03-31-2021, 04:04 PM
She's never felt the dark like this. This is tangible; she feels it in the chill the crawls below her skin. There is a presence to this darkness, and she feels smaller than she ever has before. Julia's warm side is at the ready though, and that is a comfort in the darkness. Starsonder leans into that comfort, but her sister's racing pulse makes her catch her breath. So this wasn't some trick.
Suddenly the mention of hauntings feels like more than a just passing conversation, and she wonders if some dark magician of old is hunting them or if the forest itself has judged them as trespassers. She waits for her eyes to adjust, it is an eternity that only lasts a few breaths, but they never really do.
She doesn't have to see to know the darkness is moving, she feels it in the cold currents of air that pass over the fine hairs that stand on end all across her body.
But when she thinks there could be no darker night, the darkness seems to congeal into a shape, collapsing in on itself to create the body of a stallion, and her heart sinks a little lower.
She knows that face, that dead face, that dead tongue lolling. She knows what she will find as her eyes slide down his neck and over his shoulders, following the trail of blood she can not see into the spikes of crystal that passes through one side of his body to the other. Oh, dead things should not move, and yet he takes a step towards her, his tongue hanging lower, distended and white in the darkness. The crystals glow ever so slightly, illuminating the curves of his wounds and the deep, deep wells of those wounds.
How is he moving? She doesn't have the strength to step back and only tries to fall deeper into her sister's side, but of course, she can't get any closer than she is.
A sound causes her to look down and crystals begin to grow from the earth. They shoot like spears and rise like boulders, seeking her heart in the same way they had sought his. And now, she does run. They strike her hooves and runs deeper into the unknown woodland and farther from the safety of home.
starsonder
@[Julia]