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Sisters. What a ravishing word. Siblings. Brothers. Family. They were such sweet, lovely words. Words about loyalty, about watching another's back not out of liking them, but because it was duty, nothing more than blood tying you together. Confutatis had family too- that was what came of having a rapist father. There were always plenty of half-siblings running about, even if she had never met them before. Always had the mare wondered if she would recognize them when she started across them, or if she had crossed paths unknowingly with them before- how many had fled Isilme? How many had escaped Anarore? And out of the survivors, how many wandered lost into Helovia? It wasn't a thought train Skullface frequently explored, this idea of lineage holding horses together. Why should the conceited bitch care for one of the many bastards sired by Oblivion when Confutatis had never met a single one? The black mare shakes the dull thoughts from her skull-painted head and slips away from her guard into the forest, the damp chilling her sooty skin, numbing her to all but the sharpest and strongest of physical sensations.
The trees make for poor companionship, but nonetheless better than the foolish gravedigger who caught up to Skullface and pushed her into bitter submission. They are ancient, the trees; all-knowing guardians, rustling their leaves, creaking their greetings as the young wolf moves by, a smudge of moving shadow among the static shadows. Starlight gleams dully off her skull-painted face, shines lustily on the spine arrowing down her back.
There is another shadow in the woods today. Confutatis slows, picking her way carefully over fallen branches and withered tree roots, twisted and aged, her amber eye deep and dark and almost sullen. Nostrils flare, drinking in that scent. And this mare, stranger to her, has a touch of her scent; Confutatis' scent, that is, her individual wild-stench with the same old touch of decay and death to it, even, perhaps, a touch stronger than the Skullface. Not only this, but the young mare seems familiar to her, with gleaming orange eyes more red than hers. For a moment, the gristly mare of malicious intent halts, and she begins to quiver with excitement, burning her up inside. Is she a bastard daughter of Oblivion? Is she a half-sister? Then her shivering halts abruptly, and her sooty lips peel back in a soundless snarl. If it is so, perhaps the jack o' lantern poses a threat to her being queen of the black forest.
But blood is thicker than water.
"Lantern girl," Confutatis growls, a low rumbling from deep in her chest, quite unlike a voice of silk and steel that Seele has. But there is no savagery in the growl- it is a curious tone, a cautious familiarity to it. "I am Confutatis, daughter of Oblivion." Something she doesn't know makes her add her father, the old Isilme warlord. Her ears twitch and eyes sparkle viciously with inquisitiveness. How the warlord's daughter longs for this other mare, the jack o' lantern, to return the favor.
Half-sister?
Dizziness strikes her then, a burst of nausea. Yet she stands still as stone. She knew she had been poisoned when the idiot Asylum had gathered together for a meeting. It came in waves of illness, and sometimes even hallucinations (curious ones, she didn't really mind them). Right now, for instance. This other-mare was glistening with orange light, and blood was dripping down her elegant, Thoroughbred face. Then it is gone, restoring the other mare to normal, if you can describe her as normal.
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