I have never known peace; pollock, any

[Pollock]

He has built from ashes.

Has built up from a foundation of dereliction – the gifter’s progenitor had not fallen into some heavy and unusual languor like the boy’s (though, years ago, he had reminded a lad of bright flesh and wide eyes, that abandonment came in many forms; that mothers had certain predilections… had it not bore out true, time and time again?

—had he not found her – Elve, he had called her – still clung to by a membranous sac?

—had he not come to him – Rapt, his dear disciple – vulnerable and alone, as a lamb?

—had the monster not seen indigo, time and time again, in his halls and by her graveside?

Careless, all. He is sick of herding their lost youths – but he is their shepherd. And so, with careful crook, he gives them things to sustain on.)

No. His bitch had gone, painted-faced and sweaty, into the night – blood and nativity fluid perfuming her haunches. The distinction is as negligible as the details are irrelevant – both, father and son, had stumbled from their dens alone, wielding the tools of their survival, half-mad and milk-sick.

Except, when the colt passes the foot of that goliath of stolen toys, they drain from his body. They leave him, as they had left his sire, light-headed and clumsy – bereft of fear, it can only offer itself in its base form, ungainly and unrefined.

(—he has stirred, jilting light bugs from their beds and fruit from their branches, and paced. Every night, finding no peace in sleep (though, there is little that is new about this, at least). Like an angry, nervous beast, he stalks. He listens to his heart thump heavy in his ear, lonely without the carol to harmonize with.

He traces the tracts of land inside his kingdom – places where he had left bones and teeth and found them still, undisturbed but growing ever softer. He ventures, careful not to be followed, to the places where he had buried – hacked to manageable pieces, roughly bagged in plastic, unmarked and forgotten – the things that must be forgotten.

Somehow, they had gotten out. They had conspired against him, he had believed he had interned them far enough away from each other to control them. And though he would never admit it (barely to himself, once the sun breached the horizon), they had sunk their teeth and claws deep, squeezing ever tighter for arterial blood.)

But he has built from ashes just as deep and acidic as these.

Pollock has fought and fallen – he cannot remember it all, but he knows, somehow, that there have been darker things. Stranger things. Queer constellations of another sky, gathered around that northernmost star, leading him ever towards a mechanical hum. Greedier things trying to keep him from his destiny. So he marches on, tired-eyed and hobbled by the night, past his ghostly hideout and through his kingdom until he scents familiarity and follows it. He has been waiting for them – all of his things, named and unnamed – wondering how long it would take for each to cross his path.

He would have known the boy by the curvature of his baby horns, and by the split in his little toes. Or by the way he made fear his – it would have been the first time Pollock had ever met his match, though not the first he has ever made one. But deprived of these things – only the keratin coalescing into one, single protrusion from his head – he knows him only by the scent of his mother’s insides.

Pollock moves to meet the colt, crocodile smile and none of his adornments – for once, it may have actually made him more relatable. He stops so close, taking a moment to examine him – he has never met one before, though he has always assumed he has dropped life alongside his… other offerings. “You made it down, then? Hm,” he muses, low and gravely, and he thinks he understands how. He unfurls his great, over-large wings, blocking the wind from Bruise's body, leaning down and in.

“What did your mother call you, boy? Where is she?” he turns his dark eyes from him, for a second, to peer through the evergreen murk. And there is something like hope on his tongue, though it is nothing like it should be.