"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
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.
Childish wonder is what forsakes children.
Wide, doe eyed creature, the child of a magician - a demon, truly, but a magician none the less - you'd think she'd know better than to wander into disaster without looking both ways. When you're born in a storm and raised by a tornado what is a hurricane but another day? Another drizzle? Pollock and his Krampus, Rodrik and his horns, Harmonia and her deals - she was a child raised by wolves that sought not to devour her, but to claim her.
She didn't have the good sense to walk away from Violence, not when she approached with that. Clanking skeletal masses, a hodge-podge of macabre effects of the dead. It drew her in like a moving mobile, lulling her with its sense of familiarity. Of course this woman should be a necromancer, of course she should approach young Ajatar with nothing more than a breathy hello. Of course Ajatar should step toward it, regard those claws as something to hold and not to maim, and regard her with a sense of wonder.
Ajatar is always holding those more dangerous than herself in wonder while simultaneously wishing herself more docile.
The daughter of Harmonia and Carnage will never be docile.
"Does it have a name?" she says, half to Violence, half to the creature. Is it sentient? Was it created? She thinks yes to the second thought, but the first intrigues her more. Is her own power sentient, then? So many questions the scaled child wishes to have answered, and so many big bad wolves wanting only to blow her house down.
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?”
The Bone Creature walks toward Ajatar, closing the distance - pleased, for Ajatar knew it was a sentient being. It was its own beast. Ajatar knew the feeling - she was sure all of Pangea viewed her as an extension of her mother. Careless magician with murder in her eyes and chaos in her veins. They wanted to fear Ajatar, too (she saw it in the way Pollock and Rodrick eyed her up, tested her) but she wouldn't bow to it. She would not be like her mother, stoop to their level.
But the foul evil of her lineage runs in her veins like a train over tracks, hissing the words kill or be killed and don't let them laugh you're stronger you can destroy like a sick lullaby. The words are at the edges of her vision, always pushed down...
...until they're not, and the pox spreads.
"Baron La Croix," she says, naming the thing for what it was to her, long coat and top hat and all. She smiles at it then, a named thing has less power. The name holds all the meaning.
And then, the mare gives her - Violence. It's a word befitting the thing more than the girl, but Ajatar is not too young to know misdirection. Focus on the great beast that follows her, ignore the man behind the curtain. Violence will fit her name much like Ajatar will grow into hers.
"It's nice to meet you, Violence," she says, deciding she rather likes the name. "I am Ajatar, of Pangea."
