Styx was not her familiar. The bite of the winter chill, and the howling it issued through the funereal tree limbs were both far more menacing than the snarls of the great Dane’s faithful pet. Though the owl, had he been there, would have called him a monster, fought the gales Lorraine had brought to the world, Styx held her ground and did not even glance toward the threatening animal. She was hardly a threat to the red-head. If anything, Thyri was a far greater danger to Styx than the other way around, and, had the hound any greater than an animal’s instinctual mind, he might have realized that he was wasting precious energy.

Through the thickening fog, Styx watched the other woman, her reactions and her movements with the stones. The magic inside them pulsed with the touch of the fairies. Magic touching magic was powerful, especially for two powers as great as the ancient monuments, and that which had been granted by a star-child himself. The oracle could feel it in her core just as she could feel a great many things about the world around her. Gracefully, she stepped closer to the Danish god’s mistress, watching first the woman’s eyes, and then the inscriptions on the stones, deep in thought before she opened her mouth.

“They are not alone, are they,” she asked, though the answer may not have been so intuitive. Certainly any other ordinary fairy on Shaman would not understand; Thyri was a different breed of ordinary. “Out of their world, their time. Pulled from their homes and pulled here by magical forces beyond their control.” Whether it was too subtle or not, for the Danish woman, Styx had not intended her words to be as enigmatic as they often came across. This was not an oracle telling the future, or withholding knowledge through riddles. This was a conversation, or as close as the immortal one got.

The fog thickened and the wind found another gear, pulling the blizzard with it. There was little thought put into the action as Styx pulled her shawl tighter around her body, though it offered poor protection from Lorraine’s wrathful weather. The Mediterranean was not known for its vengeful winters, and Styx was unused to this bone-chattering cold. It seemed the other woman in the henge was more accustomed to the glacial weather, even to the point that she removed her hood and pressed her face to rocks which could only be blisteringly frigid. Her actions caused the blonde to wince in empathetic pain, though she seemed the only one affected, much like watching someone bite into a frozen sweet and feel the sensitivity to the cold that the eater seems not to notice.

“Perhaps they can speak and choose not to. Stone are the keepers of secrets.” With the blizzard raging, Styx had to move far closer and speak much louder to her listener to be seen or heard. “Secrets of rituals and religions, of births and weddings and funerals, of peace agreements and wars and broken vows. Secrets that are enjoyable to listen to, and yet so common they should not be as interesting as they are.”

She shifted uncomfortably as the blood leaking from the heart froze in contact with the ice and air, forming solid ribbons and pools reflecting the swirling winds above it. Even the tiny surfaces were enough to see the past events of the world, and without control, Styx’s powers followed Thyri’s train of thought instead to the last winter Shaman had seen. More than one life had been lost, though not all of those had been swallowed by the weather, or killed. Blue eyes focused on the savage puddles. “Careless of her, or reckless perhaps, that she would bring this frozen hell to this place,” she said monotonously. “Careless that they should think to provoke her with their theft, or that they could survive in this, but also of her for not knowing or caring how the small summer realm would react to her ice age.”

image © paul bica @ flickr.com