There is a party, and Beloved is there, as she is at all things that incite high emotion in others; she watches wars, she watches dances, she observes births, and she will watch the unicorns tonight, as well.

Her occasional laughter is a soft song on the outskirts as she traipses through the bordering grasses that sweep beneath soft winds, maniacal eyes gleaming and flashing with cryptic light as she watches them all move in packs and pairs; the dancers fill the field lit by the pale blue glow of the mushrooms, her Lady observed leaping and bounding with grace and the Lord presiding on the border of the festivities, quiet and imposing and still as watching, wrathful stone.

Does it surprise her he is not dancing?

Only in ways – a man such as he should at least have women fawning at him at this time, as did her other Lord of Darkness, the man with the bone face. Perhaps, she thinks with a gleeful tinkling of laughter, haunting and ethereal in her shadowed position, he is not the man she thought him to be.

Any warlord kept whores. Where were his?

Her eyes narrow as she watches him, a low humming throbbing outwards from her pink lips as they twist as contort, as her red tongue probes their borders and she lets her eyes stray across more of the goings on, watching for something to catch her attention well enough to perhaps lure her forward into the gaiety that sweeps the clearing.

It comes from the stream.

A dark mare, marked with white, almost an oppositional photocopy to the lithe dancer who lurks and watches, who waits. She flashes haunting, empty eyes to watch her as she carries the stone basin to the wooden pedestal, watches as the bones tumble and dance about and the woman stares upon their runic surfaces as if they read something.

Oh?

Does she hear the water whisper, too? Its calling her now, she can her its seraphic symphony, see the starlight reflected on its small surface within the confines of the carved stone, and with a gleeful grin and tender lilt of laughter, she recalls the ancient wood, the pool of blood… the gift the water had given her in the presence of the bewitching Loveless.

"Do they tell you truths?" she asks, pale frame revealed as she waltzes from her hiding place, the brush rustling and her voice sweet and honeyed as her eager (perhaps frenzied) eyes maul the visual display upon the table rather than the one who wields them, "most bones are liars. They only remember what the soul taught them."



Beloved
rust every place that I touch