bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
Her words remain trapped behind her closed mouth, but he hears them all the same, as if she was screaming them into his ear. He wonders at what cruel hand had been dealt to make her feel as though no one would come for her—as if no one would ever travel to see her. As if she was but an orphan. (But she’s not. She’s not.) He can feel the familial ties rooting around her, drawing her back even now. He traces them languidly, to the dying father, the worried mother. He traces them far and wide, noting how many generations it goes back before theirs cross—at the usual spots, the Adam and Eve of their land.
It is not a close enough relation for him to draw any meaningful magic from it, but he feels it regardless.
He remains still underneath her gaze, unflinchingly returning it, scrutinizing beneath the matted mess of his mulberry forelock. His heavy head is dyed darker than the rest of him and is unreadable save the faintest twitch of muscle in his jaw where teeth clench in thought. “I know you come here,” he answers easily without the faintest hint of humor, rolling his bleeding shoulder. “And I know a lot more than your name.” Her confession fails to register with him, the truth of it so blatant that he could never imagine it even needing to be acknowledged. Of course he had the upper hand. He so rarely had anything but.
“What would you like to know of me, Marble?”
There is little to know and yet everything—constellations spinning within his veins. Should he tell her of how he spent years trapped in otherworldly dimensions with his sister? How he had pulled family away from the world to keep them safe from war and ended up trapped instead? Should he tell her about the weight of the anchor that sits in him—how he and his twin rest on the border of life and death? Or should he tell her about the way his heart beats and yet he rarely feels it, the emotions that others feel so keenly somehow dulling themselves against his senses? So much to say and yet no words to translate it.
But he doesn’t have time to ponder it because he is engrossed in her reaction to the muting of the world. The way she flutters in the breeze, dark eyes growing wide, the whole of her swelling as if she could make herself large enough to find the pieces of reality’s fabric to yank it back into place. The faintest of smiles plays at the edges of his mouth and he laughs quietly at her question, amused in spite of himself. “If I was killing you, you would know it.” He reaches for the different threads of the world around them, finding the one of her heartbeat and releasing it so that she can hear it, although perhaps softer than usual.
He reaches for the breeze and redirects it, sending the cool spring air flowing through the forest to whirl around her ankles, stirring up the leaves and then flooding up her sides. He gently manipulates the senses of her as it goes, ignoring the continued dripping of blood. He lets her feel the breeze as it musses her mane. He lets her smell the damp earth and the rain that had recently fallen. He feeds her pieces of the world around them but, for reasons unknown, gives her only the kindest pieces, muffled and soft.
And he watches, curious and unsure of why he was here at all.
woolf
I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste
