She opened quietly through the forest fog, a silver rose unfolding from the habit of day; except her eyes collapsed from the blindness of the dark.
How? It must have been daytime. At least it should be, by now. The air around was thick with the nocturne of the ghastly wood and from the tree trunks slithered out silent serpents of smoke. She quickened, bowing her head and waving so that her heavy saber would clear the dense breath of the thicket. Something beside her dwells cold-blooded in the opaque shade. The dancer passed a shiver through the goosing flesh along her spine and she hesitated like one does the instant a shard of glass enters the skin. Fear burned through her gut, reflux pierced her tongue. She tucked her rounded loin, and held her tail in tightly. She must have looked somewhat menacing: every vein inching further from muscle, ripples of hate lashed metallic from her eyes, that sword on her face bore the green reflection from a pulsing glow.
Nothing could go without her attention and the noisy clatter of each stumbling heartbeat.
What is this place?
Hell, the wind answered, and the venomous exhale punched a fang in her lung. She balked, weary of the vague movements that happened among bramble and vine and the toxic green glow. Then, there were eyes, equally as sick as the rest of this woodland. She snorted loudly, growling snarls fired out from her own lionlike glare. Her body was an armada, each tendon ready to wrestle in vain. She tasted familiarly the heat and relish of blood so fresh in her mind. Swallowing, the dancer drank a sip of adrenaline. Those round, speculative eyes blinked once and cast out more of that vile light. They were plundering beautiful pearly skin, reaching gazelike arms around her flanks, snaring teeth into her back, and wailing with pleasure. They were a stallion's salacious incinerating utterance blaring wild to lash and bleed her memory.
"I will kill you," she shouted, in her guttural shrill.
"If you come any closer to me, that is." There was an unusual silence, and the eyes never changed, never stopped raking across her body. She felt wilted from the exhaustion of her alarm. She couldn't turn heel and run, now.
"I scissor the stem of the red carnation
and set it in a bowl of water.
It floats the way your head would,
if I cut it off."
- Ai
The Portal
