Her tongue against his skin is a profane thing, enough to make a god shudder and wail. And tremble Lysander does, each touch of her mouth wracking him like a fever even as he wonders if she tastes her own blood, scarlet on the copper of his skin. Oh, she is so near the silver scar that nearly caused his killing – how many more will he have, if he keeps his life tonight?
Lysander will always be haunted by the sound wrenched from him when first her teeth close on his side. It is an awful thing, a terrible thing that should be muffled by the great cocoon of her wing but instead echoes around the barren temple like an unholy chant.
Now he is slick and dark and gleaming with blood and wishing it were ichor. Man and monster both smell of iron and salt and he thinks, wildly, of stag skeletons long bleached beneath the winter sun, of antlers locked and two feral things so needful of their own survival that they died for it.
He could sob with gratitude when first she draws back, when clean evening air reaches him and silver rims his vision with pain or starlight. Even the heat of her blood as she tears free of his sharp tines is nothing against that whispering breeze that promises freedom. Nothing could keep him still then, not even the way blood wets his side in furrows from teeth that have torn through muscle and scraped against bone.
The once-god is not so foolish as to look back. There is only a great pulling of air like the wake of a comet or the pause before a tornado, the held-breath of the universe to tell him that she is rising, rising, ready to fall.
Lysander runs. Whether gods or luck his feet did not slip on the blood-slick tile and each bright flash of pain as his lungs sucked in breath and his hooves touched the ground was beaten back by adrenaline. He forgot everything except for the blood that rushed in his veins and the singing of his torn flesh and the silver promise of moonlight, the smell of the late-summer wind.
Her scream is like the end of the world.
Almost at that he glances back, wondrous at the shape of her fury, but he knows his curiosity would well and truly damn him. Instead he only forces himself onward, leaving blood behind him like a breadcrumb trail, as marble turns to dirt turns to grass. Never has he pushed a mortal body so hard; he can feel the heart of it shudder in his chest, mournful of the blood it loses through each frantic pulse. The only thing in the world he wants is the treeline dark against the sky ahead, pines like stakes that jut toward the stars. The only thing in the world he fears is the shadow that might fall over him if he is not fast enough.
Lysander reaches the cover of the trees and still he does not stop. He might never stop until there is no more blood in him, until the world is out of air for each hungry breath he draws.
And even then he could never forget what it was to be hunted like nothing more than an animal.
we wake with bright eyes now
@Wormlust until next time xD
