the song of tomorrow

[Raum]

 



They stand together, alone in the copse of trees. Sabine and the rest of their party are far out of earshot. It is only the trees who will be their jury this day. Trees have prying eyes and ears that listen forever, but Raum knows his and Rhoswen’s transgressions will die upon bark lips, never to be heard.
 
He is too safe here, they both are. So it is with brazen eyes that he settles his gaze upon his Solterran girl and pierces her skin with the ferocity of his ice-hewn demeanour. “These are all should haves and would haves,” the Crow says with a dismissive shrug. “The fact is, Rose, that you never did any of those things. I am still alive because you wanted me alive.”
 
The Ghost cannot help the way his eyes trail over her crimson skin. The way he knows how every part of her feels to his touch. He thinks he might know her body better than his own. He certainly knows her mind and coils her tight, pulling her in tighter, tighter. Rhoswen is the girl he loves to love, and to destroy.  He riles her only to watch her spit like a cat and remind him of his despicable nature. None could bring him so low as she. He would turn her into a goddess for it. Renounce Caligo for her – ah, such dangerous, blasphemous thoughts!
 
The curve of her ear upon his lips is salvation and he curses her for it with hurtful words and contrasting touches. Only when she peels herself from him does he feel the sting of her absence. Each time she leaves him, she rips away a part of him; by the gods he hates her.
 
The sun watches her moon with incredulous eyes. Were he Acton, he might have smiled at her, might have shrugged his shoulder with indifference, again. But the Ghost is not The Magician, and instead he stands with drowning eyes that threaten to turn her fire into sodden ash.
 
Rhoswen takes his bait, as she always has – will his lover never learn? She explodes with all the grandeur and splendor of a star and in silence he sits before the flames of her, letting her firelight-ire dance across his skin. His eyes glimmer malevolently as he stands fast. “You will have to try harder to ever be rid of me.” Again that silken voice comes, low like rumbling thunder and soft as the silken scarf about his throat.
 
At last her vitriolic words strike true when she mentions her brother. His ears fall like crumbling spires (so many things he has desecrated – she is right). Her chin his lifted with defiance, but his ire is a viper in the grass she does not watch.  Raum closes the distance she makes between them, loosening the scarf about his throat all the while. It is about her throat in a blink, soft and light as air. Her lover possesses a dancer’s grace and a murderer’s speed. That is all Raum is, along with his mercury skin, poisonous and bright: a murderer and a dancer. Ominously he tightens the scarf about her throat; a reminder of who he is.
 
“Never assume you are not as sinful as me, Rhoswen.” The Crow snarls into the space between them – such little he leaves, so that his every word may be an emblazoned tattoo upon her skin, may she forever remember them. “How many times have you abandoned your brother?” Raum lets the question hang, lets all the times she left fall like piercing, ringing swords between them.
 
It was one of Raum’s daggers that cut Bexley’s face, but the Ghost does not need it now to carve into his own girl’s skin. His eyes do worse than a blade can ever do. “I chose you and Sabine that night. Reichenbach respected that decision for he chose his lover over his Crows too.”
 
Oh his voice drops so low then, a menace of thunder upon the distance, trembling, rattling bones with its coming. “You left your brother to rot that night too. We are both drowning in sin. Never forget that.” She is just drowning more in his, than he in hers.

@Rhoswen - :o :o :o