11-14-2021, 11:16 AM
Let's be better strangers
He hasn't yet found the limit of his anger and his hurt, though it no longer blazes and blinds him, instead it pulses like a heartbeat, slipping through his veins and across his skin like a blush. Wherewolf has lost count now of the number of times that his mother has come back and been killed again, he's lost count of the number of times that neither of them apologized (he knows that her debt to him has long since been paid, but he is selfish and takes more than his share,) yet still he's angry and unwilling to let go. He's always been so good at wallowing.
When the summons comes, Wolfbane's son looks down at the sullen girl and she sneers at him but holds her tongue. There's a thought shared between them, not by magic but by habit, a pattern established over the year (two? he cannot remember now,) that they have been locked in this cycle. He kills her, she returns - why? Neverwhere has never been an optimistic creature, she cannot expect to be saved, so why does she bother to return to this? He suspects it is spite alone that draws her back to make herself a prison to her jailor. They are more alike than he is willing to admit.
Like so many times before, the Pampaian Lord leaves the broken child's body of his resurrected mother among the persistent tangle of vegetation, but this time he sets no duplicate to guard it when he sets off for the Mountain, trusting instead to Aela's dragonish greed to keep his investment safe.
The Dark God's voice makes the foothills tremble underfoot. Or maybe it's the anger of Beqanna, lurching and bucking to keep those that would answer Him from climbing their Mountain, but Wherewolf is not easily swayed. Like his mother, he is spiteful and contrary, and the Fairies' warnings only deepen his resolve - and his sharp-toothed scowl. It is with that scowl still fracturing the hard lines of his face that he finds himself face to face with the Mountain's defense. It's his mother, tall and serious, frowning down at him from an enormous height - no, not an enormous height, it's him that's shrunk. His wings lift lightly from his sides but the familiar weight seems so small and he turns a greenish eye back to see them, wingless and downy and frail. Neverwhere is not a giant, she is simply grown and he is the child.
"It's not safe to go, Wherewolf." There's no kindness in her voice, and no anger, only the gruff matter-of-factness that he remembers from his childhood. The dappled mare steps forward to embrace her son and he recoils. That isn't right, but some part of his heart stretches out in response. Their lives might have been so different, if only they had been different, if they had been better, but neither of them is. The colt's protestation quiets against the brush of warm skin and the gentle tug of teeth pulling at his tufted mane, but he cannot forget that dark body he left lying deathly still among the winter-hardy grasses. He cannot forget the memory dredged from obscure depths of those same bright teeth buried deep into the S-curl of his downy wing, jerking him upwards into the air, the memory of dark knees making his ribs crack. No matter how badly he wants this, he can't have it, and the Mountain cannot give it to him.
The illusion makes him furious. The boy rips himself away, filling the cold air with curses as he does, and the Mountain only watches impassively through those ice-blue eyes as he races further up the path. Neverwhere does not chase him, her magic spell now broken, and when he rounds the next bend he is adult again with an abruptness that makes him stumble and pause to gain his bearings. The ground still shakes, every step he takes makes it growl and shriek and he pins his ears back against the curve of his poll as if it will help but the piercing sound reverberates through his skull until it feels like it will crack open and spill its wicked contents onto the broken stone and snow underfoot, but the pegasus trudges onward, perversely, too obstinate to ever do what is good or even just better in the face of so much pressure.
Blood trickles from his nostrils and his ears, leaving a trail of poppy-red droplets on the frozen ground until his magic heals the broken web of arteries. His scowl is grisly, white teeth smeared with red, his face twisted with pain and petulance when he finally reaches the peak with bloodshot sclera that makes the blue-green of his eyes a startling contrast. Carnage is waiting for him there and he adjusts his path to bring himself closer to the magician-god, to the one that cursed Wherewolf's ancestors, that set his own creation into motion. That Wherewolf would not exist if not for Carnage is indisputable. Whether or not he feels any gratitude for that existence is far less certain.