I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin
(and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)
Bruise, too, grows fat on the ease of life in the wasteland—on the relative comfort to be found within the grey and the dust, on the bodies that persevere despite the lack of commodities. He, however, has not grown compliant. He had spent his time mastering the Fear, practicing on the prey as they fall into his lap, hunting them down with a fierce and a singular determination. He has mastered his skills as an artist, taking the different materials and shaping them beneath the power of his own will, the pressure of his very palms and the sweat of his brow turning raw clay into something resembling art, resembling beauty.
Still, although the Fear grows within his belly like the wretched thing that it is, although he himself grows tall and broad and wicked, there is an air of boredom in his flat eyes. There was more to life than just this. There was more than taking these crumbs and savoring them between his teeth. He longed for real meat to enjoy, to satisfy his appetite with the blood and the gore, the ripping of flesh until he was swollen with it.
So his smile splits his handsome face when he hears his father call for them, the resulting grin wide and cold. He turns from the crevice upon which he stood to make his way toward Pollock, his body of soot and gold moving forward to place himself near the front. His shoulders roll, the muscles that rope over them notably no longer juvenile, and he inclines his heavy-horned head, the thin, watery light glinting off their gleaming curves. He doesn’t say anything at the promotion, at the acknowledgement, but whatever heart he has clenches in his chest with pride, with the need to earn his father’s approval.
“I will take Nerine,” he says with a spark burning in his coal eyes. He would love nothing more than to enter the sea-locked kingdom, to find the roost of women. He has heard stories of the Amazonian women and their strength, their might, but he does not feel Fear when he thinks of them. Just hunger.
