jamie
He wonders if she is a proud thing.
Because he can imagine the poor souls clamoring for her attention. Begging. He can imagine them weeping at her feet, flaying themselves alive. And he tilts his peculiar head, featureless apart from the eyes and the nose and the mouth. It has no shape, not like hers. No sharp cheekbone, no soft furrow in the brow. There is no expression. It is nothing, just as he is nothing.
And then he grins that cheshire cat grin again, darkness splitting apart and spitting out sharp, sharp teeth.
He is no monster, though he smiles like one.
And then finally he drags his gaze back to her, though it pains him to look at her too long. Pains him in the same way he imagines it pains the rest of them. If not for that insufferable weakness, the impossible exhaustion, perhaps he would draw the fog around her and obscure her face. If only so that he would not have to look at her. Save himself the trouble of how it makes him ache. If he had skin, perhaps he would flay himself alive at her feet, too.
She sidles closer and his nostrils flare. “Stay put,” he rasps and then shakes his head, considers her question. He draws his dark tongue across the sharp edges of his teeth and thinks of his sister, the juvenile way he had loved her. If it could even be considered love at all.
“No,” he answers, the word dissolving as soon as it leaves his mouth. It does not echo. There is nothing about him that lingers. Not even a scent, because he has none. Not even a hoofbeat, because his steps are silent. Worse than a ghost.
“What if I told you that I am merely a figment of your imagination?”