into the darkness we go
*
The morning had been quiet since she roused from her outdoor slumber. While the others rested behind their stone walls and locked doors, Calliope had bedded down in the garden between the trees. Even resting she was at guard, at restless as a lioness in her cave while a stormed brewed and boiled outside.
And so the moment Florentine descended the stairs for a morning stroll Calliope was awake.
Perhaps it was those old hunter instincts that told her to stay close, to do more than nod as the flower girl went about her way. Perhaps it was the way that the morning air felt charged and heavy. Calliope remembers the horrible things that come on breezes as thick as blood. It is a breeze of magic things, gods and other things that have always brought change and strife and sometimes war.
Calliope has ever been upon the wake of change, horn tipped and ready to swallow up all the terrible things that come with the price of magic and gods. The Riftlands had given them sickness and Calliope had given them salvation from their disease in death.
So when the goose lands and moves as no bird should Calliope is instantly alert for disease. She scours it's eyes for madness, its mouth for froth and all those dark feathers for patches of blood and baldness that should not be. Oh but when it talks, when it demands in a voice that knows no form that could hold it, Calliope does more than scour its face for sickness. She moves closer, pressing her shoulder to Florentine's warning her to be wise.
Her father was a fool too, eager to follow things he didn't understand in places he could not defend.
“Caution.” She warns in a whisper, loud enough for the bird to hear. Her lips are tight against Florentine where she whispers into her mane. That tip of her horn glints in the daylight, bare but for the silver twined around it. A relic from the Riftlands and a magic that knew no gods at all.
Without taking an eye off that strange, god-blessed bird she steps away from Dusk queen to move towards that mountain in the distance. Her steps are light and eager. Calliope has been too long without challenge, too long with only politics to fill the spaces around her. This at least offers danger.
The scar across her face stings when she smiles. A god-mark, given when she challenged a god who had only death and punishment in store for his mortals. Calliope remembers well the might and power of gods, how it could not cow her when there was righteousness to defend. “Prepare.” That smile never fades as she finally turns away from that goose, her legs carrying her towards Veneror.
Over her shoulder she calls out to Florentine and anyone else who gathered. “I will ensure the path is clear.” Calliope didn't need to say the words, the way she laughs and lets her legs slip easily into a run is clear enough.
She looks like a lion as she runs, belly low in the tall prairie grass, staking a poacher that has no idea the fate that comes from it.
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