It all comes down to a single moment,



She is not far from the borders when the painted girl arrives to her glacial palace, the golden streaked wench observing the stillness of the herd land from between the sentinels and the glassy lake. Perhaps d’Artagnan had been right, somewhat. There was little activity where once there had been dozens of faces roaming about during the hours of the day, though she supposed it could also be simple fear that held them in the nooks and crannies of the Basin, afraid that another wraith would appear out of nowhere and attempt to kill them all again.

Since returning, she does not patrol as often as she used to; the ranks in place now are ones that she had nurtured herself, spoon fed tidbits of sugar and actually, for once, trusted to do most of the work involved around keeping the borders devoid of unwanted guests to those she’d assigned it to.

It was a nice feeling, this breath of release, a silver cloud rising from her nostrils as she happily looks out on the land she has come to know as her home. No longer does her heart ache for the Edge, the land in which she had been foaled and the place where her parent’s bones sunk deeper and deeper back into the earth. She also no longer fears mutiny, as strongly, at least; she will never put it past her associates to be malicious and self absorbed, especially the mare known as Zuriel (how she had ruffled so many hairs the wrong way on their last meeting and yet managed to endear herself to the golden bitch all the same) and the outspoken d’Artagnan.

It pains her to think of him as a threat, even briefly. Is he not true to the heart of the mountain and the God who rules over it? She was of the belief that she had done well by their deity – he had granted her a magical power and had given them a safe and joyful return home with his prowess over time. The mountain itself had not been touched by a single blow of darkness, it seemed, where as the wilds had been ravaged, at least where they had passed through, outside of their gleaming circle of vibrant life.

A call turns her head about, a memory flickering to mind of a chestnut youth who had attempted to talk an outsider to the land into wandering aimlessly with her among the wild lands of Helovia. What mare had that been? What names had they held?

For a hundredth time in a matter of a few days, she curses the fate that befell her and the mortals of her chosen home; she wonders why it is that others who suffered through the shadow so clearly remember what it is they have done before and during the infection and she is left with this crippling sense of being threadbare and without a distinct path to return her to where she had once been. Regardless, she thinks as she walks, then trots, her golden legs flashing in the sunlight of the vale and the refracting white gleam of the Sun’s gift across the veneer of snow, and names slip in eventually; Tangere, the grey mare who she has not seen since she had first brought her home, and Abishia, the silver tongued and emerald eyed outcast.

Why had they been parted, Tangere and she?

Jorogumo.

It is an answer and a thought, the dark filly standing there with all knives drawn and aimed towards the equine that Illynx herself had asked here, for some unremembered reason to her. Still, she needs to quickly intervene in this situation – it is quite obvious that blood will be shed quite quickly if she doesn’t subdue the over eager, moon eyed child, and her limbs are given extra speed by the sight of a girl she truly felt she had failed and was never to see again.

They had so much in common, they truly did; perhaps one day, she will pull her darling Jorogumo aside to tell her the story of her life, in more color and detail than even her Dark Empress could recount.

”I hope Kisaki lets the wolves take you, because you’re no better than a worthless servant,” she catches, her lips curving into a smile both sweet and dangerous at the same time. Her lessons have worked well, it would seem, perhaps overly so; the girl is only nearing her first year and is already lunging at the throats of the dogs that crawl along the underbelly of the kingdom, and her arrogance is not ill founded, either.

Her opponent might actually have had her hooves full if the Lady Illynx had not so quickly arrived on the scene, a quick glance shot to the dark locks laying across the white snow as her hooves stilled alongside the developing body of her somewhat adopted child. ”Easy now, dearest Jorogumo,” she says, ”I have invited this girl here, all is well. See the lock of my hair upon the snow?” She points lazily with her horn, metallic chains jangling against one another from her vast collection of amulets as she lowers her head and gathers the bundle into her mouth, tossing it across her shoulders before returning to face their visitor.

She is sure that this is not the first time she has greeted Abishia here, but she is not entirely sure why she knows these things or what precisely happened during their last meeting other than it had not been a sweet one. That the child was back to try again proved much of her spirit, and it made the smile on the twisted Lady’s face all the more brilliant.

”You’ve come to see the Aurora Basin, Abishia of no lands,” she says, sweetly as honey warmed by summer sun though the wolves growl and toss about in her belly, ”walk with me, as I promised.” It is an invitation, her delicate features turning on a gracefully arched neck back towards the opening from which she had come, the singular gate for those bred as Abishia was to come and go from the cold mountain home of the unicorns.

It all comes down to a single moment,



She watches the reactions of the moon-eyed girl in response to this unusual turn of events, curious herself as to how the child’s first interactions with a true game of wit rather than one of violence would play out. The Lady hears the hesitancy of the growing babe to accept that all is well in the eyes of the Gilded Blade, but the smile that Illynx wears on her lips should portray plenty enough for the dark damsel to glean that there was more at play than what lay upon the surface, broadened in its depths by the painted equine’s submissive nature towards even the young Jorogumo.

Princess, she mentally laughs, glancing at the filly as she turns to walk into the lands, is that what I have made her? Or is this young woman so strange that all who wear horns are truly above her status, a foe arrived pre-tempered for our games?

The question is whispered as the walk begins, sooner than she had expected of the girl; she overestimates the level of this child’s understanding, finding that she is quite pleased with her intelligence and slightly distraught by the fact that she cannot see what is happening before their very eyes. Her grin, however, never wavers, a golden eye turned to look with a twinkling light down on one of her chosen students. ”All will reveal itself,” she replies, her voice equally low and muted for the secrecy of their passing, though she is sure that Abishia will notice that they whisper between each other, ”be patient, and watch. There are lessons to be learned in this walk.”

Lessons, even, for the Lady Illynx, who pauses with a most curious expression upon her face as Abishia removes her amulet, a gleaming beacon of the Sun’s power, and offers it to her, the gold flashing against the pure canvass of the snow; the girl’s words press into Illynx’s ego and inflate it syllable by syllable, her wonder at who she has invited home with her growing with every passing moment. It is at points like these that she wonders if her impulsiveness should be more carefully controlled, a flash of worry that she has unleashed a strange sort of plague into her home to have found a girl so obviously deluded on the realities of her life and that around her. But she must know; even if it means she will have to fight to restore a broken peace in the wake of this, she cannot simply walk away from such an alluring contradiction as a lamb entering a den of lions to dote upon the gleam of their claws.

A frown lines her mouth at Jorogumo’s quick response to the seemingly harmless offering of a necklace, lowering her lips to the object and grasping the chain between white teeth. She listens to the poison slip out of her adopted child’s vocal box as she twists her head back around to loop the gold about her leg band’s upper point, returning her eyes to the girls at the final sounding of the word, “filth.” She clears her throat, looking sharply towards the dark filly before returning her eyes to the girl who had offered her such a prize. ”I am thankful; do not let Jorogumo’s sharp words sting too deeply. She only seeks to defend my honor.”

Continuing on her path into the mountain now that she assumes all has been settled between the savage, white eyed girl and her curious threshold discovery, dark tail streaming along behind her and dragging its dips through the powdery snow. Maintaining a slow pace to allow the still growing children to keep pace with her, her curiosity gnawing away at her belly, slowly becoming unbearable; she could find no reasons as to why this child was so odd and could take the mystery no longer. ”Tell me, Abishia – why is a hornless such as yourself so drawn to my people?” her features are alive with the amusement she feels when broaching the subject of their infamy, words she knew had stretched far and wide from the bellowing lips of the miniature bitch Kri and the Dragon Whore of the Edge while her sister had ruled on the mountain with good Lord Mauja, ”surely you have heard the stories of the crowned devils in the North; most avoid the kin of the mountain at all costs.”

She pauses, tilting an eye towards the painted filly. ”And yet you have come twice, baring the key I gave you. You are quite brave for a failed creation, or deranged. I cannot decide which.”

@[Abishia], @[Jorogumo]