[P] so now we have come to a great battlefield

[Andras]

and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding

Overhead, the sleepy sun leers down, a fuzzy white silhouette behind the heavy cloud cover. It is a cold sunlight that filters down in shades of gray. Andras fades into it, black as the bottom of the ocean except for the bright, bright white on his wing, his chin, his ankle; but Pilate is a brown like spring earth, like the soft floor of Viride itself, and Andras sees their eyes meet from a distance.

"Don't." he warns, and like lead it falls out of him, crashing. 

He is a snake, rattling in the tall grass, full of air, full of venom that seeps into the snow on the cobblestone, crackling away at the teeth of a predator. Perhaps he is the coward - who watched Pilate shrink into the distance while the deep ache of want cut his throat. Perhaps he is the coward, now, bristling on the street corner, crying for vengeance and itching to sink his teeth into the man's throat, his ribs, his jaw -- in a way that is not entirely violent, but tightens his jaw, anyway.

Chest to chest, wolf to wolf, Pilate eats up the space and Andras bares his teeth like a feral thing dragged out of the forest, still covered in the loam he crawled out of. Andras is searching his face like he's taking auspices, reading each line for answers: the sharp cheekbone that might tell him why (and this is the loudest, why, because everything is overshadowed by his eyes, his scales, his mouth and Andras feels half-insane with it), the soft brow that might tell him how, the curve of the jaw that might say what--what Pilate wants, what Andras wants, what thing is sitting next to his endless rage and growing by the second.

Certainly, Andras is the coward, buzzing with pause, strife with hesitation. This close he can feel the bone-deep ache that begs him to bite, to claw, to kick, to scratch, to scream. When Pilate speaks his blood does the screaming for him, so loud he can't think.

"That's a pity," he says, measured out like a hand, reached toward the fire. He doesn't know if it's a palm or a fist. He laughs--or barely does, an exasperated slip of the chest, more breath than noise. His smile is all teeth. "I'm busy. What do you want?"

@Andras