They call it falling in love, but to Eik it is more like the opposite. Up he rises through the muck and the brine, shedding a lifetime of ashen slurry. His ghosts, with their dark claws and twisted faces, cling to him fearfully. Still he rises, and one by one they fall.
"Find out what it is that a man fears and his flesh will always crack like a lie"
Her words are like a thunderous gospel that he leans in hungrily to hear. Even this anger, this cerulean rage, it pushes him up, up, up. He supposes the fall will come later, and of this he is wary but not afraid... surely that, too, will be glorious in its own way.
The real question is what is Raum afraid of.
He does not need to see the violence in Calliope's piercing eyes. He feels it in the silent current that dances in and around them, electric. It beckons to him like a demon, like a homecoming. Later he might feel like there is something torn inside of him, but only later. Only later.
"I hunt a shapeshifter." Not a god, true, but Eik is not in the mindset to be concerned with Calliope's disappointment. "His name is Raum." With his mind he shows her the image of the man he saw on the poster-- it can't be of much use given the beast could change his skin, but it can't hurt either. Instead of pushing the thought into her mind, he alters the way the art around them is perceived. The paintings of Denoctian figures of lore are transformed to portraits of a silver stallion with a blue scarf tied round his neck. Sculptures twist into the form of his face as Eik had seen it on the poster, wild-eyed and hateful.
It is not his place to ask a favor of Calliope. There is nothing she owes him, nothing between them but the kinship of two wild animals marked by violence. "Will you help me?"
Countless pairs of wicked eyes look upon them in the dimly lit clearing.
*
@Calliope
I am appalled at how long this took me, I'm so sorry x_x
