lost among the wolves; any

[Graveside]

The bats have left the bell tower

The victims have been bled

I can only drift among the tall sea grasses with no destination. I almost feel like I am floating but the sharp sting of cold air sends me reeling. My head feels too light and I hate to admit it but also too quiet. Without my shifting, I am lost in my own thoughts.

(the dead no longer speak to me)

I had tried to fit in with these women but they are loud with gnashing teeth and shattered glass dreams. They try to force spoonful of them down each other throats with relentless shrieks and spit addled lips. They do not listen but simply wait for their turn to talk. I move away from the group even though I was eager to help. I was excused as an idiot, dim and young.

(I never realized I could be invisible even when I was whole)

I wander from the shores of Nerine to the meadow. I long for Velis...for his touch...his breath. It was in this very space that he had come to me and I have been his everlasting and ever loving Night. I swore myself to him always under that blinding moonshine. I feel the empty ache of a desperate womb for the child that no longer resides. Nimfa, sweet child, is with Velis. They abandoned me.

(I am garbage)

I can not remain among the living and the dead have turned their backs to me. I have never felt so lost...unwanted...incomplete.

graveside

[Belgarath]

Were Belgarath born a natural predator, he would slink through the grass with the greatest of ease, gluttonous stomach roaring, while his fang-filled mouth waters at the thought of hot, tangy blood. He would stalk his prey relentlessly, playing on their fears until the poor creatures was a nervous, exhausted wreck; eyes darting back and forth, flanks trembling, foaming at the mouth. And then, half-tiger and half-viper, he would launch himself at the unfortunate soul, clenching his jaws around their spine, or windpipe, or whatever vulnerable part might be closest. Then it would be done - and he would feast. Crack the marrow from its flesh-stripped bones. Sleep. Wait until the hunger rumbles in him once more.

He stalks likes a predator, remembering the last time he found a poor, lost soul wandering all by their lonesome. His grunts of pain were nice, but oh, Bel likes it best when they scream for him. His demons did all the hard work; searing the boy’s body and soul with… whatever it is that seems to hurt so damn much. A salty-sweet smell drifts towards the dappled stallion, and even as his nostrils flare to try and dissect the smell, he alters his meandering course. It leads him to a rather downtrodden looking mare - drowning, perhaps, in her own self-indulgent misery. Oh poor little girl, to have the world treat her thus.

He is smooth - the ice made his body like marble (though he thinks it must be melting by now - there are signs of ageing that weren’t there before), and oh, how the mask hides the devil inside. He does not purr the way that some charismatic villains do. No, Belgarath rumbles, his bass-like voice cutting through the silence. “What’s wrong, little girl?” For she is little - compared to him.

belgarath

[Graveside]

The bats have left the bell tower

The victims have been bled

I can sense the chill of him long before he sees me. I am invisible in my mind after all. No one bothers with the living dead girl. But no, no ,no. The ghosts with their blistered and splitting lips are gone. The wind howl of torn throats can no longer reach me.

The gray stallion is upon me with a practiced ease that was unusual for a stallion of his size but somewhere in the darkness of eyes and soul I can almost make out Velis. Lashes fall over the pewter of my eyes as I simply watch the way his whiskered lips split and form the syllables that he tries to reach me with but for a moment, I am a moon that is shifting out of orbit.

Going, going, gone.

I can see his skin more closely now as I study it with disregard to his words. How can one be scared of death when they are so well acquainted with it? Death would at least allow me to join the others on the other side of the plateau and put my relentless purgatory to an end. The stallion is odd...unusual...and I decide I will meet his question with my own voice rather than just walking away. "This." I say with low tones as I give a minor toss of my head to reflect the surrounding area of the meadow. "All of this is wrong." (Beqanna is all wrong. On it's head and upside down wrong. Beqanna has left me naked and alone.) I do not care to elaborate but instead opt to look at him flatly with a single pricked ear. I draw a breath and taste frost on my tongue but also death. It is familiar to me and it manages to draw me a big closer while the faintest curve of a smile brushes over my lips like a lover's caress. "And you? Come to talk to little girls like me?" I am not a little girl but I am barely a mare. It is an odd place to be.

My reply is not of biting attitude. I do not spit it at him with rolling eyes and flirting tongues. No. I simply reply in the replication of his own question. I have no need to mouth off to this man for what would it get me? What would such disrespect gain me? Nothing more than the satisfaction of being just like every other mare I have ever encountered.

I was perfectly fine not acquiring that as a part of my character.

I watch him now with waiting eyes and notice the slide of glistening water as it occasionally drips from the points of his body.

graveside