"You didn't tell anyone," Jaenelle said, in utmost seriousness. "No one. It's important. If it doesn't work-"
"Of course it'll work," Karla said, with confidence. "Don't even say that. It'll work. We made it."
"You don't have to ask about me. I can keep my mouth shut, unlike our ice-witch over there." Gabrielle smiled, to show she didn't mean it, and Karla stuck out her tongue.
It would have been easy to forget that Jaenelle was not just their friend anymore, Karla thought, working like this. Grubbing in the dirt, more or less, wearing patchy clothes and nearly shoulder to shoulder, teasing just like always. Jaenelle was their Queen, now, and so they were Queens under a Queen, something that had never happened before. Karla wondered what her grandmother would have thought of this, if she were still alive.
"Karla, you're quiet. It worries me."
She sounded just the same as ever, voice light and silvery with a trace of laughter running under it. At least she laughed, now. Karla knew that when the day was through none of them would be laughing. "I'm planning something. Wait for my evil laugh, then you'll know you're really in trouble."
"I already know I am. I'm with you two," Jaenelle said, seriously, and there was the solid whack of Gabrielle hitting someone.
"That's rich of you to say. I'm not the one who always ends up in trouble with Uncle Saetan."
"Both of you should hush," Karla said, primly. "Everyone knows I am the most well behaved witch out of all three of us. Surely you can agree on that." She threw up a shield preemptively, so the pebbles bounced off a foot away.
"You're funny, Karla. Are we ready or are we not ready?" That was Gabrielle again, dusting off her hands.
"That depends on in what sense you're talking about." Jaenelle sounded nervous, for the first time. "I don't want to – mess this up, somehow. That would just be – it'd be awful."
"We won't mess this up," Karla said, firmly. "Not after we've been working this long." She lifted her hands from the earth, feeling her heart lighten. Even after some time, the land still felt like murder, blood and sorrow. She stood up and brushed her hands off.
"Ready?" Jaenelle said in a hushed voice, and Karla nodded, seriously. They joined hands, not needing to say another word, and slid the last thread of the intricate Tangled Webs into place. The Grey began to glow first, followed by the Red, and finally the Black. Karla heard her sisters hold their breath and realized that she was holding hers too as nothing seemed to happen for a moment.
Finally, the shape began to form, like smoke out of the air without fire. Wispy tendrils from Black, then Red, then Grey, twining around each other into a form not quite solid and not made of mist.
It took shape slowly, and they watched it in silence, hardly stirring. One slip could have ruined everything. But it was there eventually, and they looked at it in silence.
The spiral horn had a jewel at the bottom, shifting from white to green to black and through all the Jewels in between. One hoof was lifted slightly off the ground, frozen, though the creamy mane and tail streamed in the wind. The fur shifted from warm and solid and white back to misty smoke, swirling and eddying within the shadow-unicorn's form.
Jaenelle glided forward a few steps as they let go of each other's hands, and Karla felt better that she wasn't the only one shaking. She laid a hand gently on the unicorn's nose.
"Kaetien," said Jaenelle's voice, issuing from nowhere, soft as midnight. "Morton," Karla's voice, followed by Gabrielle's, "Kaera."
Jaenelle took her hand away and stepped back. "It is done," she murmured, very softly and in the voice that rang of cavernous halls and unknowable darknesses. The words, crackling slightly, appeared etched before the still hooves of the shadow-unicorn.
For remembrance. As a reminder.
They looked at the memorial solemnly. "Oh," said Gabrielle quietly. "The sun is going to set. I want to see…"
They all stepped back together, though they didn't link hands this time, simply shoulder to shoulder lending some warmth. The sun was sinking lower in the sky, and just as the bottom edge touched the horizon and the light fanned out like spreading fingers, the unicorn came afire.
The light gleamed through the streaming mane and tail and refracted on the misty smoke of the body, setting it shimmering with light, starry and captivating. It only lasted a moment, and then the sun was gone and the unicorn seemed to vanish in the dark, but for the slight gleam of its shadow-hooves.
They all sighed at once.
"Do you think they'll understand," Gabrielle whispered. "That it's meant to – honor them?"
Jaenelle hesitated, a moment. "They'll understand enough to know that it's important." She paused, just for a moment. "It's more…more important to me than it is to them. That someone remembers their names. That even…when I am gone, someone will know that they were here, and fought, and died, for none of their fault."
The tone of her voice was deep, and sad, and old. Karla reached out and put an arm around her Queen's shoulder, and Gabrielle put another around her waist. "Don't say that," Karla managed to say, hoarsely. "About – you. Being gone. It makes me nervous."
Jaenelle embraced them both, her blonde head bowed between her friends' silver ones. "I'm grateful for the two of you. What we promised, always."
"Together," Gabrielle said, trying valiantly to smile. "Whatever we do, we do it together."
They turned to look at what they had wrought. The setting sun had reached a point again where some of its rays shone through the unicorn's mane, and they stared at it in silence, found each other's hands and squeezed them all at once.
Karla, for herself, couldn't help but smile even if her eyes were watering. Glacia was being torn apart from within, the specter of war loomed on the horizon, but it was good to see something beautiful in the world.