violence
His tail snaps across his hocks and for a moment it simply seems to be for show, and then she feels it. It’s like breathing in winter air, a moment of coldness in the lungs, and then it readjusts to her warmth and she is whole.
She reaches out with her necromancy and it floods over Pangea, eager, like a caged animal finally let loose. There aren’t many bones here – it’s a relatively new land – but she finds pieces, a buck’s skull, a bobcat’s body, and these are what she calls forth. As she has always done, she reassembles them – places the deer’s skull atop the bobcat’s body, weaves it a rough-hewn crown from the bones of birds and squirrels. It’s a rough creation, nothing like the majestic thing that had crumpled at the mountain, but it’s satisfying, to create in this way.
God, she missed it.
She calls the bone-thing forth, and it walks past her and cocks its head to stare upward at the boy. She moves its jaw and for a moment the lower jaw detaches almost completely, a bit grotesque – she’s out of practice! – but she reattaches it quick enough.
She moves its jaw again, murmurs “thanks.”
She can’t throw her voice in any kind of convincing way, but she’s always liked to speak for the bones.
She considers leaving, then, but a small kernel of fear exists in her – that he could take it away as easily as it was given. So, she mustn’t be rude.
“For all the talk, there’s not much death here. Though, that’s not all I can do,” she says, and with a sharp intake of breath she rockets into his mind, crude and brutal. She is there long enough to gleam that he can do wonderful things, to sample a sliver of fear on her tongue, and then his mind rejects her and she is rocketed back into her own mind.
She smiles, prettily. That may have been rude, in hindsight. But she is too delighted in her newfound wholeness to care.
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips
