violence
Somewhere things scream, and she feels their bodies come into existence – small things, bodies torn asunder by teeth not meant to tear so. She can touch them, once they die – once they are killed – and for a moment she does, runs her power over the small corpses like a finger down the spine.
But she prefers bones – prefers her friends long-dead. Old bones are easier than things fresh-killed. Someday, all dead things will be easy, but for now she is young, nascent in her powers. So she does not stop to enliven the small creatures, instead walks on to the clacking sound of her bone-thing, her pet.
She smells blood (a familiar scent – she once possessed her father while it hunted, dug her nails into its feral instincts, all thoughts whittled down to hunt and run and feast). She turns her head to look and sees a spotted mare, mouth tinged with blood, a look in her eyes that’s half-mad and half-hungry. Violence is still small, a child.
She thinks about going into the mare’s mind, nestling there for a moment, but she has not yet possessed a stranger, only dead things (and her father, who is not dead but is not the same as she and mother, is something with a more reptilian brain).
How do you do that, she asks, and Violence isn’t sure how to answer – bringing the bones forth has always been like breathing, something instinctual.
“I feel them,” she says, an answer that is not an answer, “I feel them, out in the ground. So I call them. And they listen.”
To prove her point, the bone-thing turns its tapered head and fixes Shaytan with a wolfish grin that does not belong in an equid’s mouth.
Violence doesn’t smile – she lets the bones do it for her – instead watches the mare, quieter now.
“You’re bloody,” she says. A statement. “Were you hunting?”
I will make you understand why storms are named after people
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