So a battle ended, dear dead, with weary soldiers tramping back from a town quiet of all its hearts. They left no one alive or free, prisoners stumbled mutely in their creaking ropes behind the soldiers. Relatively speaking, there weren't that many prisoners.

The commanding guards wordlessly marched past you, and the bird concealed behind the cloak. You would have been polite and asked how the battle went, but then, you already knew. No survivors left in the town, spilled blood melting holes in the snowy streets only to freeze, like colored nails on hollow fingers. Prisoners taken, to do who-knew-what with, you weren't part of the army, you doubted they would tell you.

You stood, before the regular soldiers reached your waiting place. You stretched. The jet bird blended in nicely with your boot in the night. But then you stepped away and she wasn't so eager to flutter up to your arm and hide in the cloak so you crunched off alone, over glittering snow. You didn't care if she followed you or if she stayed, but when she erupted into the air the soldiers' gasps of fear grated against you.

You caught up to Tatter-cloak, alongside the trudging commanding guards, Oversized-shield missing a shield and nursing a long gash up their arm. "So," you said. They both jumped. "Did you kill the so-called king?"

Oversized-shield tilted their head, coiled braids half-undone from the fighting, hairs sticking at the sky.

"Yes," Tatter-cloak sighed, long and deep and exhausted like a near-spring breeze tired of holding to the cold.

You fell in step beside both of them, except Oversized-shield kept tilting their head at you, and you couldn't ignore it with their blood as stinging as plant needles. A cry went up from the soldiers behind you, "long reign the monarch! Reign the monarch!" and Tatter-cloak turned, blushing and frowning at this victory cry shaking over the tundra. And you smiled at that. You did.

But you slid away under the sound, cloak hugged close, you didn't know what to do with yourself in a crowd cheering for the monarch of these people, a crowd whispering of what you might do.

A shadow in the night, you slipped over snowdrifts glazed with refrozen ice, trekking until the pulsing chorus army cry was just that, a pulsing chorus. Pumping blood jumped up and down, you imagined the permafrosted ground vibrated with them.

The jet bird's storm, all blizzard winds and driven snow, fluttered far overhead. You doubted she could see much, in the dark. You pretended your blood was a beacon, a current, tugging her home.

Well, your home. Through the dim frost orchards, off a path, past a boulder disguised as a towering snow mound. Down a dip in the land, jars of blood in ruby and aquamarine coloring a beacon for you, tugging you home.

Well, your home you lived like a visitor in.

The door creaked with your entrance. The jet bird cometed, carefully for once, to the snow behind you. No cloud of white erupted at her landing.

Your boots squeaked across the tile, you took off the cloak and bundled it over your stomach. The warmth of the house was fading, you hadn't fed the curses scrawled in the corners for weeks, too many meetings.

You didn't do much of this magic anymore. Scrawling things into wood or ice, to absorb and burn fungus guts for warmth, or bar entrance to another's blood. You hadn't had much place to practice it, other than the bathtub, your bed, or some patch of tundra where you camped for all of one night.

But that language remained, itching in your fingers and the ocean in your mind. Maybe you could scrawl a curse in the hinging door, sending any who entered the house into unconsciousness. There'd be no more meetings that way.

But then where would you be, entrance crowded with unconscious people?

You put the cloak back on. Stepped over the jet bird, who was curiously creaking the ajar door with a forward-back prodding of her beak. You trudged to the garden, eighty-eight steps, knelt and dug at the cold snow with your hands plowing to the shielded heart of a rock. The jet bird waddled after you. For some reason, she pecked at the snow with you instead of cometing into the ground.

The rock you dug up fit in the palm of one hand, it was winter so of course they grew slowly. You still had a couple stacked on the shelves in the cave's stomach, but you didn't want that reminder. The blood, the table, the...

You carried the rock back to the house, ninety steps, the jet bird waddling behind you, talons ticking on the ice. You shut the door behind her, so she couldn't creak it. You walked to the center of the room, kitchen on your left, table to your right. Thunking, the rock hit the tile, because you dropped it. A question to see if it would shatter. It didn't. You lifted your heel and stomped on it, smashed the rock to smithereens, shell spraying through the kitchen doorway and clanging on the legs of too many chairs, goop spraying all over the snowy tile. The jet bird squawked, startled, fluttered by the door and you briefly tugged her toward the kitchen. No argument, she followed your pull, hiding behind the walls and cupboards.

With sharp fingers, you snapped the blood off the brown tile, you scythed it into a ring around yourself. Spinning it faster, faster, you poured the tremble of your palms and the burn in your heart into violent motion. As if fungus blood buzzed enough to siphon you of all your ache.

The jet bird cawed. A question. You stopped. Fungus guts floated in a halo, caramel droplets rising from the ring. Not that you could see, in the darkness. But you imagined.

You lifted your arms wide. Splayed your fingers, flicked your wrists. One, four, three, two, the corners of the house you pillared blood into; by the door, the sitting room, the stairs, the dining table. The wood ate the goop up, the scrawled curses devoured it into heat.

Then. You crouched on the ground and felt around in the darkness for cracked chunks of rock shell, smooth on the dirty floor. You hurled them into the kitchen, the bird perched behind the archway, you stifled screams that would only sound wrong coming out of your throat.

The jet bird curled her head under her wing, blood perfectly calm. You seized fungus skins like eggs, chucked them hard, crack, crack against the stone counter, the wood cabinets.

But the smashes of rock skin hardly replaced physical vibrations down your throat, up your jawbone; shoulder muscles jerking, you threw cracked chunks of rock all the harder at the kitchen cabinets.

Under the legs of many hard-backed chairs, you ran out of fungus skin. But that was fine. Totally fine. You could lie there until the army returned. It was dark, you didn't need tear-free eyes to count fourteen table legs while you sprawled there. You didn't need tear-free eyes to feel your way up the creaky stairs, find your bed and curl up pretending like you could dream of peaceful things until dawn. But that was fine. You were good at pretending, lying there and counting things, taking yourself up the stairs and to your own bed.