And somewhere lions roam, quite unaware,
in their magnificence, of any weaknesss.
in their magnificence, of any weaknesss.
“I’m sure you do,” I toast her with the glass of my drink, which is quickly emptying. I am not taken aback by how readily she accepts my challenge; even the way her smile breaks does not surprise me, predatory, hungry, bright under the Ieshans tinkling chandeliers. Her eyes when she measures him (never looking away, he finds) belong in the face of a great cat, a leopardess or similar beast. It ought to have unsettled me.
If I were anyone else, I am certain it would have.
Instead, it awakens in a dormant hunger; oh, I want her. I want her in the same ways I have always wanted war: as something to defeat, as a conquest of land, will, wealth. I want to destroy something, she says, and the words strike a resonant chord within my monstrous soul. If there are leopardesses in the world, there are leopard slayers.
Yet, there are many ways to seduce a beast; she remains girlish but sharp-edged, even as she giggles, even as her shoulder grazes his in casual confidence. “How diplomatic of you,” I savour the sarcasm, the way it hones my voice like a special kind of blade.
I follow her readily; the room passes in a blur of colours and scents, of vibrant life and drunken decay. There is a chorus of laughter bursting in my ear; perfumes and strange, foreign fragrances. I follow the silver of her haunch; the bright flick of her tail. We make short work of the crowd and emerge on the other side of the swirling, drunken colours side-by-side. I eye the garden of statues, knowing it is where Adonai resides; but the night is full of chaos, and already has opened a chasm in me so wide it must be filled.
If she had asked of the other scar--the one splitting my brow in two--I might not have answered. For this one, I smile; but the gesture is almost entirely through the wicked gleaming of my eyes. “Would you believe me, Anandi, if I told you it was from a shark? I was a fisherman before.” I tell my own inside joke and the wickedness manifests itself into the glint of a hunter; of a wolf’s eyes on the edge of the famished winter herd.
I pull away from her, into the hall of statues. I am relieved to find Adonai has vacated the premises (and simultaneously concerned: where had he gone?) But then--I only fill my eyes with all the beauty wrought of wealth and prosperity, the statues with their hollow eyes.
“It is the lady’s choice,” I invite, with a sweeping gesture of my chin.
I have yet to take my eyes off of her; she opens within me a voracious baying, the sound of hounds on the heels of the boar. She opens within me a hunger that knows no bounds, monstrous, cannibalistic. It consumes me; igniting a feverish glow to my face, I can think only:
How much does marble cracking feel like a bone breaking underfoot?
With a tip of my head, I finish the drink and drop the glass.
