I need you to be a monster
which is to say, I am trying not to love you
He has barely begun his trek back to the beach when she appears.
She is thundering and splendid and his first urge upon beholding her is to kneel. Because she is a monster, a goddess, and she is the kind of thing he has always been so set to worship. And in his normal life, the life that feels increasingly distant, perhaps that is what he would have done. But in this life, he is cut and burnt and just so damn tired, so he stays upright, watching her, trying to decipher what could possibly come next.
She speaks and he can’t understand the words, yet the language seems to reverberate inside him nonetheless. The sky doesn’t have to speak for you to know a storm’s coming.
You must pay, she says, in the language that vibrates in his bones, and he hangs his head, sighs. Hasn’t he paid enough? His mouth still burns from swallowed seawater, and his skin is blackened in places, an awful angry pink in others. Drowned and burnt, all in one day.
She looks at the crab – Carcinus, he knows now, and it’s worse, knowing the name of the thing you killed – and it too turns to stardust. Rapt wonders if his body will have such an honor, to be memorialized in the stars.
(It’s at this thought that he realizes how close that idea really is. How closely he has flirted with death today, and his adventure is not yet done.)
She looks at him, then, her eyes dark and terrible – but beautiful too, as so many monsters are – and he once again is struck with the urge to kneel. His legs are shaking with the desire for it.
Or maybe that’s just exhaustion.
She makes a small motion, mouths a word he cannot hear, and he feels his body begin to heal anew, the familiar itch of wounds closing, skin growing to replace the burnt ash of him. He closes his eyes to savor the feeling of being whole, or closer to it.
When he opens them, he’s in a pit, and she is watching him.
“What do you want?” he asks. He would give her so much.
Slay the beast, she says – or doesn’t say, but he knows this to be true, and I will return you to where you belong.
“I’m not a fighter,” he says, but she is silent.
“Please,” he says. The plea goes unnoticed.
(To enter the lion’s den is to put oneself in a dangerous or difficult situation. Rapt has entered the proverbial lion’s den many times. He has laid himself before monsters of different kinds, let them do what they will to him. He has carried children his body was not built to carry. He has done any number of dangerous and difficult things in his life, but it’s not until now that the phrase truly springs to life in his head.)
(A caveat: he did not so much enter this den as he was placed here. Or was thrown to the lions, as it were. A less common saying, but a more appropriate one.)
The lion snarls. He, too, is beautiful and terrible. But not a monster. Just a normal predator. And Rapt is ordinary prey. It’s an absurd relief, but his body was made to outrun teeth and claws – easier to recognize this enemy than a tentacled beast, or a giant crab.
Of course, this primal recognition does little good, because the goddess did not say outrun the beast. She did not even say outlast the beast.
No, she said slay the beast.
Rapt looks around the pit, and another phrase strikes him – the belly of the beast. To be in the middle of a dangerous place. This is the most appropriate phrase, both figuratively and – perhaps soon – literally.
The pit is hard-packed dirt, with a few dead trees, a handful of rocks. The kind of place you suppose befits fighting for your damned life in. But none of it is useful to him. There is no burning pyre to lead the lion to. There is only Rapt, and oh, what a poor weapon he is.
The lion moves easily, and Rapt is entranced, for a moment, at the ripple of muscle beneath its shoulders. The set of its huge jaws. A fine beast. A thing made to hunt. To kill. It is larger than a typical lion, and Rapt thinks of how easily his flesh would fit in its mouth.
It makes the first move, lunging toward him, claws outreached toward his hindquarters. Rapt runs, and feels a faint tug as the lion’s claws snag a few hairs from his tail. It strikes again, and this time Rapt kicks out, trying to strike the lion. It roars, jaws opening terribly wide, and Rapt lunges forward and away again.
It goes on like that – the lion attacking, Rapt running. Sometimes he strikes out, but it never seems to damage the lion. His own flesh is torn, blood streaking his palomino coat. His healing does nothing here, not even the intermittent flashes he’d had on the beach. No, he is terribly, painfully vulnerable here.
When the idea comes, Rapt wonders if he’s given up. Because it’s insane. Suicidal.
Maybe his only hope.
He faces the lion. He stares at it like he’s not afraid, even as his heart thunders in his ears, and all he really feels is fear. He rears up, as if he is a great and terrible thing. The lion opens its mouth to roar again, and this is where Rapt strikes.
His foreleg plunges into the lion’s open mouth, the soft flesh of its palate. He drives forward, shoving his hoof deeper, into the belly of the beast, and the lion’s jaws shut and then there is a terrible, crushing pain. Rapt screams, and keeps shoving forward, choking the beast on his own body, forcing his hoof and flesh and god-knows down its throat.
The lion twists and thrashes and bites and Rapt still shoves forward. He both feels a terrible pain and barely feels his leg. He doesn’t know what that means.
The lion crumples to the earth, and Rapt crumples with it. There is blood leaking from its mouth, but Rapt doesn’t know whose. He tries to move his leg and can’t. He wonders if he’ll die before the goddess can keep her promise. Assuming she even intends to.
Maybe he, too, will just be stardust.
which is to say, I am still dreaming of kissing your claws