I come unraveled in the silence; savage pony

[cringe]

how to be a monster:
1. learn the taste of dirt and pain.
2. teach it to others till your knuckles bleed.
3. see if that makes it easier to breathe.

He grins when he sees her, snakelike and strange, moving toward him. He has an affinity for monsters (he shares that trait with Rapt, he supposes, though the exact nature of those affinities diverges, Rapt worships and beds them; Cringe wants to rule them). He watches her, his gaze intense. Some might have turned from him, the hunger of his gaze a warning bell, but she comes forth, unafraid.
He could change that, perhaps, with the smoky essence of his fear aura, leak fright into her like some noxious gas. But he refrains, like a gentleman, for after all, he does not yet know so much as her name.
She greets him, and then meets him with a stare of her own, her eyes dark and strange. His own eyes are plain, equine, but he meets her gaze.
“Hello,” he says, “what’s your name?”

He moves closer. Not touching, but close enough where he could, or she could. He admires the glint of scales, the faint strangeness of her. He looks so plain, beside her, gold with nothing physically notable about him. Like he could be anyone.
“You’re very striking,” he tells her, “I’m surprised to see such a thing out alone at night.”
The delivery is smooth enough, though the words themselves are cliched and even false, for she does not look like an easily taken thing. The point is to set his intention, to see how she reacts, if she might be amenable to the things he could offer.

cringe