She loved the night. Perhaps she always would. It is hard to say though, what may or may not be. Bly is learning this now, as she turns about her empty cell. What she had expected to find there, she does not. Instead, before her comes a stallion, grey but not flat. His color was full of depth unlike many others she had seen. It frightened her, that profoundly deep lack of an end. As if he held his own spectrum of light, and the hues forever fell into each other.
She turned her head, listening to his words but wishing to no longer see him. She was trembling now, her thin legs quaking, exposing her fear. Then he speaks, he tells her to choose and she can choose only one. Fire or Ice? Her voice halts as she begins to use it, "I p-pi-pick i-.” She doesn’t finish, not before he is demanding from her once more, You will look at me, he says, and she knows she must.
It’s almost too hard to turn her head, to make her neck follow the instructions from her brain. With one last terrified internal scream, she jerks her head back to the man, her crystal eyes pooling with tears. ”I choose ice,” she responds, a tiny, practically obsolete hint of hope in her decision. The hope that shines from her is snuffed out, smothered before it becomes much more than a pipe dream. He is laughing, laughing as though he knows why she had chosen ice-and he does. She doesn’t know it, not yet at least, but he knows so very much about her. He knows when she was born, where she was born. He knows the fears of her heart and its desires too. He knows all things, has taken this information from her, but he is not done taking. He was not quite satisfied yet. Very well. Enjoy my little stargazer.
Somehow, she knows now. In the way he says it enjoy, she knows he does not mean it, doesn’t mean it at all. Screams fill her lungs as she plummets, falls for what seems forever.
Down,
down,
down. Always down. She lands in a drift, up to her ribs in freshly fallen snow. The landscape is bland, a never ending expanse of white, not a tree or shrub to disturb it. The temperature is cold, to be sure, but it is a tolerable cool. For a moment, she forgets, where she is, where she had been. Not for long, never for long. You love the snow? The cold? You do not know of cold. His voice falls over the frozen wasteland, though his body is not to be seen. She pulls at the soft ground-covering, struggling to drag herself on top of it, only to sink again in the drifts. ”I do. I do love the snow!” Her statement is defiant, in all the ways a child could be so, but it lacks conviction. You know nothing, his voice tells her as the winds began to stir.
Bly has never seen or known a snow storm, never experienced the howling gales that plagued the far south. She did not know these things, but she would.
It starts as a trickle of frosty air, the flurries go tumbling across her path before a few crash against her face. Very soon they would be plastered there, inches thick and burning her skin until it went numb altogether. Slowly the air gains momentum, until the white tosses eagerly over itself, climbing into the air and blocking the world from view. The filly is scrambling now, frantically trying to dig herself from the hill of snow, she does not know how much energy she expends. Breaths come in longer, rattling pulls as the oxygen is stolen, as it was stripped from the air. He was changing the landscape, the altitude, giving the girl a taste of the Everest peak. And do you love it now, the cold? He questions her and she knows there is no right answer, but she responds anyways. "I don’t. I don’t love it, you are right. Please, please make it stop. It’s so cold. Please, I cant breathe.” Words burst from her, strained in their very making, but he is not a creature of mercy. He is a God, and she will learn. No, my dear, you do. You love the cold, I know this, your heart knows this. Let me show you what it is to love the ice. A growl, hungry and wild before she is sent somewhere new.
She falls headlong into the atmosphere, into deep space. For a time she cartwheels among the cosmos, spins in the gases Everything is vibrant, is full of wonderful colorful depth, overfilling her senses. Perhaps it was a dream she thinks, the cold that fills her forgotten. It had to be a dream right? Everything she loved was here, the stars burning against the dark skies. She could breathe too, here in space, and that just wasn’t right. Tell me Bly, do you love the night? His words slam into her core, each one drawing a jerking response from her spotted form. A whimper passes her lips, she knows that there are no dreams for her here. A pair of blue eyes roll, finding the whites as they return to look forward, to see what they are meant to see. A racing heart, pangs to a standstill, the galaxy now devoid of all color.
It was gone, all of it. Everything she so loved taken, no more glittering pretties for her to behold. Without color the world fell flat, the stars no longer burned or twinkled, and the moon no longer cast its shining halo. The galaxy swirled dull against the heavens, a monochromatic world was nothing to love, nothing to be awed by. So it was and so it would be, from her he took all color. His first trinket.
Bly falls again, sinking through the snow and plunging into something much colder. Just when she had become numb to the freezing temperatures, she is tossed into the seas. Arctic seas. Her hooves rake at the frozen surface from below, her body is burning, alive with fire it is so cold now. What was the struggle for air against the peaks compared to this? Nothing, it was nothing. You know nothing. He says again. He is right, so very right, and she was learning. The frozen fire spreads, encasing first her hooves in cold blue ice, a solid formation to take over her form.. As they knock against the ice floes they stick, cementing her to the ocean drifts as her tomb slips steadily over her body, replacing everything she is, was. Everything she was. "Let me go!” she screams, she cries. The noises were all the same now, but they would do her no good. She was not done giving, and he was not done taking.
The ice surrounds her, seeping into her very core, hardening her sweet disposition. Making cold her emotions, chilling her outlook on life, on love. What was love? She did not remember, she did not know. She knew nothing. So it was and so it would be he took her warmth, and with it, her heart. His second trinket.
She coughs, sputtering sea water from her gullet and her lungs. Retching upon the floor the frozen pieces that still plagued her insides. She was frozen no more, at least not on the outside, she would not know if her heart had ever beat. Had ever been filled with the warmth of life. With this he smiles, looking down upon her as he did all things. A God never looks up, he does not have to. One last thing he promises, and she shrugs uncaring in return.
The pain is great, far greater than each scenario she had been sentenced to. She freely wails, cries for mercy and mother too. He carves through her flesh with a freezing rod, because he would do nothing half-assed. It was on her face he branded her, a special place for all to see. She would forever face the world with his mark, the first thing to stand out to a stranger, and she would never forget what she had learned.
What do you love Bly?
Nothing
What do you know?
Nothing
She gave and he took. So it was and so it would be. Her beauty, her self worth, her self-his now, his third trinket.
