WE ARE DIVINE
He's glad he didn't light any of the torches, gladder still that he's golden and noble during the daylight.
But Veer is not made for foolish thoughts or spectral beasts that wonder the daytime and scream for justice and retribution. To him the dead are dead and he's still alive, as all victors are more alive than any other creature in this world. His eyes are hard as he watches the ghost come. That gaze is a weapon, gold melted down to a liquid that will pull back all the flesh and lies from the world.
Like a conqueror he smiles when the ghost first comes close enough to see skin instead of grave-dust and feathers instead of cobwebs. His teeth are a flash of white in the darkness and his eyes seem like two wolf eyes, peering out from the shadows of the stands when she crosses the pit sand.
And oh! When he sees the expressive arch of her neck, the delicacy of her feathers he laughs and shakes out any lingering tension from his feathers. She is no ghost, no haunted thing that has him tasting phantom blood on the backs of this teeth.
She is a treasure. She is gold, cursed perhaps but still worth something. And something is all Veer needs, for he wants everything. He wants to devour up the world and make it his.
“You are lost.” Veer looks down at her from the primitive stands (carved by clever black-market merchants) where he lounges on dusty satin pillows like a lion who cares little for the end of the world that screams in snowflakes outside his cave. His feathers seems like a blanket of night when he lifts a wing to block the few cracks of sunlight leeching in from the wall at his back.
Deeper in the darkness another monster waits, and Veer quiets him with a grow low enough to be nothing more than a rustle of his wings and ring of his chains. Not yet.
a breath of soot into these lungs
@Elif
