Antiope
acting on your best behavior
turn your back on Mother Nature
acting on your best behavior
turn your back on Mother Nature
If only she could see inside his mind, to read his thoughts, she might find irony in the way he places her and the stripes sewn upon her skin in the forest, stalking the jungle shadows like a predator. She might find it funny, how accurate his assumptions are. Or, how accurate they once had been. It’s not hard for Antiope to remember that distant jungle kingdom that had once been her home, whose warriors she had wielded and controlled as she wields and controls her axe.
Whose people had worshipped her like a goddess, had been awed by all of the things that the gods had given her, had made her.
His eyes remind her of that jungle, vibrant and verdant and, perhaps, more keen than given credit for.
“I did not stumble into this world by accident but it seems it is hungrier even than a starving lioness,” Antiope says, though she does not say that the starving lioness is her. “It did not take my magic, but weakened it,” and she can still feel the way it doesn’t yield easily to her whims, the way it once had. It is temperamental and young, it fights against her and seems to mock her when it does not do as she wants of it.
A hunt is just what the lioness in her bones is calling for, aching for. Even just the word makes her stir, makes her focus sharpen. Hunt, seek, destroy. It is what she is made for, after all. Antiope had been made to save a world only by wreaking havoc on its people and its lands. Oh, the gods could have fooled themselves into believing their intentions were good, but had any good come of it but more death and more destruction?
And when he says it, this verdant-eyed-boy, when he says “physical gods” Antiope wants to laugh the same as the hackles of her lioness rise and adrenaline rushes through her like a low growl. The storm in her skin swirls, and she can feel a wave of red-hot pouring into each of her cells. “Pray that I never find them,” is all that she says, because she does not trust herself to contain the mantra of hate, hate, hate that lives inside her.
“I’ve yet to see evidence of magical things and places,” she says instead, after a too-long-moment, and the sea of her gaze rises up over the crowd and swallows each equine as she searches. Not to say that she has not seen magic, for she recalls the girl named Isra who made rubies appear in the snow and turned lanterns to knives.
And Antiope—walking, living, breathing evidence of a world’s magic and a world’s gods—would be foolish to write off such existences. Oh, perhaps she has not seen this world’s gods or lands pouring over themselves with magic, but she knows they must exist. She would be even more foolish to believe such things would not continue to follow her, to haunt her, long after she has hoped to put them behind her. She thinks there is not a place in this world or the next or any other that would calm the hunter calling her ribs residence.
"Speaking."
Whose people had worshipped her like a goddess, had been awed by all of the things that the gods had given her, had made her.
His eyes remind her of that jungle, vibrant and verdant and, perhaps, more keen than given credit for.
“I did not stumble into this world by accident but it seems it is hungrier even than a starving lioness,” Antiope says, though she does not say that the starving lioness is her. “It did not take my magic, but weakened it,” and she can still feel the way it doesn’t yield easily to her whims, the way it once had. It is temperamental and young, it fights against her and seems to mock her when it does not do as she wants of it.
A hunt is just what the lioness in her bones is calling for, aching for. Even just the word makes her stir, makes her focus sharpen. Hunt, seek, destroy. It is what she is made for, after all. Antiope had been made to save a world only by wreaking havoc on its people and its lands. Oh, the gods could have fooled themselves into believing their intentions were good, but had any good come of it but more death and more destruction?
And when he says it, this verdant-eyed-boy, when he says “physical gods” Antiope wants to laugh the same as the hackles of her lioness rise and adrenaline rushes through her like a low growl. The storm in her skin swirls, and she can feel a wave of red-hot pouring into each of her cells. “Pray that I never find them,” is all that she says, because she does not trust herself to contain the mantra of hate, hate, hate that lives inside her.
“I’ve yet to see evidence of magical things and places,” she says instead, after a too-long-moment, and the sea of her gaze rises up over the crowd and swallows each equine as she searches. Not to say that she has not seen magic, for she recalls the girl named Isra who made rubies appear in the snow and turned lanterns to knives.
And Antiope—walking, living, breathing evidence of a world’s magic and a world’s gods—would be foolish to write off such existences. Oh, perhaps she has not seen this world’s gods or lands pouring over themselves with magic, but she knows they must exist. She would be even more foolish to believe such things would not continue to follow her, to haunt her, long after she has hoped to put them behind her. She thinks there is not a place in this world or the next or any other that would calm the hunter calling her ribs residence.
@
a war is calling
the tides are turned
the tides are turned