She's a demon, of course.
She's always known it, a part of her deep inside, Dark always. Knew it before her father told her, before he told her that she was evil, that everything beautiful her mother had given her was filth.
She knew it for sure when she fled the beatings, when she ran to the attic, perched on the windowsill and let herself
slip
She tumbled for the briefest of moments and then
hovered
A pull and a tug at her back and shoulder blades and she was rising, slowly slowly going up and out and away. She was a demon. And she flew. She flew towards the slowly setting sun like something out of a movie, fluttered and hovered and danced on the breeze, let herself go with pure joy, wondered how something so lovely could come from the Dark.
She swooped from dizzying heights, soared, thought, "I must tell my mother."
Mother. Oh. Alone there with her father and his belt and Donny who was still young enough to flee to hiding spots where only she could find him. Her feet touched the ground of the back garden, and when she reached around to feel the wings she touched only the worn-soft cotton of her dress.
~*~
It is evil. It is escape. It is loneliness above the earth, above the night world.
It is her bliss and her chain.
~*~
He dreams a winged girl, locked in a cage, offering dark, glossy feathers to the wind as Willow sleeps.
When he finally sees her, a seeming lifetime later, he smells power and the Dark. He sees a girl who knows not her potential.
He thinks her mouth could undo him.
~*~
She thinks they are horrible to touch. Like bat wings. She admits this haltingly, and shudders.
"Oh, no," he breathes, reaching out for her hand. He tells her they are like night. They are soft. The edges glimmer, iridescent.
He thinks someday he will ask her to describe the wolf for him.
~*~
She's a demon, of course.
But as the Dark creature reaches for her, her wings expand - for the first time with power and not with fear.
Together they can undo the world.