we must always be willing to be
more savage than angels
The first statue in the garden looks to Vercingtorix like a death-throe. The head is thrown back, the marble hair whipped into a flurry of forever stilled movement. The teeth, bared in a grimace, do not gleam with the sun or the moon at this hour; the twilight basks the marble in a hazy glow of grey and blue.There is a part of him that wishes it were curiosity that compels him forward, into the garden paths. There is a part of him that nearly convinces himself it is curiosity, and instead; Vercingtorix finds the thing that compels him is disdain. The marble emblems and nearly magical statues evoke within him the fear of the archaic, the fear of a man who has never known magic as anything save evil. This fear sours in his heart but does not escape his body as fear, no, but as disdain. He goes into the garden because he hates its statues, and refuses to fear them. He goes into the gardens not to admire the intricate foliage, the autumn blooms, or the ivy that seems to shift as if compelled with conscience—
No, Vercingtorix enters follows the trail in order to confront some inner demon, and feed it. The stallion, to him, is the end of the path; it marks the end of everything.
Another man would pause to admire the chrysanthemum and vibrant pansies; to pause and ponder at the celosia (which to him looks like the innards of fish’s gills, fibrous red and naked); or the purple aster, the violet dianthus, the sweet alyssum. Everything seems purple and red, dramatic and deep, envious green. Vercingtorix sees more green in the garden than he has his entire life combined, it feels; and the green is understated by the flowers and the strange statues (of bears, of stags, of pearl-winged doves). His homeland had been barren; rock and grass and the odd, storm-weathering tree.
Vercingtorix stops at a statue of a hippocampus. The eyes are inlaid black opal, gleaming with all the hues of fire. In a ridge down the marble statue’s back protrudes blue celestite crystals that mimic scaling; the belly, too, is covered in moonstones so bright they shine even in the darkness of twilight. A long, fish-like tail is bound with overgrown ivy and somehow the deep green begins to resemble waves in a storm.
He begins to recognise that he is not looking at the statue alone. All evening, other visitors had passed by him within the garden’s pathways. He had found none to be remarkable, until now.
The woman is demure in a way that only women can be. She hangs back and admires the statue, he think—but Vercingtorix is looking over his shoulder at her, now. There is something about her in the twilight that seems to suggest she, too, belongs to this garden; at least temporarily. She is a living statue, her skin taking on the blue note of the fading sky as if it belongs to it. She is thin, and elegant, and swan-like. If Vercingtorix were anyone else, he would admire her as beautiful; but he is not anyone else, and her beauty belies itself to weakness. The charm, to Vercingtorix, is lost.
He is and will forever be a winter wolf, half-starved, looking for the weakest link. His smile comes unabashed to his face; it is charming, and wide and genuine. Handsome, even, despite the scar that makes it crooked.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Even his voice sounds full of promise and the night’s charm. Even the way he says it seems to suggest, as are you.
Oh, and she is.
She is beautiful in the way the weakest deer is beautiful, always, to the starved wolf. She is beautiful in a way of survival, and necessity, and—well, all things that are inherently required and, at base, neither evil nor good. At base. She is beautiful as the line between them is beautiful. With her demure thinness, and her skin that takes on the sky, and the way her eyes are upon the gemstone studded hippocampus.
Vercingtorix sees the sea in her.
And hates her for it. But, as always, his hate manifests as attraction, as a sick mockery of love, of need, because—well,
what is Vercingtorix without his hate to compel him? “Would you care to join me?” And what is there to be seen of his hate, besides his attraction to it? The way his voice lilts, in that foreign accent, and his eyes and posture open to invite her.
"Speech." || @
rip up their flesh and reveal them to be nothing but the dreamy, worldess haze of lavender and godhood with your virtue shredding teeth. do not weep when their wings thrash. do not be surprised when there are nothing but ghosts in their heart.
