punching

                                                            out

Pale, gossamer feathers were laden in frost, crystals of frozen dew clinging like tiny comfits to nearly every capillary fiber of the phantasm's wings. The last remaining semblances of her glossy summer coat had finally exuviated from her pale figure, exchanged with a thicker, duller mantle of ashen gray, void of the dapples which once bloomed profusely along the maiden's body. Plum eyes remained ever vigilant, gazing out across a vast expanse of murky waters, unheeding to the lifeless vessels which lay just below the surface.

This land reeked of death, of an unsettling coldness. It was a charade of danger, feigning harmlessness and beauty. A film of ivory flakes careened slowly down from the giant, looming sifters in the sky, bringing about an essence of calm. Valhalla stood mostly still, nostrils flexing and ushering forth an intumescent plume of smoke with each exhalation, frost catching on the moisture of her breath.

Frostfall had come quickly this year, she thought idly, briefly dipping a charcoal hoof into the frigid waters. She lowered her muzzle to the pristine fluid, her reflection manifesting bleakly across the surface. Ripples propagated as she snorted, and morbidly she wondered what might happen were she to suffer a fall into the icy depths. Strange fish weaved there way through beds of monotone foliage, their scales glittering vaguely in the dilute winter sunlight.

But there was something else among them, something hidden deeper down. She squinted her eyes, focusing on the figure, when it soon became clear it was the skull of a moldering body, it's eyes turned a milky white, bones poking out from the skin. Horror struck her almost instantly, lavender optics opened wide with shock. Muscles tensed beneath her flesh, and she jolted quickly backward, as if the deceased's empty eyes had transmitted a signal of palpable fear.

In her shock, she had made a fatal error. Her hooves lost purchase upon the muddy earth, causing her to plummet into the glacial waters. She cried out, frantic, struggling to swim among the stray leafage.

She wasn't ready to die. Shards of cold became diffused through her nerves, causing her breathing to grow shallow, frenzied. Was this to be her fate? -to perish by the sheer mercilessness of cold, spectated by the moldering dead? This hardly felt real. It felt like a dream, a horrific rendition of her mind but the pain she felt, the urgency that overcame her, was far too real, far too tangible.

Oh Valhalla. What had you gotten yourself into.