And inside you're burning... Pollock

[Pollock]

“I thought I would have preferred you more vulnerable.”

Many years ago, he would have.

But that was many years ago. That was before many trials and tribulations. Before he earned his crown and vestments, spun black and festive.That was when he had nothing but concealment; flattened, belly-down like a snake in tall grass. And, no doubt, he still likes to pick his teeth with the delicate now and then – life is all about variety – but he has developed something like a soft spot for those willing to show a little pluck. There is joy in both endeavours – the fight and the surrender.

There is submission after each, of course, but they are flavoured just a bit differently. Sweet and savory.

“But this is no fun for either of us,” and if he can have no fun, then what is the point. He frowns like a petulant child, considering her as she is – plain; cool, jewel skin, still. But so considerably less… sumptuous. But then, he fidgets his wings (beautiful, as they are – glossy and cream-coloured, over-large, powerful, unwelcomed), and he is not without self-awareness, though it is an uncomfortable weight to be shackled to. No matter how temporary. He can only come to her openly. He cannot sidle to her, unseen and dangerous like a carnivore, to whisper across her neck like he once might have. He cannot rush her skin with his great headgear, feel the friction against her defenses. He cannot arouse that tasty part of her mind and watch her bend to him.

(So unfortunate, that they would have to meet again, naked and barefoot in snow, after having authored a constellation together! – splitting the sky open with it, dismay and revelry.)

Everything he has known and loved so. Gone.

For a moment he considers the merits of mercy – to snuff her out and let that star die in his palms before it can disintegrate any further into inelegance. Rather more pathetic than it would have been when he had his first chance, when she may have imploded magnificently and tried to take him with her, stellar barbs wrapped around his throat.

No fun.

He passes his tongue over his lips and moves in closer, his mind a wriggling vipers’ nest of everything that had passed between them – how she had rankled him and tested him; how she had yielded to him, willingly, in the end.

And everything that has happened since – how he had ensnared himself in indigo and had paused for a moment when that buckskin boy had donned his stars, secure in a thin bright, teal light around his body and he thought… 

—but it had slipped his mind (has slipped his mind even now, face-to-face with her), as his whelps (and possible whelps) so often do. At the time, he had eyes for only the girl that the boy seemed to watch over like a guard dog. The minutia of how they came to be together (that they might both be his dropped seeds – but of course, for their conceptions were alike fires, both! – bright, destructive and beautiful) had not occurred to him, as he hunted only for that rich and mischievous blue.

And then, the rapture. The bald-faced thievery, plucking the gems from their bodies one by one and holding them captive at the false mountain.

“How do you feel? Without your pretty stars, Lirren?” It is mocking – sharp and wry, a cornered dog snarling. But most of all, his words roil with anger, and in his own way, it is meant to be a cup of bittered wine shared between them.