jamie
from the destruction, out of the flame
He is peculiar, the roan stallion.
How rare it is that something so thoroughly piques the shadow thing’s interest. How rare it is that something makes him curious. In the silence that swallows them up, he can hear the heartbeat. And there, in that first instant, he thinks that it belongs to him. But if there is a heart buried someplace in all that darkness, there is nothing for it to rail against. So it must belong to the roan stallion. How ragged a sound it is, Jamie thinks, as he sinks closer. Beckoned by the sound of it.
He does not require sustenance, the shadow thing. There is nothing to feed. The darkness feasts on itself. But he has a memory of his sister sinking her teeth into the flesh of a rabbit, feeding on the blood. Perhaps if he gets close enough he will be able to smell it, the life force careening through the roan stallion.
He move so slowly, Jamie, the joints – real or imagined – aching as he goes. Each step coaxes out a swallowed groan, sounds that get all dammed up in his chest. He must rest, the shadow thing, if he has any hope at all of making it back to Pangea.
Then again, being trapped here would not be the worst thing, because the creatures here are infinitely more interesting. Again, he tilts his head. A puppet, the roan stallion says. Merely a puppet. For whom, the shadow thing wants to ask but doesn’t. He imagines the power it would take to dip fingers into the mind of another, manipulate them. What a thrill it is to imagine it. It fills all the empty space within him with the thrum of something winged and brilliant and dark.
Close enough now that he feels the shudder that steals through the roan stallion and he smiles his ink-black smile.
His father gave him a name but it feels so terribly far removed now. Jamie, such an ordinary name for so dark a thing. So he exhales a dark breath and asks in that same sick, sick voice. “What name would you give me? If your ideas were your own.”
Sinks closer still, like he’s going to curl himself around the roan stallion, swallow him up in all of his darkness. “And whose puppet are you?”
you need a villain, give me a name
@[Balto]