[private] i'm not going to change, so stay out of my way. || pollock

[Pollock]

Enter again the sweet forest
     Enter the hot dream
       Come with us

His unsolicited advice would be to cast off the anchorage of love –

That nasty, insidious bastard of weakness and trust;
He had untangled himself from it a very, very long time ago. It had been in him, perhaps, as it is in everyone. The instinct to foster it – the way it guides, like Polaris bright, to mother and mother’s warm side. (The original love.) That had turned to ash in his mouth and when nobody swooped in to keep his heart warm, it had hardened and cooled and then it had turned vile and

here we are.

Now it festered inside a box locked tight and buried under a hundred leagues of clay and memories pressed into fossilization. What little of it that had clung to the dead ends of his brain had mutated – as all good things do in his particularly rancid genetic soup – these freaks were what made him clash with such violence against the barbed body of Lirren, or the dark body of Syntyche, seeking the thrill of owning some parcel of her; the same thing that drives him to pick endlessly at Sinew’s defenses, holding her close if only to make sure she becomes nobody but his ever again.

Like touch, love is an ugly thing for him; brutal and corrupt. It couldn’t hurt him that way, as it had hurt her.

That would be his advice, if he didn’t enjoy the way it drove her to him.
Funny, she is not the first woman of Tephra to find his darkness in a trying hour.

(Darkness calls to darkness – he would bet, if he were a betting man, that both of them were darker than they seem. Most are. Some fight it. Some fight it victoriously.

Some just need encouragement.)

She smells sulphurous and sweet. Tephra is rich and blossoming, and she carries that with her on her skin and between the rows of clean, pretty feathers. It is a welcome smell, one he had hoped he would find again. Preferably alone, and so she cometh – perhaps unaware of how her scathing tone and biting eyes arouse a hydra of hunger in him. 
‘Hm,’ he grunts, as she spits at him, with not even a hint of honorific on her tongue. Impolite.

“You should have,” he leans against an old tree, one well scarred by his restless horns, “and so it might have been wise to keep to the light. But you didn’t.” Foolish. “Why are you here, then? If not to sulk – hmm, unless it was not an accident.” 

The gift-giver runs his tongue over his always-dry lips, “Were you... looking for me, Ellyse? Have you grown sick of your king?”

the gift-giver