It did not matter how many times Shrike witnessed her shield-sister’s rage; each time it was awful.
Not in the little-way of the word, used to mean inconsequential things, but in the archaic meaning. Awful the way a supercell was, awful the way a god was. The kind of thing to make you quake or pray or worship.
Shrike could not read, but she didn’t need to to guess the substance of the letter Calliope had received. The paint had kept her tongue and her distance as they traveled to Denocte together, following the cliffsides quick as a storm, but she was in far better humor than the unicorn when at last they arrived, despite the charred remains of a dragon’s foul work.
The dragon was gone, and so were its masters. That was enough for now.
Soon after, they split ways; this was an anger that was Calliope’s alone. It was not for Shrike to witness (though a part of her wished she could).
And so she continued on alone, traveling beneath the gathering dark, away from the city and its maze of walls and peculiar weaknesses.
She is drawn as ever to the prairie, this one of rolling foothills and whispering grass. In a little hollow she beds down till morning, and she spends a lazy dawn exploring further. It is a lonely, windblown place, the breeze cool with autumn. Even after hours of wandering it, Shrike keeps expecting it to shift, or birth a monster from a jumble of stones. When it does not, she is both disappointed and relieved.
It is midday when she looks up from grazing and sees a red figure, bright as a blood-mark and as alone as herself. At first she only watches him proceed beneath a sweep of tumbleweed sky, but after a moment she goes to greet him.
If she is surprised to find Raymond here, Shrike says nothing of it. She only looks him over, her dark eyes gleaming bright as a bird’s as they travel from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail-blade. The paint wears no grin when she speaks, but it is there in her voice all the same. “No extra holes since the last time I saw you. I’m glad it went well.”
If he had survived Calliope’s wrath, than he must have had a good reason for acting as he did, and that was enough for her.
get your war paint on
let them know we're out for blood
Raymond. and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
His difficulty with Sussuro Fields may well have put Raymond off open spaces for good were it not for his own adamant refusal to wallow in the past. He could not blame the vast fields of Terrastella for Ruth's loss any more than he could blame the sun for shining when it ought to mourn. To charge Sideralis Prairie with the crime of resemblance would have been evidence enough of his mind slipping that he'd have sat down and let Calliope end him on the spot.
Thus he put the court and Calliope's justifiable anger behind him for the rare indulgence of a simple walk over rolling hills, and a chance to shed the oppressive presence of streets, walls, and pointless extravagance in favor of a cloak of brilliant, untarnished blue stretched out across the sky.
Wandering felt different now. A line tugged almost constantly at his navel, coaxing him not to go too far afield, as though he had green pastures to which he belonged.
A splash of paint broke through the yellowed grasses, drawing his eye, and he recognized Shrike deeply and instantly. In a way it was Calliope's recognition more than his own, because he understood the bond that drew them together beneath her stormy intensity, understood the devouring ache of loss that had drawn the unicorn across worlds for vengeance.
He did not understand the ecstacy of their reunion, and in that you could say that he envied Shrike for the simple fact she existed.
The red stallion smiled smoothly at her observation, chuckling in full acknowledgement of the stakes behind his gamble - from all sides. "A lot has gone well, though not as I'd have liked. There's still work that needs done here." That was perhaps the understatement of the year, when in driving out the specter of naked tyranny the people of Denocte had won little more than the brittle shell of their homeland.
So coldly had she been cast out, and so young: there had been no time to develop sentiment when all her attention was focused on survival. In Calliope she had recognized a heart shaped like her own, and they fed one another as iron sharpens iron. Life was putting down the next monster or raising up the next rebellion.
She had never had a companion; no other creature had shared her thoughts or crept into the unexplored corners of her soul. Raymond’s sorrow was not a thing the paint could understand.
In this she is luckier than both of them, and unaware of her good fortune (if a mercy-death could be considered fortunate).
His chuckle rolled over her with as little affect as a cloud passing overhead. Her humor is words as dry as a summer arroyo or a sunglare-glint in her dark eyes. But Shrike relaxes a little more as he continues, nodding once. “There is always work to be done,” she notes wryly, but she is well aware that the work is needed. Idle hands, to a soul like Calliope’s, would soon be drenched in blood. Better to have something to build – though a part of her, itself bloodthirsty, wishes there had been more of the kind of work she was born to to be done.
At the question that follows she does smile, something small and sharp as a bramble. A jay shrieks and the paint twists an ear toward the noise, though her gaze only strays to the curve of Raymond’s tail. “Idle,” she answers, and all her distaste for such a state is clear in the single word. “This is the kind of place that could make someone fat and lazy.” She thinks of all the creatures at the summit, dressed like tropical birds in fabrics and feathers and dripping with jewelry, their hair coiled up like something caught and bound.
Slyly her gaze returns to his own, and there is something ursine about her smile now. “I trust I don’t have to fear such a future for you.”
get your war paint on
let them know we're out for blood
Raymond had never expected to be the sentimental type either. There was a part of him, looking back over the path he had cut alongside Calliope and Shrike, that questioned how he might approach things differently if he were to do it again knowing what he knows now. Would he stick around or leave them to their individual fates? Would he warn them? Would he try to rewrite the history, and what fresh horrors would such hubris unleash?
He did not envy Florentine her ability to answer such questions for herself. Time was meant to flow swift and sure in one direction, and the past was meant to stay in the past. There were enough monsters in the world without having to worry about ghosts too.
This is the kind of place that could make someone fat and lazy.
The red stallion's smile became a wry one. One could not help but notice the vices that such finery as courts and castles and trade routes enabled. There were certain things that were possible to a horse with access to tea, chintz pillows, and chiffon fabrics that would be inconceivable to those of them accustomed to open skies, empty stomachs, and beds of dry brambleweed. Easy to be savage in the wild, where trust and mercy are as much the enemy as claws that catch, but the savagery that grows from idleness is an insidious thing.
"Oh, certainly not. You know me."
His attention turned inward. He thought he'd known himself, too, but for his confrontation with Calliope in the court. Now, he was less certain. "Do you have any idea what you'll do now?" 'Now', of course, probably bore more significance for him than it did for Shrike, but the events on the Summit could not be ignored, nor could the subsequent abandonment of Denocte by its regime. The winds of change were winding up into a proper storm.
Raymond. and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
You know me - And Shrike nods, although that new and uncertain thing inside her, shifting like a shadow, wonders.
Something had happened between he and the black unicorn, something she had missed in death and the in-between place she had gone and in the desert, too. Something she cannot quite see the shape of, or maybe doesn’t want to.
It is not a thing Shrike has experienced or can understand, and it is not a thing she will ask him about. Nor Calliope, in all likelihood – theirs had never been that kind of relationship. But she knows it will nag at her like a horsefly until her gathering suspicions are confirmed. And then--?
Her head tilts as her unspoken question is turned back on her. For a moment her gaze is far away, looking to the north, where the sun shines hot and cruel on endless shifting sands.
When it cuts instead to Raymond, she wears no smile at all. “I intend to find out what I can of the mindset of this place. It is not the chaos of the rift or the factions of Ravos. It is like nothing I’ve known.” She refers to courts and music, foolishness and finery, but she thinks, too, of the Davke. Of civilizations that have built and built for more years than leaves on a pinoak and how each generation lay bricks on the evils of the last.
And then, at last, something like shame creeps onto her expression, and the line of her mouth turns hard, and she turns her narrow head away.
“And I suppose I must convince Calliope that she will not need to kill me again.” The words taste bitter as bad water and when she swallows it seems to catch in her throat like a blade.
get your war paint on
let them know we're out for blood
And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying,
'Come and see.' and I saw.
***
Shrike and Raymond enjoyed a war-forged friendship, born of danegr and necessity when all that remained to push back the darkness around them was the darkness within them. The easy way in which they shared space had far less basis in personal familiarity than it did in an understanding of a common heartbeat and a common goal.
Perhaps the most he could say of Shrike's character was that it had nearly killed Calliope to lose her, but for Raymond the black unicorn's trust was as high of praise as anyone could ever hope to achieve.
It is like nothing I've known.
The red stallion smiled wryly. "That's politics. Everyone's still trying to destroy everyone else, they've just figured out a way to dress it up." This was his domain, the environment he'd cruised like a bullshark through ocean shallows until the day he met Calliope, but the more he waded through it the more he missed the places where everyone who wanted to kill you had sharp teeth and claws.
Something was bothering the painted mare; it stained her eyes with a subtle shadow, drew her gaze away. Raymond did not think it had anything to do with the strangeness of Novus culture, and her words confirmed as much.
His wry smile slipped into a frown. "It was...difficult for her, after that. Calliope cares deeply for you." That was an understatement if he'd ever heard one, but it was not his place to quantify their relationship. However, he could (and would) act on what the whole affair had nearly cost himself. "You should try to keep her close, if you can."
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
Politics - even something as simple as the word on the air makes her lips twist as though it were a carrion-bird or shrill jay instead of a few syllables strung together. It had been politics and superstition that saw her thrust from her family as a filly, and it was no natural way of solving anything.
They were beasts, and beasts only; any problems that could not be solved with a wolf’s wit or hoof or strength or speed were problems that had been unnecessarily invented. Shrike has no interest in solving the troubles made by arrogant men and women with too much time on their hands.
She and the black unicorn’s disdain for politics had seen them scorned and laughed at in Ravos – but none of those hollow gods or their worshipers were laughing now.
“Seems an awful waste of time,” she says, a little stiffly.
Raymond’s frown feels more natural to meet than any of his smiles had – how strange a partnership they shared. His words are smooth-edged and sink into her like a rippling pebble into the black depths of a lake. And yet, and yet, they feel less true than any glance or touch she’s shared with Calliope – not for the first time Shrike misses her bear-body, and how no words were needed at all.
Keep her close, he says, and she grunts. “Close as an oath,” she answers, and the patches on her moon-pale body are dark as old blood beneath the summer sun. “But I will not stay beneath the tombstone-walls of that dark city, and neither, I expect, will she.”
With that she shakes out her neck and flicks her pale and wind-twisted tail against her hocks, once more angling her body to the north. It is difficult, on the plains, to imagine the smell of salt-flats and sun that burned like a forge-fire, but she has her own ghosts to track and stories to uncover, and summer is nearly over. “I’ll see you soon, Raymond.” Without a last look back she is gone, swift as a cloud-shadow over the grass.
get your war paint on
let them know we're out for blood
I'll be a stone, I'll be the hunter,
The tower that casts a shade
***
Nobody liked politics. It was a bit like urination, in the sense that the only people who seemed to enjoy it were the ones who served to benefit from it or the sick creeps that got off on that kind of thing. Raymond took advantage of it where he could, but that was because in politics others were almost disappointingly predictable and self-serving.
That he could both be the primal creature and slither into the ugly gutters of politics was testament only to his adaptability. Not all beasts are noble.
He took the painted mare's responsive - somehow both an acknowledgement and dismissal - in perfect stride, straightening only in response to her intentions toward a departure. Raymond could not hold her here, knew that Calliope would be restless without her loved ones close at hand, but neither would he give voice to the error in Shrike's words. She had already paid a hefty enough price to earn her personal freedom a dozen times over, even if she did not remember it.
"I'll keep in touch," he replied instead. Calliope would stay and Shrike would go, but bonds are not forged in common territory but in common blood. They had all shared that - if not here, then elsewhere. Distance could not wrest that from them.
He watched her go, tilting his head pensively, and said nothing more.
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
