[private] Infection;

[sinew]

She understands that he views her as young and silly -- they all do; it is a mistake that is continuously made but it favors her, allows her to appear to them in the flush of innocence and they think no ill of her. But she is immortal, and has died a thousand times over in her dreams each night. He tries to menace her, and she holds back the laughter that crowds her throat. Tarnished was the first to try that, she remembers fondly. He had changed his shape for her and made his eyes go black as the space between the stars, and she had been unafraid then, just as she is know in the face of his snarling stench and mangled flesh. She takes his question as a challenge and her own teeth are bared in a smile; “Because my mother smelled of it - the grave-rot, like you do - for weeks before my birth.” Sinew could tell him the mare’s name but he is not loath to remember it, Scalped had never been much for recognition of any sort. Scalped though, knew to pick the best stallions to sire her sons and daughters, and even in his state of perpetual decomposition, she had recognized that spark of greatness in him. Sinew knew the origin of herself better than most did, knew even that her mother was rank enough to attract the queen’s attention and become a recipient of a magic-made rainshower and she starts to tell him as much; “They said she smelled so bad that the golden queen of the land conjured a rainshower just to cleanse her of your filth.” She means no harm by it - it is truth; he is filth in the flesh, his rot is like a plum that blackens over time, grows shrivelled and fat with worms that tunnel in and out of holes in the flesh of it, just as they do him. She should be repulsed but she isn’t; he is far too beautiful to be reviled and yet, revulsion clings tenaciously to her gut, making it roil even as she never takes her black eyes off of him. “Who else could smell like this?” What she means to say, is who else could smell like you - of death and life that should not be, but is? “You gave her your name, whatever coin that is in these lands.” but Sinew does not name him yet, for all that his moniker slithers across her tongue, vile and dry. Instead she says, “You were a king once, were you not?”