In this womb or tomb - Any/Thanh.

[Aurane]

The day is worn. Thin and gathering great speed into a darkness ahead. It is getting heavy and unsteady on its feet. Great yawning mouths of darkness in the woods on either side of her expose the teeth and gums of nocturnal life — lightening bugs and their eerie, self-emitting glow, prying eyes reflecting low light. Angry. Hungry. Newly awoken from seasonal slumber and emaciated. Above, stars poke holes in the cold blue-black universe. A vast expanse of wild and wayward spacestuff, hurtling at incomprehensible speeds. ***She blinks slowly. (The sky is bright. Brighter than any day. A plane of wildfire, singeing the tops of trees, turning the world around her to ash. She inhales, but there is no oxygen, all of it stolen by some infernal body, consuming and reconstituting their atmosphere. And then the flames overtake everything. Goodnight.) She shakes her head. The world is cold and greyscales again, dampened from melt water and exposing, with no sentimentality, the well preserved carcasses of winter's purge. Spring is their great unveiling. Thrusting into their hands the harvests of their own sowing. Newborns, encased in birthing sacks, a great maternal feast; bones, still rife with good meat to be picked. There is shame, and for some delight, in the peeling of that snow cover. For her, it is a velvet curtain exposing a great stage — babies dropped like parasites in the unforgiving light of day, scars and trauma. A great drama after the tedium of eking out survival. She has followed Eyes with a narrow, searing suspicion. Lengthening her strides now and again to sidle up beside him, craning her thin neck to get a look at those milky and useless organs. Then she falls back, muttering under her breath. (Maybe Eyes is a hound?)  “That's ridiculous,” She growls quietly into the chill, night air,  “don't be stupid.” She curls around jack pines, moving off the path to test the air for scent. It is confused and over-saturated. Her brain revolts the overstimulation, suddenly a-flush with whispers and cracking sounds like electricity. The red mare snorts, moving swifter, away from Eyes and pressing through the throng of sweet smelling trees and past into open air. Breathing heavy for a moment like a spooked animal, she smooths her features and rolls her curved head. ***Aurane inhales, nostrils flaring and revealing soft pink. Black-bown eyes glossed over with a feigned sweetness. It is wide and syrupy. Never meant to be taken seriously, and bleeding around its edges, like an infection ready to run its course, a thrum of chaos. A pulse of animus. Aurane. ****Death makes angels of us all, and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven's claw.