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Enoch reclines on the balcony railing, watching a fervent debate between Madame Summer and the Queen of the Clouds. Lady Midnight occasionally interjects into their debate before it can dissolve into a shouting match.
Slightly off to the side of them stands the Beast, and beside him, a demure looking moth woman, her long antenna swept back.
She seems to be attempting to work answers out of the Beast, but by his body language he is being nothing but curt in reply.
She is new, young, she will realize the futility eventually.
When Enoch speaks, it is directed towards the spider woman beside him, also watching the proceedings with a critical eye.
“Your daughter I assume.” He murmurs at last.
“Yes, Harvest Lord,” She replies. “She will be my successor.”
He glances over at her for a moment, taking in her profile.
“What of you, Silk Spinner?”
“Do not patronize me, Thicket Cat. I am no fool, I do not delude myself into thinking I may see the final battle dawn. I shall go the way of my father soon enough.”
His tail sweeps wide.
She sighs, mandibles clicking.
“I am not so solitary as Madame Summer, nor so vast as the Queen of the Clouds, I do not possess your ever growing strength, with each coming summer I dwindle. I am not as clever as Lady Midnight, nor as cunning as Lord Winter. I am as my father was, a tactician and a prophet.”
“Did you see your death in your visions?”
“No.” She points with her elegant claws. “She did. As I saw the death of my own father. But she possesses a kindness I do not, she warned. When I saw my father’s death I guarded it closely, I could not wait to inherit his throne.”
He remains silent.
“Did you know, Harvest Lord, that the visions become clearer and bigger as I age?”
“I did not.”
“When I was young they were fuzzy out of focus things, about boys and witches and swords. As I inherited my throne they were of battles, wars, spirits, curses. Now, when I am close to my waning, they are of us .” She gestures widely at their assembly. “I have seen things, Harvest Lord, seen our wars and many of our deaths. I have seen my daughter’s wings torn, and the skies blackened by ravens, I have seen the seas boil and the earth shake, I have seen the moment heaven bent, the place where it fractured.
“I have seen the violence that will one day consume us, but I have seen other things as well.”
“I have seen old bones returning to life, warm summers, dying leaves and babes held against their mother’s breast.”
She turns to him, her eyes glimmering.
“I have seen you, Harvest King, in the arms of winter, and likewise I have seen Winter held in Autumn.”
He holds his tongue.
When she speaks again her voice is thin and fragile.
“I have seen the final victory, Lord Autumn.”
He looks at her and there is grief in his eyes.
But below it burns defiance.
He holds her gaze and she bows her head.
“You will not ask me the outcome, you are a fool.”
“It only becomes the future when it is spoken.”
“What I see always becomes future.”
“You have been wrong before.”
“You lie.”
He shakes his head and grins a wry smile.
“You have been wrong before, you simply do not know it.”
She peers at him with four sets of eyes.
“For my own sake, I hope you are right.” She says at last.