well, what's a monster, anyway?
The forest was not so different, he imagined, then the cell that had contained Prigovora. Yes. A cell he had spent many days in, many years ago. A lifetime ago. A cell that was dank and heavy with the odour of old meat. A cell that was impregnable; dark; cave-like. The trees hung overhead, not so unlike the ceiling of a cavern. The darkness laid heavy upon them, oppressive, so that the mare’s silver nearly seemed black. Even the bird, mutilated though it were, drew his eyes like something familiar would have, with the apathy of seeing holiday decorations erected a few weeks early. Oh my, his expression seemed to say. How strange. But he lacked the concern of someone who genuinely felt threatened by death, or concerned, merely vaguely curious. Vaguely bewildered. What on earth could have done that? a twitching eyebrow asked, when his lips did not.
In a place like this… The boy cocked his head, intrigued. He shaped the words on his mouth. A place like this. Did she mean Novus? Pravda was frustrated by the process it took him, sometimes, to draw connections—like the dusting of library books. No, she didn’t mean Novus. She meant this and his eyes fell heavy upon the bird again. “I’m not sure how much help mine will be,” he offered with another smile, genuine and bashful. She spoke of the bird then, and it occurred to Pravda that it looked like a sacrifice.
He knew of sacrifices, in the opaque way he knew of many things… What was it, Pravda wondered, he knew of sacrifices? She began to introduce herself, got so far as the F and following syllable, the way the F was taking on the upturned sound of ee—and then gone. Nothing. His bi-coloured eyes flicked upon the next arrival, a dark man, a man not so unlike the bird at their feat. Perhaps it was a sacrifice. The runes screamed out at Pravda, before anything else, and what World were those from, he wondered. Before he could ask, with the impulsive curiosity he found quite embarrassing, the silver mare demanded sharply, Get behind me.
It was the sharpness of the command, the brittle way it sounded, that had him move so quickly. Pravda’s eyes went wide,, his curled Marwari ears twitching toward their new “guest”. The animosity that existed between the silver mare and black stallion became immediately apparent for him. The forest began to shake, as though with a storm. The sky far above remained crystalline blue, undisturbed, but leaves rained down upon him. He twitched at the sound, at the raw display of power, as the force buffeted the stallion and the mare’s anger became palpable. It was an eruption of sentiment too strong for him to identify with, for him to understand, and that too warranted a distant question of why? Pravda did not ask it.
Pravda found his mind groping into the darkness of his own thoughts, seeking that bond that had been severed since Novus. Prigovora? he inquired, shouting internally. Nothing came back to him, besides the hollow beat of his heart, more erratic than he would have liked. Pravda was shaken, his pulse rapid, his breath fast, and he did not know why. He did not think he was afraid; but his young body seemed to betray him, once again, with a fear of violence and death his mind no longer felt.
Caine, she spat.
Acidic. Loathing was too light a word. It burned.
In his mind there was a colosseum full of red sand. There was a black horse. Why did you lie, Pravda had asked. And the horse had said, I loved her. But it was not enough of a reason. There was never enough of a reason. The sand became redder.
Pravda’s eyes narrowed with an intelligent that was not suited for a boy so young, and it turned his face to stone. The warmth fled abruptly, and he wondered what kind of justice was needed here. He wondered about it, in a way that was not soft. But hard. Metallic. His tongue felt thick when he spoke again. “It isn’t safe for anyone, here,” he reminded the silver mare.
Caine, as she called him, had not seemed so terrible when he spoke. Perhaps Pravda seen a sneer, or was that merely the mare’s anger influencing him?. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps now isn’t the time for revisiting old trespasses.” And in him, twisting, was a creature.
It was a black and white creature. A creature with eyes that saw through stone, and flesh, and lies. A creature with long teeth and sharp clothes. A creature that was sickened by sins, and wore a silken red cloak, and thirsted for a repayment of sins. All sins. Betrayal. Lies. Murder. A creature that feasted on such discontent. A black and white creature. A creature he too often called justice. But those bi-coloured eyes of his, one pale blue, one the yellow of the sun… they were sharp and clear as glass and cut through the center of the tension between them. He found his mind aching for Prigovora. He found his mind aching for knowing and so he said, with the tongue of the creature:
“What have you done?” Pravda’s voice, thickly accented, sounded older than the young stallion that had spoken earlier. It was a question the he ought to have addressed to the silver mare, he supposed. Instead Pravda’s eyes searched out Caine’s—and caught, he hoped, on the silver there. He was looking over the mare's shoulder, into the darkness, tall and slim and black and white. What have you done, he wondered, and the dead bird was a bright splash of red and black at the edge of his vision, an accusatory death. The whole forest, perhaps, had taken on the sense of a purgatory; of a timeless tomb; and it was so easy for him to imagine the primordial scales of justice with teeth in the trees.
@Pravda "speaks"
