[P] Does it still hurt

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

Raum is a shadow beside Avdotya. Still they track across the plain, side by side as the the Serpent and the Crow. Crows were canny things and serpents sly, maybe that is why, as they walk upon common ground, ravaged by a storm, they find their own common ground too. And oh it is a place of blood and scars and both are easy here, both are welcome.
 
It was a grave day when Night and Day united through mutual darkness and despair.
 
Steam curls from his slick skin and still the rain beats down through the mist about him. His  body is not like lava, his soul as frigid as the deepest ice. The Crow is liquid beside Avdotya,. He is the shadow that swallows all – that moves in silence and strikes with nary a whisper. Only this girl, this creature beside him, he thinks, no, he knows now, could ever come close.
 
How long has it been since he saw his brother Acton? How long since they shared the flare of wings the bite of a crow’s beak? The warrior beside him dashes every thought of Crows and bothers from his mind. When did the lion become malleable? He thinks. With a corvid tilt of his skull, his eyes, black as pearl, draw upon her. They linger upon the glint of pallid teeth, sharp and ready of the skull resting upon her back. It maw is parted in an eternal laugh and Raum does not flinch with its ferocity.
 
Then those eyes, blue like sparks, are upon the curl of her lips. She moves to smile, but never does. Ah, just like him – for what is it to smile here? Slowly his gaze peels from her and he longs to take a piece of her soul, to know if it is as wretched as his own. Is it black with mould, red with shed blood and ragged as though claws had torn it apart. Raum thinks it might be.
 
His attention returns to her, slow, slow, slow. He regards her in silence, as sharp as daggers, as soft as wings. Does he have the knives to press against its throat? Her words ask him, prying like needles, slick like serpents coiling about his limbs, his throat. Through it all the Crow does not flinch, he does not cow away from the attentions of the serpent before him. He holds red in black and in will, he knows now, for an eternity. “If the time comes, maybe.”
 
Oh so easily he discards her question, so simply he dismisses it. There was not even room for a beat of his heart in the time it takes for him to answer her. Raum is too calm, he is to unfussed by her question. That, is answer alone. If the time comes, he would. Raum would never fear even to hold a dagger against the end of the world and then let the blood flow.
 
“But even you know, Avdotya, that it does not have to be a knife. It never has to be just that.” And then he looks over her with a pointed stare. Raum draws attention to her scars made by claws, the teeth of the skeleton upon her back, the gleaming blade of her spear. Avdotya is a weapon herself, forged from sand and slavery and wicked, wicked instruments of war.

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@Avdotya