violence
The girl’s fright delights her, so in response she makes the creature’s mouth gape wide, as if mid-scream. She wishes she could make it scream, but she doesn’t have the power to make the bones talk, they lack certain necessities, like vocal cords, or lips. She could likely do it with the fresher corpses (though she finds them ultimately distasteful), though she has yet to try.
She makes the creature rear up on its hind legs as well, waves them piteously in the air (it’s not fearsome enough, she notes, and promises herself she will redouble her search for bones).
Finally it settles, skull-mouth closed and still, and she steps nimbly around it, stops to kiss it on its head. It’s her creation – practically her itself – and she does love it, loves every iteration of it.
“You’ll hurt its feelings,” she says, voice drenched in mock despondence, “and hurting feelings is rude.”
She looks at the girl, dark head cocked, and considers. She’s younger, though not by much. And stupid, clearly; boring, unable to appreciate the beauty that Violence has laid out before her. She wonders what the girl’s mind is like, if it is soft and pliant, able to be piloted.
(They fight her so, when she slips inside them, her mind in theirs, intimate in a way few know.)
“I could make you love it,” she says, and whether suggestion or threat, it was hard to tell.
“Let me in, and I could make you love it,” she says. She hates that she has to ask, or give warning – but she knows from experience that she is still weak in her possession, that jumping in unannounced makes them startle and kick her back out, makes them more resilient to her.
The bone-creature’s head cocks, as if listening for a reply.
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips
