do you think God stays in his heaven because he, too, lives in fear of what he has created?
He hates the rain, he thinks as he tries to find the outline of her face somewhere in her heat signature. A part of him wonders what everyone looks like – his friends, his prey, his Clarissa. Are they as beautiful as they feel beneath his lips? What do they see that he cannot? A slow exhale breathes from his nose when she says she can fly and he feels a flash of jealousy thunder across his heart. If she had wings, he would consider ripping them to shreds so they would be equally disadvantaged.
But she hasn’t got them, it seems, and so he keeps his teeth to himself.
For now.
Other form. The words linger and echo across his mind as he keeps his ears turned in her direction for a while as he considers what she says. Ghaul is only ever himself but he knows Clarissa and Sochi can change their shape as they please. Sometimes he wonders if that makes them stronger or weaker but he can’t quite pin down an answer despite his best efforts. “I am only ever this,” he says almost to himself, tilting his head. But isn’t he free already? No one commands him; no one would dare.
“Do things matter when you’re on the ground?” he mutters as his head rolls to tilt in the opposite direction. He has yet to face the consequences of anything he has done and so the goings on of the world mean so very little to him for now. When he was young, he used to care whether or not Castile found him sneaking around Loess, but these days he feels insurmountable. Even without flight, he is a mountain that the wind cannot bring to heel. The thought draws a strange sort of grin across his lips and crooked crocodile teeth.
Gluttony is moving, suddenly, and he perks to attention when she draws closer to him. Her nose touches his wing and it reflexively twitches beneath the soft flesh of her face before settling once more. He swallows hard, unused to being the one examined in this way. The blur of pale yellow that forms her core returns to his head and he is uneasy when she asks her next question. His parents did not have the wings to teach him and so his go unused, he thinks.
“I never learned how,” he whispers with a hint of a growl framing his words. The admission makes him feel weak and a fire begins to burn within him as he considers his answer for a while. She says she likes his name, though, and he thinks maybe she isn’t a threat to his ego after all. “Come to Pangea and teach me. I will spare you from the fire.”
But then comes her question. What is Pangea? His grin spreads into a full smile with embers spilling between his teeth.
“Pangea is the beginning, the kindling where I was born. All will burn before our kingdom.”
@[Gluttony] he thought about biting her but resisted both times. progress.