i’ve been both a saint & a viper
The forests of Sylva have become a part of him. He blends into the deep shadows that haunt each crevice, barely heard above the sound of the rustling, never-changing canopies. Suspended in a twilight autumn, there is even a chill that never seems to shake from the trees and their bark. Balto stays hidden, consumed by a hunger that he does not understand and abilities he has yet learned to control. The voices are kinder to him now, soothing and encouraging, beckoning him to give in to those terrible desires.
The scent of blood is what draws him from his hiding. Their lips had curled at the edges at the metallic twinge of it, whispering into his ears until he could no longer bear it. The sunlight barely reaches through the thick canopy but the parts that do play shadows across the blackness of his stretched hide, like fingertips of gold eerily criss-crossing the sharp mountains of his hips and shoulders. His antlers protrude just as grotesquely as his bones, long and spindly things as sharp as knives. Paper-thin nostrils quiver and the stallion (if he can be called that) shudders.
Balto halts in the shadows just to the right of her, hesitation brimming in his abysmal black eyes. Nothing about him would be familiar to Sabra, save for the blood-red ‘V’ that stains the underside of his emaciated throat. Haunting whispers swirl around him, wrapping around his obsidian legs and ushering him forward.
The smell of her blood is too strong for him to be able to restrain himself.
“Sabra.” He says her name quietly, almost tenderly, though the heaviness in his voice is due in part to the bloodlust that now swirls in his eyes. She has always been beautiful, but the rubies that pour from her wounds are now much more precious to him than he remembers. Stopping perpendicularly to her shoulder (yet far enough away from any physical touch), a rattling sigh leaves his trembling mouth. “What has happened to you?”
He hears himself talking but knows not what he is saying, for the sound of her pulse drowns out anything else he may hear.
Balto
@Sabra