All was still in the halls of the Haruspex; even the air seemed to lay stagnant over the cooling breast of the earth. Eyelids, so heavy over dreaming eyes, concealed any trace of the physical world from the quiet mare, eyelashes clamped tight against each other while she swayed lightly, utterly oblivious. But she did not sleep, far from it; instead, her mind wandered from lily pad to lily pad, like an aimless frog. She thought of Deimos (what was he to her? her lover, the father of her child, her Lord?); of her daughter, who seemed to grow more beautiful and distant as each day passed; of her brash patron god, who left such a strange taste in her mouth. Was her life forever to be an amalgam of the unknowable, the unchangeable? Was she always to be a slave of the world, a drop of rain in an endless ocean, whose individual voice was doomed to silence? Was war to follow her and her beloved family for ever; was she always to be as helpless and dumb as a babe? Huyana's breath quickened with agitation, with desperation. She would do absolutely everything in her power to save all which she held dear, but was that enough? Was it ever enough? With the support of such an ignoble god and a blood-hungry populus, could she bring about the change she had yearned for, craved for?

The clip of hooves against rock interrupted the frenzy of the Haruspex's thoughts. Eyes opened to study the dimly lit room, tracing the familiar silhouettes of rubble and rock, seeking out an anomaly from the still shapes. A familiar voice rang out against the deafening silence, stirring something within the blue lady's belly. The corners of her lips turned up in the threat of a smile, and she found herself moving toward the dying echoes of that voice, low and solemn against stone. From the shadows she came, her lithe, silvern body unsheathing itself from the darkness of that unlit room. He stood inside the house of her god, of her work, as handsome and menacing as when she saw him last. Her blue gaze was cast over his strong, fit frame which shone dimly in the low light. "What do you wish to know?" she queried quietly, but for all her self possession, she could not hide the tender feelings she felt for the warrior, the fondness, the sadness. Did he wish to know of impending war, of invading hoards? Did he want her to read the stars for him, to cut the veins of a god and read the spilled ichor, to search every crevice of this cave for the destiny of their people? She would do it all for him, but with all her power, with the might that was bestowed upon her, she would fight for peace—she made a promise to herself to keep him from war, from disaster; at all costs, she would keep herself from a broken heart, no matter how much power the Reaper wielded.

Somber eyes regarded him, betraying an age which spanned beyond the six years she had lived so far. She moved closer to him, ever respecting the magic which burned through his veins as it did in herself and their child. Huyana paused, the tip of her lion's tail flicking lightly, faint light reflected across the rain blue of her gaze as it bore into his face. --

Ever closer he drew, that dark lover of her's, like a plume of dust in the nighttime, the lull before the storm. He called for her endeavors, her rainy hopes and cloudy dreams; she in turn had nothing to impart but words of dread and grisly futures. From beneath half-lidded eyes she watched him, saw how the dim light caressed the taut lines of his athlete's body, saw how longingly the dark muzzle trailed over her body, like a wistful bird whose only barrier between freedom and captivity is thin latticework. She sought to do the same, to feel the thin, soft hairs of his sinewy mouth, the fine hairs of his chest like she had the morning the sun rose. Warmth spread over her cheeks like shame as she thought of that day, the longing to say words that went too long unsaid, to feel things that went too long unfelt; their eyes, both impossibly blue, glittered like the sulfur amulet he offered her in the thickening sunlight. And from that day her life was changed profoundly—and soon afterward their daughter was born, the first flower in her thawing heart. Would there be other children, laughing alloys of rain and doom? She pondered this briefly, but soon a darkness cloyed the affection in her eyes as she remembered the words of the lightning god, the sadness of a girl whose home was taken captive by the dead, the woman who saw a half a year without light and took death as a lover.

She tilted her head upward, slate lips brushing against the velvet of his dark ear briefly, ever carefully even through the longing expressed in the gesture. "There will be darkness," she whispered, her sweet voice strangled by fear and sorrow. Pulling back, her eyes, dark in the dim light, bore into his with an air of gravity. "He said our mountain walls wouldn't be enough to save us," Huyana told him, every word quickening in tempo, the hushed sound of her voice like a grave dirge, "he said we would be forced to sleep with our enemies, that we cannot fight this darkness." She paused, frustrated tears glittering in her wide eyes, but she refused to let them fall. "What will we do, Deimos? I've had enough of this darkness—how will we raise a family with all this misery, all this strangling darkness?" Her voice wavered, and she pushed her nose close enough to his body to feel his warm, to smell his delicious musk, and for a moment she was caught in the comfort of his immediacy.

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