im always dragging this horse around

[Neverwhere]

No.

This is the beginning, Lilli says, as if she knows. But she doesn't, not really, not anymore than Neverwhere does, and the frown on those small lips only deepens.

It's not the beginning.

It's not the end, either. She can feel it, that dry dusty stirring in her empty breast, a flutter like leaves in the wind. The dappled mare-- the dappled filly shakes her head as if to clear it, to clear the humming away that's keeping her going in circles. Death wants to hold them, it's greedy, it wants to keep everything that crosses its borders.

She shakes her head, eyes squeezing shut like even Death's dim light is too much. There's never really been anything wrong with her sense of direction - it was her sense of purpose that was missing, that is still missing. This is a temporary goal, find her way out of this maze. Get Lilliana back home and safe.

What happens next?

The child-that-is-not-a-child freezes.

I don't know.

The gates are still broken. They can leave. They can leave. But how? Nev opens those winter-sky eyes. Maybe a different beginning.

"Lilli, how did you get here?"

It happens so fast, but she doesn't understand most of what she sees because the creature has no single shape, it changes and morphs like a diseased thing (like Wolfbane) hands and tentacles and eyes and teeth. Its skin a black but it is red but it is white and rotting, and even though Neverwhere lurches forward for her friend, it swallows her up like a swallowtail snapping up flies.

"No!" The beast appears and just as quickly disappears, leaving behind it a lingering miasma of cruelty and malice that the filly chokes on, that makes her heart race and her skin sweat.

"Lilliana!"

There's no power behind her shouting, just a child's voice that cracks under the strain. The red mare is gone and Neverwhere's chest aches strangely like she's been holding her breath for too long. It makes her cough, she can taste the iron tang of blood on her tongue. Now she remembers.

She doesn't know where it came from or what it was, but she'd outlasted plenty of monsters before this one. There was no reason at first to assume it wasn't just another horse, it was shaped enough like one until she'd looked more closely, until she'd seen the form melted into its back with its raking claws and that awful wide grin. Until she'd seen that it had no skin and that the acrid blood dripping like oil from its gaped mouths leaves the life around them dull and dead.

It was one of the only times Neverwhere remembers being afraid.

It's the only time she ever ran - truly ran - away.

But she hadn't been fast enough. She's not fast enough now, either, when the Nuckelavee appears, melting out of the hot, dry, air. Her legs aren't long enough, they aren't fast enough, and the beast catches her up in those long-fingered hands, claws rending skin and muscle like butter. It says something in a language she doesn't know and its breath is like smoke, toxic and faintly briny like the sea it belongs to (not here, not in the desert) and she chokes on it, her throat swelling, long tendrils of saliva tinged pink with blood reaching for the fading ground.

She kicks weakly with a leg that must be broken and the squeal of laughter this elicits from the creature is the lullaby that she drifts away on.

And then there's nothing. Again. But she doesn't notice the nothingness, because she is nothing, too.

And then there's a sound; waves breaking on rocky cliffs.
And then there's a scent; heather and the briny sea.

Cold wind ruffles her thick coat and Nerine's autumn sky pours into her eyes all at once.

"Oh, fuck."

Image by FootyBandit

@lilliana