O enemy, do I terrify? // any

[vulgaris]

IT ALL ADDS UP TO THIS: THE HOLLOW CHEST, THE BRUISED NECK, THE SHAKING HANDS.
YOUR BODY, THE TRIUMVIRATE OF UNHOLY THINGS
If you’re ever going to be great, his father once told him, you’ve got to be hungry. He’d said the words through pointed teeth that glimmered all like cursed pearls. The lesson had frightened him as a child after his brothers and sisters told him their father devoured some of his young. Vulgaris had been the youngest back then, all knobby knees and bird chest, trembling in the coolness of his parents’ shadows. When the curse took root in him, he thought he understood what Larva had meant by hunger, as it became all he knew anymore. The juvenile serpent had feasted on his prey and licked them from his lips. He’d filled his palms with the sticky honey of his half-loves and left them to fend for themselves. When all this failed, he raised a child of his own and whipped her into a perfectly obedient machine.

Still, the hunger did not subside in the slightest.

As the summer sun burns across the midday sky, so too does he burn from within. He knows that autumn is looming on the horizon and some twisted part of him wishes Shiya would come within his reach. Still, there are others he could have, if only to occupy his time. Until then he decides to delve into the meadow and see what wonders it offers up to him like a banquet. There are such wondrous things to behold here these days that range from simple glimmering wings to slick black monsters. His bright green eyes skim over each one in delight as he tries to pick just one to approach.

His scales all shimmer across the handsome angles of his face and the slope of his broad shoulders. Vulgaris stands taller than most, though he does not loom over them like some giant. Still, he could rest his chin across another’s crest and comfortably bask in the summer’s sweltering heat. (How divine such closeness would be to him now.) Each step is certain of itself and he does not hesitate to pass others so close that their shoulders kiss for a fleeting second. If they are offended or intrigued then he is delighted either way.

His course slithers onward until he finds himself at the heart of the meadow and he is certain he has seen all worth seeing. The trap is set and waits to be sprung.

VULGARIS
THERE WAS NOTHING MORE DIVINE THAN HAVING SINNED WITH YOU.