ISOLT
I can taste it, and now that I have —
I never want to taste of anything else.
The hunt does not begin in full until Isolt leaves her mother’s side and learns what the desperation of a dying thing tastes like.
She can taste it in the air, the adrenaline and fear, the way its blood makes patterns on the ground that whisper of its fate. There is a part of her that wants to stop and drag her horn through it all, and paint the story in a language that is as wild as she is. She wants to savor the taste of the elk’s lifeblood on her tongue, to fill herself up on every drop of its dying breath until she is bloated with the memories of its life.
Maybe, if she was alone, she might have.
Maybe she would have followed it endlessly until it nearly choked to death on its own fear, and then granted it the peace she offered in the shape of a noose.
And maybe later she might go back to the trail of the second dying thing, and mourn that she had not been there to hold it as it died. And she would fill her belly with the taste of it, too, so that both the bull and the cow could curl up cheek to cheek in the belly of her. Maybe later —
Maybe, maybe, maybe —
Another night she might have done all those things. But tonight, oh tonight she is racing with all the monsters snarling in her blood, and she is listening to the whisper of rot and lichen blooming like flowers in her steps. And she has forgotten that she was ever a thing half-born, or a daughter who had wanted to learn by watching her mother-monster, or anything but a thing made to rend and ruin and consume.
Her steps come faster and faster as every inch of her magic and immortality beg her to be. She stretches out like just another hungry shadow in the forest, and every time it stumbles her leap brings her that much closer to its throat. The sickness running in its veins calls to her like honey, until her mouth is watering with the anticipation of it and her stomach growls with the waiting. Her heart is a roar in her ears and her magic a song in the marrow of her bones each time it nearly goes down.
And Isolt with her aching jaw and her singing horn and her waiting teeth does not know how to stop herself from lunging at its throat when it slides to a stop.
Until its antlered head swings around, and the cut of its tines brings her own blood forward to spatter against his own on the loamy forest floor.
And then, oh, then Isolt learns what rage truly feels like as it burns a hole in her chest.
