12-10-2017, 01:35 PM
<center><link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Spectral+SC|Playfair+Display+SC" rel="stylesheet"><div style="width: 600px; background: url('https://s7.postimg.org/o3l59qubv/Dante2.png'); padding-top: 5px; background-position: top; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-color: #000;box-shadow: 0px 0px 20px #000;border: 1px solid #202022;border-radius: 6%;"><div style="width: 590px; background: url('https://s7.postimg.org/o3l59qubv/Dante2.png'); padding-top: 10px; background-position: top; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-color: #293436;border-radius: 5%; box-shadow: 0px 0px 20px #000 inset;"><div style="font-family: 'Playfair Display SC', serif; color: #9eacaf;text-transform:uppercase;font-size: 11px;text-align:center;text-shadow: 0px 0px 10px #000, .5px 1px 10px #000;margin-top: 250px;line-height: 100%;font-weight:bold;">We cast a long shadow, sucking all the cold beneath</div><div style="width:540px;height:200px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 80px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; padding: 10px; opacity: .8; font-family: Times;color: #000;font-size: 12px; line-height: 140%;border-radius: 5%; text-align: justify;border: 3px double #293939; background-color: #8c9ea0;opacity: .8;box-shadow: 0 0 50px #293939 inset;overflow:auto;"> He is not like the rest.
He is not riddled with whimsical fantasies and unrealistic expectations like they are. He was brought forth into a world both restless and cruel, and he held no resentment, and no bitterness. From the moment his lithe and awkward body split apart from the membrane sac that had nurtured him in the womb, he had been forced to know a life without love – without affection. His mother held no love for him (<i>her heart is callous; a shriveled and ugly thing</i>), permitting him to suckle from her swollen teat only when it suited her, to keep the tissue and muscle lining his angular, bony body from falling away. To keep him from falling asunder. When his round and supple belly became too full to sustain the flow of her milk, a swift kick to his ribcage was often enough to stop the rivulets of liquid gold from trickling down his ravenous jaw – but could Thana be blamed?
He is not at all like the rest.
Where blunt and yellowed teeth often lie beyond the parted lips of equine, his were lined neatly with the teeth of a violent predator along a pale pink gum line, sharp and dangerous. Pristine. Too often did he pierce the flesh of his mother when his hunger became voracious, and it was only made worse by the taste of her blood. Alas, he is unshaken when she rebukes him – he does not yearn for her warmth and comfort as all the rest do, perhaps in part because he does not know any different.
Still youthful and unaware that his upbringing is at all unusual, his long and gangly limbs carry him through the thickened brush, without a care and on a whim. He does not carry himself as prey, but as predator – each slow and languid stride uncharacteristically slow and deliberate; lacking the spirit and energy of a child. Across the subtle slope of his dull gray spine, delicate scaling ebbs away at the soft and supple flesh of his hip and legs. Each dark scale lays over another, sheathing him in an iridescent sheen along the lower-half of his body, and each stride forward catches the pale and waning sunlight, as his curiosity is piqued by a gathering.
A gathering no one invited him to; a gathering of what should be those like <i>him</i> -
But he is not like this rest.
They are
(<i>prey</i>)
And he is –
What is he?
He is quiet, moving closer with nary a sound to give him away, and his two-toned gaze of burning scarlet and dreary gray peer over each face, a soft and subtle smile curling at the corner of his lips. Not at all insidious. Not at all threatening. Merely .. <i>enthralled</i>, having never been so close to so many as once, having never been far from the breast of his mother before. He is quiet, and attentive, his focus rapt upon the gleefully woven story of a false prophet and the promise of a gift – with the promise of a wish granted, if only he could find the one dubbed <i>Santa Claus</i>.
He does not wait like the rest.
He is gone, muscle-bound legs bounding through the dense woodland, with the scent of dying hickory and rotting pine to envelope the darkness of his skin. He does not hesitate upon discovering a fallen birch; his speed is only increased, and with a hitch of breath caught in his throat, he is bounding over it, soaring as if a cloaking of winged appendages had sprouted from his muddied flesh, soaring! When he does land, it is anything but graceful (<i>tall and gangling, his legs cannot keep up with his enthusiasm, and he does stumble – but it is a quick recovery, and he is off again</i>).
<i>He would find him first.</i> He would find him before all the rest, to take what is his, to plant the seed of his deepest desire into the heart of the Giver, to make it blackened and cold as all the rest of him was. His lungs are heaving with the frigidity of the air, clutching tightly to the delicate tissue of his alveoli, but he is too captivated by the allure of what could <i>be</i> to stop and rest. When he does finally slow, satisfied that the rest would be left far behind him, his crescent-shaped nostrils tilt toward the dreary sky – inhaling slowly, carefully. Drawing in a breath as if it were his last lifetime; engrossing himself in all that the trail might have to offer. There is something –
Something, so close –
He is not alone.
His pupils dilate as the dry and brittle leaves and fallen bark crunch beneath the weight of another that is not at all like him (<i>not prey, not him</i>), and his heart does palpate roughly inside of his chest – thump, thump, thump, it goes! A wry smile tugs at the corner of his mouth as his ears flatten tightly to the crest of his skull, a wickedness filling his rapidly beating heart. <b>”There you are,”</b> he muses, without fear, without uncertainty – he is raw energy and pure adrenaline, turning toward the sound. <b>”I’ve been looking for you, <i>Santa Claus</i>.”</b>
</div><div style="font-family: 'Spectral SC', serif; font-size: 60px;color: #000; text-align:center;text-shadow: 0px 0px 6px #8a9ea0, 0 0 100px #8a9ea0;margin-top: -12px;margin-bottom: -12px;letter-spacing: 2px;margin-bottom: -50px;">DANTE</div><div style="font-family: 'Playfair Display SC', serif; color: #9eacaf;text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 10px;text-shadow: 0px 0px 10px #000, .5px 1px 10px #000;padding-bottom: 80px;font-weight:bold;">but there’s a reason a killer is a lover with a knife in its teeth</div></center>
He is not riddled with whimsical fantasies and unrealistic expectations like they are. He was brought forth into a world both restless and cruel, and he held no resentment, and no bitterness. From the moment his lithe and awkward body split apart from the membrane sac that had nurtured him in the womb, he had been forced to know a life without love – without affection. His mother held no love for him (<i>her heart is callous; a shriveled and ugly thing</i>), permitting him to suckle from her swollen teat only when it suited her, to keep the tissue and muscle lining his angular, bony body from falling away. To keep him from falling asunder. When his round and supple belly became too full to sustain the flow of her milk, a swift kick to his ribcage was often enough to stop the rivulets of liquid gold from trickling down his ravenous jaw – but could Thana be blamed?
He is not at all like the rest.
Where blunt and yellowed teeth often lie beyond the parted lips of equine, his were lined neatly with the teeth of a violent predator along a pale pink gum line, sharp and dangerous. Pristine. Too often did he pierce the flesh of his mother when his hunger became voracious, and it was only made worse by the taste of her blood. Alas, he is unshaken when she rebukes him – he does not yearn for her warmth and comfort as all the rest do, perhaps in part because he does not know any different.
Still youthful and unaware that his upbringing is at all unusual, his long and gangly limbs carry him through the thickened brush, without a care and on a whim. He does not carry himself as prey, but as predator – each slow and languid stride uncharacteristically slow and deliberate; lacking the spirit and energy of a child. Across the subtle slope of his dull gray spine, delicate scaling ebbs away at the soft and supple flesh of his hip and legs. Each dark scale lays over another, sheathing him in an iridescent sheen along the lower-half of his body, and each stride forward catches the pale and waning sunlight, as his curiosity is piqued by a gathering.
A gathering no one invited him to; a gathering of what should be those like <i>him</i> -
But he is not like this rest.
They are
(<i>prey</i>)
And he is –
What is he?
He is quiet, moving closer with nary a sound to give him away, and his two-toned gaze of burning scarlet and dreary gray peer over each face, a soft and subtle smile curling at the corner of his lips. Not at all insidious. Not at all threatening. Merely .. <i>enthralled</i>, having never been so close to so many as once, having never been far from the breast of his mother before. He is quiet, and attentive, his focus rapt upon the gleefully woven story of a false prophet and the promise of a gift – with the promise of a wish granted, if only he could find the one dubbed <i>Santa Claus</i>.
He does not wait like the rest.
He is gone, muscle-bound legs bounding through the dense woodland, with the scent of dying hickory and rotting pine to envelope the darkness of his skin. He does not hesitate upon discovering a fallen birch; his speed is only increased, and with a hitch of breath caught in his throat, he is bounding over it, soaring as if a cloaking of winged appendages had sprouted from his muddied flesh, soaring! When he does land, it is anything but graceful (<i>tall and gangling, his legs cannot keep up with his enthusiasm, and he does stumble – but it is a quick recovery, and he is off again</i>).
<i>He would find him first.</i> He would find him before all the rest, to take what is his, to plant the seed of his deepest desire into the heart of the Giver, to make it blackened and cold as all the rest of him was. His lungs are heaving with the frigidity of the air, clutching tightly to the delicate tissue of his alveoli, but he is too captivated by the allure of what could <i>be</i> to stop and rest. When he does finally slow, satisfied that the rest would be left far behind him, his crescent-shaped nostrils tilt toward the dreary sky – inhaling slowly, carefully. Drawing in a breath as if it were his last lifetime; engrossing himself in all that the trail might have to offer. There is something –
Something, so close –
He is not alone.
His pupils dilate as the dry and brittle leaves and fallen bark crunch beneath the weight of another that is not at all like him (<i>not prey, not him</i>), and his heart does palpate roughly inside of his chest – thump, thump, thump, it goes! A wry smile tugs at the corner of his mouth as his ears flatten tightly to the crest of his skull, a wickedness filling his rapidly beating heart. <b>”There you are,”</b> he muses, without fear, without uncertainty – he is raw energy and pure adrenaline, turning toward the sound. <b>”I’ve been looking for you, <i>Santa Claus</i>.”</b>
</div><div style="font-family: 'Spectral SC', serif; font-size: 60px;color: #000; text-align:center;text-shadow: 0px 0px 6px #8a9ea0, 0 0 100px #8a9ea0;margin-top: -12px;margin-bottom: -12px;letter-spacing: 2px;margin-bottom: -50px;">DANTE</div><div style="font-family: 'Playfair Display SC', serif; color: #9eacaf;text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 10px;text-shadow: 0px 0px 10px #000, .5px 1px 10px #000;padding-bottom: 80px;font-weight:bold;">but there’s a reason a killer is a lover with a knife in its teeth</div></center>