[private] Journey we more into the Nightmare - Malis

[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

When he had returned and found her gone, his anger had been mighty.
(‘You can give me your name, or I can take it.’ It stills hums in his head, mechanical and angry. Silence. Empty threats; you should have taken it! Weakness. Kill it dead.)

He had cleaved great holes in his Forest. Perforated the flesh of the things he had spent such careful efforts feeding.
(‘Don’t be naïve, Pollock...’ Once he had considered the fact that she may be stronger for her brokenness. He was. But he had broken her again, all the same, to test how brittle flesh can be. Naïve.)

He woke like a beast incensed. Like a dragon whose treasure had been poached from.

She had fallen. He had seen it!

He had prayed. Found his absolution in her hips like at an alter! She had yielded herself to him like he knew she would, not because she wanted to but because he wanted her to. It was all the same to him, and if she had resisted, all the better. And when he was spent, dumb and laid heavy on her back – a dark and weary passenger – she she struck. Snapped her head to meet his, pressed against the froth on her shoulder...

That would not do. She had ruined it for him.
He might have let her go. He had thought about the dark, mysterious colour as something he could look forward to. No. She had ruined it all, for both of them.

Sadly, that could not stand.

* * * *

(There had been too many places he could not go… too many places that were not safe, and he could not smell the deepness of her flesh, only the rot he had buried her in. She had disappeared. His thing. She had left nothing behind, so he smelled the air like a whipped hound and bayed. Moaned. Screamed. Roared.)
He paces. Sleepless nights now endless, waking pilgrimages to Hestia’s bones, her funeral mound and headstone. And when he finally drifts off he dreams the same thing

—he falls. Forever, through darkness and strings of multicoloured lights. Bells and whistles sound in the air around him and then are replaced by utter silence.
And then he wakes up on the soft, giving earth. He is different.
He is mighty.

He is surrounded by great piles of earth. Each of them is marked by a stone with strange symbols that he cannot read but knows without doubt that once, he could – Hestia, Thyndra, Astri... – he treads in a circle and stops by each, his heart growing fond as he appraises them. There are many more, unmarked.
Until he gets to one and suddenly he feels bile tickle his throat. 

It is open – gaping, profaned...

He wakes up, and paces. He rubs his horns on soft, young birches and leaves irritated scabs on their pale bodies. The new sun is coming in through the leaves above and in the murky light he catches a streak of colour. Deep, rich and for a second, it is almost as if he can taste it on his tongue.
He chases it, like a hound who has found it’s quarry!

Like a good girl, she leads him to everything he had lost and in time, he understands.

* * * *

His heavy head sways like a bull elephant tied to a tree by his foot. He is agitated, excited – he mutters to himself, cursing under his breath. He leaves her reluctantly. When he knows where she is, he feels in control. He holds his knowledge of her (assumption of who she is) like a dagger to a soft throat.
He must go for it eventually, blade and teeth and horn. He had so liked the way the blood had came out the first time, like delicate pearls on the edges of new wounds.

He snorts. The pine scent stings his nostrils. This had been home for him, too, a very long time ago, indeed. It was here he had found himself helpless, invisible. He paces the edges, the tightrope between enemy territory and the rough escarpments of stone. He can go no deeper than this.

He is not stupid. It would be unwise.

He finds her there, anyway. He knows he would if he waited long enough. This is where she so often idles, he has found. Here, where they meet and speak so softly and he dares not move closer. Not until he had purged the temper out of himself like a blood-letting – slowly and methodically – so that when he moves to meet her again now, he is disciplined.
(He can hear his pulse in his ears and he struggles to control his breathing. That beast anger.)

“Well.” He looks at her, greedy and demanding. “Look at this.”
He cannot control the quiver in his voice. It betrays him. That wanting, loathing, lusting. He turns his head, displaying where he bears furless scar tissue, three old puncture wounds to the underside of his left cheek. Her work. He holds it there, the muscles clenching and unclenching under the skin, so she can get a good look. “That hardly seems fair, does it? Look at you.” He licks his lips and squares his eyes back to hers, "lovely."

POLLOCK
the gift giver

I thought we had discussed she might have nabbed him with here horns when he was being a dickbag. If you don't want, I will purge it all from the post.