wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me; pollock

[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


It still stings his nostrils. 
Somehow, despite everything, he is not used to it. Not until he has stood with it for a while. 

The hot air takes on the putridity readily (almost greedily), making it impossible to turn from it to find a mouthful of fresher air; he chooses not to look away. He has watched it go through many transformations – once new, bloody and meaty, his thing re-broken and remade; then, full of things feeding on it, sunken-eyed and falling hollow in on herself; now papery skin stretched on bones like pieces of rag here and there, only the foul scent of long ago death left between the ribs and cavities once made for speech and digestion.
She would be desiccated by now, he imagines, from the heat and time – if he had taken her to the desertlands, perhaps (a thought for later days). But the moisture of the forest floor has kept her plump and putrefying. Soon there will be nothing left.
Bones and then bones buried beneath encroaching underbrush.

And then, in time, it is as if he cannot smell it at all. 
He smells salt instead, and grass, rich soil and the cocktail of all their blood combined conveniently into one memory. Then he can enjoy, finally, the fruits of his efforts. Like an artist admiring his work. Damaged as it is now, he still feels a sense of pride and ownership over it. He wonders how close she is. In moments like this, when he cannot see or feel her near (perhaps pulled back to that grey and shrouded land – perhaps somewhere hidden in green shade too crowded by his vigil), he wonders if she disgusts herself.
Certainly, she disgusts many others. A now rather putrid landmark.

No amount of smugness makes this vacant body any more dignified.
He could admire her humor. He had left precious little for her.

He hears her, but does not smell her. He will smell nothing but this for some time after he leaves. He stops in mid-motion, his ears twisting in her direction, then runs a great horn down the rough knots of bark. He leaves these everywhere, his little token: trees with bare patches, white skin like fat bared in the wound, dead things; wreckage and ruination, and in one case, he thinks quite possible, a little life. 
Then, stilled again in anticipation, he feels her breath against the back of his ear. He picks up some modicum of her living scent in that closeness, but it is choked out by her. He turns his head in the indigo woman’s direction, searching for it with wide nostrils as she draws away, catching the faintest rub of those black studs. It takes a moment, a blink, as he searches his mind (not bloodied nor bruised, he has not tasted this one in any way; not of stars, but of night...) A grumble, or growl, rumbles up his throat and he shifts.

In dying light, he can better see the way she is blue and purple, dark and made to be split open and investigated. Before, there had been too much dark, and much too much fitfullness, to get a good hold of each other. He had been sore and sent off contemplating impossibilities, she had been much the same. 
He is different now.

“I knew her briefly,” he does not smile back. He does not find Hestia’s incessant goading pleasant, but he wonders how much she has enjoyed his hunting expeditions. “She was prettier once but, alas.” He looks her over for a brief second, then pushes off a tree and steps closer, “does she bother you?” In the dark, he thought he could see something broken about her – that fragility had been infuriating and enticing. Now he wonders. Sometimes broken things are stronger than they seem, otherwise they would not have endured.

He had endured.


POLLOCK
Lone Artist and Phina’s