violence
Restored.
She had waited with bated breath, expecting to be stripped again, but the moment had not come. She had remained whole, the unique thrumming of her powers in her veins, steady as a heartbeat.
And so, she went about restoring her bones.
She’d gone first to the mountain’s threshold, where her bone-creature had collapsed, but the bones are long gone, scavenged by hungry animals. She had expected as much, but the odd pang that strikes her when she confirms this is strange and dreary.
But she shakes it off the best she can, and she wanders, a scavenger herself – she walks the beach where they fling themselves into the waves, and she finds a new equine skeleton. She pulls it forth, assembles it, and it walks beside her. Soon enough, she has crowned it in a buck’s horns, and giving it wolf’s teeth. She is still looking for a shorter body, to mimic her old bone creature – this current one is a bit too tall, too boringly equid, it lacks the menagerie feel of her old creation.
Still. Simply walking to the clack of bones is a sweet comfort.
And this is how she walks now, accompanied by a mismatched skeleton trailing at her hip. Keeping it animated is like second nature – bone-magic had always come easiest to her, a natural thing, it’s not like the corpses, not like the possession.
The horn she’d once wielded – the tool she’d used for killing – is gone now, fractured apart with the restoration of her current powers, but she doesn’t miss it.
She enters the meadow to the symphony of clacking bones, a black and sometimes beautiful mare with fever-bright eyes and power fresh in her blood, ready to play, ready for them.
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips
