Red is all I can see. It’s behind my eyes when I close them. It’s in the liquid blurring my vision as it makes a mockery of the sorrow I don’t know how to really feel. And here there is no wolf to wipe the crimson from my cheeks with his nose, or lick it away with his tongue like just the touch of him might heal the deep wound where my soul should be.
Perhaps it’s as a soulless thing that I notice him far later than I should. At first he’s nothing more than a smear of dirt between the red tide, the black sea, red, black, red, as I try to blink away the smoke spires rolling upward. Like gods I can feel them at my back rising and rising until they are nothing more than black carrion wings blotting out the blood-moon. Perhaps it’s why the shards of hope in my wound do nothing more than tremble when I fully look at him.
I am always alone here on the tide of the killing field.
There has never been a horse turning into a unicorn with a fish slithering down his throat.
I step towards him and forget for a moment the sea curling around my bones in frothing waves of blood. I forget the spires of smoke blotting out the light. I forget that soon I will dissolve into a monster of wrath and tear out the throats of those begging mercy. I forget that I will rip out my sister’s throat and my wolf’s throat.
The sound my horn makes when I tap it against his is music. It rings more than it should, like a church bell on the eve of peace.
“Who are you?” I ask, because it’s better than saying, to war! like my mother had. And I think it’s better to tap my horn to his instead of pretending that I’m a creature of peace in a sea of blood and bodies.
Sometimes it feels like a kindness not to pretend that outside this nightmare I’m something else. My sea lub-dubs again as it rises back to our chests. Soon I’ll need to turn and fill my belly with blood and the after-math of a shaky peace. But for now, it’s so much easier, to look at him and find a fish of my own sitting in my belly like a stone.
For now I forget what I always become.
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