Desreal: to elemmírë; --

“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.”
- Blade Runner

The silent one – she glides through the woods in a shade, or in a thought. That’s the way of the shadow-walkers, of which she is but one; there are others, she knows, in her own blood and her own mind. when in shadows, she can almost taste them, like a snake does: their scent, their heat, their names.

She always forgets when she walks into the light. But the sense of déja vu remains.

Nothing, say the winds. That’s what bothers her the most. The very lack of bother, the very peace of it.

All’s well and, as anyone sane, she doesn’t like it. It reeks too much of suspicion.

Like many dictators, she trusts no one and loves even less. Like many dictators, the very delicacy of her position is what puts her on the verge of madness; that magic blend of brilliance, tactic and sheer paranoia that often breaks into undiluted violence. Even now, when she hunts with a purpose – one she does not yet know – she can feel it simmering, brimming and pooling at the surface, gurgling.

Oh, no. It’s always with me, as I’m my own pack. That’s what makes it so effective.

Wolf-Queen she may be and so many other epithets: b###h, whore (though she has never lain with anyone but her children’s father, and has no wish to do so), traitor, shadow.

But in her mind, she’s always the Godslayer; and Elemmírë – Gaia – is a goddess, or as close to it as they can get.

Gods die, but not as mortals do. Their death is an endless fall into obsolescence.

This, however, is not her day of murder – if she has ever had one, if she even wanted to, which is unlikely – and as she moves out of the shadows and into the lights, she watches her aunt – or whatever is left of her – through hooded eyes.

Can I not visit my only aunt? she smiles then, in a way that is oddly childish. I wanted to know how you feel. How you are.

Her aunt’s metamorphoses – reminiscent of her own stepfather’s – are amusing; she appreciates it, even she, stuck in her drab gray coat, dark hair and yellow eyes.

Even if spots of red dance like infection in them.

fenrisulfr
some there be that shadows kiss,
such have but a shadow’s bliss