Again, she answers wrong.

The pale dancer hisses, ears again falling back as she slowly shakes her head no, the motions eerie and played out to such a degree that she could be filmed in half time. Deranged, molten eyes slide into partial frames, their narrow glare cold and full of judgment as the mental play of the blood pool again streams within her cluttered cranium.

She does not know. She thinks she is dangerous.

Even Beloved knows better. The body that rose from the water and the fish that had fled it knew better. They knew that there were things darker than even the most wicked of mortal damsels, the most black hearted of knights; the pale one dislikes the ignorance of the white crowned woman, dislikes that she so easily believes that the talk is of her, just like a crazy bitch would.

Is it a wonder their conversation goes in circles, that they get no where but a tangled mass of their own egotism and half minded short comings? But even the white demon knows that she is correct to be demanding, that she has rights to things that this one does not – because she knows the cold wind in the south, she knows days of death like rain and screams more frequent than the beat of one’s heart.

She knows it because she watched it all, once. She saw a mighty kingdom fall to darkness, to ruin, to shadow, entire families devoured and whole forests felled. It did not touch her heart, the cold iron it has always been, but taught with each fearsome gain as she danced out of its eager reach – that power, that blasphemous and elegant might that was wickedness, true evil, real demons… it fueled her now.

It made her immortal, more valuable than this smut she willingly obliged to spare, more worthy than the night dark and shielding around their frames where they danced the verbal melee of the mad.

She knew, she knew, she knew…

"Do you hold the collar of death? Have you tamed such black wings?" a mad giggle, a floating song, her eyes glazed and lost in the bloody night, "a blood fest. You are not stronger than such things. Beloved is only its shadow, you know only the stench of its breath. There is no darkness here. We are within its maw already."

She smiles, too broad, her pink gums gleaming and her eyes shut in mirth that defies logical premises, as if she expects the teeth to crush her bones into dust at any moment, as if the saliva drips down into her eyes.

When she looks again, she has turned, she has asked the woman to go with her.

The woman asks… to where.

"Away," says Beloved, still grinning madly, "away to the snow. There are unicorns there, like we. They know the teeth that you cannot see."



Beloved
rust every place that I touch