Of Magic and Lies

Prologue:

Together they danced in the moonlight a flurry of silvers, reds, and golds. They pawed at the earth and clawed at the sky as their gleaming coats glistened beneath the light of the stars. In their manes glittered the galaxy and in their eyes the universe. Images pressed just below the surface of their shining coats, fleeting and beautiful as they danced the dance of a thousand worlds.

While the others twirled and played, tossing their manes and swishing their tails, one of their own held back. Unlike those around her who surrendered to the wind and took flight with the stars she clung to the darkness and watched from the shadows. Her coat simmered like the waning embers of fire, her eyes burning into the gloom two hot coals. Fire engulfed the stars that twinkled in her mane and her hooves scorched the ground where she stood. The others had forgotten, but she hadn’t. She remembered and the fire of her hate would not let her dance the carefree dance of the Starlings.

*//*\\*

“You are going against the Gods if you do this young prince. She is lost to us now.”

“Do as you are told old woman. I know what I’m doing.” Prince Raz spat and although priestess Asvoria bowed her weathered head in defeat, her eyes gleamed two deep pools of wisdom. Prince Raz was a fool but she knew what was to be done would be done. Perhaps this was the Gods will all along.

“The heavens will punish you young prince. You may succeed in bringing her back but your victory will be short lived.” The words Priestess Asvoria spoke hung in the silence around them, a promise of what was to come.

Prince Raz turned to her then, his blue eyes alight with a foolish defiance and a desperate hunger for something he could never have. “I would go against all the Gods and every creature in the enchanted forest if it meant I could bring her back. Begin the ceremony old woman before I have a stake driven through your crusty ancient heart.”

Priestess Asvoria took a step closer to the steadfast prince and really looked at him. She clucked her tongue and with a wrinkled clawed finger she ran it along the curvature of his face. Disgusted, prince Raz threw her hand away, words of offense just at the tip of his tongue ready to flay the old woman’s flesh right off of her bones.

“The Gods are watching you. They have seen all of what you have done. Not to worry young prince. They have made their decision. Your fate has already been drawn.” She cackled and when a furious scowl crossed his face priestess Asvoria quickly retreated into the cowl of her red cloak and began to hobble away hunched over a warped cane.

He hated that knowing look that filled her cloudy eyes when she looked at him and how her wrinkled features would twist into shrewd gaze every time he enlisted her help. When he watched her go her last words drifted to him in a stiff breeze.

“In due time young prince. In due time.” She crowed.

When Prince Raz returned to where the Starlings danced deep within the enchanted forest the transformation had already begun. The one chosen by the whispered magic was a Starling of fire and wind. When the magic claimed her she allowed it to envelope her almost as if she had been waiting for it. It twisted her bones and reclaimed her spirit so that when she opened her eyes once more, they were no longer peering out from a Starling’s face. She was human and when she looked at him, eyes aflame with curiosity and defiance, he knew that the Starling the magic found shared the same soul as the girl he loved. Priestess Asvoria had not failed him.

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*Starling*

Her body was on fire, the blood that flowed through her veins a sea of lava. She could feel her body bending and twisting and breaking until all she knew was pain. She hated him. She hated him so much she could taste it. Even when the other ones had changed her and told her to forget everything from her mortal life she had refused. She could never forget what he had done to her.

The fire continued to melt her flesh, to burn her insides and weld her bones together in new forms. She was a phoenix rising from the ashes and she clung desperately to the hate that consumed her heart for she could feel it slowly eroding away. Everything about her was being whittled away. Soon there would be nothing left. She tried to hold on to it, to fold it into a tiny box at the back of her mind but the fire of change would not have it. It ripped it from her finger tips and devoured it in its hungry flame leaving her lost and without purpose. What was happening? There was something she was forgetting but what? She had hated him but….who was him? The fire continued to rage on inside of her and she could hear screams in its flames. Were they hers or were they someone elses?

Suddenly, the flames ceased, the lava coursing through her body now a river of ashes. She opened her eyes and everything was new. A pair of blue eyes peered down at her and something in her awakened if only for a moment. A spark like the tip of a match ready to catch fire. She turned away from those imploring blue eyes and looked instead into the night sky searching for something forgotten hidden somewhere deep within the stars. They were trying to tell her something those stars. She closed her eyes and when the darkness enveloped her she thought she heard a voice next to her ear whisper a secret. “In due time.” It promised and unknowingly her new fingers curled into a fist at her side.