the lord will smite thee with madness; daeryssa

[chantale]

my corrupt nature is empty of grace; bent unto sin, and only unto sin; and that continually. Monsters slumber, and they rise. She exists in fragments, her life is pieces, stitched together – there are gaps, sometimes years of them, when she slumbered. (Not that the body slumbered. But her mind was not there. Or, not her right one. If there is a right one, in a thing so warped as she.) Chantale was here. Then she was not. Blink, and there was a girl, blood-stained, throwing a heart at her feet. Blink, and there was a foal with wings folded delicate and bones as brittle as a sparrows. Blink, and someone is screaming, and there is blood on her legs, on her lips. Blink, and nothing. Blink, and here she is again. She looks as she always does – a thing of plastic, more sculpted than bred. It’s beautiful and horrifying, the way she’s put together, an ideal come to life and sent to walk among them. (Not that come to life is the right word, not exactly.) She is gray, a color of wet skies, of dishwater. Her skin is cool to the touch, slightly waxen, like a creature dead and waiting for rigor mortis to lay hands upon it. (Perhaps she is.) Nothing brought her here. Only the faint whim of her – a switch thrown, and the monster rises, once more Chantale in the body, once more my corpse masterpiece returning home in this queer gray vessel with eyes that are somehow too bright and too dead all at once. Her eyes rove like spotlights over the meadow because she is not looking, she is hunting. She is hunting for warmth, for things with shy smiles and slim bodies, for those who would fall to their knees before her. There is a stupid kind of animal cunning to my girl, see – perhaps why she has persisted for so long – and the cunning finds them and leeches on, parasitic. Sometimes she convinces herself she loves them. Maybe sometimes she does, but the love that spills from her is something vile, something so twisted and misshapen that to call it love would be laughable. And then, a girl: pale blue like the sky, striped in purple like royalty, and a smile breaks open on her face like a sore. She is graceless as she walks, steps heavy and belying the slow lurch of blood through her veins. But she makes her way, that sore-smile still on her greyed lips. “Hello,” she purrs to the girl, “my name is Chantale.” chantale how original a sin.

[Daeryssa]

Just stay away from the white light. I'd say your worst side's your best side.

Ugh. Pregnant. I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that there's a tiny, squirmy thing growing inside me, that it's only a matter of time until I can feel it. Writhing. Kicking. Distending my belly, squishing my insides out of place, making it impossible to ever be comfortable. I already feel fucking crazy, flipping back and forth between exhaustion and raging, restless discontent, a hunger I haven't been able to pin down or sate.

God, and then – nope, nope, it is way too soon to think about the and then part. About having to shove something that size out of my body, through parts I'm still pretty damn fond of. Parts I'd really like to be intact when all this is over and I've managed to expel the kid from my insides. And after all that? After the way the little parasite is going to wreck my body, it'll be...there. Existing. Forever. Well, or at least for a good couple of decades, assuming I don't completely fail at the whole, horrifying mommy thing. It'll be alive, and needing me for at least a while.

Here's hoping the thing inherits my comparative independent streak and not that clinging, cloying, ferocious family is everything bullshit from my hypocrite of a mother. Oh, she'd drop everything for her precious firstborn, her lost boy, her firebrand. Forgive him anything, even setting another of her children on fire. On fire! And why? Because my hormones kicked in a little earlier than he would've liked. Boo mother-fucking hoo. Set out to hunt him down as soon as she found out, sure, but to avenge me? Of course not. No, to rescue him from a karmic bitchslap. He left me feeling like a monster, like I had ruined our already shattered family, ground it into dust beneath my heels, like I deserved to burn.

Well fuck them all.

This body is mine. I just found a way to have some fun with it, just started to feel like I had a damn right to it, and this little monster comes along and thinks it gets to take over? I don't fucking think so. So even though I feel like shit, even though I'd rather curl up in a ball and sleep for a week, even though I feel about as sexy as a goddamn hippopotamus and the idea of anyone touching me right now makes me a little nauseous, I grit my teeth and drag myself out of the shelter of a far too cozy willow tree to hunt for anything, anything to chase away the feeling that my body isn't mine anymore.

As if summoned by my silent demand, she is beside me. There is nothing right about her, not the waxy grey of her skin or the lurching of her stride or those dead eyes too bright, too intent as she looks at me. Her voice skitters along my spine in a sickening caress, and I can't quite tell if the tingling in its wake is horror or hunger and right now I don't care.  “Chantale.” Her name is honey on my lips, if only because I need it to be. “A pleasure,” I croon, forcing my body forward, painting a sultry expression on my face as I draw near enough to touch her.

A teasing brush of my lips along her neck is enough to feel the unsettling cold of her skin. I offer her my name in return, matching that purring tone of hers. “I'm Ryss.” Not happy, curious, wide-eyed gypsy Dare-baby. Not caged, muted, weak little monster Daeryssa. I am Ryss, reckless and ravenous and reveling in the lightning singing in my veins as a lover sinks into my skin. Even if the storm is infuriatingly reluctant to wake back up and play, dammit.

Just when you think that you're alright, I'm crawling out from the inside.

Daeryssa

of the restless heart

[chantale]

my corrupt nature is empty of grace; bent unto sin, and only unto sin; and that continually. My corpse masterpiece has her own small brood, children who hold no love for her, children left bloodied and strange in her dust. They were all stupid things, lax-jawed fools who cringed and keened. Amazing, that her deadened body could even produce anything, it was a strange sort of magic that let the dead breed. (The last child delivered from her loins had been a son, sniveling and weak, a boy she bruised and left once his purpose had been served.) But the children don’t matter now – if indeed they ever did – because here before her is a vibrantly colored her, the swell of her belly barely noticeable, a girl crooning her name back to her and a sweet expression slapped on her charming little face. Both players in a game, maybe, but authenticity has never been of much interest to my corpse queen. The mare brushes her lips against the dishwater gray of her skin, which Chantale takes as an invite, she brushes her own muzzle along the mare, savored the warmth. She wants to press closer, lock their bodies, take her warmth – but it’s too soon. There are rules, see. Propriety. (A funny word, coming from her.) “Ryss,” she coos back, and likes the name, it’s short and easy and seductive. She doesn’t care if it’s a lie – she’s worn many names herself, the ones that strike her fancy. “And what are you doing out here alone? There’s monsters about.” Monsters who have slumbered and risen, even. Monsters who are hungry. chantale how original a sin.

[Daeryssa]

Just stay away from the white light. I'd say your worst side's your best side.

Cold, dead lips brush against my skin, an icy touch that leeches away a little warmth even in just a moment of contact. A delicious little shiver races down my spine in the wake of her brief caress, just a little bit wrong, a little bit wicked in its newness. Every body I've pressed against or arched into or writhed beneath has been warm, and the contrast is intriguing. As long as I don't look too hard at those too-bright, too-dead eyes, it could be fun to play with a snowstorm instead of lightning.

I like the sound of my name on those icy lips, and when I touch her again it's with a hint of fascination just starting to brew. The chill of her flesh seeps into me, siphoning off a little bit of my body heat as I explore the line of her jaw, the flat plane of her cheek. “Well you see,” I murmur, my mouth tracing the edge of her ear, “I'm beginning to like monsters.” Everyone else has been too gentle, too sweet, too soft. Monsters make the best playmates; they're not afraid to use their teeth, to draw blood, to make it hurt in all the right ways. “They're so much better at making me scream.”

Only one has been dark enough to get my heart pounding, rough enough to make me completely come undone and leave me melted into a pool of sunlight, basking in the aftermath, too exhausted even to stand as he walked away. Only one has had what it took to wake lightning in my veins; only one has lingered on my skin for days, weeks, as the marks we left behind healed. But he can't be the only one capable of it. Maybe I just have to find the right kind of monster. “Why, are you one of them?”

Just when you think that you're alright, I'm crawling out from the inside.

Daeryssa

of the restless heart

[chantale]

my corrupt nature is empty of grace; bent unto sin, and only unto sin; and that continually. She exists as their contrast – cold to their warmth, death to their life. She exists as their contrast, my corpse masterpiece, and some like it more than others. Some find something godlike in it, they coo her name and think of her as holy. Some are repulsed and turn, flee from her. She knows every reaction, savors each one in its own way. She in unsettling, my corpse masterpiece. Wrongness screams across her body – it is somehow too sculpted, like a thing made of wax rather than flesh. Her lips stretch too wide in their smiles. She exists, a contrast, though her pale dishwater gray compliments the girl’s light blue as if they are something lovely. The girl is eager, my corpse masterpiece can smell it on her breath as the lips trace along the rotten bones of her cheek. She coos things, and every word is a shovel digging that grave, an invitation asking her across the threshold. “Some have said as much,” she says, and sighs, as if put-upon, “but they were rather cowardly.” In her wake are kings and queens, are a dozen dead lovers, are strangers whom she passed like a ship in the night. She can feel the girl’s pulse pounding under her skin, alive and eager. “You aren’t scared, are you?” she murmurs, and touches her, presses closer. The girl is warm and strong, striking in her colors. And so eager. It’s so easy, like this, but it does not bore Chantale. She wonders, idly, what colors she might be beneath the blues and purples. (We all bleed red.) Her lips peel back and her teeth skate along the mare’s crest, down to her withers where there’s so little fat, only skin over the bone. chantale how original a sin.