[open] looking for heaven found the devil in me; any

[Rodrik]

It hungers. The hunger is an obstinate version of the way a newborn craves for sustenance. While once the creature’s biology had made it capable to derive its energy and nutrients from a diet consisting of a variety of food sources, such as plants and berries. These have no longer been enough. It desires something more, something that beats with the very essence of life that is far beyond the physical nature of meaty flesh from another. The very soul of another is what it craves – the essence of life itself. The heathen is incapable of pushing away this desire, not when it has for so long been engrained into the biology, the epitome of darkness that flows through its very existence. It was always born to prey on the others, after all it is a predator. It follows It must survive; it must live. It will hunt. The meadow of Beqanna is a favorable hunting ground for the hellion, knowing that life comes and goes through here. It does not hide within the darkness, behind the shadows of the world. The monster reveals itself, unafraid. What is there to fear when you, the very image of darkness, itself are the devil? It is strung together by bones and muscles. Cartilage, ligaments and tendons are the only thing that hold the monster together. Rotted flesh hangs in strips and patches all over the body. There are few patches of the once bright chestnut coat scattered, but they are ragged and scuffed into one huge mess. As it moves forward, bones crack, rattling against one another. It sounds as if the body of the beast will break, but it will not. It eyes are hollowed and lifeless. It is only the hunger that fills the beast’s eyes with life. The scent of others, the very essence of their souls taunt it. The beast moves through the meadow; desperateness fills the creature’s nutmeg-colored eyes as it searches among the bodies. It is a very feast spread out for its choosing, as if Christmas could not have come any sooner. Yet, once glance sent his way by another will send them running for the hills. The devil is an abomination; every nightmare wrapped into one; a demon from hell. It is hungry.

Rodrik

angels banished from heaven have no choice but to become devils

character info: here | character reference: here | image © uribaani

[Witching]

Sometimes One thinks of fire. And pine smoke. They are what she had yawned her eyes open to as she slipped from mother and into the mud. As she waited for Two and Three to arrive (a bitter taste of alone) she could see the gape of wounds and ruination in the pinewood. It had been nothing to her – normal. Beautiful, maybe, with its plume rising high above the dark teeth of trees and its stain of blood-red in the cracks of scorched earth.

Her crib of ash and charcoal. Her playground of war and magic.

(“Set.” Her first word, mouthed around the sour taste of distrust and suspicion.) She leaves Two and Three, perhaps sleeping, and every step feels like the uncomfortable tug of a choke around her neck – each finger presses its bruise onto her skin, ‘too far.’ “I’ll be back,” she whispers, softly, to her mirror and her completion. They always come together again. They gyrate around one another, whorling around pulls of gravity – they may stray as their trajectory juts out into cold, lonely space, but they are dragged back, always, by the base principles of physics. 

She has utter faith in the science of their germination and birth – queer and unnaturally warmed, but so unnervingly together.

But she smells it, it tickles her nose and her brain, and it baits her from them.

She remembers.

“I have to find something.”

She hunts, too.

(One. Two. Three. He had named them, each. “Witching. Gravely. Reap,” because mother had slipped back, dumb and deaf, into the darkness, tongue a-loll.) She sniffs the air, following the meaty scent like a hungry cat – soft-trodden and quiet. The smell of rot – memory comes with it, riding those strings of blackened and fly-eaten meat – mingles with the stagnant scent of dead grass, long interned in winter and excavated by spring.

She scents the air, sucking in long inhales, her expression unchanged, as it is wont to do.

Like a tracker fingering prints in the dust, she finds him. Though, his trail is more like heavy feet in deep mud, unmistakable and clean-edged. He may as well have dropped maggots like breadcrumbs behind him as he stalked.

She looks at him, and she can see he is hungry.

She blinks at him, as she once did, so long ago. But the brazen, naked flashes of grimy chestnut between the rancid land masses of dead flesh make her nostrils flare and quiver with the instinct to draw away from it. He must be like mum, she supposes, and she takes a careful step forwards – careful because she has Two and Three and return to. And he is very hungry.

“Rodrik.” She mouths, her lip twitching. And he will not hurt her, she knows (in the way a lamb knows to follow wool, even if the wolf has skinned and donned it). 

Long ago, he had named them, each – Witching, Gravely, Reap – and had touched them, one by one and smiled.