I watch as she moves through the trees, pale decay. She is a fragile being, and pale as death; she is not dark as the shadows or black as a moonless night, but white as snow and ice, the color of dry bones and skeletons lit by moonlight. When she walks it is delicately, not in the way a unicorn steps gracefully but rather fearfully, as if the ground might reach up and swallow her, or perhaps she might shatter her foreleg if she steps too hard. It is a warm summer day, the sun glowing brightly and cheerfully, a twinkling, winking golden eye, but still the unicorn shivers, head dipping and swaying, trembling like a newborn child.

Hecate pauses in her walk, tail lashing. Her mouth foams just slightly, and what a fearsome mouth it is- all sharp, filed teeth and cut lips.

Above her the birds continue their twittering and chirping, weaving their songs cheerfully, feathers glowing ruby and sapphire among the green shade. Up her head tilts, a girlish smile curling over her vacant features, and she giggles, sounding for all the word like a child. Still, I cannot help but notice the red caught between her stained teeth, the fetid stink of her breath smelling like a corpse- and her smell, even, smells of decay and cold and winter monsters. She- it- is not right.

Not right at all.

I cringe as I hear her voice- such a voice! All silk and velvet, rustic and gentle, but with a peculiar lilt to it that screams and grits like a pebble honing a knife on the edge of hearing. "Helleborr!" She calls, an earnest smile on her milky face. “Where are you, my love?"

A frown tugs at her mouth as no answer comes. The silence is deafening. "Helleborr," she chuckles nervously, pale eyes flicking around, more rapidly by each passing moment. "Helleborr, come out! I don’t like this game."

The sun flickers and dims behind a cloud, casting the world into grim pale shadow.

The birds. They were so colorful... azure and violet, sapphire and scarlet. She was so pale, so pallid and gaunt and hideously white. What if she just ate them? Would the blue bleed out over her marble satire, would the incandescent oranges and crimsons stain her chest? Would she turns as black as their beaks and gray as their little feet? Her hooves drift over the earth, drawing her closer, her mouth watering. They smell so very delicious, all hot blood pumping through tiny, fragile veins. And she's so hungry too, practically starving...

Perhaps you're just not playing it correctly, dear sister. Hecate's head snaps around abruptly, the bones of her neck cracking unpleasantly, but a smile creeps over the porcelain pallor of her lips, her wicked ice eyes gleaming. "Oh Helleborr," she croons to him, a thin rope of spit slipping out of her slackjawed mouth. Her eyes are hungry. So damnably hungry... the harlot drifts away from the tantalizing jewels perched in the vein-like branches of the trees, drawn towards him, his mighty white darkness, the familiar smell of him, all death and decay and the smell of white mushrooms that creep up from corpses. Beside him, she is tiny, an angel where he is the reaper, he's her giant, tall and grand and full of malice, with his calloused little heart.

She quivers at his caress, moaning softly at the brush of his muzzle over her fragile ribs, gasps at his audacious nibble at her ears. The forest is so bright and golden, they hurt her eyes used to darkness and shadow. But he blocks out the sun, he is her protection, her warrior, her guardian.

"We're here to eat, Helleborr. Don't you remember? All the living flesh is gone from our shade family..." A conniving smile curls the corners of her lips.

Someone approaches, dark and white and dark again. Hecate screeches, nostrils flaring declarative red, shrinking to Helleborr's side before the tension leeches out of her muscles. It's alone.

"Helleborr, I'm so hungry." She whispers, eyes fixated on the stallion, unhearing of his words.

Away from her flank she drifts, towards the stranger's soft face.

He smells of the living.

"I want food."

Hecate sways slightly, shifting her weight back and forth over her hooves, crimson tongue making a swift circuit around her pale lips, eyes never shifting from their victim. He had a red horn, the color of blood. Blood. Is it gore covering his spiralling horn, so unlike her and her twin's gnarled ones, or is it just the color making it up?

Slowly the mare's lips peel back to expose filed yellow molars that cut at the soft insides of her hollow mouth.

She can smell him, the pungent odor of the living betraying him.

With a wariness in her fragile, short-legged steps, she inches closer, peeling away from her twin's flank, coming to circle around the prey. It is the usual plan; they divide and circle. No-one can keep their focus on two moving horses at once.

Hecate reaches out for the soft flesh of the stranger's haunches, aiming to nibble at the thick muscle lining his spine. Not a savage clamp down with her teeth, but little love bites, caressing the length of his spine. It was easy to seduce the dying, to pet and stroke them until the tension leaked out of their muscles. Then they die, and the contents of their bowels spill out over the earth, making a bloody mess. In the snow, it was oft pretty, the stains of crimson and piss yellow, the fragile bones peering out from dark skins. In the summer, it was ugly and bleak and grim, but that was okay.

She was ugly and bleak and grim too.

It speaks, and she listens without hearing, before she realizes what it is saying. Immediately she hisses, a sinister, drawn out tsssssss, and jerks back from it as if she has been burned. "Helleborr," she rumbles. "It has a point."