And still she smiled. With a flick of her delicate finger, she sent them flying, all her fears. She banished limitations, and soon she wondered if she ever had any. A devilish grin played on her face as she ran rampant through a darkening world. She took down a lost hind with bat of an eye and feasted with starved voracity. The hunt was all that mattered now.
                                            
*  *  *
      She slept in abandoned alleys and courtyards in tangled thickets of wild roses that never bloomed. Her hair was matted with thorns and dirt around her heart-shaped face, and her eyes were the deepest, earthiest brown you had ever seen. Her eyes were the only part of her that was clean, ebony pupils fixed by brunette irises and surrounded by pure white scleras.

*  *  *

She knew her torture,
that sweet lover,
her mistress:
a forever-young mystery,
born in a cave of a thousand wonders,
she knew the hunt.
A ravenous beauty,
in lost truth lies the stranger she once knew as humanity,
but it left long ago.
The blood lust was calling,
and time rushed sweet like a fabric dream.
She lay asleep,
restless,
kicking her feet,
running in sleep.
She cried out at the dream-kill,
and sent mothers locking their doors from the angel of death.
The blood stain,
an invitation,
not a warning.
With eyes wide open,
she smiled with the vibrancy of a hurricane
and flipped to her feet.
She stalked the night,
never alone.