do i still taste of war. can you feel the battles on my skin stitched across my back
In another lifetime, in another universe one beyond this one, he might have been a soldier with a rifle slung across his broad shoulders; a lieutenant enlisted for war—with only the memory of a wife's kiss to accompany him like a ghost-caress in the blood-soaked trenches, the ravaged battlefields. In yet another lifetime, he would have been a king of pagan times—a ruler of men, swathed in blood and dark nobility. In other lives, he could have been a gladiator —a slave— with only the scars upon his bronzed flesh as memories made through passion, through violence—sacrifice.
Each death, each memory, each reminder of who he once was, were etched unto his decayed spirit like patterns on a dead, fallen constellation. But everytime he breathed, everytime he lived, it only ended in fire. He ended in ruination—in death. The dead memories of him, linger like lover's ghosts within the tomb of his ribs. Their voices plague his mind; driving him into absolute insanity—ruin. The memories he'd devoured, the lives he'd taken, they all haunt him like the festering sores upon rotted wounds full of stagnant pus. He feels the primordial creature within his broken spirit, now —the otherworldly beast devouring its new host from within— gnashing its fangs against his bared teeth; climbing his throat with all the promise of disease.
He feels demons, demons itching beneath his skin—
He can sense it wrapping its jaws around the night of his heart, ushering a roar of thunder; a howl of savagery—sharp with the wretched scent of death. The rancid taste of darkness follows his soul. The fevered music of decay bleeds into Arawn's tainted heart like moonlight bleeding quicksilver against a bruised nightsky. He can feel himself shattering, even now. Breaking, like a mirror breaks, containing starved spirits trapped in a hollow vessel. Demons are peering out of his handsome skull; salivating infernal reflections, blinking within each of his cold, steel-grey eyes. How his heart hungers for the hunt. It salivates. It wants. It yearns to consume—
It wants life.
Arawn's hunger is an ancient thing not borne of this universe. A legendary curse. He can feel their carnal whispers calling to him now, beckoning him with siren moans of old-world fable.
The forest bemoans his name, whispering promises he cannot taste as they draw shadows along his mouth with stolen kisses of wicked passion, driving him mad with desire. The soil mars his skin; his bronzed muscles, tainted blood-red. The bones of the animals he'd killed matt his hair, tangling like a woman's slender fingertips through his mane as they dangle like solemn graves rattling within the nocturnal breeze. Arawn is an arrogant man, a wild man, and when his hellish gaze turns towards her in the moon-touched floodlights—is it not her rosy, crimson gaze he holds; but the raw, naked wilderness surrounding them.
That is, until—he feels her—motioning against his muscular side. Seizing him with her celestial perfume, as she presses her maw next to his—breathing in, exhaling straight into his lungs. She is ambrosial, a saccharine jezebel. She is pure. Full of promise, of danger, life. He breathes her in as he breathes in her tempest of savage, blooming wild-flowers. She is pure intoxication as he inhales all of her in. Her every seraphic curve. Her every holy ruin. He drinks her down, drunk, on the scent of an angel—
"Who said I would bow twice?" His whisper is the Lucifer. A smirk threatens to curl his lips. The fog begins to salivate with miasmic dew; coiling mists, thick as serpents flow raggedly between them. Darkness follows them in convulsions, it bellows in the wake of his vicious undertow, as the fog thickens against his muscled thighs. She follows him, but not as a maiden trapped in moonlight curves and tender desire. She arrives like a reckoning—a bright archangel—in the wake of his thunder—she, the Persephone to his rugged, hunting hounds. Blazing in her soft, righteous fury: radiant, intoxicating, commanding as she is beautiful. Weaving hope with her ethereal voice, her precious flowers.
He can feel her slender figure bristling softly against his hard frame. He can feel the heat of her body brushing like silk above his muscles. When twilight's shroud envelopes them both, it hung as saliva between his jagged smile—his dark lips. The moonlight becomes strings of silver. Ardent, bewitching silver that pools like bedroom curtains between them; flapping sheets of gauzy azure. Passing in and out, between and around, till the fog fell upon them like a cloak—or a noose—nestled heavy against their shoulders.
A zephyr stirs, and suddenly, it feels so cold. So chilling. The ghastly breeze comes sighing in the wake of his thunder. Arawn's hunting hounds wag their tails. Their heavy jowls, bright with saliva.
"I will make an exception this once," Arawn does not smile, nor does he rejoice in her soft, musical laughter; but in a gesture almost tender, Arawn pulls a white rose from her army of flowers and tucks it behind Danaë's ear with a devilish grin.
He wants to say, 'this rose suits you, too'. To drop a whisper of a kiss upon her brow; to draw her body against the strength of his chest, with smooth, male fingers curled against her waist; to take her breath away, as she had taken his—but he only stands against the thick beams of moonlight. Roguish, male, tall—indifferent. Watching the way the moon dips into the ivory dimples of her soft, blood-touched curves. Her flowing white hair descending her svelte physique, in strands so tameless and wild. She could have stolen every angels' beauty and called it her hell.
"And what does m'lady wish to hunt—to chase?" His voice is deliciously low, almost taunting. His breath falls in rigid plumes of smoke when he speaks. He holds her gaze with his smouldering, criminal features. His piercing grey eyes ensnares her likeness, her beauty, like winter ensnares the world. Let her see there is no tenderness within him. Let her see the veil, the illusion of charm. Already, he hears the forest calling his name. Already he feels the forest reaching out for him, begging to hold him close, aching to tear him apart like a vengeful lover. Aching to kiss his dark skin—like the pale, sensuous moonlight kisses hers.
@Danaë
