[P] Alte Füchse gehen schwer in die Falle [CALLIOPE]

[Turhan]

“ bone to rune ”

Oh! Calliope was a thunderstorm and Turhan hit her the force of an ageless, but hard sea.

If Death did not fear him, then Turhan would not fear death. Not did he believe he would find such things here. "You do not listen!" He spat, twisting and pulling back just to get some inches between them. Quills darted out in self defense, but the thunder misguided his auditory aim and he missed her. Wherever they had disappeared into the night, the poison darts were gone, wasted.


Turhan risked the chance to be skewered, spiral-cut, sliced, diced, or just plain butchered by the unicorn when he threw his time, energy, and weight in the opposite way of her. He didn't know which way was what, he was blind and that seemed to be the end of his logic. He heard her feet, he lowered his head like he would charge her. Old wounds had been opened up in his heart, as well as on his flesh, and the old bear's heart raced with youthful vigor.


Or was that adrenaline?


Blood started down his chin, down his throat, onto his war-paint white chest. His shoulder shook unsteady from muscle strain. The old man's attempt to back off of her horn was quite taxing on his old body but still, he held together. And forced his voice once again at her, just one more time, as clear as he could.


"This rabbit - poisoned. Yes, I catch. Yes, I kill. It is bad to make rabbit suffer, then die. I pray to Vespera. Take rabbit away. Gods, Witches, Shamans, Rabbits - all the same. All the same thing." He was batty as batty could be but with all the rain that was now pouring down upon their backs all the paint seemed to wash all that hocus pocus off of him. Coppery reds and blacks took the places of all the ketchup and mustard paint. The scars looked worse with all the white sloughing off his nose. His hair was crusty red mats that laid flat against his hair. Colourful ribbons painted streaks down his chest and legs - but nothing about any of this detail made him look softer, or more helpless.


Between his eyes, a most hideous scar as he narrowed his blind eyes on her as if he could see. "I was once you." Turhan felt his heart race quite suddenly, heat filled his face as anxious dizziness lead to ringing in his ears. The words came out of him barbed, too hot, and - quite suddenly - too real for him to remember. Blind fury threatened to fill him and make him roar like a mighty tempest.


"Now I am not. If I still was .. rabbit would be here and you would not."



Wind blew fire and ashes up at Calliope's face, consequently Turhan's too but he could not see them, only feel them. The fire finally gave up its last flame and left Calliope and Turhan in complete darkness.


Nothing changed. Turhan started making strange noises in the dark at her. Some awful grating noise to pitch the marrow being spooned out of the top of his head as he remembers when a greedy king held him down with an army of his men and cracked the horn off after having mostly dug it out from flesh, muscle, and soft bone. Now the scars looked like he had went head-to-head with a weed eater, but it was the slight dimple over his brow that made it more obvious.


"I still dream about the sounds when they scrape the horn from my skull."


Lightning interjected, then thunder recanted, Calliope could find Turhan still standing against her, poised, even though his strength had left him. Determined to live like the coo he fought to wear the horns of and not to die when it wasn't his time yet, his admittance was more out of aggravation than anything.


"You cannot kill what is already dead. Leave me."

T U R H A N
skull to dust

@Calliope So this is a painful history he cannot bare to reveal to anyone - not even his presh Ilati .. if you can even understand him. I certainly cannot. I love you.