she will remember your heart long after the world ends
*
Calliope is on the hunt and her nose flares as she lifts it into the night wind. Her breath rises like smoke from her, it makes her look like a dragon, like the steel skin she wears cannot possibly hold the fire of her. She's a shadow as she tracks, lithe and slick with sweat, and she blends flawlessly into the darkness. If it were not for that flash of white across her shoulder any eyes would slide over her as nothing more than a strange, fleeting thickening of the night.
The few that see her, the unicorn that moves like a lion, are wise to turn away back to their fires and families. But it is not them she hunts and even if they called out a welcome she would not have paused. The city outskirts hold nothing for her and were if not for that scent on the wind she would not spare a second thought for that looming castle ahead.
On she goes and the sound of her hooves on the cobblestone are hushed and quiet. She stays close to the edges of the street, letting the raucousness of those too far into their sins muffle the whisper of her body through the night breeze. Even her horn fails to gather the starlight, content for once to let only the band around it to flash and glitter.
It's better that way, that the tame horses of this place cannot see the way blood is crusted into the cracks of her horn. Better that they can't see the patch work of scars across her body, left by dragons and sirens and beasts infected with dark, broken magic. There's one, less healed than the others, that was left by the beak of a foolish phoenix that dared challenge Calliope and those she protected.
They are safe for now, the others that she slips by so easily, unaware of the vicious, determined unicorn that has made her way to their haven.
Only when she reaches the castle does she slow. She boldly walks past the door, concerned in a way that what she hunts is so alone, so tucked away in a half empty castle. But the air does have a touch of Gabriel on it so she's not overly surprised that it is so easy for her to move undetected in the halls.
In the courtyard she finally comes to a stop, tucking herself away below a willow tree that's bold enough to thrive between stone walls. It's strange, the way she blends so well into the flowers and willow branches, a lion in a garden of lambs.
And when the night starts to fade, giving way to the sun and a thick humid kind of heat, Calliope is still there-- waiting. Only her tail moves, twitching back and forth, back and forth until all the flowers beneath her are trampled and headless.
Still she waits. The lioness has come to Novus, tracking the boy she knew so very long ago and the girl that smells like a certain gazelle she captured so long long ago.
Calliope wonders if they'll remember her at all, or if like time they too have forgotten who she is.
@Asterion @
