so soft and so tragic as a slaughterhouse ─
It starts like a hum. And it is not one that praises or pleads or worships, it is a damnable hum, and it reminds the aether of a sound like the one Erasmus heard when he was drawn to the island that ties them all together. At first, this is all it is: subtle, but scarce, like the buzzing of a fly. It is not a high pitch, but a low drawl that drains the height of the voices behind him – they become unison, humbled to incoherence, shouldered for the finer notes that raised between them: the sharp clinking of glasses, hoofbeats on marble, an ear-splitting laughter from the courtyard. And then: “Good choice.” The glimpse of the man is fleeting, but Erasmus just catches the tangles of serpents' heads as they sneer at him in passing, fangs and tongues and eyes with a lethality that he admires.
Laughter draws him from another direction, and he can tell by the note of its song calls to him, if not in one way then in another. It is familiar, distantly, but not in a way that it knows – it is a sound caught in a web of fluttering cards and smug voices and the crooning of sophisticated music pursuing the darkness caught in the tender places eyes cannot reach. green eyes – green eyes and sharp things, moonlight hair and the undulating waves of – of – his core churns pleasantly, needily, an uncoiling black boa of appetite and fervor.
“Has Solterra sank its fangs into you as well?” her voice flits like a bird over the heads of the guests, and that greedy black thing at the pit of his stomach recoils, grinning, mouth wide and waiting. “Well? How does it taste?” Her laughter is still pouring vibrations over the lull of her voice, and the songbird is fluttering with each syllable over that black beast, wavering, wavering, and Erasmus laps the word taste over and over his tongue with dreams of snatching the nightingale, of coiling, of devouring. How does it – how does it taste? His fangs knit the tight line of his lips, and – taste – sounds like an invitation, like a rose unfurling for him, like an offer, like a sacrifice.
But there are thorns beneath that rose. Would they hurt, all the way down?
One hopes.
He turns then, when the hum rises above the chanting of their audience, and the poison of the drink is strangling the essence of his veins and the hunger in his throat – molding it, compressing it, making anew – some muffled chuckle, and it hurts. Why did he laugh? The lining of his flesh prickles with the thought of more laughter, the way it bubbles up his throat, but he swallows it all down. It thinks that it should frown for this distaste, but the grin only spreads, a twitching, derisive thing that loathes itself. But it forgets, drinking in her countenance as though she were the remedy to the awful thing beginning in the center of him and turning him inside out. Death would be better.
His eyes move to each pin in her hair – just after drinking the depth of her eyes, which make him think, perhaps I should have had the emerald potion instead – and cut themselves on each pinnacle, then each thorn, then each blushing petal of carnation-rose that blooms from the nestle of her cream-white hair. It is a wonder that the thorns do not cut or pick more roses from her flesh – and it thinks, perhaps his teeth are the thorns that will. Taste?
"Not as pleasant as–" as you may, Erasmus's voice echoes in its head, and more laughter, but this time he is unsuccessful in stifling it. "–as I would like, but it is... different." Strong would be the appropriate word, but it doesn't understand the correlation of a taste with that particular physical property. Potent is the better word, but he doesn't say it, because this doesn't even suit the nature of it. He also doesn't tell her about how it is undoing him at the center, splitting him like a knife inside his chest, and all he can do in spite of it is find the humor in it.
His eyes are at the thorn lingering above the delicate lining of her neck again, and he thinks he can just see her pulse under the shadow of its point, and it sings above the drone of that pandemonious hum - the nightingale, that bird. He is the black thing coiled beneath.
The laughter swells in his throat again like a bubble, and he bursts it before it has a chance to escape. Beyond them, the guests are a blur of color and silhouettes, insignificant and melodious as a drunken orchestra. (But are they not so?) The painting on the wall parts them, like a beam splitting the room for them, and he asks, what do you think of that painting? and in the same thought, Has Solterra devoured you, Aghavni? but instead, it comes as: "Have you ever seen the death of a sun?" And it is absurd, but it is there, and there is no mortification in it, no notice of the gravity it speaks, of the darkness welling in each corner, so like and unlike a threat. The black hole in the painting opens, spreading like cracks, like veins, and menaces to darken the lining of its golden frame.
here comes the moon again ─
@Aghavni ; uh, what??
