Freedom is intoxicating. Her choices are limitless, and Ana almost feels overwhelmed with the amount of them. Should she stalk the small children in the playground today? Should she creep into the kingdoms by night and listen in on their concerns? She laughs to herself, and the sound is chilling, her mouth splitting into a smile punctuated by her inky black teeth. Now that the day had bled from the sky, Anastasia finally felt awake; she finally felt alive as soon as darkness stole across the land and blanketed it wholly.

Rising from where she had been asleep, she stretches languidly, her mane matted and lost as it pressed up against her neck. She yawns and opens up a portal before her, stepping through it with the confidence of one to whom black magic came easily. Within a second, she is in the meadow, and it is nearly deserted. Her predator’s head swings from side to side, yellow eyes peering out into the bowl of the land.

It is then that she spots the…other. Male or female, she cannot decide, and she does not particularly care. Shadows cling to her as she drops her head, her step going from curious to predatory, her motions made without noise, her shadow-self emitting no scent. There was thrill in the hunt, although Ana never felt any hunger. It was, instead, a trait learned from her panther-father. The hunt was power. It meant stalking your prey for hours on end if necessary; it meant wielding control over another’s very life.

Like freedom, it was intoxicating.

But, it was also boring by yourself, and when Ana realized that there was no challenge, no snarling father goading her on and then beating her to the punch, she grew tired of it. Yawning, she cracked open another portal and then another, stepping through and then letting the portal spit her out again directly in front of the other creature. “Hello,” she snapped in her harsh voice, lips spreading into her Jack-o-lantern grin, yellow eyes wide. If she did not want to eat, perhaps she could at least get the satisfaction of fear.

like the moon, we borrow our light
{I am nothing but a shadow in the night}

Fear was almost as sating as an actual meal—or at least, Anastasia liked to imagine that it was. She had never truly enjoyed eating and thus had no way of knowing its pleasure, but feeling the fear of prey was certainly pleasing in its own right for her. So when she sees the mare’s stoic face, feels the tremors of fear in the air, she shivers with her own joy. This was exactly what she needed; this is what she wanted.

“Come for you?” she echoes in her own broken voice, her tongue clumsy as it wrapped around each word—as if discovering the syllables for the first time. For all the ways that Anastasia was graceful (melting through the shadows of night, stalking her prey, bleeding from the portals), her tongue inherited none of it. Her conversations are spotty, jolting, broken from the beginning. She did not mind.

Moving toward Malis, she presses herself against the mare, breaking the seal of personal space. Her nose goes to the mare’s indigo neck, and she breathes in deeply, marking the scent down for future recollection. “Did not come for you,” she grunts, lips pulling back from her teeth as she contemplates sinking them into the other’s flesh before deciding it against it and putting them away. “Can take you though.”

Stepping back, she considers her newest toy, wondering what she wanted to do with it. Finally, she just gives the other mare a grin, lips stretched too tight. “Scream,” she requests, tail snapping behind her haunches. She takes another step forward and she can feel the acid bubbling on her lips, the sound breaking the sound of the silence between them. “Ana-sta-sia likes the sound of screams.”

like the moon, we borrow our light
{I am nothing but a shadow in the night}