stones taught me to fly; kingslay + any

[etro]

and I ran back to that hollow again the moon was just a sliver back then and I ached for my heart like some tin man when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang She does not know where she has been. She does not know anything except it was cold (so much colder than that smothering heat of the Desert that both stifled and warmed her very bones). She does not know anything except she had run into her legs could not carry her any longer, until exhaustion claimed her; she had run until she had two options: to sleep or to die. She had run until she could not choose the latter. The sickness had started slowly, and she had dreaded it even as she felt it stealing through her veins and racing up her throat like arsenic. She had fought it (oh, how she had fought it!), but eventually she could not deny it. Not when waking up was like shrugging off a thousand pound coat; not when opening her eyes had flooded her senses with agony. She was stubborn, but even she wavered. How does one accept the fact that one’s body cannot love home like one’s mind? How does one accept the fact that there was something broken? Something she did not fully understand or comprehend or remotely grasp. So she had run with a fear as deep and instinctual as time itself. She had fled her foreboding father and powerful mother and him. She did not know which hurt more. But eventually the sickness had ebbed and health had flooded her rather plain body until she woke brightly and found herself thinking more about the pangs of loneliness than the twists of her gut. And, like the moth returns to the flame, she had turned her homely nose back toward Beqanna where it had all begun. Where she had once been a precocious youth who asked dangerous questions. She expects a chill to run through her when she steps into the meadow. She expects there to be some sort of emotion, but the only thing she can articulate is the feeling of anticipation and the sharp-edged sting of desire thrumming through her breast. It is then that she realizes that the meadow never had any power over her; it was him. Her almond eyes flicker from body to body as she watches them, and she waits for the hardened eyes.  The eyes of a killer. The eyes of her Kingslay. E T R O vanquish and yael’s trait negating desert princess

[Kingslay]

KINGSLAY

The shadow of a weeping willow casts dappled shade across the meadow and the child's back.

She is muddy brown, with legs that are too long, and hips that slope too gently. She is pulling at the hanging boughs, pulling the curves branches taut before releasing them up again, and he is watching from not far away, listening to the erratic thrum of her young heart, watching the light in her eyes and thinking of the ways that he will take it. She is the closest he's found, with her plain little face and her dark brown eyes and her muddy flesh, but she is not close enough. There is no one close enough. There is no close enough.

He moves forward, and she looks up. The ends of her lips will quiver with a smile, but he will not be moved by it. There are boughs that will fall across the burning skin along his spine and catch fire, and she will gasp aloud, and it will only bring him too much closer, too much faster. There is no distance between their bodies now. She is crying, and he is stone-faced and dead-eyed. She is not close enough. There is no close enough.

But something changes.

He knows before he ever sees her.

He knows because the fires he is burning through the leaves of the willow tree begin to waver and collapse into themselves. He knows because smoke curls from the branches now instead of flame. He knows because his charcoal skin rolls along the ridge of his spine and then the fire on his body settles. He knows, because the throbbing ache of a carnivorous hunger simmers down into a dull roar, and he leaves the child who is not close enough for something different than the crack of bones and the sounds of warm blood sizzling.

Something changes.

The ravens flew. They filled the sky with black feathers like storm clouds might, and they flew. They flew a thousand directions with empty eyes and empty hearts. They flew a thousand directions with nothing but a command save for the cacophonous flutter of wings beating that he will never stop hearing. He thought about their endings. He thought about their broken ribcages, and emptied eye sockets. He thought about pulling the feathers from their wings and of the sounds that they would make. He never thought that they would matter.

But something changes, and they do.

They do. They do, because close enough no longer matters. They do, because the slope of her hips and the length of her back are still the same. They do, because her eyes are dark and her flesh is muddy. They do, because she is real on this horizon.

He stops too close to her. She will feel the heat of his breath before anything else, and his flesh will quiver and roll, and his legs will be as taut and tense as the curved branches of the willow tree that the little girl held tight. 

"Etro," he says, like he has a thousand times before today, but there will be no masking the need in his voice this time. This time he will be ready if she runs.

And so, he made the Gods themselves bend at the knee.

KINGSLAY BY NEVAEH | HTML BY MAAT | IMAGE © ILYA KISARADOV

[etro]

and I ran back to that hollow again the moon was just a sliver back then and I ached for my heart like some tin man when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang Etro is galaxies and stars and impossibilities lighting the evening sky. She is the contradiction of wonder trapped in a body that did not allow it; she is the contradiction of solemn, plain looks belying the honey tongue and silver-bell voice. She who is in awe of magic and yet cannot see it or touch it. The negator; the equalizer; the eraser. She is fear swallowed in the mouth of bravery and of need smothered by gut-wrenching sacrifice. So when he touches her, she can feel her skin bunch and her nerves crawl to the surface in violent ecstasy in the same time that she closes her eyes and sighs in contentment.  Home. He is home. He smells of that metallic tang of life taken, and still she has never imagined a more comforting scent. He is the angle of a sharp blade and yet she still presses her cheek to it, loving the sweet agony of the first drop drawn. “Kingslay,” his name coming out in an exhale as if her lungs could no longer hold the word back. As if her very body had been cradling the word for years. Suddenly, the time spent apart comes into violent clarity. The loneliness of being without him; the fear she would never see him again. She can feel the pain of it threaten to tear her apart at the seams, and she closes her eyes against the onslaught--pressing her chest into him and bathing in the sensation. “Have you missed me?” she questions with childlike innocence, and she cannot hide the hope that is tangled into each syllable. Oh, how she had missed him. Oh, how she had needed him. Every night, dreaming of the sharpness of his angles and the shadows of his eyes and the way rust seemed to claim his throat so every word was difficult, and yet all the sweeter for their rarity. He was beautiful to her as all poisonous things are; she sensed the danger, and yet she could not turn away. E T R O vanquish and yael’s trait negating desert princess

[Kingslay]

KINGSLAY

He will follow her forever, leaving blood and bones in his wake, and he will never know why. He will never know why he has waited for these moments, why he has sought them out with promises etched in flesh and blood and glass. He has found and buried hundreds of them that were never close enough, torn them apart from the inside out in search of as little as fragments of likeness. They could not move the way she moved. They could not breathe the way she breathed. There were no galaxies in their eyes. There was no gravity. There was no point.

“Kingslay,” she breathes, and he quivers, because the way his name sounds off her tongue is unlike any of the others (the ones who were not close enough, the ones who could never be close enough) – because the way his name sounds off her tongue is enough to make him forget the crack of bones and the sizzle of warm blood and the way that the smell of burnt flesh can sink into the earth and the air, at least for a moment.

But the tension between their bodies is palpable.

Here she is, pressed against his xylophone ribs, where he can feel the thrum of her heart as it rings through the marrow in his bones. Here she is, and they are flesh to smoldering flesh, yearning and needing like starved animals before a carcass. And here he is, quivering and with skin that rolls again and again along the mountains of his spine, like he could ever belong to something bigger than what he is – like he could ever be capable of needing something more than he needs death. He can feel the unrest as it settles in his soul.

And when she exhales, he watches as her dark eyelashes shut tight against the tops of her muddy cheeks, and he wonders what it would be like to make it so she never ran again. She is so close now, and he could keep her if he wanted. He could hollow her out in minutes; wear her like a second skin. He could bathe in her blood until he ran red with it. He could coil her entrails around and around, into a grotesque crown of innards and gore, and she could never leave him then. He could keep a piece of her flesh lodged between the back of his molars, until his breath ran putrid with the stink of rot and death, and she could never run.

“Have you missed me?” She asks, and he will say nothing while his body will spill everything.

‘You ran,’ he thinks, and suddenly the heat of her body draws him closer, the thrum of her heart draws him closer, the smell of her skin draws him closer – and suddenly, his lips find the skin of her neck and they hover there just behind her ear while he thinks of all the ways to tear her open.

‘You ran,’ he thinks, while he says nothing.
Because she said she never would.

And so, he made the Gods themselves bend at the knee.

KINGSLAY BY NEVAEH | HTML BY MAAT | IMAGE © ILYA KISARADOV

[etro]

and I ran back to that hollow again the moon was just a sliver back then and I ached for my heart like some tin man when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang There is some primal part of Etro that knows what Kingslay truly is. That knew the first moment she came upon him in the meadow and underneath the musk and the heat of his body, she smelled the metallic tang of life that was not his. Life taken too soon and then worn on the crown of his head and in between his molars. But her stomach had not churned. She had not been revolted, and she had not fled. Instead, she had gone closer--intrigued. Instead, she had stepped into the belly of his flames, and she had never looked back. In some ways, she wonders if she has sold her soul in doing so; after all, how good could she be when she cradles the stallion who murders? How can she love something that kills? But Etro is not bound to this world. She is of the stars and of the galaxies and her moral code is not set up to be judged against or compared. It is crafted by and of her, and she does not lose sleep in making decisions that would otherwise make hearts restless. She feels peace in knowing what she knows. She is happy to love who she loves. There is freedom in not expecting the world to understand. “I did.” A simple statement because although she is many things, Etro is not a liar. She had said she would not run, but she had. She had run from their argument; she had run from the sickness curdling in her veins. She had run because the wind had whispered in her ear that she should, and she had listened as she had wanted. She would not apologize for doing what she felt was right, in the same way that she would not expect Kingslay to apologize for being who he was. “But I am back now,” she murmurs and does not flinch against the teeth against her neck. He could kill her, but he wouldn’t. She feels confident in that. He had the ability to burn down forests and destroy empires, but she knew that he would not use it against her. At least not now. “I will be back for a while.” Not forever, is what she leaves unsaid. She cannot make that promise, although there is something in her wild bones that wishes she could. If she would stay forever anywhere, it would be with him. E T R O vanquish and yael’s trait negating desert princess