WARNINGS: - Scottish literature as an allegory for suicide, though it is never explicitly mentioned - Near death experiences - Exceptionally mild blood and injury - Brief discussion of carnivores and their simplistic tendencies There is an old saying-- old in the relative sense, a saying in that someone must have said it, once, wasn’t that all it is?-- about this sort of thing: Between the bridge and the river. In the metaphorical sense, it meant a decision made last minute. She decided to change her outfit between the bridge and the river. Between the bridge and the river, he decided not to go. They were going to be married, but, between the bridge and the river, they didn’t. In a more physical sense, it was significantly more weighty (pun intended). Like a whole body’s weight of weighty. ‘ It meant: If, in between the bridge, where you jumped, and the river, where you’d land, you repented, would your soul be saved? Would your regrets carry weight-- more weight than your pathetic, mortal body, plunging down into some great abyss (metaphysically, not physically, this time. Details. Connotations). Marakorum was there, presently. Physically. In between the bridge and the river. Marakorum would not repent. And it wasn’t, technically, so much a bridge, as it was a sheer cliff, a here-again-gone-again stretch of earth, and a plunge down through cold, open sky; and it wasn’t, technically, a jump, even though she had, at the end, there, put her legs to work in an attempt to hit Mel so thoroughly there was no means of escape. And so, technically, she wasn’t between a bridge and a river-- she was between her slimy, pathetic sister, and a long fall into a semi-frozen pool littered with sharp rocks. Her sister’s illusion shattered into a million formless pieces; she didn’t feel it, because there was nothing to feel, but one second Melinoe was there and then there was just open air and cold and the fall. Her stomach flipped and ran jejunum first into her ribcage, the wind sliced at her like sharp knives, and, while it was at it, it twisted a hand down her throat and ripped whatever air was in her lungs out in an and-expletive-you-too moment. Mara twisted in the air; the night sky spread out over her, like a blanket. The moon passed behind a cloud. Her horn drew in the sudden dark; it climbed up the levels of keratin, pooling and slipping like a fountain in reverse. She bent it to her will, covering herself in a cushioning, lightless cocoon. It was hard to keep focused when she hit the water, but she reached out and grabbed for that darkness like a child does a warm blanket, pulling and tugging and wrapping it around her, the cold void a sort of protection she’d never gotten from all the light in the world. A slab of granite caught the edge of her bubble, and the dark bent around it, like rubber. She was still frigid. She still couldn’t breathe. She still plunged deep underneath the foam spat out by the waterfall, buffeted by the current, but the darkness buoyed her back to the surface. She broke free, ichor sliding down over her muzzle, and gasped for breath, as the manifested darkness sluiced away, pooling at the edges of the thick floes of ice, spreading like oil in the water. Mara cranked her legs, tipped her nose up so far her jugular occluded and she became dizzy, churning through the frigid foam towards the opposite bank. She hit it chest first, and with a final, pained scream, managed to heave her front legs onto the frozen dirt. The water in her pelt turned frosty immediately; the back half of her, the submerged half, was already going numb. She couldn’t tell where her hindquarters were in space. This time, the darkness at the edge of her vision was not a comfort; it felt more like a stalking beast, waiting for her breath to run out. She considered calling for help, but who would hear her? She was alone out here. She had always been alone. And if she had to die, she was going to die alone. Her front legs weakened. Mara slipped back into the water-- and felt a hind hoof touch stone. Gasping and shivering, she sat back and kicked as hard as she could, gaining enough momentum to sling her midsection over onto the bank. She hit with the wet slap of rotten fruit; and then she was free, laying in the soggy dirt, with frost crystalizing over every part of her. Soon she would stop shivering; her body would become too cold to function, and that would be the end. It would be like Mel all those years ago, except, for Mara, there was no kind sister to drag her to safety, to warm her in the night; to lean on to get home. It was rather poetic, all of it wrapped up so neatly in a wintery bow. Maybe this, down here, maybe this was her bridge and river; maybe it wasn’t so much a physical bridge and a physical river, but where she was now, somewhere in the middle. Her eye lolled up towards the sky as the clouds cleared the moon. The wind knocked the tree branches together, and between them danced little lights. Hypothermic hypoxia? Or stars, come to take her away? More and more little lights appeared as her eyes slid closed. Marakorum woke to a feeling of warmth, which was odd, and in more ways than one. And, really, she wasn’t sure ‘woke’ was the correct term; it was more like waves as the tide rolled in, each one licking higher, and higher, on the beach. She was warm, although she hurt everywhere; it even hurt to breathe. Out of all the pain there was an insistent, dull, bruising throb in her lower legs. Her hearing came next-- the cracking and burning of… was that fire? And something higher still, a persistent, snapping chirp, pitched in different tones and distances, like something was moving around her. Then, a sharp sting, just above her shoulder. And another, and another. Little fly bites, making her pelt twitch. Then something grabs a small clump of hair and pulls-- --and she throws her head up, snarling, ready to fight. A harsh stream of screeching cries and chittering fills the air, nails dragging on stone. Mara pins her ears, certain she will find some terrible beast, come to feast upon her flesh, and looks upon… …a cavern, filled to the brim with glittering things. Ornaments and baubles in gold and silver, strings of fairy lights, enchanted in all colors; gems of nearly every shade; bows with metallic trim, paper embossed with glittery, velvet swirls. Small fires on tiny, matchstick sconces lit the dark stone. And everywhere she looked, little, tiny dragons, dancing and hissing, making a small perimeter around her, snarling and lashing their tails. There was a brief standoff, Mara glaring and gnashing her teeth, the little wyrms spitting and grumbling. Mara realized even in their number they were not an immediate threat; her heartrate slowly dropped. A thin trickle of blood cascaded down the line of her shoulder. They sat like that for a long time, the small dragons making a circle around her, and Mara just sitting there and taking everything in. Eventually, the hissing became quite tiresome, and she found she could feel her legs again. With some effort, she heaved herself to her feet. The pocket-sized lizards snarled and spat, some of them coming forward to nip at her heels. One got its canine teeth into the meat of her ankle and she shook it off like she might refuse from the bottom of her hoof. “What is happening here?” Her voice was hoarse; every word felt like claws dragging up her throat. The kitten sized dragons had no answers-- they did not seem capable of comprehensible speech. Their silence posed more questions. Even between all of them-- there were twenty, or so-- there was no way they had the strength to haul her… well, she didn’t know where ‘here’ was, exactly, but it still wasn’t where she had been, and that counted for something; and aside from the newest little nip in her pastern and the tiny little wounds she could feel on her neck and shoulders, it didn’t seem like they had been… ‘eating her’ sounded garish, but still. Had she gotten here herself, under her own power? Had she reached deep into the festering darkness that was her soul, some mysterious inner strength kept locked away, and crawled free from the grave into the (relative) safety of this pest-infested cave? Had… had Mel? Found her? Brought her here? The thought made bile spike up her throat. That was the worst case scenario. She honestly would rather have died. Suddenly, Mara’s seething rage gave way to nausea and dizziness, like her body was too exhausted to support such strong emotions. She staggered forward-- the writhing ring of wyrms around her screeched and jumped, moving like one single entity, a stupid scaly bubble, in and out and in-- chest first into the treasure pile. Bits and baubles scattered across the ground with faint tinkling noises and the jingle of bells. And there, at the center of it, curled the answer to all her questions. It was not, by all accounts, a very large wyrm. It was shorter than she was at the shoulder; it reminded Mara of a very large cat, like a tiger or a leopard, but long bodied, enough to wrap double on itself as it lazed in the middle of its ornamental nest. As it stood and unfurled, it revealed strong, stout legs, and a thick, boxy head. Its tail was twice and a third as long as the body, and it flexed and curled belying a prehensile strength. The crushing feeling in her legs made sense, now. The dragon stood and stretched, also in a feline manner, front legs sliding out and disturbing a knot of gilt bows, toes spreading, claws extending and tapping one at a time and hooking into the soon-to-be-shredded fabric. Its hindquarters bunched and stuck up, tail undulating. A long tongue lapped between sharp canines as a luxurious, deep-chested yawn escaped them with a small puff of fragrant smoke. Mara waited for it to be done with its display, pushing herself clear of the pile of-- what she was realizing to be-- solstice decorations. “Did you bring me here to eat me?” she asked, voice flat, shaking loose a fleur-de-lis ornament that had hooked into her skin. The cat-dragon tucked its haunches underneath it and sat straighter than any governess. “Brought shiny,” it said, squeaky in a way that almost had Mara laughing, “want shiny.” It beamed at her with golden eyes. Mara scowled, confused. Maybe the exhaustion was still clouding her brain. “What shiny?” she asked. She hadn’t had any jewelry or finery on her when she’d fallen-- one didn’t wear noisy things when they were hunting their sister through the woods for bloodsport. “Shiny! Shiny, shiny!” The cat-dragon insisted, claws tensing against the stone. The small dragons around them took up the chant in a hissy mockery of the word. Mara snorted and turned to leave-- and saw something flashing in the polished surface of some sort of ornamental bowl, glimmering in the matchstick light. As she shifted to get a closer look, there was another flash; move back, flash; move forward, flash. The realization sank in like a hit to the head. Honestly, she didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it sooner. Her eyespots had always been a source of weakness, for her; another representation of the massive gulley between herself and her sister. Melinoe’s bronze sigil turned to gold in warm light; Mara’s pelt was stamped with the image of some paltry moth, a useless creature of no consequence that flutters through the night, driving haplessly into its fiery death head-first, subservient to light. This was made doubly insulting by Mara’s innate capability of weaving the darkness to her will-- these tiny, insignificant pinpricks of light would always shine like a beacon, no matter how tightly she pulled the void around her. Still. It seemed these simple creatures found purpose in her reflective, white markings, where even Mara could not. One of them was missing, with a dark, red scab in its place. Likely where one of the small dragons had taken a bite out of her, in an attempt to gather the ‘shiny’ for itself. “Take shiny. No shiny.” The larger dragon wrinkled its nose. “Red.” “Well, yeah,” Mara said, huffing a beleaguered sigh, “if you chew on meat it tends to be red.” The cat-dragon did not seem impressed by this assessment. “Keep shiny,” it said, jabbing the end of its prehensile tail at Mara; then it curled it back at itself. “Keep shiny!” Mara closed her eyes for a long moment. On the one hand, she found these creatures laboriously simple, and there was no reason to stay. She should get back out there, find Melinoe, and put an end to-- to everything. It would be so much easier, now that Mara was dead. The thought brought a cruel smile to her lips, and she bit back a giggle-- dead, dead, she was dead, and now Melinoe would be hunted, and haunted, at every turn, every moment. How ironic that dying was the best thing that could have ever happened to her. And if she was dead, the longer she stayed dead, the deeper and deeper the visage of her revenant would slip into Mel’s mind. So rushing out to find her would, in fact, be detrimental to her ultimate goal: making Melinoe suffer, as she had, her whole life. Trying and trying and being found wanting; wandering aimlessly, abandoned, without love. Mara opened her eyes. The cat dragon was looking at her, expectantly. A soft buzzing touched her ears, and she realized-- it was purring. The cave around her was warm. She was tired, down to her bones. “Keep shiny,” she said, and the cat-dragon threw its head back in a victory yowl, as its tiny counterparts hissed and chirped, dancing around her in some semblance of ceremonial glee. “Yes, yes, very exciting. Now, I’m going to go over to this pile of blankets--” edged in golden threads, interwoven with silver patterns-- “and take a nap. If you want to keep shiny, do not try to take shiny.” She turned away; as she walked, the little dragons slithered in between her legs, bumping against her ankles, purring contentedly. Her legs curled up beneath her, and she all but flopped; a number of the wyrms hopped up to her, rolling themselves into tight spirals and pressing against her in the crooks and curves-- between her front legs, against her belly, slung over her pasterns. The rest of them set up a perimeter, beaming happily at her, watching her eyespots glimmer and flash. Warmed by the attention, Mara lay her head down, and sank into her river.