"I am Ktulu the Constrictor, leader of the warriors of the Grey."
Exhale.
Fog forms around an ebony muzzle, little hairs spun into silver as moisture collected from the heat of her breath. It is no simple breath that escapes her at that thought, however. It is a deep, soul-wrenching sigh, filled with sorrow and bitterness. Albino snowflakes cascade before her vibrant violet irises like a curtain, thick enough to coat her locks in silver and pewter, unable to hide the darkness of her canvas completely. It clumped in her forelock and caused her to blink rather furiously whenever the rare, yet violent, gusts of wind would appear to whip the heavy blankets below into hurricanes of frozen flakes. Icicles hung from branches overhead, those of thinner existence high in the tops of the grandfatherly trees snapping and cracking together quietly, hissing and whining, creaking and groaning whenever the wind pressed them past their limits. Long, thin legs were covered in snow to her knees, shivers wracking her body whenever willpower could not suppress the physical need. She did not need warmth, she was not deserving of it. This weather should be her domain, if she lived by the echoes of her frozen, tiny heart. A demon did not feel pain of any sort; physical, mental, or emotional. The weather should not be of any significance to her if she was truly cold to the core. Wasn't that what all those hissing whispers behind her back had been?
If they saw her now, would they scream in fright at the real demoness they had summoned through their cruelty?
Features, once so beautiful and feminine in the tentative hope she'd let blossom when around Ktulu and Arah, had frozen themselves far more thoroughly than ever before. A demoness did not show emotion, for they were incapable. They did not eat, for they were cursed to never take pleasure in the littlest of things. Someone had broken her stained glass window, and Lakota had been shattered into a thousand pieces of colorful glass that refused to give out any hints of the place they belonged. Instead of trying to scoop the pieces up once more to glue them together as she always had, the mistress of coal and raven feathers had simply stared down at her hooves where they lay. They were far too small to be picked up once more, and surely she would only shred herself to pieces on the sharp edges. Maybe then the crimson of what lay in her veins could stain the alabaster surface trying stubbornly to crawl up her body and bury her, turning it into a true mixture of the shades present in those born albino. Would it look beautiful, even if it had come from a being as wicked and tainted as her?
In the flurry of brightness her siblings are hidden from her for the long miles her wandering feet take her, Aodaun silent in his element, eyeing her with concern. She is like a blind babe, led by the palm by a worried sibling; dazed, untouchable, removed from all around her. Almost as if she were drugged. It kept her from feeling the pain that lurked beneath the new ice she'd constructed over her insides, crystallizing herself to keep it at bay. Was it a coping mechanism? Quite possibly. Instead of suffering, she slowly killed herself off inside, keeping what was important in stasis as if enclosed in glass, ready to be brought back out when all the emotions had been kept alone long enough for them to shrivel and die where they couldn't hurt her in their rawness.
It is he who senses them first, growing form stiffening and legs extending into a long, gaited stalk that is completely silent through aid of thickly furred paws that leave large prints in the ice-caked top of the snow. Words, her world's language, have yet to be implanted in his mind. Even so he nudges her with the emotions he feels; concern, wariness, suspicion, and curiosity. In her own form of slow-motion she turns, a ghost in a hollow shell. Stirring like a machine slowly coming to life, jerky and uncoordinated, she follows the prince of winter. Two pairs of plum and amethyst eyes glowed in the washed-out scenery, the only other color being the subtle ashen and sapphire accents where the snow could not hide Lakota's sinful painting. Slowly she has gone from being so emotionally sick that it was nearly physical, and therefore unable to muster the interest to eat, to completely forgetting she required sustenance to live. What was death to her anyway? After all, she had stood upon Death's threshold and screamed for him to come and face her, to take her and reap her tattered, acidic soul. The devil had stepped upon the gateway to hell and been denied, even as she hollered and demanded for the ruler of the anti-paradise to face her, bring her the infinite suffering she deserved so long as it meant leaving the mortal plane.
Darkness was seizing the horizon, enveloping her in navy and coal. Frostfall's thick clouds could not keep the platinum droplets of light from view, but the thick fall of snow- slow and soundless until the wind picked up, which she found beautiful- did little to improve the two's vision. How could it fall in sheets like this, and yet still be so eerily silent? Poisoner drifts just as quietly over the snow, though her legs sink regardless. It feels as if she's floating, and the silence with which she walks is not a new development. For so long she had been frail and tiny, not reaching her current height gained from her granddam until she was well towards becoming an adult. Back then, Alleo had been the stone wall that shielded her from anything and everything; anyone and everyone. So long ago, she had needed to be as silent as death itself in order to evade a beating or some other grueling task. It had kept her steps light as a feather, hardly a whisper. Many had confessed that they wished to have such a gift, but Lakota would trade them in an instant. Gift or not, it had been created and won through events she would not wish upon her worst enemy.
Often she found herself snorting derisively at herself, knowing just how many others with tortured or simply difficult pasts used dramatics to show all others just how damaged they were. Kota despised such behavior. Perhaps she succumbed to her mind at times, but it was only to retreat behind walls of titanium and ice, never into an emotional wreck. Like hell she'd ever reveal what had happened to her without a fight either. Lakota did not look for pity, sympathy, support, or understanding. Unless they'd been at her side like her beloved older brother, they would never convince her. Instead, she strove towards strength. Never again would she be perceived as weak. No. Lakota would be respected, even feared if that was her only other option.
Curtain of pale frost was slowly drawn back, Ao leading her onward, and two figures became blurry shapes in her vision. They are just as hard to view as the snowdrifts around her, canvases blending perfectly into the alabaster and pewter shades the world seemed to have defaulted to. One of them, as they approach, is immediately recognizable as her younger sister. Her coat is just a little darker than the stranger she is beside, who is like a ghost that flickers in and out of view, barely seen. In the barren wasteland she has created, her heart has only spared love and concern for her family, and it wells up inside like a tidal wave. What is Hana doing out here? Who is she talking to? And why was she shaking as if crying? The notion that Hana is that upset flips a switch, transforming Lakota from a dazed follower into an aggressive pursuer. Birdlike limbs began stretching high out and over the snow, running towards the two figures, fury rising inside at the unknown stranger who dared to make her sister cry. Was she hurt? The anger only swelled larger, burned brighter until it felt as if her entire being was on fire from the inside, no longer feeling the cold. She will murder the faceless brute if he hurt her baby sister; will spill his blood across the snow as a warning to every living being that her precious baby sister would never be harmed while she lived.
Almost soaring over the snow, she angles right and sweeps in to come in at the stranger face to face, visage wrinkled into a snarl befitting a rabid wolf. And in that moment, as she's just a few strides from taking him down with her to the snow, she sees his face.
Alleo.
There is no mistaking him, his face was the first she ever saw when she was born, the only one she looked to her entire life. Time slowed for her, face flashing from enraged and protective to shocked and disbelieving. As her black hooves touched down on earth once more from springing towards him, she stopped herself as abruptly as her body allowed, a spray of snow nearly to her shoulders surrounding her as she froze in place- a deer startled into total stillness. Like a feline backed into a corner she is low to the earth, knees bent from her sudden shove against motion she'd created, not straightening. A wounded animal, wary and frightened. From her lowered crown she gazes up at him, eyes wider than the moon when she was heavy with fullness in the sky. Soft, pale jade eyes meet her, a color she could never forget. Scar over the bridge of his nose, pink muzzle and darker crown, pale smudged body that let him disappear in the element he despised the most.
Alleo.
It has been so long, what seems like an eternity, without her partner and companion; her guiding light and calming darkness. He had held her throughout the nights while she cried innocent tears into his pale coat, and protected her throughout the day from the monsters that should have belonged only in her nightmares. Alleo was her everything, and he could never do wrong in her eyes. He had seen deep into her soul the moment she had been born, his sweet-grass irises the first sight imprinted into her newborn mind. A connection had been welded between them, unbreakable, since that moment. Even when her flaws and weaknesses began to show so vilely upon her coat and within her nature, her precious silver lion had only ever loved her. When all others had turned their backs, renounced her, cursed her and degraded her with words as sharp as a thousand tiny swords...he had loved her. That love had been written, carved, in every portion of her soul. She carried it with her every step into the spiral she'd dipped into, a lifeline. Hana had been at her side since the herd meeting, but Lakota still felt she had to be strong for her, lead her and be a good role model. With Hana she had to be strong, even in her emotional welcoming when she had found her sister in the Threshold. With Alleo, she didn't have to be strong. They held each other up, were strong when the other needed to be weak. With Alleo, she could be weak.
Alleo.
Aodaun gave a soft whine, confused, and it broke the spell his dark mistress had been under. Crouched bodice straightened slowly, cranium rising at the same pace as if moving too quickly would make him disappear as if he was a mirage, an oasis that would flicker out of existence the moment she pressed forth towards him. Finally, her disbelieving features crumpled pathetically into an array of emotions she wouldn't trust any other to view so plainly: relief, love, and pain; sorrow, weakness, and vulnerability; desperation, defeat, and concern. Dark lips trembled, and gave life to the name that had been whispered with such desperate love inside her head over and over.
"A-Alleo..."
Lyrics break with such pathetic weakness and she doesn't give two shits about it. And like a tidal wave has broken over her, she succumbs. Tears flood her eyes, knees shake like a newborn foal, and tiny sobs wrack her thin birdlike chest. Stumbling forward ungracefully she reaches desperately for her brother, needing to be tucked beneath his neck and held against his chest. Needed to be protected. All the while she's pressing as close to him as she can, inhaling his scent like it's a drug, words falling from her mouth with abandon. "Leo, Leo, oh L-Leo it's yo-you it's really you," she sobbed, silver tears streaming down her snowflake-covered features. "I mi-missed you so much, Leo don't go again, please, please, stay, I need you Leo please, I'm sorry, please," and she's begging, pleading for him to stay, even though she was the one who had to go and not him. Sightless from the blurry world her tears create, the typically aggressive poisoner blindly reached for her big brother like a foal searching for their mother's side.
Soft sounds of crying were all that accompanied her, needing him to be pressed to her, to feel him and see him- to know he was really, truly there. That she didn't have to do this anymore; be strong. He could carry the weight for her until she had recovered, and soon the world would lay upon their shoulders equally as it always had, and she would be healed enough to do the same for him. She ached for him to shield her as he had so long ago when she was but a babe, fierce emerald eyes keeping everyone else at bay. He had stood above her, around her, sheltered her beneath his belly like a mother.
She just wanted to feel safe again.
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