here we are, turn away now
*
There is a shiver in her flesh as the night settles around her in the meadows. The air smells like smoke and oil and she can taste magic on the breeze-- old magic, sick magic, rift magic. First she thinks it has found her here, those monsters she marked for death and buried in their own caves. Calliope quivers for the battle she thinks is to come, happy that the lighting doesn't lick across her spine at the promise of pain.
Their deaths will be more satisfying when she delivers them with her horn, hooves and teeth. She misses the lion in her bones enough to crave feasting on the flesh of the damned and dying.
But then, oh but then.....
The weight on the air changes, shifts and it smells like the color red, red, red. Suddenly her hooves are flying across the grasses, swift as a storm and as silent as a lioness. Her body is feather-light as she runs but her soul is heavy and she feels like the distant fires might sense her guilt and burn down to soot and embers.
Calliope deserves it, for the many times has she left him, lost to her hunt, her vengeance, her heartbreak. There was always Shrike and Raymond and now he is all that is left of her kingdom. They are the last of their kind, the last of Velius, of her broken and forgotten kingdom. When she finally finds, him that wicked blade lifted high and ready she wants to smile, to feel a thrum in her heart for the sight of him.
All she can see though, is the shallow claw marks filled with blood and no calico cat in sight. The only taste on the breeze now is fading rift magic, sweat and the sharp, bitter tang of sorrow. Calliope closes the distance slowly, as if approaching a wild creature who will fight to the bitter end. Even now she has not forgotten how the loss of Shrike made her mad with blood-lust, how she killed every dragon she came across.
When she's close enough for him to see the sorrow in tightness of her body, the sadness, the guilt, she presses her muzzle to the claw marks across his shoulder. “I'm sorry.” The word chimes like a bell, one that rings endless and alone over the wasteland of all the things that could have been (should have been).
She's reckless with the blade of his tail. Raymond is the only one left that she trusts to care for that wicked, frozen heart of hers.
Her touch lingers, saying all the things she cannot bring herself to give sound too. She's sorry for being a hard queen to follow, she's sorry that she has been so careless with his devotion. Calliope is sorry for everything and it's there in her sliver, scarred eyes as she tucks her black shoulder against his.
@Raymond
