(‘I-I-I'm not sure I'm real.’ Wind clings desperately to her mane with his translucent, cold fingers. He flaps like a tatterd flag in a hurricane west wind; when he moves she hears the whispers of a thousand vocal chords he has captured in his travels. They are like fireflies in a mason jar, and he carries them with him always. His own airy voice is distinctly concerned. Melancholy.)
“Don't be silly.” The red woman mumbles soothingly, weaving through the bone-white labyrinth of birches. She lets out a wry laugh and snorts — it rings hollow here, in this stale moss-air — “That is just ridiculous.” She turns her head to try and look at him, but Wind is gone. Shrieking off into the vast everywhere. She grins wickedly. “Oh, Wind.”
(If he is not real, then we are lost. Then we have lost it.)
“He jests!” She snaps. An angry, desperate insistence; a sad, persistent hope in her own delusions. Her ears fill with quiet, quelled for now. “He's always worrying.” Wind has been her constant companion. Her stalwart messenger — her well-trusted adviser. They are connected, intimately coupled. He is as formed as she is, as utterly real as the timber and rock around her. Of that she is sure. So very sure. “I'm sick of everyone's incessant hand-wringing around here.”
Aurane is still smoldering when she stops, sick of moving for movings sake. Sick of wandering and finding nothing to sate the unrest in her gut. She has been provoked to distemper. Disheveled and narrow-eyed now, she is flushed flesh and a desire for unrest. Redder than before. A carnal, blood-fed coat flinching and smoothing over an unremarkable set of bones. She is not beautiful, but there is no ugliness in those defined curves and planes — she is a simple and efficiently designed catalyst: unassuming and fragile, but dangerous in her own right; whip-smart but deceptively dull- and hollow-eyed.
The red mare leans against the knots and crooks of a gnarled, black beech tree. Now and again she mutters a segment of a diatribe under her breath. But mostly, there is silence. A silence growing impatient.
A ghost precedes us. A shadow follows us
And each time we stop, we fall.
“Don't be silly.” The red woman mumbles soothingly, weaving through the bone-white labyrinth of birches. She lets out a wry laugh and snorts — it rings hollow here, in this stale moss-air — “That is just ridiculous.” She turns her head to try and look at him, but Wind is gone. Shrieking off into the vast everywhere. She grins wickedly. “Oh, Wind.”(If he is not real, then we are lost. Then we have lost it.)
“He jests!” She snaps. An angry, desperate insistence; a sad, persistent hope in her own delusions. Her ears fill with quiet, quelled for now. “He's always worrying.” Wind has been her constant companion. Her stalwart messenger — her well-trusted adviser. They are connected, intimately coupled. He is as formed as she is, as utterly real as the timber and rock around her. Of that she is sure. So very sure. “I'm sick of everyone's incessant hand-wringing around here.”
Aurane is still smoldering when she stops, sick of moving for movings sake. Sick of wandering and finding nothing to sate the unrest in her gut. She has been provoked to distemper. Disheveled and narrow-eyed now, she is flushed flesh and a desire for unrest. Redder than before. A carnal, blood-fed coat flinching and smoothing over an unremarkable set of bones. She is not beautiful, but there is no ugliness in those defined curves and planes — she is a simple and efficiently designed catalyst: unassuming and fragile, but dangerous in her own right; whip-smart but deceptively dull- and hollow-eyed.The red mare leans against the knots and crooks of a gnarled, black beech tree. Now and again she mutters a segment of a diatribe under her breath. But mostly, there is silence. A silence growing impatient.
And each time we stop, we fall.
lines and shading
by bronzehalo
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