Shrike has never been the sentimental type.
So coldly had she been cast out, and so young: there had been no time to develop sentiment when all her attention was focused on survival. In Calliope she had recognized a heart shaped like her own, and they fed one another as iron sharpens iron. Life was putting down the next monster or raising up the next rebellion.
She had never had a companion; no other creature had shared her thoughts or crept into the unexplored corners of her soul. Raymond’s sorrow was not a thing the paint could understand.
In this she is luckier than both of them, and unaware of her good fortune (if a mercy-death could be considered fortunate).
His chuckle rolled over her with as little affect as a cloud passing overhead. Her humor is words as dry as a summer arroyo or a sunglare-glint in her dark eyes. But Shrike relaxes a little more as he continues, nodding once. “There is always work to be done,” she notes wryly, but she is well aware that the work is needed. Idle hands, to a soul like Calliope’s, would soon be drenched in blood. Better to have something to build – though a part of her, itself bloodthirsty, wishes there had been more of the kind of work she was born to to be done.
At the question that follows she does smile, something small and sharp as a bramble. A jay shrieks and the paint twists an ear toward the noise, though her gaze only strays to the curve of Raymond’s tail. “Idle,” she answers, and all her distaste for such a state is clear in the single word. “This is the kind of place that could make someone fat and lazy.” She thinks of all the creatures at the summit, dressed like tropical birds in fabrics and feathers and dripping with jewelry, their hair coiled up like something caught and bound.
Slyly her gaze returns to his own, and there is something ursine about her smile now. “I trust I don’t have to fear such a future for you.”
get your war paint on
let them know we're out for blood
let them know we're out for blood
@Raymond
