Lord to which has spoken to her), the devouring pyre behind him lowers into hungry embers and flickering at his heels as starved lions, she wonders if she should bow once more, if she should grovel upon her knees before a fiery King, if she should proclaim her allegiance, her ardor— and she wonders if the magic she bears demands she is a worshipper of Luna, if she is a moonlight Nightingale upon the tides of the brine, for it comes to her that though the abilities she calls forth are of crepuscule and the wind she does not bow to the ice laden Queen.
  If the Lord demanded it of her, she would devote her life to He whom gave the lands life, harsh, unyielding, and yet warm and welcoming as the entrance to the Labyrinth beneath their hooves.

And she wonders what his palace in the sky is like.

Depthless molten cores flash across her, considering her, judging her (and perhaps if she takes a placid step towards his sweltering frame, it is merely because she is clammy of sinew and frigid in the morn, for unlike the other breeds of equine and mythical beast she is bred from desert lineage and the sleek, waify, doe like bodice that she has inherited is almost lain bare, her kind never meant for the freezing glacial air of the arctic nor the goosebumps gathered in the winter), and when he speaks, it is with delicacy she sets the fawn amulet upon the snow ground betwixt them, nestled between drifts of snow and cradled within its icy fingers, safeguarded as a childe in a crib. Her attention is transfixed upon his, devotion and deference beating within the glass encased and vermilion artery that beats a drum's song within her bosom, silvery lyrics sliding forth from a upturned maw at his first lyrics. "Indeed, my Lord. I would not forsake you."

He queries her upon how she has come across the trinket, and as the tides to the sand covered beach she is overcome with melancholy, mournful for a babe she had not known (she swelled with the faith it would have grown into a fine young thing, mangled so she could not discern its gender), somber for the loss of life. She has turned over the idea that the little one may have a dam within the contours of the countryside, one whom missed it dearly, and entertained the idea it did not, and was merely reunited in the underworld, and yet if it was the first, she grieved for the mother's heart as well. It dances within her violently hued eyes, within the ever so slight dip of her dome, within the soft air her song takes next, the careful delicacy of each formed syllable before her King.
"A childe whom a Reaper took, my Lord. It.. was terribly mangled upon my arrival of it in the underground Labyrinth to which we held sanctuary in the days of the perpetual gloom and infected kin. I do not know how the young one died, merely that it smelt of disease and rot. The fawn and aureate trinket was looped around the child's neck, and I took it from it, cleansing it within the river. I—" alabaster lashes shiver down to cascade upon cheeks, to cover heavyhearted eyes. A amber feather from a old friend is blown tenderly by the wind in her mane. ".. I gave it a proper burial. Sir."