Isolation & Fear (Damned of the 2/19th Book Seven)

Daughter of Tir na Nog

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My leg ached as I pressed the soft moss to it. The creature had slashed me deeply before I had torn out its throat with my talons. This part of the Tir na Nog was dangerous, bordering on another land, and while I had been keeping my eyes out for chicken tracks, the creature had rushed me. It had slashed my leg, but I had raked with my feet, spilling its guts onto my belly, and my finger talons had ripped out its life.

The blood tasted sweet as I drank my fill, as sweet as its meat. It had grown fat, unchallenged, and was no longer the thing it had once been when it stalked the nightmares of small children.

I was no small child, with fears of one such as it to give me pause.

The moss shrivelled, leeching the venom from the wound, and I waited until the black snake trails receded from my skin, before allowing the wound to close.

Satisfied that I would not be hindered I dropped back down to all fours and scurried down the path, my nose close to the dirt.

The insects and breeze here stayed hush, regarded me as an interloper. I did not have time to give obescience to the Master of the Hunt that ruled this land, I had scant time to reach my quarry before they retreated again.

...Hannah, run...

Paul's voice slithered through my belly and into my mind, reminding me that once I did this, I could return to the arms of my sweet beautiful Paul, and we could walk the paths of Tir na Nog together, reclaim our child, and once again dance in the mortal world.

It hurt, to be without him.

My mother, fierce, wild, untamable, would call me weak, revile my connection with Paul, but not to my face. I would tear her eyes from her face if she were to say such things about him.

It did not lessen me, my love for a mortal man. Even now, with him slumbering in my brook, watched over by my deadly guardian, I could feel his heart next to mine, feel the warmth of his love fill me, and the need for his touch drive me on.

My belly would be ripe soon.

Endless ferns gave way to sprays of snow, a twisted winter landscape, the hand of the White Queen, Maiden of the Cold and Mistress of the Dark.

In my youth I might have quailed from entering her lands. Even my mother would tread carefully upon the snowy moonlit paths of the White Queen's domain.

I plunged forward, afraid of neither the darkness and shadow, nor of the cold and frost.

They were but shadows and a cool breeze compared to the eternal hatred of Alfenwehr, home of the dark elves, where they had crafted their weapons to challenge the Gods, declared war on the rude beast that had been primitive man, and been slain by their own bereft black iron weapons wielded by the clenched fist of mankind. Left to die, bleeding upon their dark stone altars, their own black iron weapons used to chop free their limbs, hack open the bellies of their women, and castrate their men, in a war so long ago that only the stones remembered.

Stones that whispered to me as I passed them.

A wolf trotted by, a large, shaggy things, with underslung tusks and carrion so thick upon its breath that I could smell the miasma as I passed. It stared at me, but I ignored it.

Go about your task, servant of the White Queen, do not bar my path, and live another snowfall.

It whined slightly as it scented me on the still cold air, moving into the darkness.

I plunged into the snow, the feathery touch of it as it let me within it, accepted me, and passed me to the mortal will made my skin shiver with pleasure.