“So what else can you do, god?”
She asks him from the water with broken reflections rippling in her wake. He forgives the irreverence because he’d watched her, suddenly hungry, as she’d passed him (eyed the length of her back, and the slopes of her hips with a sense of greed that was entirely within his character). They are worlds away from home, but so much is still the same. When she is finally shoulder-deep the reflections in the water mask her scars like atlantis, and there is a moment where he forgets that she is ruined. And when that moment passes he wonders, however fleetingly, if she ever forgets, too.
He could keep her.
He could build her worlds (universes, dimensions, existences) like beautiful, expansive prison cells and then feed off the wonder and gratitude that would surely linger in the forefront of her mind. She could forget, at least for a time.
Elektrum follows her from the shore into the water, briefly pacified by the gentle smile on her face. When he is close enough to smell the sweat on her skin he traces a scar on her shoulder with his lips, and says:
“I can help you fix this, if that’s what you wanted."
ELEKTRUM
how time twines around your neck,
@Lepis