Jaide. Jaide. Jaide.
Her name echoes into the vacuum in space three times, ringing with finality long after the last horses closes their lips. She’s counted all of them, kept a running tally of their choices as they’d responded. So she knows that three is a bad number to have. She knows that the others have less (save for Tyrna who has one more than her) and that she will therefore be condemned for it. Three is not six, though she thinks, but the madness has mostly left her by now. The demon itself has mostly left her. She feels like her bones are her own again, her’s to move and control – and also to fall.
And soon, that’s exactly what she does.
She falls and falls and falls and doesn’t stop for a very long time. The falling is okay she finds - even thrilling for its novelty - but the end result will be less than pleasant. The end will be a quick and final crash and splash to an already short life. Jaide closes her eyes as she plummets. She tries to imagine all of the faces she’s known (not many, as young as she is) pressing into the darkness of her fall-tunnel. She sees her mother and father, their bright eyes like the stars as they watch their daughter’s free fall into death. She sees the Sisterhood encircling her, feels the warm strength of so many women watching out for her. Noir comes last, an exclamation point on the final sentence of her life. He’s vibrant and whole as he tracks her downward motion, so young and alive that she can almost believe he hasn’t died at all. He smiles at her and she almost laughs with the great happiness that fills her.
Jaide reaches out to press her muzzle to his when her stomach lurches. This is it, she thinks, this is my end. A sharp pain erupts behind her shoulder blades. Something seems to split her skin open, flaying her from the inside out. The falling blue girl cries out as it happens, but she notices something, too. Her descent slows with each passing moment. The force of the air flying past her tugs violently at whatever has sprouted from her back. Wings? She opens her eyes, but she cannot see the things pulling at the muscles on her back. It hurts like absolute hell, but maybe she won’t smash into the ground after all.
But the ground rises to her all too quickly.
Sand replaces the blankness of space. It stretches as far as the eye can see in all directions but one. There, waves crash against the shoreline in unrelenting fashion, pounding the sand flat where they strike. There’s something directly below her, though. Some dark and ominous caverns she’s not sure she can avoid. Jaide flaps uselessly (and shudders with the pain each time) to try and skirt the rocky rise. The momentum of her fall is too much to overcome, however, and she sees her actions will not be enough. A perfectly shaped hole just large enough to fit one horse opens in the granite caves. Her wings scrape the sides roughly as she squeezes through. Fresh blood wells up and runs down her legs, the rock cutting into them as she flails.
The ground finally comes, and to her absolute surprise, she lands as softly as a butterfly on a flower. Not my doing, she thinks, looking around at the hell-hole she’s found herself in. Something is toying with me…with us, she amends when she spots the other mare pacing in the distance. The walls are blackened by eons of smoke; she can smell traces of fires long since snuffed out in the ashen air. She sees the blood already marking the other woman like it does her; she wonders if it is the ticket into this place. “Tyrna?” She has the decency to be meek about it, knowing full well that she’d added the silver girl’s name to the demon’s tally. Jaide takes a step forward, but suddenly, she realizes that she can no longer move. Just like quickly, He takes her bones for his own again.
Jaide
girl of fire and ice