beloved

The leaves are dead beneath her, and she takes in the crisp sound of the more ancient of the bodies slipping against the malleable, waxy coats of those yet to dry and crackle as weight finds them, its notes bending through her twisted thoughts until she is humming aloud to mimic the noises rising from her hooves, a sweet and strange sound that is cut short when an additional maestro approaches.

She stops, a scowl on her lips; her ears twitter atop her head and a flighty giggle escapes her lips as she twists her small, ivory body around to spy upon whoever has come to interrupt her sonata. Stifled as suddenly as they chattered into life, her ripples of laughter still as a sound of greeting catches her ears, the pinned status of her listening tools slacking as they slowly rise and her face equally slow turns to face whoever it is has invaded her quiet and privacy - not alone.

For the time, the mare has forgotten that she is in the threshold, that this is normal to be talked to by strangers as if they want something of her. Her haunting eyes narrow, the black a streak and the silver flashing dangerously as they find purchase on the red toned equine that has come to her. Hot and red, her tongue openly probes at her lips as the woman speaks, the scent of her heavy with flesh and the crisp smell of grasses growing alongside water, and while the other mare makes nice and does as all good recruiters do, the wicked white one just stares with an expression of distrust and unnatural hunger lacquered to her face.

"Not alone," she whispers after too long a time, the narrow slits of her gaze blinking slowly to return to their state of watchfulness, and while it is likely to soft for any to hear her, she finishes with what the woman is – if she is not alone, "Draoahm." It is heavy with the pronunciation that was so easily cast from the lips of the spell holder, caught and pondered on the tip of her tongue even if she wonders just how Drom’s taste if they smell so pleasant.

Thankfully for the mare now become delightful prospective snack cake, another arrives to draw the liquid of her eyes away from the sweet face that wishes only to make friends. This is a different sort of beast, the wicked witch takes note of, her mouth tightening into a scowl that her game with the Drom has been ended by a fat whore of a creature. Her sides are wide with child, and a shudder rises from inside the ivory bitch even as her lips curl off her white teeth in a grimacing smile, her giggles rising once again out into the air.

"Hello," she mocks, her voice sing-songing out against the dying ripples of her pointless laughter, the humor that they both floundered with the same word reaching deep and hard into her heart and twisting the wires of her strange humor until the sparked in the air alive and vibrant.

They both gave names, too, but she doesn’t want to give them hers. What do they need it for? Perhaps they want to sell it to the rotting man in the castle but – another bout of jittery, bizarre giggles choke the silence into nothing – the rotting man is dead. Is there another one here? Did he not die in the fires, with the others? Did she not hear him screaming?

There were too many screaming. It was like an orchestra of voices and it rises through her soul like a mantra of strength. No. Maybe she hadn’t heard him, after all.

Her eyes narrow again, the breathless laughter breaking from her lips is stolen away in their sharpness, in the way her red tongue probes at the corner of her mouth and she looks them both over with the scrutiny of a butcher looking over his latest carcasses to hack into sellable bits. They didn’t ask her anything, and she didn’t even have to answer if they did, and she finds that she is staring at the horrible curse that has befallen the pregnant unicorn in the form of her round sides as she finally finds words that fit into her strange, falsified realities.

"These are herds?" she sounds sweet and innocent enough, and while obviously deranged as a drug addled hermit, she is still passing as harmless for the most part, if only creepy. But there is a hunger underlying her pitch that, should they listen closely, betrays her true desires and leaves a dark smut glittering around her words; herds had people, and people were just bodies.

How many bodies were there?

die like God, on the cover of time