Nymeria

She can hear smoke and ash in his lungs, the ragged cough and heave of corrupted bronchioles and ruined alveoli. In her silence, the polished glass walls rising high above and around her in a labyrinthian fashion, she is contemptuous at the thought of company, bitter at the idea of shattered solitude. Nymphete ears flick back, lissome shadows melting into her mane's voluptuous curls, and Nymeria huffs, vaporous white curling up from her nostrils in smoky veils. Her head lowers, neck slackening, and she wags her muzzle back and forth in an unconscious and scornful reflex. I would've thought to find quiet here. The wolf's thoughts spill out against the confines of her cranium, overflowing into the canals of her companion's; he chokes beneath her thoughts' weight, the ill-tempered thunder of her ponderings.

Eyelids slither shut over luminous irises; her exhale's sound is soft and silken against the tunnel's sheer cold, a chilling rasp like that of a knife drawn from its sheathe.

Lilómiel's wings spread, whispering shadow against the light streaming in around them. His darkness prevails even when kissed by the sun; he swallows all light like a hole in space, a gap in the cosmos. Over the last weeks his scales had dulled, their glistening brightness fading to a deeper black than anything Nymeria had seen before, a frightful tear in the brightness of the world. She loved it—the heretic and romantic darkness, his eyes' crimson gleam stark as roses blooming in sacrilegious black.

The needles of his mind—serrated edges, shards of glass rubbing up against Nym's wolfish skin—hum to her a lilting message, a flash of images. Her lids are dark (and yet streaked with red and indescribable light) and against it familiar sights play out, though tainted by his peculiar binocular vision.

His wings hiss against the air as he launches into flight, streaming shadow winging towards the intruder upon their peace. She melts into his rhythm, lets her thoughts wax and wane in mirror to his, until she can feel the air beneath her wings and embers in her throat, can taste ichor against her lips and sullen self-absorption pounding against her breast. Through his hawkish eyes she sees a thousand shades of color, a landscape of hues she can't even dream of in her equine body—how can one explain a color, when it's not like blue or green or yellow, red or indigo or orange?—And thus the first time she sees Gull, his body is painted in kaleidoscopic hues, and he is a look into another world, a world she can't be part of.

Nymeria exhales, and begins to wander, mind split between here and there. They've been practicing this—but she can't get the hang of it. Reluctantly, sorrowfully, she retreats from Lil's brain, slithering back into her body and maneuvering through the womb-like passages of the Frozen Arch herself. Through their uncanny connection, she can see Lil pressed up against the cavern wall, perched on a lip of ice far above the pegasus' reach, claws locked into the ice and lips curling back into something part snarl and part sinister smile.

---

"Are you dying?"

The snake drifts out from the tunnel, putting on a new skin for a new man. This time, she's sly and slippery, cool and dark-eyed, all layers of glass and frost, ash and solidified night. She wonders if he'll notice her youth (it had a way of being forgotten when she acted like mother); but mostly, she wonders if he'll stop breathing.

In that case, it might've been worth the walk.