there is no surrender to be found here
*
“I would expect nothing less from you.” Calliope doesn't hide her approval of him. It's there in the way she presses her nose against that sharp edge of his cheekbone. Had that lion still lingered inside her chest it would have purred for his honesty.
It's the reason Calliope is glad Raymond has stood through the storm of her. Calliope is too passionate to tolerate his trickery, too full of her blazing righteousness to stand for lies. Long ago Raymond made a promise and Calliope made one right back.
They have always known exactly what it is that they are. She knows he's more self-serving than full of ravenous justice. Raymond is the water to cool the fires of her, no less deadly for the way it too boils when her fires run too hot to stand. The rift was unkind when it lead them down, down, down through all the possible worlds and ended where Novus began.
But perhaps, they are made to discover worlds together and tear down the walls that do not suit them and all the ideals of freedom they hold to.
Perhaps they are made for each other. The way she feels adrift when he untangles his tail from hers suggests that Calliope, for the first time, doesn't want to feel so alone or forgotten.
Patience, he said. “Until then.” She offered back as he promised to seek out those who deserved to be marked by her.
When his shoulder was pressed against hers and his nose tucked to her neck it was easy to feel patient and restrained. It was easy to forget that a forest burns and Flora waits back at her castle with a heart that knows what it feels like to shatter.
It was easy to forget that she burns.
The moment Raymond crosses the last hill and fades from sight Calliope is again an inferno of need, hunger and rage. Patience is nothing more than a passing whisper, a word her blood won't let her remember.
She turns towards the wilds, the distant smoke and the desert that promises monsters. Calliope lifts her nose to the wind, inhales just once and lets her hunting begin.
@Raymond
<3 until next time
