i’ve been both a saint & a viper
Jamie’s voice is familiar against his skin and the stallion stills beneath it. The darkness of his lids close around those icy eyes, veiling the desperation within them from the dark world that shelters them both. Despite the uncertainty and the voices that whisper (are they Balto’s demons, or something more sinister that he hears?) in his ears, he clings to the ray of hope that shudders in his chest. Yes, this will be the end. Jamie will finally untether him, letting his blood seep into the damp and brittle forest floor just beneath his hooves.
The lull of Jamie’s voice keeps Balto standing as the cackles of his own imaginary demons reverberate in the air. They do nothing to show approval nor any protest for what the taller, black stallion begins to do and the elder wonders briefly if that should frighten him - their sudden silence now loud and unnerving in his ears.
The darkness that had begun in the center of Balto’s belly continues to grow, sped up by Jamie’s terrible magic. It spreads until there is nothing left but empty blackness, Balto’s form nearly abysmal and neverending in its sheer darkness. The antlers that had begun to break through the skin on his forehead stretch and splice like gnarled fingers, sharp and twisting as they grow upwards with sinister creaking and groaning. Balto’s already gaunt body grows ever thinner, as if the skin would split against the sharpness of his hips and shoulders, protruding grotesquely from beneath inky-black fur. Even his eyes, as they slowly open, are endless - as black as the darkness he had come to know so well.
The stallion blinks slowly, glancing around warily before his pupil-less eyes click onto Jamie’s when his name is expelled from the stallion’s lips.
He feels different - there is no despair in the sharp bones of his face; merely blankness, devoid of the same desperation that once flooded his entire being. His shadows croon in the darkness, drawn to the terrible creature that he now is, mewling at his feet like pups.
When he finally speaks, his voice is a low hiss, coupled with the mixture of awe and disbelief. “Have I been reborn?” The sharpness of Balto’s muzzle stretches forward to scrape delicately across Jamie’s cheek, resisting the urge to bite down on the thin, vascular skin of his creator.
Balto
@
jamie