“She was beautiful and terrifying,
savage and pure.”
savage and pure.”
E
ach drum of her heart is a knell, a tolling bell in her chest that sings and screams and chants. Blood and vengeance, rage and retribution, war and annihilation. It sings and screams and howls. Her horn, that old and weary blade upon her brow, sighs and quivers violently like a harp string that almost wants to be sweet and almost wants to be a religion. Today her skin is nothing but a cage in the gilded prison of this world with its courts and parties and gods. It's the thing beneath it that drives her now, that lion, the dragon killer, the monster who knows that evil tastes like fermented wine and burns when it goes down. There is a dominion of righteousness that boils and smolders and stings inside of her and it...
It wants out.
It wants gods and birds and elk. It wants the flesh of mortals who smile while they have sins in their hearts and blood that runs black, black, black with hatred (black as her flesh). It wants everything.
Calliope aches with her need when Shrike presses teeth into her shoulder. They touch like bears and lions and beasts that devour. She wants to roar and shake down the mountains of this place, shake loose the statues of gods to nothing more than dust and dirt and decay. The clock in her chest has tolled, chimed out the hour and each ticking clang says, kill, kill, it's killing time.
And all the violence is in her gaze, in the fingers of white-hot and hungry electricity that covers in her a storm. Although that's not quite right.
Calliope is the storm.
“Finally,” She growls and it sounds like a prayer form her lips, a hallelujah for a blessing. “the beasts of this world have shown their teeth.” It's a dangerous thing that sparks in her eyes. Like Helen it's a look that could destroy entire worlds. But her look is not beauty and grace and poise. It's fury and determination and thirsty, thirsty blades.
Calliope is a graveyard, empty and waiting and raw.
“Are you as hungry as I?” And she knows she doesn't have to ask. She knows that there is a fury of violence hanging inside Shrike's heart. Calliope knows that each raw thing in her that stings and burns and craves has its mate in the bone and ruby mare.
But she still wants to hear the words.
@Shrike | "speaks" | notes: <3
