for woolf;

[stoney]

She can still remember it - her death, like it was yesterday.
Maybe it was, until anger and the Mountain shook everything all up.
It still left a bitter taste in her mouth, coppery and hard.

The earth shook; she felt it, and was unafraid.
How could she fear it?
Once, she flew and once, she died. There was nothing left to fear after that.

Stoney was not brave like the rest of them.
She was not angry and did not stomp her feet in a tantrum at the things taken from them.
Stoney felt it leave her like a sigh - “Oh!”and she was mortal again. Relief flooded her face, crawled up out of her black eyes begging to look at the cloudless sky above the Mountain. She regarded the rock and the sharp blue thinness of the air in a way that she never would have before, before - when she was immortal, and had all the time in the world to look at such things in a way that they would never seem new and surprising to her again. Now, she could look and she could stare, and it was like the blind waking up to sight - she saw, and the seeing shook her to the very core of her being. She almost relished in the fact that her immortality was gone, even though the set of her neck was forever irrevocably altered from that headlong flight off the cliff in which she learned of her immortality.

She grows fearful;
Is too close to the Mountain’s edge and backs up hastily.
Fear tears at her throat with sharp claws and she bites back a cry of terror --

Stoney would never stop reliving that moment over and over again.
The pitch over the cliff and the rush of the air as it goes by her, almost whistling merrily in her ears until she slams into the earth and it is a hard embrace that she finds herself in, neck broken and a trickle of blood from one nostril. Then she rights herself, bones click back into place and everything works just like it should.

She jerks back from the precipice; ashamed at how the sentiment of her death stays with her.
It will haunt her for all of her days, she suspects, swallowing a sigh of self pity.

The pintaloosa climbs down the rocky slopes, careful to pick her way amongst the rocks and the pitfalls of other horses’ steps. What must they have been thinking to go up and down this Mountain? She is curious, but is not long for the curiosity as it dims in her, sparking out as she steps along the grassy way towards the beckoning Forest. Something about the trees promises her safety, solitude even. Maybe because she met her death in the Meadow, she avoids it and skirts the edge of it with nary a glance or the flick of an ear to it.

When she did bother to look up, she saw the glitter of green eyes beneath a shock of hair of muddled mulberry. It stopped her cold in her tracks; not because the green of his eyes were familiar, but because she had never seen anything like them in her short (once immortal) life.

[woolf]

the wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight
{drunk and driven by the devil's hunger}

Woolf rarely felt emotions of any strength—stripped clean of them, living a life of isolation and detached curiosity. That was, until, he had been ricocheted back from the afterlife and onto the craggy slopes of the Mountains. That was, until, he had made his way down her harsh, demanding slopes to be rewarded with the bleeding out of his magics, the gifts leaving him empty and powerless in a land he did not recognize.

What had followed was not indignation or tantrums or fury. 

But what had followed was confusion (Why am I punished for sins that are not my own?) and irritation (Why was I brought back to a world that I can no longer affect?) and, ultimately, frustration (What do I do now?). Such emotions had poured into and through him, and Woolf had eventually stepped back, curious of his own response to the scenario.

The following days were spent mostly in self-reflection; he to the meadow and then sequestered himself off from the crows milling about so study, and to think, and to discern. When his journey had eventually turned up fruitless, he had set it aside with careful intentionality. There was nothing for him to do now but to turn back toward the world as a mortal and to trust the devices left in him to sort out the rest.

It was then that he saw her, spotted and alone. He was looking at her as she looked toward him and although nothing stirred in his breast, he felt a tenuous bond. Enough of one that he uprooted himself from his spot and made his way toward her, moving through the other horses carefully so as to not touch them. When he reached her, he found himself yearning to throw out the rope of his magic, to dig through her mind (open and ripe, like untouched fruit—he could feel it) and understand. He bit back the annoyance at whatever powers Beqanna had called forth to cleave his own ability cleanly from him. For a moment, he thought of speaking, but having nothing to say, he remained silent, instead standing too closely, breathing in her scent, brazenly studying her for whatever there was to learn.

Woolf