a king walks among us
A shadow passes overhead and Rey finds that there is a strange bird between the clouds. He ponders this briefly before she speaks, for the greatest wonders of this world above are not gore and agony but the creatures that dance between the blooming things. He would ask of it, had she not asked a question of her own.
“Do you like my flowers?”
He says, “Yes,” as those very flowers curl around her, a king marveling that they do not tear the hard soil underneath. El Rey reaches down to the hungry blossom teeth and inhales, long and slow so the void in his belly can pack itself with dust and hatred (not his own, no, he does not even see it in the bladed twists of the flowers, the searching twists of her horn. When have his horns done anything but search?) When he does not find a perfume but the sting of cold steel, he wonders what manner of natural thing they are. He remembers the wall folding into diamonds and thinks: unnatural thing.
He was told little of the unnatural things in this world.
El Rey does not know to apprehend her. He does not know what it is she does, what name she dons beneath her cloak, but perhaps foolishly he says, “What did you do to the wall to make it diamonds?” for he is only a curious child that wears death upon his brow.
He was instructed to kill when asked, to hurt when told, and when there was information to be heard, to peel back the loose lips of the traitorous and rip their tongues from their palates and listen.
He does not know if this is something for Raum.
@Isra | Pan Asian Delight
”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,
