09-10-2018, 03:02 PM
Vulgaris
Even when his face is torn apart and scabbed over, when his scales turn dull in preparation of their spring shed, she traces her lips across him. She promises that she truly knows him and it makes his heart tremble at the idea of being figured out. He blinks slowly as she stares into his emerald eyes and proclaims her acceptance of the whole of him. Her gaze turns a spotlight on all the shadows of his soul and for once they do not cower from the brightness of her. All the crippled shards of who he is stand upright, faces turned toward the sun of her face.
I am not afraid.
She should be. He should tell her to flee and save their child while she still can, while he’s weak and too slow to hunt her down. Leave him while he is chained by his mortality and live the life she deserves, he thinks but never says. Then she speaks again and the words tear through him like a knife of clarity.
“I love you,” he whispers in reply. The words escape him before he even realizes that he is speaking and maybe that’s just his subconscious finally speaking up. Maybe the monsters all shackled inside of him have fallen in love with her too. But that’s even more reason to defend what’s his from any who might dare to rise up against him. She is his, now until the edge of eternity. She belongs at his side as the queen of his life.
He listens carefully as she explains that the scent of another is no threat to him or the sanctity of their love. Just a ghost and nothing more. Maybe he should make a true ghost out of him just to be sure. Her words are shaking weakly in the presence of his rage and so they bring him back to the present once again. Vulgaris sighs, slow and agitated, but he grows more gentle by the second until he’s pressing his lips to the corner of hers.
“This is all I really am. My life is all gore and violence.” He rests his cheek against hers, rough with torn scales standing like jagged edges. “I want to give you everything beautiful but I don’t know how to be what you deserve.” His fangs trace the curve of her jaw and the lines of her neck as he speaks. This life he has now feels stolen, like he is some imposter and any second the man who truly earned all these things is going to come back for them. That fear is what drives him to crush anything that might take his place. He’s not ready to wake up from this dream.
“I’m a rat in a sewer who’s fallen in love with an emporess.”