curiosity killed the cat // ALL

[Thana]

It's in her kiss; the black seal.

  Her rage cannot be contained.

  Writhing, hot and ferocious in the pit of her stomach, her ire began festering long ago in the soiled and sordid blood seeping through her veins. From the moment her son had slipped free of her womb, struggling and suffocating in the thick membrane that encased him, her anger had grown. The seed had been planted, spreading like an infectious disease through her, before being expelled with wide, mismatched eyes – a gleam of red, and a glimmer of gray, sheathed in filth and muck from the heat of her own body. Forced to bear his forsaken spawn; the progeny of the one she had vowed to follow anywhere – the one who had left without a trace, pathetic and lowly that he was.

  Her anger cannot be controlled.

  Her son is nowhere to be found, and for that she is grateful. She can sense the stench of sulfur and ash miles away, and the lithe wolf blanketed in pitchless black moves seamlessly through the dense and dimly lit forest. Each broad paw moves forward with precision, while sharpened talons rake softly at the supple and fertile soil beneath her weight, with grace and refinement uncharacteristic of such a bloodthirsty sociopath. Her breath is soft and shallow, as the frigid wind weaves through the hickory and pine, sweeping over the luscious fur lining her slender physique – until it is all but shed; and she is merely herself again. Swathed in indigo, with her wayward lock of ivory fallen in the way of her glowering stare, she emerges into the clearing – baring her still-sharp teeth.

  She does not need to say her name; her name is heavy and laden on the tongues of many! She is revered, feared and the mere mention of her name is enough to make so many quiver and tremble, with urine trickling down the length of their pathetic, shuddering legs. She can still the taste the metallic blood of her latest kill caught between her teeth, and her muzzle is stained with the demise of another, as it so often is. Her shoulders move with predatory sleekness, as if she is anything but prey herself – as if she is the wolf, and nothing more.

  She is closer, ever closer, until her breath is a warm caress across the cheek of the diamond-laden Head of War – the scent of magma and filth is heaviest on her, and a grimace of disdain crosses her lips – neither intimidated, nor deterred by her display. Should she want a fight, she would have one – she would find a way past that pretty, glittering armor, and spill her blood like she had all the rest.

  But she does not linger – her roving black eye set on Dahmer instead, as her parted lips and clenched teeth near his cheek – and what is he, aside from arrogant, foolhardy and predictable? He was like all the rest. Nothing more, nothing else. The scent of his testosterone and sex lingering across his blackened skin is enough to make her stomach turn; did his precious male ego need to partake in sins of the flesh before coming to conquer? Did he need to feel another beneath him to make him feel more like a man?

  ”You come to me, making demands – as if you have anything but your precious arrogance to back it up,” she breathes, coy, with a sneer drawn at the corner of her dark lips. ”I could fucking kill you and leave you wasted on the ground before she could even try to stop me –“ she croons to him, her hatred – not for him, but for another – boiling over into a white-hot rage she can barely contain. ”you would never even see it coming. Take this wasteland,” she snarls at last, her proverbial crown of thorns tossed long ago – she would not bear the burden of Gryffen and his failure; if Dahmer yearned to have what was left of an empire left burning, so be it. ”have at it. I have no need for it,” she muses , coiling around him, like a serpent – like a boa constrictor, aching to suffocate the absolute life out of his gasping lungs. ”I am greatness; I do not need you or a pathetic piece of land to reassure me of it. Flounder on your own, heathen,” she growls, shifting into the wolf that had never hidden beneath sheepskin – ever the wolf, always the hunter. ”Sylva is your burden to carry.”

  And then she is gone.

Thana.

It runs deeper than you can dare to dream it could be.