darkness is coming to swallow the light; pollock

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

He watches from damp shade as fire overtakes his body. His mouth and his sides and his throat, licking his shoulder blades with lust and greed. But he cannot smell roasting meat or singed horsehair. He tries, pulling in deep wafts of musty air, searching for the acridity of smoke and mouthwatering scent of him. But the fire burns clean and kind. It does not melt him to bone and black char.

But he screams.

He writhes.

Pollock’s heart races.

Another gem to adorn his greathall with. Another twisted web of bones – these scorched and masculine and hanging with cooked flesh – to join his strewed treasures and toys. He licks his lips, watching feverishly like a cat watches a mouse curl and squeal in death hollers as he holds him by his tail. When he falls to his knees, searching for something to sooth the singeing of his body, Pollock shivers and wonders if he has ever seen flame vanquish life – he has seen time and sin, and foolishness and pride, and thoughtlessness. Skulls cracked and bruised up brain tissue…  

—well, he prefers brute force and bludgeoning, but there is a gracefulness about this, too.

(He flinches. He thinks he remembers the smell, all right. The dance of flames from houses and from damaged machinery. He remembers plastic, melted and disfigured and sad looking. He remembers making them his, from beloved things to soldiers. And then he remembers none of it at all, but his brows furrow and he sends some savage part of him chasing that image down a fox hole.)

Then the orange spotted man goes quiet. He breathes and the fire retreats back into his ribs and belly. He stands up and he is mightier than he was before. Where Pollock had been refashioned (and had paid no price for it at all – that had fallen squarely on the boy’s thin, feeble, naked shoulders), this man is restored. Once weakened, now something else entirely.
He appreciates the transformation.

The gift giver moves from his hide and to him, face to face. He does not know that he is a flicker of dark against flame and heat waves to this man, but he draws closer and then stops. You. He smiles, “hello, indeed.” For a moment the palomino revels in the one-sidedness of it all. Enjoys, for a moment, that Pollock knows him. Knew him. Had briefly brushed air with him as he spattered blood at his feet – he holds it close to him like a secret and is for a second possessive of it. 
But this secret is better let go, he sudden thinks, though he does not yet know why. Sometimes they do not hold in their vault like well behaved things, but know when it is more lucrative (or fun) to have themselves be known.

“You were different when I last saw you here. Less firey. I do hope you and Hestia were not too close,” his gravely voice is thick and nauseating with feigned compassion, “or her king-mate. How horrible, really. I hadn’t realized she was such a family woman, nor a royal’s whore.”
He sows chaos and waits for the harvest.