![[Image: whiteliesartheader2.png]](https://i.ibb.co/H2bL9kY/whiteliesartheader2.png)
SUFFERING FEELS RELIGIOUS IF YOU DO IT RIGHT
He thinks of the rabbit lying beside his fireplace; its ears wet with death. He thinks of his first kill (hot, bitter, moist) and how it had made him feel hungry in ways he'd not known possible. How easy it had been.
But when he looks now at this creature fashioned from ancient lust and rockweed born of thunder, he sees the true insignificance of his depravity. She is elemental. The very constitution of violence gives life to her second-spun body; hiding her secret behind a mask that sags and rots and smiles like bamboo as it rises through flesh.
It had been winter and he had been three. Wandering the dunes in search of something he could not name, he had happened upon the remains of a child. What had once been a child. He was not quick to forget the sight of torn infant-flesh masticated by sand. There was only one thing that could negotiate such horror and he had seen it, or perhaps the shadow of it, disappearing over the crest of a hill.
So as he stands before Sereia, with his mouth set blade-straight, he cannot stem the tide of instinct as it blooms like hemlock in his chest, weaving between his ribs to grapple at his heart with moth-eaten hands. It tells him to run, to forsake this creature he cannot transcend and leave her alone in the dark with her starving torment.
He stays.
There is nobody to call him home, nothing to lead him into the light. So he stays; in the darkness and the peril and the brine that stings his eyes.
The seawolf flinches as though he had struck her with a belt. She mistakes his curiosity for conviction; he does not correct her. A kinder man would have lowered his gaze at the choir of her snarl, but Raziel has never been kind and he stares, stares, stares into the jaws that condemn him. He feels no shame. Even as her eyes begin to cloud with tears, even as she bares her body stained by hunger, he does not stir. She is hollowed out; empty; a soul denying itself of its very essence.
"Well, if death is what you are looking for, I think you have almost found it." As the unicorn's bruised gaze lingers coldly on her bowing bones, a single drop of gold blood falls from his horn into the space between them.
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art by whiteliesart
He thinks of the rabbit lying beside his fireplace; its ears wet with death. He thinks of his first kill (hot, bitter, moist) and how it had made him feel hungry in ways he'd not known possible. How easy it had been.
But when he looks now at this creature fashioned from ancient lust and rockweed born of thunder, he sees the true insignificance of his depravity. She is elemental. The very constitution of violence gives life to her second-spun body; hiding her secret behind a mask that sags and rots and smiles like bamboo as it rises through flesh.
It had been winter and he had been three. Wandering the dunes in search of something he could not name, he had happened upon the remains of a child. What had once been a child. He was not quick to forget the sight of torn infant-flesh masticated by sand. There was only one thing that could negotiate such horror and he had seen it, or perhaps the shadow of it, disappearing over the crest of a hill.
So as he stands before Sereia, with his mouth set blade-straight, he cannot stem the tide of instinct as it blooms like hemlock in his chest, weaving between his ribs to grapple at his heart with moth-eaten hands. It tells him to run, to forsake this creature he cannot transcend and leave her alone in the dark with her starving torment.
He stays.
There is nobody to call him home, nothing to lead him into the light. So he stays; in the darkness and the peril and the brine that stings his eyes.
The seawolf flinches as though he had struck her with a belt. She mistakes his curiosity for conviction; he does not correct her. A kinder man would have lowered his gaze at the choir of her snarl, but Raziel has never been kind and he stares, stares, stares into the jaws that condemn him. He feels no shame. Even as her eyes begin to cloud with tears, even as she bares her body stained by hunger, he does not stir. She is hollowed out; empty; a soul denying itself of its very essence.
"Well, if death is what you are looking for, I think you have almost found it." As the unicorn's bruised gaze lingers coldly on her bowing bones, a single drop of gold blood falls from his horn into the space between them.
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art by whiteliesart
![[Image: deadj5s-7ea0ce6c-63ed-494d-a2b1-1ea29d98..._KYezSKapw]](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/62895f4e-8c60-4924-a6f1-54bf30743d42/deadj5s-7ea0ce6c-63ed-494d-a2b1-1ea29d98adc1.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3sicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNjI4OTVmNGUtOGM2MC00OTI0LWE2ZjEtNTRiZjMwNzQzZDQyXC9kZWFkajVzLTdlYTBjZTZjLTYzZWQtNDk0ZC1hMmIxLTFlYTI5ZDk4YWRjMS5wbmcifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6ZmlsZS5kb3dubG9hZCJdfQ.No4YMruHY_LHkiZwS9oVnGKGelURHdwU3_KYezSKapw)
