There is still that tap, tap, tap of her blade against her hip below the low thunder of Eligos. It does not stop when he turns to look at her with his dark gaze. It does not stop when she sees the tips of his horns, tainted golden as a sword she has seen before. There is still that tap, tap, tap of her blade (like a hungry thing rattling the dead trees in the forest as it passes) when she closes the distance between them. And it is still there when she says, “You came,” like it's blades swinging from her lips instead of words, “and you did not ask me.”
Thana inhales the rot of her trail and the sand of his skin. Oh, there is that thing gnawed loose from something old still prowling between the cage of her bone and flesh. It's moving inside her with an aching jaw and a hollow stomach that could devour the sun before turning on the moon. And when the tapping stops, there is only the prowling thing and her hollowed out, corkscrew horn titling towards the hollow below his eyes.
She exhales. The rot around her hooves expands-- black, molding moss and rocks worn down to dust. It runs in looping circles, like a stone tossed into a quiet lake, straight towards him.
Eligos moves closer with the decay.
Part of her wants to agree with him that she knows the violence of the river. Part of her wants to drink from his heart with the tip of her horn just to show him that next to her the river is nothing but a slow, bloated death. Part of her wants to drag him beneath the waves. And all she says, with her horn trembling out a warning like a divining rod, is--
“It is not for you.”
But there is a look in her eyes and her snarling teeth that says, the violence can be.
He only has to ask.
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