violence
He asks her if it’s draining, this work. She scoffs a little. It’s the opposite, for her – she feels revitalized by the bones.
“No,” she says idly, “but my mother’s a magician. And I’m stronger than you.”
She is clearly arrogant, this half-grown thing whose smile stretches wider as the bones dance. She is all power and no responsibility, and someday she will pay for this, and likely dearly. But for now she is bright and vivid and given strength from the bones.
She watches raptly as he draws for a sinewy head, half-rotted with maggots tumbling out as it moves. It’s a disgusting totem atop the thing they built, but she lets it be. She prefers the clean, almost architectural lines of bone, has no need for the sloppiness of rotting flesh.
Like a child knocking down a sand castle, she draws back her power, drops and tosses the bones about. They fly out like shrapnel and lay scattered in their small clearing, as if some gruesome bomb had gone off.
“Duck,” she says. Gracious of her, to give warning.
“Wherever I want,” she says in answer. She has no plans, does not feel she needs them. She has no desire to work her way up a kingdom, she’d walk in as their queen or she wouldn’t walk in at all.
She leaves without a goodbye, bored of him for now, but she has his face in her mind and his name on her lips and she will be back, in time.
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips