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+------ Thread: Pink is the new black (/showthread.php?tid=28757)
Pink is the new black - Sabra - 01-19-2021
I don't know why I expected anything but grief from the overstuffed pigeons on the mountain. I know it's dark, they honestly couldn't spare half a glance, a dash of fairy-magic-dander-dust to fix my hair? Huffing and puffing the entire way, I make my journey back home from the mountain's reach.
More or less. It is very dark, and the journey takes longer than I'd anticipated. This does exactly nothing to improve my humor. My jaw works in harsh circles as I walk on, considering what it would take to actually inconvenience a fairy. Vaguely, I think of whoever managed to turn off the sun. That was a stroke of brilliance, I'm sure. Only wish I'd thought of it first. Granted. It's inconveniencing me just as much as its inconveniencing the damn fairies, and I swear rather colorfully when my hoof catches on an unseen root.
I light up like foxfire in my pique. A jagged outline of a mare with no fuse to spare, and an awful lot of irritants. My wings flare out like an angry owl's, only to catch on the skeletal fingers of a shrub or low hanging tree, or something less inanimate. With a groan, my fit ends, and I kick at nothing before moving on.
The way I'm traveling has been well trod by many others before me. That is perhaps the only reason I am not entirely lost. The path is mostly flat, mostly dirt, and I can smell the others who have gone this way. Other suckers on their way to beg favors from the glittering nightmares of the mountain. I cast another sightless glare over my shoulder, hoping it's sharp enough to cut through the darkness.
The way home is always so much longer than the way out. Miles and miles that stretch between my feet, and in the darkness that problem multiples. I could be walking off the edge of the continent, and I wouldn't notice. Not when there's no landscape to mark the passing of time and distance. Its just one step after another, over and over again until I think I could be going in circles just as easily as going home.
I begin singing a stupid little tune, trying to find rhymes for "fairy" and "hairy". It doesn't get very far, so I stop, glaring moodily ahead and getting blisteringly mad that I can't simply wish myself back in the woods. I have to walk. After a while, my mind wanders home without me, wondering how Calavera is handling herself. Staying out of Balto's reach, I hope. Though I suppose it's no great loss if she hasn't even got that much sense. I'll find out soon enough, I suppose.
I know she has a handful of dens scattered throughout the woods. Little hideyholes to hunker down in whenever she feels the need to make herself scarce. I think if I were to bet, I might give the yearling something like forty against sixty odds against the ravenous stallion.
Really, his appetite has been insatiable since his return from the battlegrounds. It's thrilling, and just a touch concerning. It would be more concerning if I could see myself on the menu, but my mind stubbornly refuses to allow that. I am untouchable, for all I know or care. And if I am touched, I will make sure it is regretted.
There are many things to think about on a long walk, and I think I cover most of them before my legs begin to loudly complain. However long I have been walking, it is too long by their standards. Old injuries, I think. They make everything harder after a while. It is no reassurance when the memories attached to them bring on a new wave of bitterness.
My knees ache, and I know it's because of the long ago burn scars. My shoulder throbs, and I remember that my wing was torn almost completely off once. The well of my repressed sorrows runs deep, and now it carries up a bucket of memories to drown myself in. I can go no further like this. Not when every step sends a lance of pain through, screaming "failure, failure, failure," as I go. No, I can't keep going.
Instead I turn off the path, just a little. Not so far that I won't find it again. There is grass, I can feel it, taste it, but it is more dead than living. There is no joy to be found in the dry mouthful. There will be less on sleeping on it, but my bones give me no choice. I lay among the rattling vegetation, nose under my wing. After a while, I even sleep.
It is not peaceful sleep, mind you. I so rarely experience that. But the Voices are soft, mere murmurs on the edge of my subconscious, and I do not question why. I think we have established by now that I am a foolish creature.
They are cruel, you know. They are masters of weakness. Every insecurity, every doubt is their weapon, and they wield it with dreadful precision. Who commands who? They ask one another, in a tongue so old it has no name. She has forgotten that she has no power. We will remember it for her.
And they pluck, one by one, the fiery strands of hair from my neck. The long, tangled threads of my tail. Every single lock, until I'm left naked and shivering, but sleeping still. There is no sun to wake me. And they are careful barbers, their needle thin claws precise as they epilate. A mockery, because they know they could do so much worse, yet this is what will give me lingering pain.
My vanity has long been my downfall, and now they prey on it. They salivate over the screams of anguish they know will follow my waking moments. And I will suffer all the more because it really was all my fault. Beauty means nothing if none can see it. I know that it is my beauty that others tolerate, because I have no other redeeming features. In the dark I am nothing, and now I cannot deny it.