Feel the good cold stinging blood - Ajatar/Harmonia

[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

He draws his tongue across his dry, dark lips.
For her, he smiles—though it is strange and reptilian, it is all he has.

It is a mimic of paternity, comity—not a good one. 

He can only hope she falls for it; he can only hope the wideness of her eyes that day, and the cower from her overbearing mother, meant the girl had been brought up to be naive and pliable and had not yet found someone fool enough to teach her she is better than this place. 
(Someone younger than her had fallen for it, many years ago; someone needy and meek, too, found himself in the gift-giver’s clutch.

He is good at this, but he is rusty.)

The things he knows about this young woman makes him want to treat her mildly, not only because she is powerful, beyond measure perhaps, but because he wants her. (He wants in many ways—hundred-headed and thousand-mouthed is his desire; mostly, he thinks of that burnt world, empty but for the two of them, and this sparks with excitement.)
So, he does not bark at her or growl; he does not creep around her to test the give of those scales down her thin legs. Sometimes, strangely enough and much to his chagrin, females do not like being treated as roughly as Sinew does.
(You never know until you try, of course, but for now he stays softened—in his own way.)

“Hello,” and this too tries to be delicate, gravelly and low but bereft of most threat, “I never got your name, when your mother introduced us.” A habit of his, the one thing he cannot seem to learn—never let a weapon keep their name, it makes them stronger.
“I have not seen her around much,” he says, frowning a twitchy frown, “how is she?”

His Fear sings out for her, perhaps attracted to the annihilation she bears, but he keeps it shackled and barred.
Not now, he tilts his heavy, horned head, blinking, now we pry at the maternal.

POLLOCK
the gift giver