( closed. )

[alar]

WHO: danica, ellis, and wysteria
WHAT: corpse bride voice: new arrival
WHEN: whenever ellis and wysteria have time honestly
WHERE: near the mountains

Danica dreams herself in her wedding day.

She wears the beautiful burgundy gown Eleanor made her, the ring Zane gave her on her index finger. The court is gathered before her, every eye trained on her. Each face is known to her, yet she she cannot place a name to any. Rei is no longer on the dais with her. Only Zane remains, holding a hand out to her, his scarlet eyes glimmering. Do you trust him? Danica raises her own to lay in his. Another hand grabs her, jerking her violently away from him.

The woman wears Mara's face, but this is not her sister. The dream makes her identity known, though nothing else does. Alasdair. Alasdair, the first avian queen. Alasdair, the first victim of this conflict. Her golden eyes, a mirror of Danica's own, are wide on her eternally fifteen-year-old face.

"What have you done?"

When Danica opens her mouth to answer, she is swallowed by emerald lights. Her stomach turns and she realizes she is falling. Instinct has her turn, her wings unfurling in a cascade of gold-and-brown feathers from her back. It means she does not hit ground so much as land heavily, the sudden stop jarring her ankles and sending her to her knees. Her dagger lands in the earth. The hand that reaches for it aches, a glowing green slash stretching from her knuckles to her wrist. The runes on the dagger catch the faint light. Runes for protection and luck. Funny. She isn't laughing.

Rising, she looks about her in a mounting panic. Her bare feet stumble over loose stones and hard-packed earth, not cool, polished marble. Her Demi-form allows her access to a hawk's eyesight, but though she can see further, the details clear as crystal, nothing she beholds is familiar. A scream rings behind her, like another dead on the battlefield. She turns in time to see a spindly creature like a monstrous mantis slashing for her with fingers like knives.

Danica has enough time to remember the brutal tearing of her abdomen before she slipped into dreaming. Maybe this dream played out in reverse; maybe she dreamt first the effect, and now her mind has seen fit to supply the cause.

Comments

[heorte]

The litany of misery tumbles, one after the other after the other. The hand supporting Danica shifts to rubbing clumsy circles in some instinctive attempt to comfort her.

He looks up at Wysteria again, at a loss. One of them is going to have to explain to Danica that this is real and that she can't go back. Are either of them really equipped to do it gently enough that it won't make her distress worse? It had been easier somehow, when Fitz dropped into the middle of their expedition all those months ago. He'd been upset but not like this, and Tony had been familiar if not exactly comforting. The circumstances here are far less than ideal.

Clearly Ellis thinks he's the best bet, because he looks away from Wysteria and back to Danica.

"I'm sorry," he begins, faltering before finding his footing, voice steadying. "We don't know the way to send people back through yet."

The "yet" is extraordinarily optimistic, but he can't bring himself to imply that she's trapped here forever.

[heirring]

"Mr. Ellis is correct," says Wysteria, straightening as she withdraws her hand. If he cares to be the gentle hand, she will have no reservations about being-- well, the slightly less gentle one. She is hardly without sympathy. Certainly she recognizes some measure of the distress so apparent in the young lady from her own arrival. But one can only express condolences so many times before they become quite useless indeed.

"Let this be a consolation to you," she says, not without kindness. "There is strong evidence to suggest that your husband, the place you left and everyone in it, will continue on as if you had never left. Perhaps even as if you are there still. If you like, I will introduce you to Madame de Cedoux who is a Rifter like us and most familiar with the idea. She will put your mind entirely at ease with respect to your home, I'm most certain. In the mean time, let us be thankful that you appear not to have brought your wound with you for it is a long walk back to the Gallows and we should take care not to be here when darkness falls."

With a glance toward Ellis, she adds, "Not that I have any doubts in your ability to safeguard us from scoundrels, Mr. Ellis."