GRETA
I once held your soldier heart between my war teeth; shook it like a dog with a bone until it knew the fear of good love.
" Do you remember? "
He is constant - a movement that does not settle, a rapid maneuver of scales and teeth and sound and thought. She is unused to this. She has only ever known the silent cage that she was placed in. Here you will stay”, he had said. “Here, you are safe”, he assured. And safe she was - a world built just for her, a safe haven, a snow globe, a map that reached to her every desire. It was silent, and solitude. Her father placed her there and fled (to where, who would ever know). Her mother had released her and then returned to her galaxies - whichever they may be. All she had known was herself - her stillness and her silence and her unknown.
And now here he was - a constant motion or memory or noise. His clicking and warbling an undertone in her ears since the moment she stepped foot into - here. Here. And he answers - Pangea. The world tilts her insides, spreads them thin like a liquid. Pangea. It is like a memory you have lived, but cannot remember. A word that is on the tip of your tongue, but you cannot spit out. Pangea; the beginning. She shakes her head slightly, a miniscule movement of frustration. Pangea - this is where she was beckoned to - but why? He seems so confident in the word - he knows why he is here. But why is she?
His face alights with what looks like a promise - but he carries a crocodile grin. His teeth careen and cater to one another, sharp and clacking. Somehow, she finds that they bare no ill will, despite the look they tell. She is unsure (as she knows nothing) - how to read a letter like him that falls into her lap. He seems like a demon sent to shred her (father? Is this your work in kind?), but his body flurries towards her like a moth to flame - not to maim, but to mirror (side by side).
Suddenly, he is beside her - settled for a moment (how still, she thinks, how unusual for this moment). His wing alights over her body and she flinches as the moon is shadowed by his mass. She starts, a tenseness stringing through her body like a wire. Too close, too close. All she has ever known is that lengthy stretch of solitude. But he is so at ease - it is as if it were a yawn, or a smile, or a peel of laughter - his wing stretched out across her. And as the moon ebbs away under the thick scale of his skin, she finds herself fading into comfort (or whatever that may be).
Fire, he speaks of. Something all consuming and cleansing. Her eyes jolt wide at this; an unsettling comment. “Fire?” She finally speaks, filling the brief silence she has given them. She is not sure she likes this, it feels like a rough and unsteady word in her mouth (though she has never come into contact with such a feral flame before). Her body, though tense, leans into the heat of his own. As if he could protect her, as if anything could keep her safe in this world.
The silence ebbs, and he is quiet (as is she); no throaty clicks, no sad crooning tune - simply the silence of the night.
“Ghaul?” She questions after some time. It is that question you ask when you are fearful of being the only one awake, that your lover has drifted asleep and left you alone to the wolves and the night. It is the timid query that has been rolling in your head as you lay there awake, daring yourself to close your eyes.
“Ghaul? I think I have been here before.”
@[ghaul] ... until he eats her - ha ha!