lord, I fashion dark gods too;
He isn’t sure what drives him to her, this time. But before he knows it he is there, hidden in the shadows, and for a moment he watches her. She is lovely, in this twilight, but that is easy – there are many lovely creatures in Beqanna, they come a dime a dozen. No, she is something more, that strange and indefinable thing that keeps him returning to her, that keeps him finding new ways to test her.
(And oh, he has a test biding its time, a thing that is tethered and quiet in the shadows.)
He emerges – the thing that was beside him does not – and he walks to her side.
It is infinitely more gentle than their last greeting (where he had torn her throat out, jealous, insulted), as he brushes his muzzle against her. He savors the feel of her skin, the way her ribs move in their breath. He recalls how still they’d been, her corpse unresponsive to his magic, how, for a moment, he had felt something like helplessness. It had been such a disquieting feeling, unfamiliar, for he is a man – a god – used to the world bending to his wills. When she had not listened (not her fault, of course; it had been Gail, whose powers unnerve him in a way he does not entirely admit) he had, for the first time in a very long time, not known what to do.
And perhaps that feeling should have kept him away from her, lest things go awry again. Yet he is here, touching her.
He lingers on her throat, now unscarred. As if the whole thing hadn’t happened at all.
Perhaps he should have left a scar there. A reminder to her. To both of them.
Ah well. He removes his muzzle from the unblemished flesh, looks at her, instead. Speaks, finally.
“Hello again, Ryatah,” he says, “how have you been?”
As if everything was normal. And perhaps, for them, it was.
c a r n a g e
@[Ryatah]