Soot-eyed and bramble-maned —
The daughter of dragons is not afraid of the dark.
It embraces her.
Lays over her like a lover.
Really it’s just an amorphous and vaporous blob that sometimes congeals and is given a shape of her choosing. The rest of the time it just trails off down the length of her back and over her spotted hips. It mingles itself into the long fine hairs of her tail and puddles underneath her feet.
Once; it had a name.
Once; it spoke to her.
Then she fought with her shadow and friend became fiend. So she banished him into the nebulous abyss from which she supposed all darkness is spawned from. She could conjure him back up if she chose to. But for the time being, she enjoyed the loosened shackle of the bond that kept them bound to one another.
It allowed her a certain unquestioned freedom. No snide comments. No unhappy looks. Only peace and quiet. So she sighed before inhaling the fog-moistened air of the redwood forest. Sometimes she paused to stare up into their overarching canopies. Whenever she did so, she could feel the darkness gathered in their branches singing to her.
The dark recognized its master as she walked by. Flowed out from beneath branches and over upturned roots to lick at her heels. It twined itself sinuously with the shadows that ran off her back. Glim could hear them start to murmur to one another like old friends and a smile came over her lips.
The loud explosive crack of a branch underfoot caused her to whip her head around and demand, “Who’s there?”
@[bruise] ❤️