[AW] All wrapped up in wrong

[Eik]

 With every step he takes from Isra, love hardens to fear, to anger, to fury. By the time Eik reaches the mountain he is a different man than the one shaped by Novus. He is the last relic of a land the gods turned on, and his scars burn with memories of violence.

(a memory of a dream flutters in and out of focus: "whatever you do--)

The clearing is well-lit and merry, branching off into paths that suggest a world of possibilities. But beyond the glow of the lanterns and the fire, the forest is deep and too thick for even the moon to pierce. The dark trees watch him, and he stares back in search of a message. 

(--your hands will always know the shape of violence.")

When he sees the sharp outline of Calliope he is too intent to believe in coincidence. Oh, how far they've come since the day they met with the sky falling down. This time, the storm rages in his eyes instead of the fields before them, and where there should be lightning there is only black, black, black. Still the silent wind howls her name like a call to arms, cal-li-ope!, and all the fallen leaves in his chest scatter at the sound.

"Calliope," he calls her name quietly but the sound cuts all the same. That first time they met, she had drawn a story from him that he didn't know needed to be told. It was the start of something-- an unfolding, or perhaps a crumbling. This time, though, he knows what it is he needs from the woman with a lion in her bones. 
 
"How would you hunt a man who can change his face?"

*

@Calliope 
(Although... I would not be opposed to anyone else wandering in, and I'm sure Nestle wouldn't either! Let's start a man hunt >:D)

[Calliope]

Calliope
“and when I lift my head to scream out my fury, a million stars turn black and die. "


Calliope does not find herself in the darkness of the mountainside gallery to ponder art. There is no joy to be found her in heart tonight. Her skin crawls across her bones like snakes, shadows and things better left forgotten in dead world. Even her horn feels strange tonight; like it's both lighter than air and hungrier than a lion.

Tonight she hides in the darkness because she can feel old fragments of herself rattling inside her lungs with every breath. Tonight the mountainside seems a place for war instead of thinking about her her body seems more full than it did a month ago.

Perhaps that is why a part of her isn't surprised when Eik finds her.

Their gazes meet and it's storm to storm, fury to fury. If there are leaves in his chest there are flames in hers, enough flames to eat a forest. Calliope wonders if he can see the barely contained violence running like a lion across the plains of her skin. Tonight she feels like she could bay at the moon like a wolf and she wonders if he would join her.

His question only fans the flames in her chest and lures the lion across her skin. “Fear never changes, not like faces and skin might.” Once she knew a skin-walker, once she electrified an ocean to save him from the weakness of his male heart. “Find out what it is that a man fears and his flesh will always crack like a lie.” Lightning crawls between her teeth as she smiles like a scythe, all metal sharp curves and hunger.

“Who are you hunting, Eik?” And oh, she cannot help the wicked part of her that hopes he might look her in the eye and say, God.

[Eik]

They call it falling in love, but to Eik it is more like the opposite. Up he rises through the muck and the brine, shedding a lifetime of ashen slurry. His ghosts, with their dark claws and twisted faces, cling to him fearfully. Still he rises, and one by one they fall.

"Find out what it is that a man fears and his flesh will always crack like a lie"

Her words are like a thunderous gospel that he leans in hungrily to hear. Even this anger, this cerulean rage, it pushes him up, up, up. He supposes the fall will come later, and of this he is wary but not afraid... surely that, too, will be glorious in its own way.

The real question is what is Raum afraid of.

He does not need to see the violence in Calliope's piercing eyes. He feels it in the silent current that dances in and around them, electric. It beckons to him like a demon, like a homecoming. Later he might feel like there is something torn inside of him, but only later. Only later.

"I hunt a shapeshifter." Not a god, true, but Eik is not in the mindset to be concerned with Calliope's disappointment. "His name is Raum." With his mind he shows her the image of the man he saw on the poster-- it can't be of much use given the beast could change his skin, but it can't hurt either. Instead of pushing the thought into her mind, he alters the way the art around them is perceived. The paintings of Denoctian figures of lore are transformed to portraits of a silver stallion with a blue scarf tied round his neck. Sculptures twist into the form of his face as Eik had seen it on the poster, wild-eyed and hateful.

It is not his place to ask a favor of Calliope. There is nothing she owes him, nothing between them but the kinship of two wild animals marked by violence. "Will you help me?"

Countless pairs of wicked eyes look upon them in the dimly lit clearing.

*

@Calliope 
I am appalled at how long this took me, I'm so sorry x_x