isolt.I dream in tomes of rot and hunger, of a world where the dead command the living to lie down in the graves. I dream of men who carry their eyes on strings around their necks, and weep tears of blood from empty sockets.
Men like him, who did not listen when I whispered to them like religion, bow or be broken.
After today, there will be always be a song running in my dreams where before there was silence. And that song sounds like —
Men like him, who did not listen when I whispered to them like religion, bow or be broken.
After today, there will be always be a song running in my dreams where before there was silence. And that song sounds like —
Isolt does not know how to listen to the music. While others dance to the violins and the lutes and the harps, her horn sings only of battle-songs and blood-lust and bloody ghosts trembling in her marrow. It does nothing to drown out the thunder of her heart, of all her broken pieces whittling themselves into blades that point now at his heart. She can see it now, the truth of this man who stands like a weapon held out in an offering of violence between the two of them. His scars are written in a language she understands, that language of monsters and mortals, hunters and prey, things to be consumed and those who consume them. He is the blade others have formed him into, but she is as much as she is made.
A soldier is a dog, trained to come when they are called, to bay after the fox running through the thickets. But Isolt is a wolf. And wolves do not know how to be anything but what their instincts tell them to be.
This is why the wolf leads the husky out into the darkness beyond the fire, where the pack is waiting, hungry and drooling. This —
ah! This is what she was made for.
All the monsters her father warned her about are living inside of her chest tonight. Each time they snarl and lay their teeth against the bones of her ribs she snarls, too, and feels their rage echoing in her rage. She closes her eyes and sees them, flashing teeth ripping apart bodies, maggots crawling through the spaces their fangs rent.
She does not ask her sister to open her eyes and watch, watch as she unmakes a man who knows nothing of unicorns and how easy it is to die at their horns. There is no time to whisper to her that the feast is coming, that this is only the first soul she will give her tonight. There is no time for anything but a smile, before the feel of his horn tap, tap, tapping against her own sparks against her volatile hunger.
Like an ember tossed on a pyre she explodes.
She watches the color of blood reflecting back to her on one of his onyx horns when she blinks at it. The hungry, hollow curl of her horn catches on his like it has only ever been a track for her to follow. And then down it travels along the smooth line of blackened bone, all grace and fury, red gleaming against black like blood splattered over armor. Down, down, down, teeth bared and begging for flesh, and blood, and bone.
And when she twists, she aims to slip like a knife straight into his eye.
Just like that, the music stops. And all its songs turn to screams in the throats of the not-unicorns that look on like sheep knowing their time is coming.
But she can hear it still, in the music her horn makes sliding down his, in the way the wind whistles down the hollow spine of it. And this time it sounds only like her heart beating out a promise to a stallion that knows nothing of wanting.
And when her eyes turn from ruby-red to blood-red, the desperation of them says I will, I will, I will, and then —
I am.
i wonder what i look like
in your eyes
