“a fathomless chaos of eternal night.”
The forest becomes pillars of wild-wood. Light is catching on the bark like it's blood instead of everything. The trees turn sharp, and brittle, and they are broken up by flecks of black when the ants starts to crawl up them in neat little lines. “No.” She says in iridescence and the teeth flashing between her red, red, red lips cut the brightness. “I am not all of you. But I could be.” Her hooves make hardly a sound as she moves closer, and closer, and she begs that wolf in his sneer to growl.
She would drink the sound of it like wine.
A waiting reservoir inside her mockery of skin starts to open up when she watches his golden eyes drink her eyes, and his shadows start to nibble on the endless ends of her. Eshek starts to remember how her ribs used to hug, and how her skin used to embrace, and how her flies used to crawl up and beg for lungs. She starts to remember how much she loves violence, and becoming, and being. Another step brings her closer.
The island starts to come to life around them and she does not turn the pits of her eyes to swallow up the sight. When the trees rain down ash and leaves she only sighs for the press of death against her spine. Each lick of her tongue against her lips brings a little more of that magic to her throat, and her belly, and that hollow, hungry universe. She wonders if it tastes like salt, or dirt, when she watches a flake catch in the empty place below his eyes.
It's only as the island comes calling that she closes her eyes against the whip of the wind, because she knows that her light has already sunk into the air. Her moths scream when the wind dashes them against the wild-wood, and her worms eat the ash like seed and water. She does not open her eyes again until the blackness is spreading and making of itself a map.
She does not notice it reaching for the stallion's throat. But if she did, oh if she did--
Eshek drags her teeth along the shape in the blackness and laughs when it sinks to nothing and falls around her skin. She laughs with the forest and says, “Of course you do”. And then she licks the rest of the ash and soot from her lips and sucks it out from between her teeth.
“Which direction will you go?” Her ribs are still aching with the memory of an embrace and she does not need to wonder if he would survive the true shape of her.
No mortal could.
@Erasmus
