To glory in self like a new monster - any.

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

That bend is so enticing. A tease, and he has acquired the patience for it alongside his clutch of ill-begotten gifts. He applies his pressure and she flexes from him, something of a dance. Once her smart reproach – that whip of her tail and the reprimanding glance – would have set his teeth on edge. “A woman with many little tricks,” he glances down the armoured crook of her belly and flank. There is a sharpness in his growl, a hint of his limits. Like her bowing will break, in time, so will her nerve get the reaction she so desires.

Each giving the other their just rewards.
They could work well together.

If she could surrender to his darkness, down her spine and brain, perhaps he could make his sting mild. She could pick at his gilded flesh all she likes, trying to find that broken boy within. Or whatever it is she thinks she will uncover. He wonders, for a moment, if this starlight indeed seeks to protect that soft, bygone coward from Pollock’s own murderous hunt. Bit by bit, that coltish shade is being dismembered by the sheer force of his own glory and self-hate.

If so, she is treading thin ice – the friend of his enemy, is his enemy twice over. And he finds nothing more nefarious than the vestiges of his wretchedness.

His eyes narrow and he tucks his chin towards his chest, close to the beloved thrum of malice therein. It seeks its own twin behind her ribs, he can feel it; he wonders if perhaps it is not that she thirsts for instead. Like his dark shard needs to annihilate her northern token, maybe her light seeks to cleanse him from inside-out, or to reunite what was once a single whole. He looks to her again, his heart thumping in his breast.

‘Was that a test, darling?’ Her soft lips express warmth over his flesh, and he snaps from his speculation. His nose crinkles, and he finds once again, he cannot distinguish the cursory glance of her flesh from the remembered strikes of his mother. He carries them indelibly on his body. As he washes over with animus, she adorns her head with a horned crown of her pretty, little lights. Jeweled mimics of his own headgear.
“You are incredible.” It does not taste of flattery, but of acid. Sour and corrosive.

“Was that a test?” His tail whips across his haunches, and then back against her own.

With an unnatural quickness he is standing face to face with her again. From that darkness in his core, he feeds fear into her. Just enough to cow her, and in its sweet cunningness, it feels incredibly organic. As if borne from her own mind, catalyzed by the hostility in his eyes or the unsettling swiftness of his movements. She may recognize in his eyes the glint of his own manipulation, giving himself away. She is bright, he cannot deny. But its origins are irrelevant.
It is there, all the same, and her stars cannot shield her mind anymore than he can bite through its diamond strength. And it always has a certain... perseverance.

His gift to her. He withdraws it, sated. Watching her teal features and eyes for the tells of his intrusion. He has come to find this afterglow to be his favourite part – they are always lovelier for it. “Pollock.”


Pollock,
The gift-giver.