jamie
from the destruction, out of the flame
There is something deeply repulsive about it.
Some sordid thing tightens a vise grip around his windpipe while he watches. But the old roan seems to feel no pain, even as the blood drains out of him. Even as the life in his eyes flickers and fades and then goes out completely. The eyes remain open, though, peering glassy back at them.
A moment of silence passes between them while the old roan, dead now, continues to bleed. Whatever giddiness he’d felt is gone now, tempered by the gravity of the situation. But he feels no remorse. How he would have mourned the old roan if he had not lost his capacity for guilt! How he would have wailed and thrown himself at the foot of the funeral pyre. And it would not have made a difference that he was owed the soul, that it belonged to him, still he would have been consumed by grief.
But he understands that this is the way things must be done now. And it is in the silence that the old roan materializes. The soul, he thinks, when it is really only a ghost. A shimmer with soft edges that stands between them.
“You understand, don’t you?” Jamie asks it, though there is no sorrow in his tone, no apology. The ghost nods and moves - so fluid that it almost floats - to Jamie’s side. Stations himself there. And it is there that he will stay.
Beyza returns to him - them - then. And he must convince himself that he can feel the way she touches him. He swallows down whatever desire thrums in him, whatever greedy thing that wants her to seep even further past his edges. Sink into him. She does not and he does not ask her to.
Instead, he turns that freakish yellow gaze on her, studies her face. How casual she is in her killing, he thinks, and this brings with it a new thrill.
“Where has your voice gone, Beyza?” he asks, finally, “why are you only in my head?”
you need a villain, give me a name
@[Beyza]