"nothing in life is ever fair, because life is love and war.”
*
Between them there is only blood, flesh and tooth filled smiles that are reminiscent of wolves and lions. Calliope languishes in that between and she presses them together until they are black and red and blood. Her tail twines about his like a noose and perhaps that is the only apology she can bare to give (one of flesh instead of words). Even her lighting hides beneath her flesh, cowed by the fire licking across her bones.
And for the first time Calliope feels a fire that's not fury, a fire that she wants to sink into. She wants to burn.
Each of her touches becomes crueler and colder and her lips etch her name into his skin. “Always.” The word feels like a brand between them-- fire hot enough to freeze. With Calliope everything is a bond, everything a promise. Nothing is fleeting with a black unicorn with a lion in her bones and violence in her blood.
Her lips peel back and then it is only teeth between them (and there's still feathers and blood caught between her teeth like dreams in a dream-catcher). First she drags them along his crest then his spine and she tastes a challenge on his skin. Of course to her love is a challenge, a thing she must defeat and taste upon her tongue like sugar. “Promise me.” And here she thinks about a castle of whale-bones and how he left her behind to rot at the first promise of dragon-war. Here her violence rises to the surface-- love, want and rage.
But of course she doesn't point out that she was the one who welcomed death and almost left him behind for that final adventure. Loving Calliope is very much like loving war.
Over and over she traces their names across his flesh. One name is teeth and the other kisses curved into letters. “It will always be us, until the end.” Her voice curls like smoke and soot and storm between them. She wonders if he can feel the sparks in each of the places they mold together (sparks and blood, sparks and blood).
She wonders if he can feel the storm swirling and gathering in the world between her skin. A storm that even a war could not ebb.
@Raymond
