burnt offerings; any

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

He finds he can feed on her fearlessness as easily as on cowed flesh. 

To him, it is something like having game gravitate to the path of a buckshot – the antithesis of a moth’s inclination to flame... Except it glances off of her as if her skin is steely and not meaty. And even more than the thrill of easy prey, he is aroused by the idea of testing her mettle and picking at the calcification of invulnerability that he thinks must hide something even more appetizing beneath.
(He has learned that some things bend and bow stubbornly until they finally snap – he wonders if she neither bends nor snaps, but holds her shape, even as her flesh is harrowed.)

Yes. He could pry that open.
Pollock could teach her fear and maybe more.

While immortality can be such a pesky thing when he is in the mood for a happy ending, horses like her are canvasses that have no end. (Or have many ends and blurred beginnings and hold the splatter of a hundred lived lives.) And for artists like him, that is a wellspring of inspiration. 
He cannot tell from her face alone that she is endless – but there is a curiousness to her that he yearns to finger and figure out, to pull at like a woven thing until unravelled. Maybe he recognizes something confused and riven in her – both of their hands fumble with time. Hers is eternal and his is a queer snare of pasts and presents.

(He had given in to darkness, heart and soul, the moment he had taken healing hands and made them viscera art on the walls, ceiling and floor. He could have taken the other half of that whole, it was right there – he didn’t.) 
When she eyes his wing his lips wrinkle and curl and his head feels suddenly too light. Too unencumbered and tidy. (He had washed his horns and forehead clean in water mixed with Beqanna's cremains. Into that mire he had given his oblation – blood and sand. It had left him feeling empty and plain. He prefers himself decorated.) His lips draw tight against his teeth and he bites back admonishment and temper.
That is a strike. He lets it slide but it aches like a bruise that refuses to heal.

“–that. And more,” he says finally, catching her eyes and so unlike his other, younger things, she holds his. “Your boldness. There is always a need for more. The question is what else do you have to give, Sinew.” Much and more he imagines, but if pressed, he might admit that he has begun to think selfishly. 
The Valley would need more from her than he ever would, to be sure, and would offer more, too. He is not overly demanding, whether the Valley’s newly installed Queen is remains to be seen. He had never promised Demian he would relinquish his vices (Demian had taken him not inspite of his bloodthirst, but because of it), but he can keep his own nest clean and he can share.

He can be good, so he smiles.

POLLOCK
the gift giver and guardian