violence
She pulls bones from the river, and builds with them.
It’s not much – small bones, mostly, broken and worn by the rushing water. Small, drowned things, she suspects.
Her creation is nowhere near masterful – her penchant for architecture only goes so far. It’s a slop-sided pile of bones, her attempt at a throne in miniature, but it barely holds that shape. Her materials are poor, she thinks, blaming the tools rather than the carpenter.
Where her architecture excels is in the creature who lurks beside her, a skeleton that is a menagerie of creatures, horses and bobcats and wolves, pieced together into a monster that click-clacks beside her when she moves. It’s mostly useless, this creature, and it crumbles to dust when she is distracted. But she is fond of it, of the noise of bones clicking beside her, of the way it makes them stare – in fear, in horror, in wanting, she doesn’t care, she just likes the weight of their eyes on her.
Other than the bones, she’s not particularly remarkable. She’s pretty enough, but this is of no importance to her, she wishes she was more of a monster (she’s made herself sick with envy more than once, jealous of her monstrous sisters with their alien bodies and whip-sharp tails).
She has her bones, at least. An ability unique to her (among her family, at least – mother aside, they were simply monsters). She takes some comfort in this, a sweetness to even out her bitterness.
Her creation crumbles, and she curses. Petty, she scatters the bones, throwing them all over the river’s shore, as if a small massacre had taken place there.
She is much better at destroying than she is creating.
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips
