FAITH IN THEIR HANDS SHALL SNAP IN TWO,
AND THE UNICORN EVILS RUN THEM THROUGH;
SPLIT ALL ENDS UP THEY SHAN’T CRACK;
AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION.
AND THE UNICORN EVILS RUN THEM THROUGH;
SPLIT ALL ENDS UP THEY SHAN’T CRACK;
AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION.
Death does not turn away, paint in kisses of salvation and lust, or do anything but consume with its hollow, wanting that is never full. The blackness is eternal, unending, inescapable. It creeps. It is sudden. It gnaws like a cancer and spreads like a vine born from her king's magic.
And Thana, looking at the mare with her secrets tucked away like cells begging to be cut out, becomes not a unicorn, or a red-monster in the black night, or a master of the desert-beast at her side.
Thana becomes death as much as she consumes it with each brass drum inhale and exhale of her rotten lungs.
Even the air, the frankincense, the flowers, and the dust bloated with useless religion, do not survive the touch of her black-magic blood. The parts of her, those small sparrow frail parts, that know how to love start to wither in the death-want and the death-knell whisper of mortal flesh when it's pressed to her horn.
She does not wonder if the mare realizes, as clever things never do, that there is nothing to touch upon her flesh that does not maim, and desiccate, and destroy. She lets her begin the unmaking, smiling as a wolf will with teeth and froth and hunger, when the mare presses her cheek to her spiral horn. The iron and copper smell of blood sits just below the smoke and prayer smell as the drops start to puddle on the floor like tears from an innocent thing. “It has always been the dying things that flatter the most.” Thana steps closer as the mare pulls back and drags her horn through the wound like a bow to a violin. It's a gesture that promises an answer to every secret-thing-not-said in the mare's words. It promises song, and almost sacrifice, and the only religion that the earth knows to pray too.
It promises that even gods, even holy relics, even already dead things discover a new unmaking with just a kiss (only one kiss, only one gentle touch of horn or lip) from her. Thana knows that the moment the mare touched her she had marked herself for the unmaking. And like a god, like the things the mare has promised to fuck, Thana listens.
She lowers her horn to answer the prayer given in touch and flattery. It points at that mortal heart now, that fragile little thing that hasn't learned yet the quick, frantic beat it should be singing. Clever things never learn. Not until it's too late, too late, too late (and the mare did not say she was clever).
“You bend to the wrong gods, mare. They cannot give your son back to you.” Her voice is more than another trembling strand of night between them or another bone deep purr of Eligos as he licks his lips. Her voice is everything. Thana hides no secrets. She only gives them away like the clouds peeling back to reveal the stars (look there, in the belly of her jaw, constellations).
Thana steps closer and taps out holy writ with her horn against the mare's shoulder. Tap. tap. tap, like a knock, tap. Their shadows tangle together, like vines and veins, in the moonlight creeping in through the marble arches. She exhales against the mare's skin and with it there is language and scripture. “It does not matter where you have seen me. Not when I can give your son back to you.”
She replaces her horn with teeth.
“I will not even ask you to bend.” And in the darkness, with her monster pressing close, the true-gods and the true-death, ask for no sacrifice. They only offer.
And then...
Then they will take.
<3 | @Euryale
"Speaking."
"Speaking."
