beloved

The other one watches, silent and with eyes that flick from feature to feature, and Beloved gleams, she excells, she brings to light all that has withstood the life that pressed dirty, hard fingers into her flesh and struggled to bring her to her knees and failed.

Can you see her, mommy? Do you know where your Beloved stands now, are you proud? Did she become everything you wanted her to be?

The Reaper sees her, even if mommy doesn’t. Mommy can’t see anyway. We killed her, we took her life and drank deep from the well of her soul and have never looked back since, and look where we have come. The fall of empires left Beloved unscathed, more corrupt and pristine than she had been before the decay of Isilme, and now she has ridden the frigid crests of stone and ice to stand before giants and men of obsidian, flesh and heart, as she once did in Isilme, too.

Oh, land of unicorns of snow and frightened little mares in forests dark and brittle, will you burn too?

Beloved will send your imagery to the heavens as she has the rest, rivulets of smoke drifting to the waiting figure of the damned being who gave her life, who handed her the flame that smolders inside, the reaches and licks outwards as the man she has to appease this afternoon stares upon her flesh that twitches and writhes incessantly.

She is beautiful, and he will see it. To turn her away will be unfortunate, sorrowful even – bone face saw her, with his heart full of wickedness, and this man is more beautiful than he had been, without a flaw but the blue stains that marked his darkness, the hollow way he looked upon her haunting and filling her with a desperate need to have him watch her longer.

And she is mad, swallowing his words and turning them about in her head until she tastes each syllable, until they are to her liking. Her talents? She had thousands. They rush at her in myriad voices loud, soft, mumbled, precise, they sing and yip in the caverns of her mind, and with a swooning sigh she eases into elated, gentle laughter that whispers through the snow.

"Writer of death songs, an angel of war, sweet as rain amidst a wildfire," she utters between the rolling tides of her giggles, her delight at being asked of what she does, "beautiful and wicked as the snow about your hooves. Taker of hearts, smashing them apart, cruel fox with a mouth of blood, a benevolent kiss of escape. I have followed men savage and men just, and none have outlived me."

Her laughter suddenly stills, a smile exposing the pale pink of her gums as her eyes nearly roll into the back of her skull in the rattling breath that takes her at the grace of her verbal portrait, the splendor of her skills spread wide as cards of fate across a black tapestry. "You will have need of me," she nearly sings, "you will have love. They all do."

die like God, on the cover of time