jamie
from the destruction, out of the flame
Perhaps he is merely biding his time.
The child is none of his business, certainly. But that had not stopped the sharp stab of something dark and possessive. It had not immediately dampened the flicker of something cruel at the very center of him either.
He had not asked, but that does not mean he won’t.
She is such a beautiful thing that it softens the edges of his vision. How kind the sunlight is to her. And the water, too, as it rolls in rivulets down her face. He wonders what it feels like, the wet. Even when it rains, he does not feel it. There is nothing for the wet to stick to, nothing to absorb it.
He is not cruel.
He is no monster.
But she sinks into him as far as she can – regrettably not as far as he’d like for her to – and he can hear the smile so plainly in her voice when she answers. He wants to belong to her. He wants to be the thing she dreamed up.
His shark-tooth smile does not soften. The mouth is still ink-black, the teeth the only thing that catch the light. He draws away from her then so that he might peer at her with those freakish yellow eyes, his peculiar head tilted.
“Who does the child belong to?” he asks finally, the voice scraped out of the bottom of his chest, all rust. He moves quiet to her side then, presses his mouth to the swell of her barrel. But, as always, his edges dissolve where he touches her.
Perhaps the true weight is not in what he’d asked but in what he’d implied by asking it.
you need a villain, give me a name
