Oro supplex et acclinis,
Cor contritum quasi cinis,
Gere curam mei finis.
***
Cor contritum quasi cinis,
Gere curam mei finis.
***
Calliope's words broke over him like a rogue wave, chilling his ire to the bone.
All his life he had stalked the world a solitary predator, a leopard arrogant in the totality of his own stealth as he cut off and cut down those he scorned like antelope on the open savannah. He had only himself to look after, for the cruelty of life was such that his own skin was all he'd been allowed to take with him and the nature of his own transgressions demanded that he keep it that way. Solitude was freedom and safety. You cannot be compelled to any end when the most valuable possession is your own life, and even that is worthless.
Calliope had broken that cycle. On that first meeting of crossed blades and measured words his interest had been piqued just enough to draw him in, to make him forget why he didn't let himself get familiar. She was his first mistake, and once he tasted what he'd lost he couldn't put it down and disappear again into the wilderness. But old habits die hard: he would do, had done, whatever he thought was necessary to keep her safe.
My love would not have kept you from danger.
Her retort had startled him into a stony stillness, suspended between the self-righteous defense of his actions and the crushing horror of personal revelation. Raymond and Calliope were two shades of the same vengeful spirit: she the swift and sure deliverer of naked justice, he the slippery serpent that slithers in and destroys from within. Together they could have been a force of nature, a thunderhead rolling relentlessly across open plains, but he did not know how to be together. He knew only how to protect, to stalk, to risk his own life and no one else's. It never once occurred to him that there might be someone in the world who could feel deeply enough for him to resent being protected.
That someone might love him enough to risk her life with him. For him. As he was willing to do for her.
And like a bastard making off with a selkie's skin he'd stolen from her the right to choose.
Raymond felt hollow in the turbulent wake of her silence, a ship adrift in the ocean with wind dragging uselessly at its tattered sails. At the peak of her heartbroken fury he had seen his true name reflected back at him through the light in her wild eyes. It pierced him, scalded him, and in a single mighty thrust forced open a network of veiny cracks that cried out to be reforged in her fires.
"I'm sorry." Remorse; his voice trembled. He hesitated toward her, then pressed forward in earnest as his resolve gathered up the grinding shards of his self-righteousness and forced them into the shape of atonement. "Calliope, I'm sorry. Please forgive me."
He brushed the sooty velvet of his muzzle against her iron cheek, traced down along her throat to the place she'd drawn her blood against his blade, smeared it like salt water into his red skin. His body curved around hers, hesitant to touch but intent upon making of itself a space meant for her as his head came to rest alongside the tragic heat of her breast and his tail sought hers. Raymond didn't know how to apologize - he'd never done it before - but in those repeated, tremulous words that mirrored themselves in the repentant shivers in his skin he had felt a lifetime of penance and shared a promise both familiar and infinitely alien: he would do whatever was necessary to keep her, even if it meant charging with her headlong into the maw of hell itself.
How frightful, then, might their love become?
All his life he had stalked the world a solitary predator, a leopard arrogant in the totality of his own stealth as he cut off and cut down those he scorned like antelope on the open savannah. He had only himself to look after, for the cruelty of life was such that his own skin was all he'd been allowed to take with him and the nature of his own transgressions demanded that he keep it that way. Solitude was freedom and safety. You cannot be compelled to any end when the most valuable possession is your own life, and even that is worthless.
Calliope had broken that cycle. On that first meeting of crossed blades and measured words his interest had been piqued just enough to draw him in, to make him forget why he didn't let himself get familiar. She was his first mistake, and once he tasted what he'd lost he couldn't put it down and disappear again into the wilderness. But old habits die hard: he would do, had done, whatever he thought was necessary to keep her safe.
My love would not have kept you from danger.
Her retort had startled him into a stony stillness, suspended between the self-righteous defense of his actions and the crushing horror of personal revelation. Raymond and Calliope were two shades of the same vengeful spirit: she the swift and sure deliverer of naked justice, he the slippery serpent that slithers in and destroys from within. Together they could have been a force of nature, a thunderhead rolling relentlessly across open plains, but he did not know how to be together. He knew only how to protect, to stalk, to risk his own life and no one else's. It never once occurred to him that there might be someone in the world who could feel deeply enough for him to resent being protected.
That someone might love him enough to risk her life with him. For him. As he was willing to do for her.
And like a bastard making off with a selkie's skin he'd stolen from her the right to choose.
Raymond felt hollow in the turbulent wake of her silence, a ship adrift in the ocean with wind dragging uselessly at its tattered sails. At the peak of her heartbroken fury he had seen his true name reflected back at him through the light in her wild eyes. It pierced him, scalded him, and in a single mighty thrust forced open a network of veiny cracks that cried out to be reforged in her fires.
"I'm sorry." Remorse; his voice trembled. He hesitated toward her, then pressed forward in earnest as his resolve gathered up the grinding shards of his self-righteousness and forced them into the shape of atonement. "Calliope, I'm sorry. Please forgive me."
He brushed the sooty velvet of his muzzle against her iron cheek, traced down along her throat to the place she'd drawn her blood against his blade, smeared it like salt water into his red skin. His body curved around hers, hesitant to touch but intent upon making of itself a space meant for her as his head came to rest alongside the tragic heat of her breast and his tail sought hers. Raymond didn't know how to apologize - he'd never done it before - but in those repeated, tremulous words that mirrored themselves in the repentant shivers in his skin he had felt a lifetime of penance and shared a promise both familiar and infinitely alien: he would do whatever was necessary to keep her, even if it meant charging with her headlong into the maw of hell itself.
How frightful, then, might their love become?
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
@Calliope
aut viam inveniam aut faciam
