'be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt'
Calliope stalks him as he talks and prowls all the messages writ in blood that shine darker than his skin. He's a ruby of war, all sharp edges that draw her in as much as they call to her blood to turn back from this fire in her chest that could rewrite universes. On he goes and it feels like a hundred words cross his lips for each beat of her heart and throb of blood through her veins.
And with each word the fire grows and turns to electricity whistling through her. When she looks again at all the blood upon him something surges up between her bones memories. “I know the rift well.” Her voice is charged with sorrow and rage, violence and loss, fury and fury and fury.
The bitter smile on his lips is reflected in her own. She makes the look darker for the way it twists her black lips and flashes her teeth when she grinds them together in agitation. At her back her tail snaps like a whip against her now still feet. It rends the silence after all his words like horn once tore asunder a world made of dark, stars and glass.
Snap, snap, snap.
It's an effort to swallow her fury and draw her eyes from the patterns of blood upon him. It's harder still to blink away the rage and touch her nose to his in a gentle touch that asks instead of demands.“And yet I see neither of them here.” The words taste like ash on her tongue and they are bitter where they hang in the silence between them.
She's so very tired of surprises that come not on the battle-grounds, ones that make her bones feel as fragile as porcelain. Love is a cruel thing, she thinks, to still her fury and impatience when she wants to light universes with storms and turn the riftlands to dust so that no one else will go back to that dark hell.
The rift has taken enough from her and Raymond has taken what was left of her to give. And now she has nothing more to give than silent hope that the end of this tale will not turn to ash all the pieces of her that's she has given him to hold.
