with her sweetened breath and her tongue so mean
she's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
She felt the birth of her sister like a new weight on her soul, like another strand of spider silk webbing outwards from her heart. But it was not until she felt the echo of hunger, the shadow of an ache in her belly, that she chose to follow the pull back to the child. If she died, if anyone died, Bright would feel that loss more keenly than anyone else would, anyone besides Woolf. Death was like poison in their veins, it ravaged the marrow of their bones and bled their magic dry. But even more than that, this one, this hungry little filly who had managed to drift from her careless mothers side, this one was hers. Her blood, her bone, her family.
Rage fluttered on featherless wings in the pit of her stomach.
She could have walked to the meadow to find her sister, could have grown a pair of wings with which to take to the skies to travel more quickly. But Bright did not have any intention of babysitting this new brittle soul once she did find her, and the plans she did have required something quicker. The use of this magic would not come without a price, but Woolf would understand why she had taken so much from him to do this.
Instead of opening new portals, tearing new holes in the fabric of time and space, she found old ones. The places that had been teleported to or from, the rips where magic had left gaps that could not be repaired. Time and space, once ripped apart, always had a soft spot, a flimsy half-healed scab and Bright was both willing and able to tear it back open and reuse it. It took less magic this way, if only by a little, and she would be able deliver this tiny new problem, the fault in their lineage, to her proper place.
It wasn’t the most direct route, but Bright quickly made her way to the meadow, following portals like worm holes to and fro. As soon as she saw the filly, bright white and iridescent, gleaming like an opal or the glaze of ice over refrozen snow, she knew who she was. For a moment she watched the filly, traced the ridge of her ribs like welts stretched across her sides, the corn silk wisps of a mane and tail so red they rivaled fresh blood spattered across fresh snow.
“Mine.” Was all she said, a quiet and intensely possessive word as she strode to the girls shoulder, touched it, and opened a brand new portal. The draw of magic was immense and she could feel the weight of it crushing in on her, knew Woolf would also be stumbling from the blow wherever he was at these days. But it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t kill them. It would just be a very long walk home for Bright. In the half second before the portal closed and swallowed them completely, a shadowy figure emerged from the trees. The elk was immense, a giant among giants and even his antlers stretched like branches over his head. It would have been suspicious enough to see the beast wandering the meadow, but the fact that he was the color of steel and pewter curved her mouth in a frown. There was just enough time to trace the look of quiet amusement on his face, and to watch it deepen when she tried to search his mind but found only stone to greet her prying. Her violet eyes widened and surprise course through her for the first time in her life.
“A pleasure, father.” She said with a quiet, disgruntled hiss just as the portal slammed shut.
The portal opened again and dropped them in the sand, and although the space was wide open, vast and gold and endless, there was one large, dark object looming immediately before them. There was no surprise in Bright’s imperial purple face when she met the gaze of Vanquish with the hint of a smile edging across her mouth. “For you, grandfather.” Her eyes leave his face for just a second to trace the white and cream of her half-sisters disoriented face. “She is to be called Faultline. She is your granddaughter.”
Mine. She thought possessively, the word like a brand on the forefront of every thought.
bright