Dust and stone, a gorge nearly dried out and turbid.
It is theirs. Perhaps an ugly conquest, to some. To him, it is sweetened by the pillage and rape that it had taken to get her. She is a canvas, to his eye – an artist, though his hand would be small and inconsequential. He hasn’t the power to furrow her barren, grey soil. He can’t sow into her or change the make of her stoney skin. (The god-leader could, perhaps. He could make this thing from healthy tissue, surely he could wrought more brutal, twisted things from this earth.)
But he could paint her.
He could inlay gemstones into her crust and crags, make them glisten with slicks of bright red and blue brushstrokes, meaty and sumptuous.
He could make this place homely.
(Carnage had said build.
He is a carpenter. An architect.
The gift-giver can see scaffolding scaling her tall cliff faces. He can see the bones of something being erected, a home or a fortress or a prison of desert waste. It would become clear, as the magic and dust settles, what this is. Whether it had a purpose, auxiliary to the god flexing his might at the world.)
He has said to build, too. Told her it was the way forward when she came to him and asked.
Came to him, even when she could have loosed herself.
She is not his, that plains-wild thing. He knows that. Perhaps, knew it from the moment they met, brazen and stone-hearted – when she was young and he had eyes for… different qualities in her. Knew then, maybe, that she would not be kept.
He can accept that. (He can accept that to some degree. He can accept that grudgingly, sometimes angrily.) He had long neglected the idea that everything has to be his (he can hunger, that he will not quiet; what is a monster without hunger?) and even that everything could be his, even if he wanted it. He has watched them slip through his fingers like sand enough to know that some are crafty; powerful enough themselves that when they come together it will always be like iron on iron. A thunderous, raucous, violent thing.
So be it.
But still he dreams of that sleek, pinkish scar on her neck. It incites something wakeful and eager in him; greedy and envious. Last they met, and been alone, they had been rudely interrupted. He hadn’t been able to probe her like he wanted to, so he sets across the wastes to find her, red and white, because though she is not a possession, he is what he is. Hungry.
It is theirs. Perhaps an ugly conquest, to some. To him, it is sweetened by the pillage and rape that it had taken to get her. She is a canvas, to his eye – an artist, though his hand would be small and inconsequential. He hasn’t the power to furrow her barren, grey soil. He can’t sow into her or change the make of her stoney skin. (The god-leader could, perhaps. He could make this thing from healthy tissue, surely he could wrought more brutal, twisted things from this earth.)
But he could paint her.
He could inlay gemstones into her crust and crags, make them glisten with slicks of bright red and blue brushstrokes, meaty and sumptuous.
He could make this place homely.
(Carnage had said build.
He is a carpenter. An architect.
The gift-giver can see scaffolding scaling her tall cliff faces. He can see the bones of something being erected, a home or a fortress or a prison of desert waste. It would become clear, as the magic and dust settles, what this is. Whether it had a purpose, auxiliary to the god flexing his might at the world.)
He has said to build, too. Told her it was the way forward when she came to him and asked.
Came to him, even when she could have loosed herself.
She is not his, that plains-wild thing. He knows that. Perhaps, knew it from the moment they met, brazen and stone-hearted – when she was young and he had eyes for… different qualities in her. Knew then, maybe, that she would not be kept.
He can accept that. (He can accept that to some degree. He can accept that grudgingly, sometimes angrily.) He had long neglected the idea that everything has to be his (he can hunger, that he will not quiet; what is a monster without hunger?) and even that everything could be his, even if he wanted it. He has watched them slip through his fingers like sand enough to know that some are crafty; powerful enough themselves that when they come together it will always be like iron on iron. A thunderous, raucous, violent thing.
So be it.
But still he dreams of that sleek, pinkish scar on her neck. It incites something wakeful and eager in him; greedy and envious. Last they met, and been alone, they had been rudely interrupted. He hadn’t been able to probe her like he wanted to, so he sets across the wastes to find her, red and white, because though she is not a possession, he is what he is. Hungry.
@[sinew]
![[Image: kkN1kfc.png]](http://i.imgur.com/kkN1kfc.png)