violence
Not long after she appears, there’s another, blush-pink and tentative. Violence turns to look at her, a grin infecting the curve of her lip. Her skeleton-thing curves its head, too – a horse’s skull bedecked with a buck’s horns, wolf teeth replacing the blunted herbivore teeth, and for a moment both she and her pet are fixated on the other girl, the easy prey.
But then the man speaks, so she turns her attention back to him. He’s not much to look at, though she admires the wings – she admires any kind of power she lacks. She considers trying to steal her way into his mind, to test out his flight, but possession is tiring – other living things fight back so much more than corpses do.
“It’s hungry,” she says, and its teeth gnash, one falling from its mouth – disappointing. She takes her eyes off the stallion to reaffix it, forcing it back into a socket it doesn’t belong in. She’ll have to work on that – can’t have her creations crumbling when she looks away.
“My name is Violence,” she says, looking first at him, then at the other stranger, who has kept her distance, “my pet doesn’t have a name.”
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips
