My mother told us a story once, of two wolves destined to consume the world. She told us how hungry they were, how one day their hunger would break chains and there would be nothing left to stop them from laying their jaws against all the earth.
I think I am that wolf, who does not know how to pick its jaws up from the world as it runs through. I think I would not want to even if I knew how.
I think I am that wolf, who does not know how to pick its jaws up from the world as it runs through. I think I would not want to even if I knew how.
There is a snarl on her lips when he moves closer. It rises in her throat like poison, like rot, like she is one breath away from consuming the world with it. She takes another step back, and back, and back and Isolt does not know if she is stepping away from him —
or if she is stepping away from herself.
She knows she is a terrible thing, a twisted thing, a thing-that-should-not-exist. She knows the forest that she claims as her own does not love her, cannot love her when each night she lays her teeth against the young-trees and steals their life before they have truly begun to live. Isolt is nothing like her father, who carves away sickness and begs new life to grow in its place.
The new-life burns her, and resists every terrible throb of her magic that struggles to wrap itself like a noose around its neck. She can feel it winning, the same way her sister’s magic always (always) wins over her’s when Danaë grows poppies from the ruins of the saplings.
And oh, how she hates it.
Oh, how she hates herself.
She is still snarling as she steps back in the water. “Then you lie to yourself.” She hopes her voice cuts like a knife, the same way her horn slices through the air when she tosses her head. And Isolt, terrible, monstrous Isolt thinks that at least she is not so foolish as to think she is something other than what she is. She thinks that at least she is not so foolish as this boy, who does not know he is as much in love with death as she is.
She jerks away from him (from his touch, from his kiss, from his magic.) And with the blade of her tail still carving out her anger from every tree, and wildflower, and berry-bush she finds, she runs through the forest like a wolf trying to consume it all.
@Leonidas
"wilting // blooming"
"wilting // blooming"
