a justice that no flesh can hold
*
It is a dangerous thing when two unicorns come together beneath the ancient trees. There is a connection between their eyes, rose gold to silver, black to gray. Something dark grows, something powerful, something older than magic when their scars glint just so beneath the shady light. How heavy the shadows seem between them, too thick for any fire to breech.
Calliope is comfortable in that place where the air seems like oil and smoke and to breathe it feels like drowning. She wonders, if they were to tap their horns together what sound might ring out in that heady air, what tinder they might alight with the sparks of their weapons. Like a lion she moves closer. She is nothing more than a wisp of strangeness as she comes close enough to taste the lingering sweetness of sunshine on gray unicorn skin.
“No.” The word sounds like more than a syllable on her lips. It sounds like a rumble of thunder, an echo of all the lighting storms that lived on the tip of her tongue once, so very long ago. “I am not of Novus.” Calliope smiles. Even that gesture is something more than a flash of teeth and the tilt of her lips looks too feral for a horse to wear and it sets her eyes to sparking like stars.
She leans closer, reaching out to wipe away all that paint and glitter on the other unicorns cheek. They need no adornment but their horns and the brutal patchwork masterpieces of their scars.
“I am from more universes than you could dream of.” Calliope is from worlds far beyond this one. She has changed her skin, her weapons. She has changed so many parts of her, over and over again until all she was left with was her soul and that wicked, violent purpose of hers.
But this body, four too long legs, that curving scythe of her horn and that streak of white lighting down her side, is the most familiar to her out of all the bodies and bones she's worn.
Behind her that double tail flicks and twitches over the soft, summer weeds. It moves just like a lion's tail, a hint that this body she wears is more than just a unicorn. That tail promises that she's a hunter, a wild-cat in the body of a legend.
“What of you?” How heavy the air as become now, thicker than oil. It's as thick as the ancient blood of unicorns that courses through their veins. “What kind of unicorn are you?” Even as she asks the question, Calliope remembers.
She remembers killing all the other unicorns who raised her and the way their skin felt like paper beneath her rage.
@Pavetta
