[P] We are just dust and bones

[Raum]

 


He follows the tongue that licks the teeth, then turns his gaze back for one last look upon the girl of gilded gold and wicked fire.
 
Acton was a showman and this was his showgirl. Together they are the violence and savagery of love. Oh they are a mirror to Raum and Rhoswen, but this mirror of theirs is warped and broken. There was nothing whole in the love of a Crow, it is broken beaks and cutting claws.
 
Slowly his gaze turns at the last from Bexley Briar. Her name is a carving upon his soul, it cuts upon the inside of him. She is gone this night, snuffed out like a flame. In the dark she leaves, Raum turns to watch Acton. In her wake, would he smoke, or glow like embers waiting to be breathed upon?
 
With silvered skin the Ghost leads the bright of his brother further into the trees. They pass solitary figures, other ghosts, here to haunt the forest in their vestments of blackest night. Raum does not watch them as he should, for he knows the truth of this forest: he and Acton are the worst things here.
 
Slowly he tips his chin up and, with electric eyes, drinks in the flare of Acton’s eye. “Beware the fetters of the payoff, Acton.” He does not deign stop his brother, for the Crows are condemned to want the girls of Solterra. Raum was the first, Acton would not be the last.
 
With corvid dispassion he watches Acton mourn their Crow King. He watches his brother wilt like a cursed flower in his lover’s desert. His temper is a short fuse and his teeth snap shut with the clang of clashing blades. “Do not grieve a man who abandoned us to leave with his lovers and their Crows. They have abandoned us and Caligo. I never thought our brother capable, until now.”
 
Ah he is too slow and Acton’s flippant rejection of his god too fast. It is a blow that has never hurt, but today it is a score across his cheek. It blooms with old blood, congealed and dark. These are old hurts, the differences, that on days like this, lie like a chasm between the brother Crows. Yet Raum knows how to breach this void, how to look beyond it. Deftly he stitches his wound and rolls his blue eyes, cold as ice.
 
“Then who will redeem your cursed soul? You must not rest easy in death, brother. Death is no rest for anyone.” But victory is a sweet, sweet thing. Even to an assassin of silver and blue. He turns from his friend, enough for the barest hint of a smile on charcoal lips to escape unseen. His joy is always secret thing – were Rhoswen and Sabine the last to see him truly smile? His daughter and lover have stolen the last of him that is soft and warm. All he has left for this world is cold and sharp and it cuts like a knife and chokes like a scarf.

@Acton <3