Ash and charcoal is spun on a pedestal of thin bones and gangly limbs, melted over twisted sinew and ineloquent muscle, and in the cold winds of the north this iron figure (normally bold, brazen, vibrant, alive) appears hardly more substantial than a wraith; one as like to drift away in the breeze as to haunt the desolate reaches of the world. The halo of fractured ice and wind-drifted snow pressing in around a narrow silhouette—sharp shoulders and hooded eyes and a smooth, breathtakingly straight profile—only enhances the reality of the vision, only reinforces the nerve-jangling image of a ghost borne upon turbulent gusts of air; but to what end, to what purpose? It is true that she, precious daughter of flame and death, bone and scale, breathes fragile life into a dull and thick reality, stirs the cumbersome boredom of subdued regularity into eccentric mystery and exotic unknown; but why she has been stolen here, she did not know. It hadn't been of conscious choice—she had simply come, listened to the mourning song of the wind and been borne north on the zephyrs, all tangled hair and weak-kneed limbs tossed into a desolate wasteland.

Nymeria breathes, and it hurts. To someone so new to the world, so young and childish, it was difficult to understand the pain which burns through her lungs and freezes her saliva and even the snot which had begun to trickle from her ebon nostrils; to understand why the frigidity existed here, and not in the heat of the south, or even why the world become so blindingly white this far away from her home. And yet forth she marches, because permeating the frost-bitten air is the siren call of her twin, the faintest of scents lingering in her charcoal nostrils, an aroma which pierced her to the very heart. Brother.

How could she resist following him, resist him?
He meant more to her than even mother, or the distant and guarded figure of father of which she had observed only briefly; he was her and she was he. Before brightness and the blinding light of the sun, they existed in wholesome entirety together, a final and absolute togetherness that she mourned the loss of; it hadn't even been they, in the darkness of their mother's womb. It was simply an existence utterly and wholesomely united, with two heartbeats and two bodies, both woven together so delicately that every breath without him was torment beyond explanation. She wonders, for a precious heartbeat, if he feels the same way; if Volterra, too, physically aches to be separated from his twin, and wants with every fibre to be with her. And then cold and wind-numbed lips curl into a light smile, even though there is no-one for her to smile for, because she knows utterly that he certainly feels the same way.
How could he not?

Eyelashes flutter, dance, over ruby retinas as the sun slips awkwardly downwards from it's perch high in the sky, a yellow eye that is unable to retain a hold on it's blue nest. The spider hopes it will not disappear too quickly; she doesn't fancy trying to find mother again in the dark with only the stars to guide her. Mother would be (or at the very least, pretend pretentiously to be) furious at her quiet taking-of-leave, but it couldn't be helped. For all her dam's preaching, Nymeria knows that Confutatis wanted courage and strength and fierce wills and wild children not afraid of working to get what they wanted; she knows it would simply d e l i g h t the World Eater to awake and find her twins disappeared. Oh, she would worry; but mostly, she would be wickedly eager to find out the mischief they had been up to. And so if the spider found wanderlust taking hold, wander she would, because there was nothing to stop her.

North, north, north she waltzes, and with every step the snow grows deeper and she grows colder. The wind is in a frenzy, whipping her bare flanks and sheering icy flakes into her eyes, painting frost on her shoulders and hips and long, long lashes. Shiver and quiver she does, for she hasn't the fat of even a yearling; she is all sharp bones beneath irregular, scraggly hair and a tufty tail.

Finally, the little ghost-girl can take it no longer.
She breaks into the tumbling, inelegant run of a filly, bolting towards the strange and archaic structure she spies on the horizon, and into the depths of the ice fortress she goes.

Hooves clatter on a glassy floor.
Steam curls up from a sweating body.
Home for the night.