02-21-2021, 10:16 PM
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She had known she was a doorway. She had known, lying on the beach, boneless and dying, with the feeling of tiny hands pressing against her skin, her ribs, her throat. She had known, tucked against her brother’s side, that new magic confusing the pathways of his mind, twisting them to her will while her skin pulsed with the pressure of their fingers, and their claws scraped against the backs of her eyes. She had known it was only a matter of time until they ripped her apart like over-ripe fruit and poured out. Her claws flex, remembering the feeling of splitting open salmon bellies, remembering the way the bright orange roe burst out, sputtering thousands of half-lives across the ground. She remembers lapping them up, little explosions of salt that filled her mouth with the sea, and she remembers the feeling of her own flesh beneath her own claws, and the way the beasts – not one, but many; small bodies sputtering from her split skin – fell to earth drenched in the salt of her blood and the lathered sweat that fell like sea-foam from her torn, panting sides. She remembers how it all seemed like the same thing, and how she had laughed.
They are strange things, their limbs too long, their fingers hungry. Malevolence made flesh, but no more immortal than she, and Manikin remembers the way they had once died, screeching, and hooks one under an eager paw, expertly decapitating the squalling beast while its knife-toothed compatriots scatter into the shadowed grass around them to seek out other prey. Her horrible children.
Manikin was not the only channel. They had all been vessels, every one of them that died on the bone-strewn Beach and went forth into the grinning crack in the universe at the bidding of Grandfather. They had all come back, some with one, others with many, and now each of them is alone in the darkness; abandoned, bereft. The young chimera worries no more now about the Monsters she has unleashed onto a world that should have been expecting them than she did that first day in the Otherworld. They are Prey, she is Prey, the world is Prey. Her beak is stained with the oil slick of their blood, their foul flesh burning and boiling in her belly.
As it turns out, she’s lonely without them inside her.
The call to help finds her downy ears as she is wiping her beak clean in the moon-dried grass, and Manny pauses, nose to the ground and yellow eyes flicking up. <I>Help.</I> And who is she to ignore a haunting call leaking down the mountain like snow melt in Spring? Such a thing made her steal away from a spot not far from where she lounges now to usher in this endless night. Such a call gave her family and power, and it sets her to the high-pitched purring that Avocet hates so much – when he remembers to hate it. When he remembers how it comes before the Hunts.
He rarely remembers, these days. The delicious confusion that crumples his wide brow is addicting, she craves it, even with the buzzing of fae voices crying in the night, taunting the Huntress. She rises with a long stretch and picks her way excitedly to the Mountain’s base, to the milling group, the families that find each other in the darkness, the Helpers and the Hunters. They are lost, mournful, angry, and she grins her feral, beaked grin, yellow eyes fever-bright, and chest still vibrating with that mad, treble, purr, reaching out to each of them with a feeling like peace, like safety.
</div></div><a href="https://www.deviantart.com/starrynightxxi/art/The-Hippogryph-868809565" style="padding-top:10px;">Image by ratty</a></center>
She had known she was a doorway. She had known, lying on the beach, boneless and dying, with the feeling of tiny hands pressing against her skin, her ribs, her throat. She had known, tucked against her brother’s side, that new magic confusing the pathways of his mind, twisting them to her will while her skin pulsed with the pressure of their fingers, and their claws scraped against the backs of her eyes. She had known it was only a matter of time until they ripped her apart like over-ripe fruit and poured out. Her claws flex, remembering the feeling of splitting open salmon bellies, remembering the way the bright orange roe burst out, sputtering thousands of half-lives across the ground. She remembers lapping them up, little explosions of salt that filled her mouth with the sea, and she remembers the feeling of her own flesh beneath her own claws, and the way the beasts – not one, but many; small bodies sputtering from her split skin – fell to earth drenched in the salt of her blood and the lathered sweat that fell like sea-foam from her torn, panting sides. She remembers how it all seemed like the same thing, and how she had laughed.
They are strange things, their limbs too long, their fingers hungry. Malevolence made flesh, but no more immortal than she, and Manikin remembers the way they had once died, screeching, and hooks one under an eager paw, expertly decapitating the squalling beast while its knife-toothed compatriots scatter into the shadowed grass around them to seek out other prey. Her horrible children.
Manikin was not the only channel. They had all been vessels, every one of them that died on the bone-strewn Beach and went forth into the grinning crack in the universe at the bidding of Grandfather. They had all come back, some with one, others with many, and now each of them is alone in the darkness; abandoned, bereft. The young chimera worries no more now about the Monsters she has unleashed onto a world that should have been expecting them than she did that first day in the Otherworld. They are Prey, she is Prey, the world is Prey. Her beak is stained with the oil slick of their blood, their foul flesh burning and boiling in her belly.
As it turns out, she’s lonely without them inside her.
The call to help finds her downy ears as she is wiping her beak clean in the moon-dried grass, and Manny pauses, nose to the ground and yellow eyes flicking up. <I>Help.</I> And who is she to ignore a haunting call leaking down the mountain like snow melt in Spring? Such a thing made her steal away from a spot not far from where she lounges now to usher in this endless night. Such a call gave her family and power, and it sets her to the high-pitched purring that Avocet hates so much – when he remembers to hate it. When he remembers how it comes before the Hunts.
He rarely remembers, these days. The delicious confusion that crumples his wide brow is addicting, she craves it, even with the buzzing of fae voices crying in the night, taunting the Huntress. She rises with a long stretch and picks her way excitedly to the Mountain’s base, to the milling group, the families that find each other in the darkness, the Helpers and the Hunters. They are lost, mournful, angry, and she grins her feral, beaked grin, yellow eyes fever-bright, and chest still vibrating with that mad, treble, purr, reaching out to each of them with a feeling like peace, like safety.
</div></div><a href="https://www.deviantart.com/starrynightxxi/art/The-Hippogryph-868809565" style="padding-top:10px;">Image by ratty</a></center>