The Child watches.

It is an ugly thing, horrible. Not the beast itself, whose black scales gleam dark and bright at once like the wide empty gloss of her own near-black eyes. No, it is not the snake that is terrible but the Hunger and the violence of its feasting. Bone and sinew crack and blood pulses from the deer's nostrils and mouth, cherry bright, like holly berries, where it drips to the snowy earth. Still, the Child watches.

She does not flinch or tremble, no. Not her, not the Everchild of Pangea. Soot still clings to the nearly-transparent curls of her tail, the ashes of her own body, burnt to dust and cinder, and she steps into the dappled light curious, drawing noisy, deep draughts of air through delicate nostrils. Fear. She feels it, but not like the Others. It is hunger needing to be fed, parched soil begging for rain, and she is the storm.

The doe had been afraid. It was what drew the filly in closer to her, the taste of that fear, the shape of it screaming unformed in the depths of the cervid's mind. She had given the nightmare shape as a Medium gives ghosts a voice, and the blood is cherry bright, like holly berries, where it splashed across her snowy breast.

What do world-eating snakes fear? Do they fear empty little children with dark eyes, as her mother did? Do they fear claws or beaks or red-eyed grey stallion-gods? Perhaps an endless winter; she has never been The Cold before. What is the shape of such a thing? Hunger stirs her eager bones, too, the Magic woven into them yearns to take a different shape. It is something they have in common, perhaps, the Child and the Beast.

For a long time, the Child had one shape. It was natural, at first, frail and white, pink-skinned, knobby-kneed, with eyes like black pools and a pelt full of curls. Her dam line is written across every inch of her, along with innocence, dependence; it was that last item that the pallid mare feared most, the responsibility. Starlust's daughter gives no careful thought to the fear that caged her into this delicate shape, not even to consider that it was that formative time that trapped her in what appeared to be a defenseless body.

But not entirely defenseless. No, after all, the Everchild is her father's daughter.

The Mother rarely spoke to her, and when she did, a response was unnecessary, so the Child rarely speaks. When Draco found her at the River, more enchantment than equine, she had simply parroted his own words back - or stole them from the image of his dying sister-love that she found in some crevice of his heart, spitting his name out along the river of lifeblood that poured from her mouth. The Snake, like the Mother, does not speak to her, and so it does not occur to the Child to cry for mercy or for help when the creature coils tightly around her, when he grins at her and plunges great fangs into the porcelain skin at her throat. There is no resistance, there is only The Game.

The magic that changes her bones is tricky. Some of Them are afraid of concepts, not things. Sometimes their fears are hidden well behind their own powerful magics, or behind cold and unnatural instincts. She must guess, and guessing is an imperfect art, but so many are afraid of the same things, really. It is not exciting to become simply a larger version of what she already is, not even for someone that cannot become that shape naturally. However, like the insatiable Hunger of the Snake, the Child's soft bones are not choosy. A mare of black and green is still a new face to wear, even if it is not an exciting one. Her blood-spattered chest turns raven-black, her neck willowy, lithe and long - a touch too narrow. She's been ill, perhaps, but getting better, slowly, slowly. But for that illness, she might be strong enough to break free from the bonds, to neutralize the toxin coursing her veins, but she is not, and so she can only turn her green eyes to his red ones. There is no fear there (of course, the Everchild does not fear Death, but she is a masterful actor when the magic is right) because there is no fear in the mare's love, only ferocity.

An accident. It's an accident, of course, it's their bad luck - his bad luck. Built up only to fall again and again. The scent of lilies and rainwater softly lingers in the cool air around them while the minutes tick closer to death. Failure after failure - parents, kingdom, lover, ah! Can he pick himself up from failing her? There is so much hidden away in the corners of Fear that cannot be easily shaped, but it's there, in the forgiveness in her bright eyes as they dull and grow heavy-lidded, and in the rueful smile on her lips before she presses them numbly to the side of that black mouth brought them here.