violence
She sighs.
She would have liked for the girl to have touched them of her own free will, an indication that Violence’s will would persist and linger like a virus in her pliant mind, but alas. Instead, the girl balks as the bone-creature’s head tilts as if wondering why she’s stopped.
“Then I’ll have to make you,” she says, and it’s all the says, all the warning she gives, before she slips back into the girl’s mind. She slips in lightly, this time, as if dipping a toe into a shallow pool. She cannot fully immerse herself in the girl and make the bones do her bidding, but she can lightly steer her, and she thinks it might be enough.
In the shallows of the girl’s mind Violence focuses once again on the bone creature, reaches Stoney’s – her – muzzle out, brushes her lips against the tapered point of the skull that had once supported its snout.
The bone-creature accepts the kiss, then rears back, and for a moment it seems like it’s grinning. But it’s a skull, and they are always grinning, and there is no warning when the wolf-teeth tear into the girl. Jaws that hadn’t tasted meat in meat in years grow sweet with her blood, from the tears. Violence feels her pain like an echo, but does not flinch from her – pain has never frightened her. Nothing has ever frightened her.
Instead, the sight of blood pattering onto the dry earth fills her with excitement, at the knowledge she has done this, had made the girl bleed for her defiance. She steps out of her mind like one steps out of wet shoes – cautiously – and returns to her own body to watch the girl in the aftermath.
“I told you to be good, and you weren’t,” she says, simply and slowly, as if speaking to a child, “now you’ll listen, won’t you?”
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips
