The trills of her ringing voice continued through the hoary wood, unanswered, perhaps unheard. Her blood ran cold and with it, her mind became feeble. Salomé's sharp eyes pressed unflinchingly to the massive glare of the dark beast - the way they roved her, quickly jeering as they were searching - attempting to
leech something intangible from her mind or maybe her soul.
Disgusting eyes. She had never seen eyes so devouring. And all at once there was a copulation: hundreds of smaller eyes blinking and opening from the surrounding area, searing a hot flash of fear in her chest and her heart hammered. A gasp whistled through her throat and with her jumping heart went her skin and bones. The eyes and their laughing presence dominated the woods, nearing from every previously shadowed hallway of forest. The beast of the threshold uttered a sound that rattled and seethed through even the ground and obscured sky. Everything vital about Salomé urged her to tear apart the ground that lay ruin to where she had come. Her heart in its meek position within her ribcage even screamed with every pulse
'go back!' She was frozen, pale as porcelain and motionless as ice. She could not find it in her mind an option to run. She was already dead, it seemed. Her mind could not attach itself to one beautiful, resolute reason to fight even though she previously promised that vicious pair of eyes that she would nick its throat. She didn't really
mean that, of course. It was an instinctual reaction for Salomé, to promise certain death to her foe. The strength and skill behind her weaponry was unknown.
The eyes and their swallowing irises closed at last as the end of that horrendous howl echoed back from the forsaken mists of the tangled wood and died into the darkness.
Gone. The green glow also subsided, leaving only faint reflections to paint the outsides of the immediate tree trunks and gorse underbrush. Her silvery coat retained the shine and it heaved with her flanks as she drew in deep, panicked breaths. Her mind tangled together in matted confusion through the passing seconds of quiet. It was... taking her a moment, to gather herself, to compose something, mentally of what in the hell had just occurred. She was exhausted, yes; she was completely worn from the miles of treacherous journey in midwinter and now entirely startled and untrusting of the world that she entered. What otherworldly experience had come even
slightly close to anything like what
just happened here, if ever, in her former life? She thought about the moments of blood drizzling down her face, how the warmth and fear all at once created an odd sensation in her stomach and brain. But even that, no, it could
not compare to what she'd just witnessed. She drew a mental blank, still stunned and internally awry. Her glinting silver eyes occupied the ground that swelled with glowing smoke and foggy daze. But then she heard something else for the first time since the growling snare and her gaze lurched to catch the hulking outline of a massive approaching creature. Her breath stopped. She ceased to blink.
The glow barely scratched him apart from the dark, drawing thin little strips of figure from the black. From what Salomé's gasping eyes could glimpse, he was towering slowly forward from the shadows, creeping like mist. There was an endlessness to him, shags of hair dripped from his chin, neck, and underbelly - a row of horn pillars drew up from his face and crest. He clasped wings to his sides. Smoke was billowing around him as he walked, and then suddenly it dissipated. His face grew lighter with the glow and it revealed an otherworldly appearance. He stopped all at once, and offered a dip of that enormous head, exposing more of that sharp neck-horn. The sight of those horns turned Salomé's stomach. She didn't move, she didn't know if she could outrun this thing. Her heart pulsed again, pushing swells of fresh, hot blood to her limbs which shook uncontrollably as the stallion opened his voice. The formality that caked his words was genuine, she decided. She still couldn't trust his grueling size, the way it could so easily crush her birdlike bones. She felt uneasy through the warm sincerity of his speech and balked at the mention of her fear.
"You didn't alarm me," she spat, still trembling. Hulking
fool. "I don't know where the hell I am either, how I even got here, for that matter. " Salomé gave her head a slight toss, and took one confident step toward him.
"I wasn't meaning to kill you. There were clusters of green eyes out there, surrounding me, and after them, this loud growl hurtled from the forest. They were the target of my horn. But perhaps, you should take my threat seriously as well, Giant." She stamped one cloven hoof, an assertion of her ridiculously outmatched might. She was sure this misshapen horse was no threat, as she felt that perhaps he was the savior that scared those venomous eyes back into the shadows and caused their defeated, agonized howl.
"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
