This keening soul;
Her paint is cold against the chill of the swamp. It is white upon the black of her. It blazes like gashes and as she moves it dances and whispers. Ancient magic cries out along her skin, it laughs in the dark corners of her torso. Where blood spatters, where mud clings to her, it ordains her an ungodly priestess.
Leto’s eyes draw along the line of his lips. She feels them like a shard of bone, drawn across the weakest part of her – oh, she did not know there was such weakness left in her. Not until the blood and bones drew painted their mocking art.
Long ago.
He steals the air from her lungs. She might believe he was drowning her, but for the hiss of breath between her lips. Where her teeth meet, her breath spills like serpents from her mouth. Fury becomes her, light shines, turning her flesh to endless pitch. The shadows of the swamp hungrily reach for her, the laugh as they scuttle like beetles and consume her. Star-light shines behind her eyes, it is wicked bright and oh she is laughing. Her voice is stars clashing and earth shattering. It is godless and endless. The dark of her skin swallows all but where the lancing of light maps her. Starlight illuminates her and Leto blazes hotter than the sun.
Desolation and fury are bedfellows within the chamber of her body. A star is pulling at her, it is rattling in its black, silk sky. Idly her magic reaches for it and it descends, vengeful and bright. From around the altar she steps, each stride of her slim limbs sheds another part of her faith. It rips and drifts from her like tattered vestments. Her heart is a rattle within her chest as her gaze settles upon Asterion.
Leto does not flinch as the falling star strikes within the center of the bowl. Blood and bone and divine magic bursts into white-hot flame. Greedily the fire licks along the edges of the bowl growing brighter, hotter, wilder. Oh she is hungry, desperate for the calm that softens his stature, that forms words upon his tongue.
Inside she is empty, empty. Inside her is a hollow space where a godhead sat. Now Leto is frayed edges, she is a rent soul. Her chin lifts and she drinks in the calm of her Sovereign, she feasts upon him and only finds herself ravenous. Silver eyes, once clawed, once soldered into the brown of him, pull away to drink in the swamp and its scars. “Really?” She breathes, hotter than the sun, her skin baptized in darkness and light. All of her is burning, starfire rips through her veins it burns wild in her heart. Soon she will be ash upon the wind. Lost religion has slipped her loose and she tumbles in abandoned disarray.
Water is a river beneath his skin. She tastes it and she reaches for him, desperate to drink it, craving every inch of water within him. Even as her hot lips press against his neck, desperate for his quenching magic, ire toward him, toward the gods, fans the flames of her own magic. “Will you leave us again, Asterion?” Leto challenges, her voice the smoldering embers of the starfire that still swallows the bowl. She looks at the scars of Tinea, she remembers finding her king wrapped up in lavish luxury. She remembers scrambling between flood water for food, loyal to the earth, to a vengeful goddess.
Mud squelches beneath her feet as she shifts. “I won’t come for you again if you do.” Sweat gleams across her skin, glittering where white hot light shines like lightning across the night sky of her body. She holds his gaze, moonlight upon earth, limning him in starlight. Bones chink in her mane that clings to the slick of her throat. She steams, smoldering. “Leaving us is the only test you can still fail.”
And she hates the small, small twist of selfishness that twinges in her core and longs to beg him not to leave her, above all.
@Asterion | "speaks" | notes: table 2/2!! this was super fun to make
