A word leaves her lips but it doesn't match – it doesn't match – it doesn't match the curvature of her neck or the ferocity of her eyes, not the sharpness of her teeth or the way the eerie light falls on her harshest contours like a threat. It is disembodied, a graven crow from some distant naiad, a giggling nymph dredged from the undertow of dis-heavenly leagues. It is soft, a feigned bit of startle, wonder, cradled in the innocence of some childish figure. But it does not match. He watches the way her teeth – not her lips, no – the way her teeth form the word, and if it hadn't been for this measure of ware he may have missed it. It undoubtedly, though the idea was an otherworldly thing, hardly possible, came from her. his eyes moved from the soft curvature in her mouth (was it not something rougher, something less curiously O'd before?) to the blood that dripped from her chin. The one, the two, the three that hit the ground with rhythmic certainty. Pupils dilate; it's hard to ignore the fact that his mouth tastes like an awful nothing, a cruel sort of nothing that begs for flavor. It went unnoticed until now, now the hunger rises with a vengeance and he can only think of warm meat, of blood, of red, red –
the twilight shifts and she is no longer a wolf – she is a girl, cunning and tender, full of refined edges that speak endlessly of touchable softness, of magnanimous curvature, a delineation that unravels itself slick as python coils. He watches with an unspoken wonder that treads the depths of his eyes but is lost to the rest of his face – that which loosened and tightened all at once, so that the shadows dripped from the edges and loomed in the corners, waiting and biding with a curious inhibition. She was no longer just an obstacle ; how oddly the carcass seemed to fade into the backdrop as he beheld her change, so much that he nearly forgot his parched tongue or the way it stuck to the roof of his mouth with impatience. She was a pretty thing at the bottom of a deep well, something shiny, glittering and harmoniously wanton – and she bid him to lean just a little closer.
and what a thought ; he considered doing so, so that his shoulders twitched with the anticipation of movement and his spine unkinked just – just slightly. Warmth razed where her eyes roved, and while he watched her warily for any lingering moment they dared creep along the softness of his neck, the curvature of his throat where veins pulsed with virulent ichor. But they did not hold to any particular place of vulnerability – they simply drank, they roamed with conquering ambition every framed crook of his musculature. And when he met her gaze he wasn't sure if the wonder was with mirth or hunger, but he understood the latter well and almost wished it more. O, he wondered how sharp her teeth were, their knitted ferocity and reddened shadows, how they glinted and glimmered, how they could rake against his flesh and sink with effortless abandon –
and he would let her drink, and drink, wouldn't he? Until she was full, until it was his blood that dripped from her maw, those satisfied jaws slaked in titan blood that tasted like copper and gold and virtue –
no. no? no.
something in the light changes as it passes her eyes, and their verdant hue reminds him of the woman in the scarab. But these are different. They are cold.
His hunger drops to the pit of his stomach like a stone, and from it the hot torment of doubled fervor. He allowed his jaw to slack, an attempt to wet his tongue and lips that feel too, too dry. If it hadn't been for lapse of memory, he may not have even heard her speak. Her voice lulls like fawn-ish effete, sweet and lacquered and o too cool. Erasmus is a predator. He knows the sound. But his body can not help but relinquish from its sharpened angles and crooked spires to the smoothness of a more handsome barbarity, its metal is melted to a curvature framed by the shadows that hung from the trees, tangible and painstakingly mortal. she offers - her neck bows in the light and the way it moves is like softened petals unfurling from a bloom; tender, honeyed, he watches the lines draw across as swift as skating. his lips are tight against the press of his fangs. it is a request. it is a demand.
but he is selfish.
in a thought, he closes around her throat like a starving hound does upon a slab of meat - depraved, shameless, tongue searching and prying the pulse that rises from arterial webs - and he drinks her like fine wine. but instead he swallows, and his nose flares with the scent of raw, fresh gore. to dream. to need. his tongue slicks across his fangs and he chuckles quietly. "name's erasmus." smooth, collected baritone unravels from the quiver of his lips and his eyes prick the spot that thrums against the flesh of her nape. he swoons, silently, after musing a quartet of syllables that nearly stumble over each other. each thought is more troubling than the last. furious and cold. a taste. just a taste? he turned, angling towards her just a few steps, maintaining the tense distance between them that meant the difference between civility and fatality. for a moment, his gaze returns on the carcass, but they can't help but return to something fresher. a deep breath, and he wonders what her skin tastes like. she smells of brine and sweetened musk, opportune and decadent ; his tongue curls with anticipation, remembering a too-faint tinge of iron. "are we strangers, still?" the utterance is smoke and craving lost to formalities, something husky and hanging desperately by a thread - it is fiendish charm teething on appetite, and it begs to be whispered against her neck. pressed to it. carved into it.
somewhere in the jungle, the drone carries too weakly for him to hear, and he just almost forgets that there ever was a relic to be searched for.
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