It did not matter how many times Shrike witnessed her shield-sister’s rage; each time it was awful.
Not in the little-way of the word, used to mean inconsequential things, but in the archaic meaning. Awful the way a supercell was, awful the way a god was. The kind of thing to make you quake or pray or worship.
Shrike could not read, but she didn’t need to to guess the substance of the letter Calliope had received. The paint had kept her tongue and her distance as they traveled to Denocte together, following the cliffsides quick as a storm, but she was in far better humor than the unicorn when at last they arrived, despite the charred remains of a dragon’s foul work.
The dragon was gone, and so were its masters. That was enough for now.
Soon after, they split ways; this was an anger that was Calliope’s alone. It was not for Shrike to witness (though a part of her wished she could).
And so she continued on alone, traveling beneath the gathering dark, away from the city and its maze of walls and peculiar weaknesses.
She is drawn as ever to the prairie, this one of rolling foothills and whispering grass. In a little hollow she beds down till morning, and she spends a lazy dawn exploring further. It is a lonely, windblown place, the breeze cool with autumn. Even after hours of wandering it, Shrike keeps expecting it to shift, or birth a monster from a jumble of stones. When it does not, she is both disappointed and relieved.
It is midday when she looks up from grazing and sees a red figure, bright as a blood-mark and as alone as herself. At first she only watches him proceed beneath a sweep of tumbleweed sky, but after a moment she goes to greet him.
If she is surprised to find Raymond here, Shrike says nothing of it. She only looks him over, her dark eyes gleaming bright as a bird’s as they travel from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail-blade. The paint wears no grin when she speaks, but it is there in her voice all the same. “No extra holes since the last time I saw you. I’m glad it went well.”
If he had survived Calliope’s wrath, than he must have had a good reason for acting as he did, and that was enough for her.
get your war paint on
let them know we're out for blood
let them know we're out for blood
@Raymond
