“She was beautiful and terrifying,
savage and pure.”
savage and pure.”
T
he three words that fall like hammers and blades and weapons of war from Shrike's lightning laugh knock loose things in Calliope. Her love, her weakness and her loneliness feel like a doe living in her chest. One that has lifted its nose to taste on the air gun-smoke and sweat and simply said in the language of forest creatures and unicorns, no more, no more, no more.That doe turned and ate the hunter, licked up steel and lead and smiled when it made her teeth ache.
All of those things like love and forever and ever-after rise up from her like smoke and dissolve into the summer air like dew. Only this thing between them, toothy kisses and scars that match like stars and moons, survives. There is only fury in her steps, in the cracks of lightning that work over their skins like whips, only a hurricane in her eyes that turns towards the mountains and then further than that.
Calliope looks at the world as if it is thin as air, thin enough that she might look into the very core of it, to the magma and stone and fire. Far off, perhaps, a thunderbird feels that gaze and ducks behind the shadow of the moon.
Perhaps it already knows that there is no universe in which a lion will not come to strip it like a goose.
She pauses, hoof poised in the air like a doe, like a lion, like a unicorn. Each gleam of moonlight catches on her like a bullet, raw and gold where it should be silver and sweet. It should look like water, like a dream. But Calliope dreams of her lips touching fire instead of river water, bone instead of fruit, fury instead of peace.
Oh, she has learned there is no peace to be had, not for black unicorns, not for her. Not ever.
And so when her hoof falls back to earth it clangs like a meteor, like a dragon falling from the sky (like death). Her eyes blaze when she looks at the sky, hoping that the gods see the thing in her that wants the thing in them-- wants it dead. It batters at her, over and over again.
“The gods here are as guilty as all the others. Guilty for their beasts that they have no control over, guilty for their tricks.” Overhead a summer storm starts to roar, perhaps feeling the fury of Calliope, waiting for her to find the deeper, stronger magic in her that's from another world.
Somewhere too far away to see a Rift trembles, knowing that it has not been forgotten after all.
@Shrike | "speaks" | notes: <3
