Since the bad time,
the hours (years?) spent int he cave,
since the demons had nibbled long jagged marks across her legs,
since it all faded to black...

Nikoline had been along in the forest.

She collapses every night with dreams of fire. The brilliant colors lick along her skin, singing and stinking of burnt hair. She screams and screams and screams. The red and orange tongues close her paper-thin throat till the screams are just a gargle...then she wakes in a cold sweat.

But every morning under the thick streams of pastel pink and soft yellow, tiny flowers bloom in her mane and tail. They weave themselves tightly into her wounds and heal her with their gentle felt petals. Niko can only dream of pain despite the way she her thick cuts seem to heal nearly overnight. It only takes a few mornings before she feels whole, the zig-zag of scars of only a delicate shade of pink along each leg like that of her primitive ancestors.

The mare does not understand the gift of her torture until she manages to wake stiffly one morning and her body feeling foreign to her. The hazel eyed mare rises from her place of sleep, the moss ringing her body and cushioning it in a soft nest that she has become accustomed to. She had been alarmed the first few nights but now? No, it was simply a trick of the forest...till the day she notices how the very soil beneath her hooves begins to grow lush and green. Had it all been a mocking joke by the bastard demons?

Was it her angel?

The days pass, her body is pained by the cold, yet the green glow of healthy seems to stay with her always. The scent of gardenias and lavender seem to waft around her despite the perpetual cold of an oncoming winter. Time passes, nights filled with horrific fire torment her endlessly. It seems so painful, so bleak, despite the way the flowers bloom and the trees bend...it is all too much to live with. The ring of moss, the whispers that flood her ears, her beautiful angel lost and gone from her? His memory fades more and more everyday till she can barely remember his face...oh the cruelty of it all!

Niko aims to finish her story with an exclamation. She would not live without his memory!

Then that night, the dreams of raging fire are suddenly gone as she contemplates her own death but then...then the pale glow of her angel cools her brow, his lips meet her cheek as he whispers his love for her, placing a small lily in her hair and he tells her to live with him, not without him in her own suicide, that he could be with her in the forest...he kisses one last time as she wakes.

The dryad has replaced the painted mare. She knows all, sees and understands now. Her angel is the forest. His is every small seedling, every sacred bloom in her hair. A soft content smile lips the edges of her pale lips as an aura of calm surrounds her. Her angel would be with her now and always.

Thin bark-like legs move her steadily over the ground when the trees whisper of a stallion. The dryad is nearly silent as she moves to seek the unfamiliar face. The concern for such a broken thing is across her immortally beautiful face. "Hello." The dryad speaks gently like the sound of  cool spring waters over smooth stones. She tilts her cherry blossom antlered head, curious of the other and his ailments, shying away on thin legs till she is comfortable close to an old oak that leans to touch her skin. "Are you real?" The soft river-song of her voice dancing like a warm summer breeze as the grass grows lush and bright against her feet. The mare tilts her head curiously, inclining it towards him as she listens for his answer. Was she awake? Was he truly here?

The darkness of her eyes do not leave the other as she hugs close to the old oak tree with it's enduring strength and stability. She almost acts like a shy child attempting to blot out a stranger's presence by hiding behind the leg's of her parents. She is nervous but the quiver that gently sways cherry blossom petals around her pale form was not from fright but more because of the dropping temperatures. The dryad mare had yet experienced the bone-chill of an early Beqanna winter in this new, strange body.

The horse, most definitely male, stands near the gaping mouth of a strange dark cave. It looks hungry in her eyes and she could nearly mistaken the sun kissed skin of the animal at it's tongue. The last of the sun fractures between the trunks of the nearly naked trees but Nikoline can not take her eyes from the stormy grey-blue of the stallion and his cave. Small ears collapse against her smooth poll but lift again when he takes a few paces closer. The nymph responds by moving from one side of the tree and poking her head around the other, narrow chest breathing deeply in the anticipation of his words. "I think so." His voice is overwhelmingly strong against the sensitive nature of her ears. She had listened to the silence of the forest for so long that she almost feared the sound of his voice would be enough to break her into splinters...but it doesn't.

The man, etched from rare marble wrung by thick sinews, takes a few paces closer with a lower head as though he were praying. Nikoline does not approach but she does not stir from her place next to the oak. The way his dark hair falls across his eyes captures her attention, clutching a breath in her throat. "But I feel as though I may be dreaming." The words are nearly a whisper and she must lean forward from the protection of her oak. The mare steps away from the trunk, her thin legs drawing her only a pace closer but she does not bound away from his advancement. "I thought I was too." She replies back in the same hushed tone as the moonlight spills across his skin in a silver pied pattern. The dryad edges another soundless step closer though her body is stiff and the throb of her heartbeat nearly deafens her.

Large dark eyes flicker to the seeping darkness of the cave with the half expectation to be torn limb from limb by the creepy crawlies inside. Death would not come this day though unless it was in the form of a broken mottled creature with pain in his eyes. The forest nymph listens as the sleepy trees whisper to her. They tell her he has been 'marked' just as she. Nikoline takes a pace closer to him as her own head tips downward. "They say you were there too." Her voice is a soft sound of chimes teased by the love of a warm summer's night. "The demons hurt you too." The confession falls from her pale lips as the tall redwoods with their all seeing treetops fall silent.

The had always bothered her. Nikoline can not recall a day that it did not. Every winter, despite the length of hair that grew on her body, she would tremble as icy caresses tangled and knotted her pale mane. Except now, the cold does not seem to penetrate this skin and the grass at her hooves, er- stems was a lush and vibrant green. Dark eyes move to look at the ground as the rustle of decayed brown leaves blew into her aura and suddenly returned to a healthy green again before blow off from the tangle of her soundless feet.

The dryad lifts her gaze, dark and shining, as she meets his eyes. They are glassy and wide and she can see the way they are dimmed by the horror they have witnessed. The pale woman studies him as though he were the alien creature with the ever approaching step drawing her slowly towards him but able to leap off he should prove to be malicious.

...but he is not and the rawness of his soul lay flayed on a slab. She would be able to deem him unholy and measured him in sins but he is a broken thing, pieces together with harsh black cord and empty promises. She knows he is marked just as she. He is impure in this cathedral of the holy righteous Beqanna. They have been touched. A tear, sweeter than honeysuckle, breaches her doe-like eye and falls to dampen her cheek a soft rabbit fur grey.

She wants him to approach, willing it silently but frightened nonetheless. They had taught about their tricks. Their gnashing teeth and wagging tongues. Their stink of excrement and decay soaking to her bones when she had awoke in the forest. She was ashamed of her folly. Broken puppet of a woman with her strings plucked until they snap and she lay in the dust to be forgotten.

His response was gentle but the sheer ferocity is enough to make the world quake. She had never felt anything as great as another willing to help her, sacrifice their own blood for a thing like her. The dryad woman, shrouded in her pale glow beneath a starless night, goes to him as she can feel his soul splintering. Niko is edged close enough that she steps to close the gap between their physical forms and wraps the length of her smooth neck around his in an embrace.

She does not know this man. She does not know is name but sounds of the voices, the tree's wisdom, whisper that he is a good man and beckon her to him. Niko grips him rightly to warmth of her slender form against his own as cherry blossom petals fall around them like pale pink snowfall.