Silver Creek Beautiful things

So she was alone.

Fancy that — the guards called off her trail, the royal family in mourning. Ah, the whole kingdom in mourning; black pelts slung over apathetic shoulders and dismal den mouths, the daily wailing of holy songs meant to honor the dead. Ilianora was, to her family, nothing but a ghost now. Nothing but a could-have-been, an unsung future and a few days of weeping before they looked on their other children and remembered that there were so many, anyway, and some far less troublesome than their deceased daughter had been.

She didn't mind. She found it funny, though, that they would mourn. They'd been the ones to bury her, not now but long months before she'd ever dared to dream of escape. Ilianora had been a ghost of a girl even before she'd grown into the thin, haunted, stunted woman who settled at the creekbed. Alone. Imagine that!

Overcome by something she couldn't quite name, something as strangely similar to joy as to melancholy, she set to working the tangles from her dulled furs. Too tired to hunt; too stubborn to lose herself to despair. Perhaps she would die, but not today.

Today she would look presentable, at least.

Vestiges seemed to haunt her every step, both living and dead. Since her exile, she had begun to hope that every encounter she would greet death once more and allow passage to across the marigold bridge. But she knew this would never come to pass. In the eye of the madre, Mictec had an earthly tether and forever would roam the lands never finding satisfaction and only to ferry others to la tierra muerte. Pity la madre's eyes would scorn her and force her back into the mold. La madre wanted this Mictec would often tell herself since her birth, she was the only one to survive the litter.

So she continued to carry that burden, as she neared the fork in the river which if her abuela had been there would have interpreted as a sign from the gods, a reflection of her split identity. Hunger had begun to claw in her stomach once more, winter had driven prey to hibernate while others were scare in appearance which served no benefit in the hallucinations she had begun to see skirting the fields of her vision. So to see the outline of another, a small, frail frame reminiscent of her abuela, anger flared through a snarl.

"Why must you continue to pester me?"

A bristling shadow; a woman with the moon carved into one side of her face. Ilianora looked up with muzzy blinks of her pale eyes, too lethargic to react with any great panic. For several long moments she only studied the stranger; a wolf like any other, but in many ways so unlike anyone else Ilianora had met. By appearance alone she was marked as other — and that sparked curiosity in the princess, albeit a dull, muted sort of curiosity.

I don't believe I've ever seen the likes of you, much less pestered you, Her thickly-accented voice was rough with disuse, but melodic nonetheless. Or are you some mad oracle, here to tell the wayward princess of her future doom? She tossed her head back and laughed in disdain of the notion.

My present doom is enough, thank you. I couldn't accept a drop more, Ilianora added, grimly cheerful.

The closer she approached did Mictec gain clarity as the strangers scent did not mimic that of her abuela. Anger subsiding, she kept a distance from the strange woman who gave an even stranger response.

"I am no oracle."

Like she had practiced so often, she let her eerily vacant expression take head of what the strange woman said. A lost princess, something we strangely have in common she thought to herself. Madness had begun to drive her insane, perhaps this other was feeling the same as well.

"I would imagine you have not seen someone like me, I am but a stranger to these lands." With each word, her own Spanish accent washed over every word she spoke, a clear marker of her former nobility to speak two tongues.

"As such, I am in no mood to offer any type of salvation if that is what you seek."