ooc: Private. Pictou falls, Northern Halycon.

Wordcount: 5+

It was cold beside the falls. The kind of blistering cold that begins as a burning fire across exposed flesh, until blissfully sliding into numbness.

The numbness was more frightening than the pain, but China had been feeling it long before she had left Inferni. That cold had started on the inside, slowly freezing her outward, until she forgot how to smile. There had been the girl - The soft warm girl, with the pretty ice-blue eyes. China had savored her like some sort of final meal, and she had not been disappointed. Perhaps, in the beginning, she had expected such a simple cure - To find redemption in the feminine arms of another sinner, another one of her kin. Although Myrika had provided some respite from the storm, it had come anyway, and she had left without looking back at the ghastly, leering skulls.

She had wandered with a vague sense of being lost. The songbird had considered saying goodbye to her sister, to Sage - The other, Clover, had left some time prior. But if Sage had seen her in this condition, this deterioration of body and soul, the daughter of the Earthmother would surely never have let her leave. And how could she had explained herself to her sister's questioning gaze, when her tongue held fast? No, far better to slip away like a wraith or a ghost, like a dream, like a snowflake that melts on the tongue. Far better that way.

A vagrant thought had sent her to the borders of Ichika, where her father had rumored to dwell. For a long time she had lingered there, surviving on the misfortune of small animals that died by falling into hazardous crevasses or natural causes or simply of the oncoming cold. Her ability to hunt seemed to have long fled, and with each passing day she grew thinner, weaker - More of a shadow of a girl, than an actual one. The emptiness within, where in sunny days prior a sweet tune might have welled forth, or perhaps the merry notes of her little pipe, festered like an infection. Her voice, her song, had been taken. There was a thin scar across her throat; Not enough to have physically damaged her vocal chords, but enough. Enough to have silenced them.

The man still haunted her dreams, and she would wake, alone in the cold, gasping and weeping dryly, her body wracked with spasm-like sobs. Sometimes the dreams were vivid enough that she would take handfuls of cold, withering moss and scrub at herself, scrub and scrub until her silvery hair began to fall out and the raw spots on the pads on her palms would crack, and bleed. But the process made her feel better, at least - Made it easier to suck lungfulls of cold air in.

Sometime, China wasn't too sure of when, she had caught fever. Malnourishment and physical exhaustion had stripped her bare to the bone, and the heat burrowed in and came in terrible flashes, burning her dry and then leaving her to freeze. Unable to wait any longer, she traveled west, using up whatever steely strength was harbored in the marrow of her bones to press onward. Her hair, once a neat bob, had grown long and unkempt. Her beauty remained - Like a spectral thing, like something from out of this world. It would remain surely until she was little more than a pile of lovely bones.

The fever took her again, sometime during the agonizingly slow trek northwest. Instinctively, she stuck to the mountains - Out in the open she would be easy pickings for any predator. However, she feared no death at their hands, only one. Only one hunter, one beast, did she fear so truly.

Dehydration had set in by the time she had reached the falls. Glazed blue eyes of such a pretty lapis lazuli hue gazed in wonder at the water that rushed in a torrent of icy spray from some unknown heaven, far up the mountain. It tumbled down in crystals, forming deeper pools between little and large waterfalls. Desperate for the cool liquid to quench her deadly thirst, the girl dropped to her nears at the side of the nearest pool and flung aside her bag, which spilled out her little flute. Without thought for these items, she began to greedily guzzle water into her dried, shriveled stomach.

China lasted less than ten minutes before the cramps hit - Terrible pains that made lights flash behind her closed eyelids. She threw the water back up, and shivered wretchedly, pathetically, beside the small pool. This was some sort of final agony, some sort of final test. Unwilling to even attempt to stand, the songbird dragged her frame under a small overhang beside the falls, and curled up, there to die. Her flute and bag remained aside the pool, eerily misplaced amongst the serendipitous beauty of the Falls. The running water sang sweet little lullabies, and tucked into the cold bosom of the mountain the girl drifted in and out of a weary consciousness with a small, cold smile.

Wordcount: 3+

Time slid by, before the touch brought her back from deep, tortured dreams. Dark lashes fluttered, struggling to grasp at the thin strands of peace that could be found between the polars of sleep and awareness; For so long now she had been unable to rest, to sleep sweetly. Weariness clouded her brain with an unpleasant fog, but the girl stirred nonetheless, finally opening bruised eyelids to release a gaze of fragile eggshell blue.

It was him, but of course it was. It was always him. It would always be him.

A gentle smile curved about the silver songbird's maw, tentative, calm in spite of her broken appearance. Something deep within her clicked into place, and suddenly the red eyes that haunted her seemed bearable, suddenly the terrors that plagued her seemed manageable. Suddenly, everything was alright.

An overwhelming sense of safety enveloped her. She swallowed, wincing at the rawness of her throat, at the soreness of her emaciated frame. Her limbs, once blessed with an otherworldly and captivating grace, were weighted with the cold and numb. One hand managed to rise, trembling blush-hued fingers seeking the nearness of the man's chest. The man, because the boy she had loved was no longer. Where once her fingers had found youthful bulk, healthy softness, they found now hard muscle cloaked in some strange, thick material. Fingers traipsed upward, and her gaze followed as tender digits found his golden cheek. Then, finally, her eyes met his.

Sounds built within her, a surge of powerful emotion that momentarily flooded her frozen body with life. They swelled in her heart, and in her throat, but were never born forth for his ears to hear. The silver dove felt her veins flush with warm blood. Like a phoenix, she felt herself come back to life.

Her smile quivered, and the unbearable ache that had crushed her chest was gone, leaving her with a bizarre feeling of weightlessness. The voiceless songbird remained in her broken silence, but both arms lifted toward him now, seeking or expecting comfort and warmth and the memory of a body, a connection, she had despaired losing forever.

Shuttup. I love you forever.
Wordcount: 3+

There was such darkness within him, such potential for havoc and chaos. The forces of a dim despair, a vengeful and apathetic god; He was blessed with a beauty to make the angels cry, a pelt of sunspilled gold and a lean, athletic body to make a mortal crave. Lucifer, the most beloved of the fallen, the favorite.

She coveted his bleeding hues, a fragile wisp of moonlight and purity that had been stained for knowing him, for loving him as she did. But even this love was, in itself, the rarest form of purity, and although his raven wings furled in an ethereal mist of black to change her colors with their soft embrace, the adoration that had kept her going - The adoration that had manifested itself as such an otherworldly specter that she had become - made the white of her own wings brilliant, forever glowing.

But her love had come with a tragic price, for although they were white as fresh-fallen snow, the dove's wings were truly broken. She was grounded, her voice stolen; No longer the perfect doll-like beauty that his childish hands had warmed with desire, so many lifetimes ago.

However, there was only a fleeting anxiety within her, fear of rejection from her lover's arms. She knew, deep within, that if he were to turn from her now she would die. She would lay down in the bosom of the mountain until the snow cradled her bleached bones. China was frighteningly prepared for this outcome - It stirred within her no girlish terror, only a bland acceptance.

But the power she had once held remained still - A spiderweb spun of silver thread that connected this hell-born beast, this grim gentleman of the underworld, to her side. He had belonged to her, just as she had, and always would, belong to him. It was the way of her magic; The magic of the unicorn, so rare, so delicate, so innocent with its allure. And when his coat wrapped her in warmth, the last of her fears left her, and the girl knew only a bone-deep bliss that warmed her far better than any body-heat or fabric layers could. Muscular arms pulled her toward him, into him, and she came willingly. Her hollow bird bones were nearly weightless to his adult strength, and palms that had reached for him found now the soft plush of silky, creamy gold that sprung from his chest, curling in towards her body as the dove folded into him.

Her head leaned against his pectoral, hearing there a heartbeat that she had not heard for a long time. Safe in the invincibility of his embrace, the girl finally allowed herself to weep - Silent, tearless sobs, delicate shakes that rattled the bones of her chest as her insides ached for them both. She wondered if he knew what had happened to her, for in her mind he was all-knowing, and could read her soul as easily as any parchment. Would he hold her still, even if he knew of the darkness she had allowed within her, that which had been thrust into her being by the man with eyes so similar to his? Would he allow her to love him, even if he knew of how she had willingly opened her legs, desperate to feel again in the way that he had made her feel? Would he care for the songbird once he realized that she had lost her song? The thrill of joy was replaced with a deep and wretched feeling of unworthiness, worse than any physical or mental pain she had felt before.