but she bites like loveless ice {dark kingdoms}

[Shadowmere]

but when aurora's lights ceased to shine

She always managed to find her way back to this place.

Dark sleek body, slinking through the dark eerie autumn night like a demon shadow. Her pace was slow, her head stuck outward and low as per usual. As old as she gets, she never seems to lose herself, she is still the same tortured mind.

Her plans throughout her years in this land were always thwarted in some way or another. Her damned panther child, Naga, betrayed her and ran off to lord knows where. Her son eventually left her side as well. Not to mention, Naga stole away her Nerissa. Now she stands alone, not feeling guilt. That is not like her. She feels no pain, no guilt, no remorse. Only morbidity and revenge filled thoughts.

Our dark creature, maneless and twisted, has bounced from place to place. For some reason the Valley had always been where she managed to end up. Though now she didn't care where she went, which is why she is here now. She decided she would gain some entertainment by watching recruiters bicker amongst each other, trying to one up each other's spiel, each one hoping to win her over and get brownie points with the higher ups. Always entertaining. She remembered her days of attempting recruits, but of course she always managed to scare more than appeal.

Now she was not worried about impressing anyone, all she really had to do was stand there, let them pick her out of the intense amount of estrogen in the field this fine autumn season. She had her fair share of ungrateful brats, so she was not going to take part in the....festivities.

Our demented silver dappled black girl slithered her long delicate body up a small hill, her tail flowed behind her like a thick long dress train made of silvery cobwebs. The older mare then stood alone, framed by a pale full moon rising over the horizon. She looked like a serene...nightmare. Soon enough though she would no longer be alone. For too long she stayed isolated from others. She needed a place to spend the rest of her life, commit to one place. She could probably be of use to someone. Only time would tell. For now, she stands statuesque upon her hill.

SHADOWMERE

i was alive, i think, for the first time

[Ribcage]

He wakes up in a lather.
If he could, he would be as steeled as her. If he could, he’d subsume himself to that carnivor fully. Happily, as he once had. Now he wears that other skin like the patterned pelt of something endangered – guilty, arrogant; heavily, comfortably. But he can never hate it. When he is one, he longs to be the other, until he wears out his welcome and becomes over-friendly. He forgets how to eat something without bones; he forgets how to sink his teeth just where he needs to. It gives him his independence, most of all. He no longer has to trail sister and mother like a hopeless duckling.

Remorse eats away at his quiet thoughts and dreams. He is harrowed, deeply shaken – yet he remembers the taste of blood too fondly on his lips. 
It shouldn’t have been her, rather anyone that did not have sister’s shape.
Some semblance of that girl clings to his brain like a vice. When he drifts off, finally, he sees her there, surprised and fringed in flame. She is spotted and then blue (blue-tongued, blue-bodied), red (red-throated and red-eyed) and then impossibly dark. Only a silhouette, fringed in flame.

Sometimes, when it is not her, it is sand and bedrock come alive, suffocating him. It is war.

He awakes on cold, hard stone. Nearby, he knows sister and brother are asleep and somewhere mother is circling like something hungry around a wounded thing. He lifts himself up, stretching his front paws out before him, bending and lengthening his wiry body; he yawns widely, bearing sharp, white, tearing dentition and rough tongue.
“Where are you going?” she is tired, foggy. Sweet. Always sweet.
He moves towards her, smooth and dangerous (but not to her – never to her). She offers her forehead and he meets it with his own rub. She giggles. ‘Out,’ he chuffs and sister rolls back over, neck hung over brother’s black body.

He is over-reliant on this striped self. One day he must learn to navigate the pinewood and beyond without it. Not because he anticipates losing it – it is him – but because he knows this body may not be particularly conducive to duty. It is violent looking thing. Capable. Sinewy and uncomfortably athletic. If he were a warrior, he would be a formidable one. Except when he is himself, he cannot see, and if he cannot see, he cannot fight. 

He paces on the edge of the Field, low in the tangle of thorn bushes and nearly naked trees. He watches them with darting, wide eyes. He licks his lips now and then and jerks at quick movement, until he finds where he wants to go and holds his breath. In a moment, he is in darkness, his ears whirling around to orient himself. But he gets to her with relative ease, stopping too far away (too close it worse in situations like this, he plays it safe). He is thin and young, black and it would be fine, if he had been made whole by a caring maker. He is strange and unsettling. Unfortunate, at first glance. 
“Hello,” he turns his head this way and that, as if trying to spy her with his empty, smooth sockets, “I come from the Chamber.”