do i still taste of war. can you feel the battles on my skin stitched across my back
There is a thirst in him, a darkness, that no living thing can sate. His soul is an empty vessel. Wraiths purr beneath his cursed skin. The earth reaches for Arawn's physique, like begging fingertips reaching for salvation. The darkness caresses his flesh like soot quickening over burnt, diseased flesh. He remembers the way the earth crawled with insects over his dead heart. Remembers how the soil drank deep from his veins, grew damp with his organs; rooting into the marrow of his bones, until their roots became bloodthirsty parasites latched unto decayed meat. Fire, death, torture, resurrection, will change a man – he feels these changes now.
It's in the rolling gesture of his shoulders – erratic, oozing muscularity. The deep-rooted hunger within his thirsty gaze. The way his tongue flickers snake-like between his fangs; sighing, with dark passion and cruelty. The way his expressions do not fit over his scarred face, that snarled more with echoes of war than they do the greed of men. More feral, more wolf, than man. Arawn barely remembers who he was before the darkness, the madness, devoured him. Arawn breathes in shadows like a wolf breathes in spruce, birch, soil, deadwood. Each scent becomes memory, a lover. Each cry, tear, a drop of blood spilled, becomes tainted flavour inhaled deeply within his lungs. A curse, wrapped like twine and bones against his mane. Spilling fresh rivers of blood, down his powerful shoulders. He drips of sin, the way she drips of innocence.
Arawn drinks the forest, a gluttonous predator. He savours the moonlight like a pagan deity drinks sacrificial offerings before the devout-sick villagers. Skinning souls between his teeth, his famished jaws, and feeding upon their intimate screams. Of this, he remembers. Arawn is constantly consuming, devouring. And so, it is no wonder he gazes to the maiden with dark severance. Licking his bottom lip like a serpent whispers dark promises to lilith, to eve. He feasts on her divine image as darkness feasts on the blinding radiance of light – swarming, drinking, eager for the promise of her celestial perfume. For that radiant touch of youth, she so gracefully embodies. And is she not breathless? Is she not pureness, incarnate? Is she not wicked angel trapped in succulent, pale curvature? He could watch the moon for an eternity, consumed, by the silver gleam of her skin. The ruby-red pomegranate seeds, that were her bright, shining eyes –
She radiates this beautiful purity, this otherworldly innocence both holy and corrupt. Arawn does not know purity like this – where innocence is both deadly, and righteous, like the sword of God dipped in heavenly promise, celestial ink and aimed straight for his heart. The flowers around her spurn for her wickedness. They fall beneath her like she's the source of death, or life. He wonders if it's in the sigh of her ribcage, so tender and delicate; or the curving of her lips, plush with the pureness of a dawn-rose in full bloom. Subjugated by sin, by violence, Arawn embodies the supernatural thirst. He embodies the hunger, the intimacy of the forests, the bellowing cries of the starved woodlands deep that ached to spill blood and taste flesh. Consume souls. It's always the soul he craves, for he has no use for beating, mortal hearts. And what is a heart, but a thing to be devoured? Owned?
"Yet you are the moon in all her forms," His voice is a laughing whisper away. Darkness follows Arawn like a disease, a lover. He remembers nothing of himself; nothing, except that every breath inhaled carried with it the scent of soot and ash. Every moment lived, was that of torture and punishment. Every moment, laced with primal screams echoed throughout the seven hells. He consumed all of it. Wrath, became his fiery prison. "–and darkness, always bows before the moon," His voice is pure sin. Laced in smouldering masculinity. Low, deep – guttural. The throaty purr of a wolf, who growls instead of speaks. Whispering fangs, and bristling hackles for language. He turns his scarred face towards her then, ears swivelling atop his skull, just as her horn motions towards his own. They lock in a temporary clash, like swords wrung out against the tameless night. He steadies her with a dark smile. His breath, smooth upon her pale cheek.
"A pleasure to meet you, Danaë," At last, Arawn bows to Danaë. As darkness bows to light. A knight, who takes knee before a queen – to press his lips to the back of her silken hand with a kiss. But there is nothing tame about his descent; as though the earth were his lover, he greets on a bed of soot and ash. There is nothing tame about the way the shadows curl upon his spine; climbing the toned muscles along his back, as though each bead of sweat clinging to his skin echoed for the threat of Armageddon. There is nothing tame about his rugged masculinity – his unbridled rage – that tore like a dragon, into the open-wounds of smoke and twilight. There is nothing soft about Arawn, as his horn dips beneath hers like a sword pressed into her armour. Grazing the soft, vermillion petals of her rose; brushing its flesh, just lightly enough to leave the softest of bruise, as he taps their root and soil with the severing tip of his horn. When his skull dips into his swarthy chest, Arawn becomes an image of elegance, of gentlemanly charm. If only, for a brief moment.
When he rises, he is not looking at her, but looking above her shoulder. To the emptiness of evening, the desolate stretch dividing forest and urban domestication. He gestures towards the snuffed-out candlelights, to the creeping fog rolling in like tide, as darkness sets deeper into the folds of midnight. "Will you leave to join them, Danaë?" He asks, smiling with all the conviction of a devil. Him and his hounds step away, his footfalls heavy like thunder upon the earth, allowing the moonlight to pass through; to drown her slender figure in blinding silver, even as the fog rolls in wicked and heavy.
@Danaë
