in the darkness we stand as one
*
Calliope is not late to the meeting but she is late to be seen. As they come she is there in the darkness, circling, circling, circling the perimeter of the meeting spot. She is a lioness in the swamp. All the monsters, black magic beasts and things that want to swallow the queen whole as she lingers so carelessly in the waters keep far away from the warning of her horn as she dips it low before their venom dripping teeth.
Florentine, she thinks, is too like her father to know the difference between bravery and foolish hope that all things have a vein of goodness buried in them.
Their words drift in and out as she both expands and shortens her patrol. They are all parts of a story but she knows enough, enough to know that some are fools and others far kinder than they need to. Calliope smiles, as they spit their wrath and reasons and the scales of her morals tip and sway until they are so unbalanced that the need for payment makes her eyes flash like meteors. Her horn feels like an inferno betwixt her eyes, too long has it had no purpose, no monster with a name she might say over and over again until they are dead.
It's not until the pale, horned stallion speaks that she departs her shadows, and moves light as a predator to cross his departing pass. There's a smile on her face, bright with teeth and her horn glares like a promise in the gloaming light of the swamp. “For betrayal I will always take a life, a heart for a heartbreak.” Her voice rings not like a bell but a war drum and she moves close enough that he might feel the heat and rage and promise of hers. In another world her vengeance was paid in dragon bones and blood.
As the light shifts a scar between two of her ribs is highlighted and made grotesque in the tapestry of her skin.
Calliope doesn't touch him, but she's close enough that perhaps she could tip her horn at just the right angle, with the right pressure, and split him wide open if he doesn't run from the brutal unicorn and her prophecies.
“Be happy it's not blood and death she calls for, I would not be so forgiving for a trespass of trust.” She is not of the blood of Gabriel and Novus should be pleased there is no crown here she would wear. This is not a world made for unicorns and their cold, harsh justice. The words ring out behind her like the echo of thunder over a canyon and she moves on to the rest of the court, the horse at her back nothing more than a memory that she will not forget.
Calliope forgets nothing and her promises are her bond. Until she is dead and nothing more than dust they will hold.
The unicorn (once a lion, a slayer of gods, a sword for freedom from tyranny, a monster when necessary) has little else to say when she joins the others. Even the swamp monsters stray far from the fire of her bones for they rattle with needs that clamor out against the pulse of her blood. Her eyes meet them all individually, and the way her eyes almost seem to reflect off the blackness of her horn seems to suggest one thing as she stands there, still and waiting--
Retribution has a form and it is Calliope.
