violence
She does not expect her cry to be answered. Did not want it to be, for now, empty as she is (and it feels empty, without the bones, without the constant of keeping them erected). Others are no fun unless she can make the bones dance around them, unless she can prod into their minds (some of them are so delightfully open, she recalls the mare whom she had made fly from the cliff, who had landed with a twisted neck and a curl of blood at the corner of her mouth).
But there are sounds, a distant murmur of voices she can’t make out and then a stallion appears, silver bay and framed by trees. Usually, she would send her bone-thing to greet him, a wolf-fanged mouth open in a macabre grin; a thing to test the waters on if they will interest her or not.
Now, there is no such test, and she only looks upon him dully.
“No,” she says simply – she is not all right, she is emptied, poured out in a pile of bones left on some invisible threshold, then adds, “I had something taken from me.”
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips
