[P] light a match, watch it burn

[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.

 

What comes from the moment when madness meets madness?
 
Raum has heard their whispers: mad, madman, madness. Each word is a dog at his heels. He feels their teeth upon the swell of his fetlocks. But he does not care, he bears the weight of madness with ease. It almost slips from him like water from a duck’s wing.
 
She says she is not mad, that she is as sane as the next person.. He might laugh. He might have struck her down and wiped himself clean of her blood and carried on – it would be easier, gods his life would be so much easier. Yet bexley’s laugh, her loud voice proclaims him mad and he might have cared, once, whether he is or not. Yet now, proclamations about his sanity do not concern him. Let the masses believe what they will, they all still fall in line with his command or suffer.
 
Oh, suffering. He feels it as well as a soldier feels the first blade that runes them through. He feels it with the clarity of the sky splitting open and the sun tumbling down, wild and out of control.
 
She is speaking and he watches her, silver and sharp and utterly unmoved. He is the statue before which she performs. She leaves no stone unturned in proclaiming all that she is not and affirming all that she is. She is not mad, she is a vessel for madness and chaos.
 
Ah.
 
Is there a difference? Is there a difference enough for him to care? No one brings madness and chaos upon peace and calls themselves anything but mad. He does not even stir as he realizes he has defined himself too. Well then, Bexley Briar was right. Raum is mad. Raum is crazed. Raum is the monster with the jilted ideal. Raum is the beast hunting, not for food but blood and death. Not because he must, but because he can.
 
Do I make myself clear.
 
Her words hang and he is not contrite. He is not cowed by her gall. He is not impressed by her assertiveness. He is not swayed by her pride. He is not made meek by any word that slips from her ruby red lips. She makes herself a liability. But, she is disposable. It is not Raum alone that any should fear, it is the machine of war behind him that smothers the sky with the belching smoke of violence.
 
He offers her nothing but stone, not his name, not an ounce of emotion as she performs before him. Then, slowly, he says lightly, “Look out for a letter.” For you are disposable, he does not say. For you are all fodder, Raum does not add. But he thinks, behind the electric blue of his eyes. Mmm, behind the electric blue of his gaze is a chasm, a place that once knew love, but now there is only rattling walls.
 
Still he does not tell her his name. Still he is not moved by her.

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@Targwyn - her new picture is so very awesome. I love her pose!