violence

 
Restoration took far too long.
Violence was left – forced – to survive as wretches do, left to walk empty with no bones beside her (her menagerie, her pet, left a scattered pile of bones at the foot of a mountain). But now – finally – she is whole again, regifted the powers that were made hers by birth (child of monsters and magicians, she deserves power, deserves to be a thing feared and worshipped).
She set to remaking her bone-thing, collecting the dead things that are always around. She makes it anew, builds it from wolves and bobcats and horses, even finds a bear skeleton (those claws!). She crowns it with stag’s antlers, large and awful, and thus she no longer walks alone,
 
But she is restless, her bones thrumming with everything she wants to do. She has forsaken Pangea – she was never much for kingdoms – and is once against left to her nomadic ways, which she takes pleasure in. But this, of course, means she gets bored, and her boredom can so easily grow teeth, grow dangerous when left to fester.
Then, there is a girl, and she catches Violence’s eye – a random act, a moment in time, a chance – and Violence moves to her, her bone-creature clacking alongside her. She watches the girl’s eyes to gauge her reaction (sometimes she can’t even get close when she approaches them), and then, she speaks.
“Hello,” she says. She offers nothing else – not her name, nothing – but instead makes the bone-thing walk forward, close to the girl, close enough to touch, as if it’s a handshake.
 

I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips

violence

She doesn’t know just how alike they are – both children of magicians, dark and awful women. There’s even blood ties, for Ajatar’s father is Violence’s grandfather (a fact unknown to her, for her mother scorns that particular aspect of her heritage, prefers to pretend she sprung into the world fully formed rather than a babe ripped from a mother’s womb). And maybe that was the subconscious thing that pulled her to the girl in this instant, some thrumming of magic to magic, blood to blood.
Or perhaps it was just chance, a random act in a random world.

Nevertheless, Violence is delighted that the girl does not run, that she instead watches the bone-creature with interest – and even half addresses it, a proper acknowledgement. Violence smiles, her own bony grin, though it lacks the fangs of her creation.
“It changes, from day to day,” she says, and her bone-thing nods in affirmation, “what do you think its name should be?”
She sends it forward. Her eye is caught by the glint of scales on the girl, and she wants to touch them, feel the different in texture, wants to rip one off and hold it in her mouth to know the texture of it.
Ah, but that’s rude, she supposes. So she refrains, even if the creature is close enough to touch.
“My name is Violence,” she says, “what’s yours?”

I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips