Supergirl: Crown of the Cosmos by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Supergirl-Crown-of-the-Cosmos-1274762490

Supergirl: Crown of the Cosmos ANIMATION

Bloodlight Over Gotham

A single coin of light slid between the building ribs and the lifted hands of stone, turning the gargoyles' features a lacquered wine. The moon — swollen, wrong — lay over Gotham like a promise and a threat; the kind of promise that sings through the teeth of the city and leaves an aftertaste of iron. Rooftops glittered with puddles of neon and blood; the usual nocturne of horns and sirens was muffled as if the world had tucked its sound into its pockets and gone very still to listen.

Kara Zor-El moved through that silence like a sudden flare. Her cape was a comet-tail of red against slate, her silhouette an ancient, precise geometry that made the shadows straighten. People who loved symmetry sometimes said she looked like a theorem, and in the hard angles of Gotham it was true: she fit where angles refused to yield. Her hair, the color of late summer wheat, slid under her collar with careless grace. She preferred being called Supergirl in larger rooms, but tonight she answered to the city's ragged heartbeat.

She landed on a rooftop that smelled of tar and old coins, a rooftop rimmed with broken glass that glittered like a constellation of bad luck. A bank vault below hummed its secure song; far off, a neon bat blinked out in a rhythm older than the youngest barfly. Kara's eyes caught the moon, and for a breath she felt, against the muscles of her chest, the small human ache of being an exile who had learned to love two skies.

The creature waited where a chimney's shadow met an advertising billboard. It was not a single thing so much as a wrongness in the architecture. It had the grace of an animal and the mischief of a parasite: long limbs that ended in multiple-feathered fingers, a body stitched from skin and the silk of old dreams, a face that could be folded into the shape of anyone you had lost. It shifted, and the rooftop filled with the faintest sound — not a voice, but the impression of a voice layered on itself, like moth-wings over a phonograph.

"Lost-and-found," it said, which could have been the name of a shop or a threat. The syllables tasted like cigarette smoke.

Supergirl's response was steady. "You don't belong in this city," she said. Her voice, under the blood moon, had the clarity of a bell that refused to shatter.

It laughed — the sound of silver spoons colliding — and leaned forward so its eyes could be seen. If you could call them eyes; they were black wells threaded with old streetlamps' glow. "Belonging is a delicate thing," it breathed. "Gotham learns how to keep people like me. It keeps everything, eventually. Echoes, debts, regrets. I'm a collector."

"You collect grief," Kara said. "You feed on it."

"We don't eat what humans call grief," it corrected, a ribbon of amusement curling in its tone. "We feed on the small soft edges — the regret you tuck into the margin of a photograph, the quiet that collects where laughter used to be. It's delicious." The creature cocked its head. "You hide them well, solar child. A cowardly neatness."

Kara's jaw tightened. "I'm not afraid."

"Ah." The creature's smile was all teeth and old bone. "Not afraid of the monsters you know. That is very brave. So painful. Brave and very, very lonely."

There was something intimate in its voice, a knowledge that scratched at the inside of her ribcage. It had the memory of voices from long-ago alleys: the lullabies of a street vendor she had seen once on a mission, the whispered reprimand of an adoptive aunt she'd known in a fleeting broadcast, the hush of a city that knew she might one day give its name to hope. For the length of a heartbeat, the city itself seemed to lean in, expecting.

"Why here? Why tonight?" Kara asked, aware of how small she sounded in the open air.

The creature's limbs unfurled like velvet banners. "The moon has teeth." Its gaze flicked to the swollen moon. "It sharpens us. Bloodlight. Old oaths find purchase. There's a particular sorrow gnawing at a block downtown — a woman who keeps her husband's hat in the closet; a child who hasn't said her mother's name since July. The city is a pantry. I come to taste the richer jars."

"You'll hurt people," Kara said. She stepped forward, the soles of her boots kissing the tar. "I won't let you."

"Perhaps," it murmured. "Or perhaps I will show you how brave becomes brittle. How a hero's light can be used like a magnifying glass to burn what you love to tind
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