I have never needed the permission before.
Perhaps it she was less of a monster and more of a unicorn, or a girl who had gotten to learn the innocence of being a child — perhaps then she might have recognized the warning in the other girl's eyes as something to be feared. That there was danger in two beasts who refused to relent, or go gently, or do anything but lunge straight for the throat.
And maybe she would have felt anything but the way her heart settles into a familiar death-knell of a rhythm that begs her to use teeth, and horn, and blade, and all the ways her magic is whispering to her of how to kill a dead thing. Every violent part of her is rising in her throat to meet the rage in another unicorn's eyes, and Isolt pauses only for a moment to wonder if it is more holy or profane that she should be so willing to consume her for it.
She smiles.
And the only answer she gives is in the way she moves her blade against than moonlight pale cheek like a caress (like she knows how to be gentle — but it is only ever a lie.) She taps there, bone to flesh, like she is tapping against a shell and listening to see if the sea answers her.
She tells herself this, when she presses the tip of it hard enough against her cheek to break the skin: just one drop of blood to take with her when she goes. Just one taste to remember her by.
But one drop had never been enough. Not for her. Not for the endless pit of rot that lies in her stomach, ready and waiting to eat, and eat, and eat.
Even now it is begging for more. Even now it is telling her how much better Avesta would look if she were dead, how lovely a garden her bones would make, how beautiful the flowers her sister would grow from them would be.
The way her teeth shine in the winter light is more snarl than smile. And that is the only warning she knows how to give before her tailblade twists to flay the scales off of a silver cheek, and she drops her blood red horn to her throat.
@avesta
”wilting // blooming“
”wilting // blooming“
