lines by schwartze

Pale plumes of breath ascend in the night like ghosts, rising to touch the pinpricks of stars with greedy hands. "Cobwebs," a whisper; a lament to the veil of darkness, so insistent on bright orange eyes. She stands firm, uncertain, the moon casting a halo of light around her quivering form. Is this the place? Another breath, a sigh; another pale mass of sorrows unfurling in the midnight-wood, rays of moonlight passing through it like the blessings of long-forgotten deities.

She wonders shyly, if the gentle silver-spun light was the work of moon-spiders, spinning away at their radiant threads on clear winter nights. Her mother, a blood-hungry mercenary with a list of grievances that spanned the girth of the world, would sometimes in a fit of motherhood, sing her fair-haired child tales of bravery and truth from the distant lands of her birth; of spiders who spun webs of moonlight and maidens who slayed their treacherous princes for the love of dragons; and the girl with the pale hair would listen with wide-eyed wonder to her mothers words, which seemed not ephemeral and mortal, but as old and vast as magic.

But was there any left in this cruel world, that as readily took the innocence of an amber-eyed girl, as the life of a mother, wrought with malaise and a lust for battle and a love of life?

So, here she stands, hunched unrelentingly against the cold, wondering if this was even the right place to look. Cobwebs, cobwebs, cobwebs, she repeats to herself, as if the word alone would bring her what she desired the most; as if a single sound, chanted, would let her see the light-side of things. She blinks slowly, fluttering ivory eyelashes an outcry against the darkness which presses against her like a purring cat.

But it is not the night that instigates her to face this frozen night, nor the loneliness which she welcomes so warmly; the girl has a task to fulfill, the question of a dying mother to answer. It is with this purpose, as fleeting as the very life she lives, that lets her cling to breath, forces her to endure this endless night of the heart in the hope of a single strand of moon-blessed spiderweb to pull her back to dawn.