even monsters are made of stardust
This night feels different than the others.
Even if much is the same (her inert ritual of worship and longing under a cloudless sky), there is something wholly unique about tonight. As the cool air of fall whispers through the leaves and twines around the black and scaly pillars of her legs, Zosma feels the change. She is surprised to find, too, that she is agreeable to it. This night will be the fatal blow to her wasted time spent staring at their unhearing heavens. This night she will turn from the water, turn from her indifferent master and do something she should have done a long time ago.
Tonight she will move on.
In part, she believes, because of this mulberry stranger with his own quiet apathy. Perhaps he reminds her of her Lady in this way. The manifestation of her demoness finally brought down to her, to her lowly level here on earth. It makes her want to punish him for it, to carve out all of her anger and frustration in lines of violence on his skin. Lines of words and pleas and prayers she’s said over and over in her mind. Can you hear me now, Kangaroo? But of course, she’s not listening. She’s never listening, and a bloody sacrifice in her name will make no difference.
You already know that I am no gentleman. “Do I?” She asks, instead of ripping him apart, watching the way his head tilts to take her in further. Like he is still magnifying her, bringing her into better focus. There is revelation brightening in his eyes that she means to capitalize on. See if he underestimates her again. “I don’t know a single thing about you.”
Finally, finally, she pulls herself away from the river because what she says is true.
Zosma places deliberate steps over the firmer mud of the banks, bringing herself nearer to the stallion. As she draws close, his features come alive in the same way that hers’ must for him. Her own red glow washes over him and makes the hollows behind his shoulder and below his hip darker with shadows. “I don’t know if I want to,” she says, even as she’s tracing the lines of his body and then his face with her wide opal eyes. My name is Woolf. “Do I?” She echoes again, her voice dark and deep like tar.
There’s potential energy humming in the air between them, like together they are tilting precariously on a precipice, ready to fall one way or the other. She’s never met anyone like him here in this plane of existence. Even in their few instants of time together, she senses his Otherness. It reminds her of the stars she’s just banished from her heart, her future. But how can she resist a brush with them right in front of her in the flesh?
Flicking her forked tail against her haunch in a cat-like gesture, the demon looks away into the night-gloom. She wants to know everything, truthfully, and she’s sure it is written all over her face. When she turns back to Woolf, she tries to look as aloof as he had at first. “Is that what you want, my name?” Shadows snake up her legs then, thin tendrils at first that widen as they encircle her. There is power in knowing a name, she’s learned, but surely that’s not all he means to collect tonight.
zosma
@[woolf]