Fury, animosity and ire were all he knew, stone chords wrapped around his heart, bound across his chest, covered and cloaked in the feverish, fervent daggers of his turbulence, trials, tribulations, toils and mayhem. The rainchild was something else altogether: carillons and minarets, spires and harpsichords, ocean and breeze, brine and the soft roll of cascading rivulets, archaic waves drenched in forgiveness, forbearance and tenacity. He flicked his ears forward, capturing the pealing toll of her whimsy, and as her laughter rang at his expense, bells, chimes, whistles, a trill, a warble of watery whims, he was unsure of how to react. Was she mocking him, deriding him, scorning him? Was she ridiculing his foundation, his finely taut fibers, his pernicious, puissant blade? Was she tearing down the walls of his carefully wrought iron simply to gaze, to inspect, to taunt and taint at the nothingness that lay beneath? Why did she giggle? What drove her to such foibles and follies? What had she seen that he did not? And how should he behave now, when all the machinations he crooned, created and crafted couldn’t manage to surmise the reasons for her light jeers? Did she wish to see him as a fool, a jester, dancing in the air of her marionette poise? His life was a sculpture, a masterpiece, an oeuvre to heresy, to war, to blood and glory, clawing and ensnaring, death and demise, triumph and vanquishing, rubble and ruin - not the easygoing gestures of games. He couldn’t recall drifting on the bracken of cackles and chuckles, couldn’t remember the simplicity of jokes, jests and tricks, long since derailed by ruses, wiles and Machiavellian scheming, calculating meant to abolish, annihilate and destroy. The only disparagement he concocted was upon his enemies, waiting for their breaths to be stolen, patient and composed as they fell to their knees, collapsed in the ache and wake of his ferocious tyranny. He was amused, gratified, and satisfied when he’d stolen flesh from bone, peeled life into anarchy, mayhem and bedlam; sin sliding upon sin, atrocious, devastating humanity. He never chuckled, he never smiled, and he rarely drew his lips in any amiable gesture. But this nymph did, and he didn’t know whether to cease the vile rancor that twisted in his throat, to hiss, enact discordant tones to abolish her torrential giggles, or permit the silken, dulcet croons to continue their dance, solidify their persecution of his bewildered stance. The demon’s pride was blemished, altered, brandished by the titter of this girl; he narrowed his gaze, sharpened his blue stare to mere slits, and allowed the laughter to wash over his dark carcass, defiant against the beguiling sounds of her parody. Even then, the taste of satire was unpleasant.

She swiveled amongst the rippling rivulets, as natural as he coveted the Stygian shades, born beneath the veils of rain and sky, prospered another bewitching stare that left him glaring in return, hooves sliding back against the ice and slush in effort to evade some new assailment, bombardment of a cool torrent. There was mischief in her eyes, foxy, entrancing, fascinating and siren-esque, but he was not a soul led out to sea, he was not a sailor adrift on the rocks, ushered to his demise by the Scylla or the choking, strangling hands of the current. He refused her coquette distortion, and watched as she seemingly disappeared into the murky depths, gone, discarded. For one moment she was corporeal and whole, the next, transfigured into nothingness, and he was instantly alone again, the plaguing tirade of desolation returned.

They both held too many mysteries, enigmatic, specious ploys and ruses that enticed, captivated and ensnared; his icy glare dismissed the notion of looking away from the cool, crisp, flattened reservoir by the sentiment that he may be unraveling a paradigm, a riddle, the Sphinx’s tongue lacquered to brimming, brewing undulations. Was she mermaid, fish, dolphin, toying, grasping for his armaments, waiting for him to remove his armor, to join her in the vacant sea, to pull him under, drown him in the grind, friction of her despair? Would she wail, sing, and lament the dirge, the warble of her requiem? Did she wish to divest him of his shield and carapace, lead him towards temptation, into upheaval, into disregard and folly? Did she yearn to distort his framework until he was no longer monster, beast nor behemoth, but a demon submerged, immersed, into the strange paradox of her candor? Was she a temptress, carrying her worn corpses to desecrated depths? Did she twist reveries into contorted ideals until they sank with her, ships trapped by the weight of her smile? He would not be her plaything, not her trinket or doll to string along into the cataclysm of whims and fancies, for the devil’s opus had already proclaimed him as his idle gift, and Deimos spurned to be lulled, pulled and tossed again. A sibilance drummed from his vocals, rough, grating, severe in their query, settling across the pool in pernicious, cold splendor, the chilling decadence of his maimed morality, the coldest, feral, savage kiss of darkness to water. “Why do you mock me?”