[private] hunt or be hunted; cellar

[cellar]

I wanted to leave something besides a blood trail,
besides prayers growing stale on my tongue.
The autumn breeze plays with the pale locks of her mane, twisting and knotting them into careless braids. She’s the color of snow on the side of the highway and her eyes are tired like she hasn’t seen rest since before she was born. Maybe she was wide awake even in the womb, she thinks to herself with a weak laugh. Maybe if she slept she could remember where her children are or what their faces look like. Cellar wonders if she loves them but she isn’t quite sure how a name should taste in her mouth when you care for the one you call.

When she called for Tyrael, it always tasted copper like her own blood and tears.
When she called for Ledger, it tasted like venom and bile.

She closes her eyes and remembers the faces of the people she’s killed more easily than anything else in this life. A part of her likes to think that she loved each of them for the brief seconds they were in her life. It’s easy to recall the way she cried every time they stopped breathing or the way she offered up apologies like they could bring them back if she meant it enough. Her breath exhales in a shudder. The death always left her feeling dirty and hollowed out, even worse than when her father taught her how to bite down on someone’s throat. Vulgaris is still out there somewhere, she knows, but she keeps away. His new family wouldn’t want her darkening their doorway.

When she opens her eyes again, she watches the hellhound watching his prey and she remembers him for a fleeting moment. Somewhere in the haze of another autumn, she had known him. Her legs move forward the way weeping willow branches sway in the wind. She swallows hard and wonders just what she hopes to gain from speaking to him again. A monster can never form a connection like she yearns for, lies awake every night sobbing for. Friendship is reserved for those spun sugar souls. Cellar is not like them, not at all. Instead, she is beautiful like a freshly sharpened knife. Her scales shimmer in the sun and her cold green eyes hold no emotion. She is a weapon and nothing more.

Hadn’t she learned that by now?

“I hadn’t expected to see you again,” she croaks, some half attempt at a smile taking over her face. Tears are already welling up in her eyes as she braces for harsh rejection. The sharp angles of cheeks would be breath taking on someone with more confidence, someone more worthy of such lovely features.

Cellar takes a step back and wonders if it would be best to leave before he can even tell her to. Her body is just a thing to be used until something stronger or more useful comes along, she reminds herself. She is a means to an end. She’s quick to crush the hope of finding a companion, to devour her own just blooming confidence as she tells herself that monsters don’t get happy endings. They just get what they deserve.

Cellar
I could give you my body, my flesh,
offer it up like a sacrifice, like a banquet.

@[Sinner]