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Glass. Surrounding her, enveloping her, drawing her into a world of faded, lackluster images of sugar-spun silver and sweet blue, frost-wreathed ice and the faint glistening shadow of something beyond the opaque walls, the shadow of the swirling shining storm. Her very body glistened with diamond, stretched and twisted beyond recognition, just a gray and charcoal mass of thin hips and a huge head. Another step forward brought her body wide and head small, slim legs stretched impossibly long, a gazelle's legs on an elephant's body. Illusions, and how were she to distinguish from reality, the impossible refractions of the dark mare herself over and over, all around her, the malice of her blackened heart seeming to grow deeper and deeper, take disturbed hold of her contorted thoughts. "Impossible," she breathed, turning her head to and fro to try and asorb the oddity that lay staggeringly strange around her. How was a horse to realize or recognize the reflections for the simply "magic" they were? They could not, not unless gifted with the anthromorphized mind humans so often like to put to them.
The scarred beast halted, nostrils flaring, the familiar darkness in her right eye seeming alarmingly dangerous.
Confutatis' skull-marked head twisted, her sharp amber eye, the scrutinizing gaze of a horse not quite sane nor quite insane, lacking in the proverbial rules created by the gods to keep them prey and not a predator, seeking out the perpetrator that roused the basic instinct within her. The very much intuitive sensation of there being someone, something watching her, eyes laying on her dusty black form. It was the movement in the surreal fortress walls that caught her attention even swifter. Glass, more glass, but this time ruby diamond. Hooves clink on ice, her dark hooves, a faint clicking sound not unlike the domesticated dog's on hardwood floor. Oblivion-daughter swivels one ear forward, silent, un-communicating. You look troubled.
It's blood that paints him, glistening ruby, the snow on his shoulder, the night caught in his mane and tail. And his eyes are winter, cold and blue and the howling wolf. What was troubled? Why did the stranger care? The feral beast feels no need to be presumptuous and assume this stallion is like the young that greeted her in the Threshold, low in maturity and pompous in believing that everyone he meets would care to join a herd. In the corner of her golden eye, she can see many of them, facing off to one another. She sees how dark, savage and wild she looks; and she likes that. Better to be feral than aristocratic, or pampered, or pretty. It suits her and the skull painting on her face much better than a well-combed mane and a braided tail.
Confutatis does not blink. Instead, she continues to stare, unblinking, serene, the frigid nip of winter lessened inside the caverns of ice.
Finally, she stirs, shifting her weight and giving a lethargic blink of her eyes. "I am not troubled." Nearing tepid in tone of voice, Confutatis eases back into her apathetic state, as if the trudging through snow had worn away her energy- which it rather had. There was nothing like trekking through the deep white drifts to become heavy in the legs and let the eyelids droop. Except for, perhaps, a battle, like the many the scar-striped mare had participated in. Some were carefully planned, clever and sly, while others had relied upon the basic strength of a madwoman. But it is important to remember Confutatis is not mad. Just ambitious, and restless, and a quiet- or rather, not-so-quiet- lover of chaos, just like her father.
"I am contemplating the strangeness and lack of excitement in this world." Another pause. "Are you troubled?"
The wind howled louder outside, as if aiming to gain her attention. Apart from a mildly alarmed flicker of an ear, Confutatis ignored the call of wilderness' savagery, enjoying the ability to explore her thoughts with ease. Thoughts of blood, lust, war, strategy, hostilities and the plundering. Not the plundering of riches, like the explorers of Spain who sought out the Aztecs and enslaved them, and drained the lake surrounding the island of Tenochtitlan simply to try and find the mysteriously disappearing gold. No, quite unlike that. She was musing over the thievery of joy, the replacement of abandonment and loss of hope, ever the villain even in her ardent thoughts.
Vaguely she can recollect a time when she had enjoyed herself, believing to be of good. The moments before she attempted to suckle, acidic mouth seeking her mother's teats, and then being driven away. Scorned. Having to pillage milk from nursing mother, wreaking havoc on the world from even a young age.
Villains always have the worst of histories, childhoods so full of despair and resentment. Bad guys aren't just born. They have to be made.
CONFUTATIS
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[O] Magic in death and beauty in blood
