"This time, I’ll fight. Tooth and nail, I’ll fight.”
Each word and each beat of storm-carrying wings coils something deep inside Calliope. She coils tighter and tighter, over and over again until she feels ready to explode with violence and lighting. And part of her hates the thunderbirds more for their lies (surely, she thinks, this is another lie of peace). Another part of her hates the innocents between her and the monsters.
Calliope has little use for stories, less use for gods that bend a knee before a tribe of beasts.
So she makes no move to join them, only paces back and forth, back and forth waiting for the first strike to be blown. Perhaps though, if she listened to the story she would not have paced so like a lion with a dragon of violence flapping against her rib cage.
It's only the touch of Shrike against her skin that cools her steps as much as it sparks her fury into an inferno. Unlike Acton she lets her eyes spark a challenge when she looks up at the beasts. Each flash of white and each crack of electricity over her skin seems to say, be dragons then. Be dragons and I will be a lion and I will feast on your insides.
In the most kind thing Calliope has ever done, she swallows down her fury just enough to stop her from crying war and tearing out their eyes. The first move belongs again to the thunderbirds but oh how her blood roils like a hurricane at the idea of vengeance.
And, until the end she knows Shrike and Raymond are with her (courts and titles can only hold them so long).
