Panther Park white winter hymnal

The beast appeared suddenly, with only the thunderous beating of hooves upon the earth to signal his arrival. But the sylph had been so focused on her swiftly impending blitzkrieg that she only truly noticed the titan when he entered the periphery of her vision above her, legs lashing towards her like vipers. Olive’s mouth slacked as her swimming, peridot crystal eyes swept upwards, up towards the underbelly of the bringer of her doom. The blood drained from her body, pooling in her legs and she found she was paralyzed. Eye for an eye had made the world blind.

Then, all the air was forced from her lungs and she fell hard upon the permafrost, her jaw clacking against her skull and limp body tumbling. The double impact [one from Dakarai, the other one against the ground] jolted her vision and she was unseeing for a minute, only feeling. The force and suddenness of it all, coupled with the fear of god, kept her upon the ground for several moments. Her body pulsed with hurt — but it was not the type of pain she had expected to feel. Olive’s head swam and she felt disoriented, but she eventually gathered her limbs and pushed herself up. She wasn't dead. 

But the titan was still there. He ridiculed her from afar, but Olive was much too transfixed with the mass of spilled ink at his feet to notice him. Olive’s breath, which had just begun to slip back into her bruised body, halted again. It was her king, and he wasn’t moving. She was frozen, paralyzed, unable to tear herself from her unearthly nightmare.

Even before the beast had stopped his jeering and walked away, Olive was upon the crumpled form of her husband. With effort she drew him into her twiggy arms and cooed and rocked him and ran her cold, dreadful tongue over him to draw the poisonous energies from his being. All too quickly it dawned upon Olive the impracticality of her artistries. She was at the mercy of the earth and could only interpret its energies, not harness them. She couldn't fix him. She couldn't heal him. Where was help? She wouldn't even know where to go about asking for such a thing. What was happening? Why was this happening? No. No. No.  

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.  

And she sat there, singing and crying, stringing together an eery melody of dread that carried deep into the forest that looked so much like home, but felt so far away.