god called in sick today

[Pollock]

Take. Take. Take.

(It had been a blessed thing to see.)

Because when they take, they take all.

It is how the mighty survive.

And what Carnage took had fouled instantly. Spectacularly. It had withered in his hands, spread like grey scabs, scaling down the skin of stone like some grotesque disease. And they fell, bloody and spent, with thunder and a roar of dust, those canyons of gold, milk and honey had collapsed and all the things that had once grown there, 

—they died, too.

(They take and they rearrange. Her land is furrowed with the scars of the mighty – old and new alike.)

There is something poetic about it, he thinks, as he picks his way through the nothingness left behind for them. A dead valley and decomposing cliff, crusted with that god-magic. That he should take her beautiful, newly birthed thing and damage it so. Beyond recognition. Beyond resuscitation. So utter barren and sterile.

They will always rise, and find their place.

A forest needs a wolf.

A child’s room needs a bed monster.

Beqanna needs its boogeymen.

(“Could use trees,” he had muttered to Bruise as they winded down the craggy path to the gorge below.

No matter, perhaps he could ask. Even dead and naked things would suit his needs.

He is a simple man.)

He recognizes her – gold for gold; the searing fury burning both their throats raw – from the meeting, where Carnage had summoned them and they came in rows like sheep. He’s not used to being the flock anymore, but he’ll play. The gift giver is not stupid. Never has been. He has been a worm in mud, a boy, a wretch and a demigod of Fear. But not stupid. He’d have been snuffed out long ago if that were the case.

He knows to go to the trough and follow the hand, if need be.

And their situation calls for need.

“It sure is something, isn’t it?” his voice is gravel and many subtle things besides. Like her, he does not see the ugliness. Just land. Hard rock and dried riverbed. He finds beauty in his forest, to be sure. And in flanks and lathered shoulder blades. 

This is another kind of beauty, the brushstrokes rugged and ghoulish. 

He lets his unwelcomed wings settle at his side. “Your name?” he eyes her with those black-brown eyes, tastes something powerful on her. But they are all (mostly all) disarmed things now – pale and vulnerable. He gives the boy at her side a glance, but he scents something alike weakness on him (like a carnivore is supposed to smell fear, with slaver moistening his lip). He knows what it’s like to ensnare younger minds, though he has always had to do it the old fashioned way.

“I’m Pollock.”