The color of the sunset season is one of death. Leaves fall from their life-giving patrons gently, violently sometimes, to loam and dirt, to become food for other, lesser creatures. The beauty of the paradox is lost in the eyes of the darkling prince—for he sees naught but grey and throbbing anger, the world pulsating in the beating tendrils and coal-beds of the coming storm and his ever simmering wrath. The rain that pours thickly down is naught but tears.

Before, it had been some other grey-eyed charlatan who had dared claim these lands; that one didn’t seem to be around anymore, he noticed. The air was void of the odor of heathen creatures, and that stallion’s piss seems to have evaporated, the challenge erased and nulled. All that remains upon the wind’s breath is the empty smell of life and trees and bushes, the earthy aroma of marble stone, the transparent shadow of the vaulted glass ceiling. He comes closer to his conquered piece of rock, craving his kingdom, returning from the journey of a failed crusade for his mother. He retains smoldering frustration with his mother’s absence, his father’s lack of alarm. The faint trace of filly--a familiar scent, one of annoyance and something more now, something heady like an itching cloud of pollen—only serves to give light to the dormant explosives within him.

He does not see her at first; the clouds hang low overhead, and her coat blends seamlessly in the falling of the leaves, painted as she is with their reds and marigold hues. She moves between the ivory pillars of his doorstep, a gauntlet thrown before him—the ultimate challenge. The rain is a curtain upon his back, a sheet possessing the full chill of the season; a fine mist of steam trails weakly from the taut cords of his neck, the tensed shoulder blade that pounds through the growing mud puddles. Memories suffuse his skull as they have done many times before—the smell of the sea salt, the joy of the cracking shell beneath his hoof, a blur of warm, sunny golds and finally the great pain of collision and humiliation. Often have these recollections had possessed him, a fever of unspent rage that festers and bubbles, searing and latent and ready to be poured from his fangs in liquid fire. It surges to the back of his throat as he sees her, and recognizes her countenance; the rain fails to cool him. He smolders indeed.

He climbs the steps of the rotunda, his movements heavy and stiff, filling the cavernous space with the clamoring echo of his hoof-falls. He stands at the edge, just out of the sheet of rain; his quarters cock, his hind legs lengthen, and, almost as an afterthought, he releases a thick, golden stream upon the finely cut marble. May there be no more doubt, it seems to say, for this is the property of the Grey-Eyed prince; he is jealous.

His mane lays plastered against his neck and face; his shaggy coat is lank with the weight of the rain, slickly clinging to his skin. The storm has diminished him, stripping him of the padding of a coarse hide. It matters little, for he has grown, and swagger swells the rest of him. The fire is bold in his eyes as he looks at her—staring hotly, equal amounts of flint and brimstone crackling from his gaze. He is still; a the puddle of piss rainwater seems to flow from the hooves of a statue.

“You.”

The rain pounds thickly overhead against the glass, a dull, persistent roar. His hiss slithers underneath, as dangerous and pensive as it is soft on his lip; he continues to stare. Lighting sparks in the eyes of grey.



@[Tandavi]
Speak

Lightning flashes though the darkness and the rainbow panes of glass. Thunder rumbles overhead, greater than an echo, lying heavy in the air like the shadow of some prodigious beast. Rain pours, silky and silver, and the wind howls underneath the canopy of clouds; it swirls passed the beast, dancing underneath marble eaves, merry and clueless to the fires of detestation that have sprung between the two children. The Grey-Eyed prince receives a shock; she spits her own poison.

His head drops; his brow is shadowed by shaggy, dripping-wet locks. His shoulders start to shake, rising and falling the rhythm of the laughter tumbling from his lips. It’s a warm sound, smooth and masculinly rich, the promise of a fine tenor instrument of adulthood. Softly it falls, pleasantly amused, a creature apart from the usual rasp of the whisper he is accustomed to. It falls so sweetly, this laughter, incredulous in its enjoyment, light upon his tongue—for his thoughts are light as well, his head swimming and dizzy with the purity of his wrath. It takes his breath away; he has lost his train of thought. His mind has shut down—his body has become stiff—his heart hammers hard in his chest, fluttering wildly, dangerously—he has never before been consumed in this fashion by his rage. The gods saw fit to build a creature capable of his complete and utter hatred; he cannot help but laugh at her.

It is all he can do.

The laughter remains soft underneath the rain, a delighted, boyish laughter. It is difficult to pull himself away from it. “But…” he coos between chuckles, “…you invaded my world.” His tone is teasing, deceptively cordial, a farce of youthful charm.

Something snaps within him; the self-control he has carefully crafted for himself, the almighty shield between himself and bull-headed, weak-hearted passions—it falls apart, blasted away like the finest panels of jade and china glass. He launches into the rotunda, beneath the heavy, multicolored shadow—he charges the child of rust and sunsets, horn pointed for her throat, her heart, her long, ugly misshapen face—

--for his ears ring for her demise—

--his body aches for her destruction—

--his blood boils for her agony.

She must not be.




@[Tandavi]
Speak

The rain does not care that she is in danger; the thunder rumbles only because it is in its nature to rumble, and not in response to the thick, intoxicating elation that throbs within the Prince’s veins. The earth is soaked around them, and the glass does not reflect darkness. The clouds have isolated them, those children and their hate, and the rain is a silver, silken canopy that drapes atop their nest of detestation.

He laughs again—her body bounces off of the marble pillar, a clumsy, rust-colored ragdoll, and he snarls a vicious, nasty laughter at her, spitting at her, baring his teeth and tearing at her shadow—for even her shadow manages to offend him. The world throbs around him, red and hot, and the rain is forgotten, the comfort of the thunderheads wiped from his memory. His head pounds; the thing that has been rising inside of him, bursting from the deepest depths of his psyche, has started to bloom into a blood-red, stone-laced flower, petaled with daggers and poison, and hell’s fire-pit its nectar. He does not think; her body steams, but it’s her bellowing cry that pierces through the veil of blood and a furiously pounding heart. He feels her scream—and never before has he felt such a release from the terror of an enemy. Surely she should be destroyed; surely his victory must be complete!

Fire flickers in his eye; the wind howls, the fields burn, and the sky teases a storm. Someone screams; they’re caught in the flames, nothing but a coltling, perished in the flames of terror and childish fancy—and Reginald stalks away, looking for his mother.

Fire flickers in his eye; he snorts, his hooves digging into the still-pure marble tiles of the rotunda, stopping his mindless charge at the maddening female. His eyes focus; the flower petals die, naught but the promise of something great one day, were he to control it. He gazes down; the brown rat of a thing demonstrates its shocking power; it dances within its whirlwind of fire, protecting his mistress, turning the air before Reginald into a fine, pearlescent steam. He comes back to himself—and is faintly shocked at the heaviness of his breath, how the breeze cuts through his soaked pelt—soaked not with rainwater, but his own sweat.

He stares at the rat and its whirling fire; he turns his lidded gaze into the girl’s ugly face—she dazzles with the flash of sparks and flashing fire stars, erupted, perhaps, from the sheer loathing he stares at her with: The Grey-Eyed Prince does not think too clearly yet. “My evil…?” he spits, rumbling in his throat, the hint of mockery still laced on his tongue. “But it’s all for you, my dulcet bitch!”

He lunges—but not for her. He has decided that this rat would not throw a good pelt—it is far too sparse, far too small, much too ugly-- but it would be worth it to wear its pitiful bonnet, just to watch her spirit shatter and break at his hooves.

His hooves rake the air; they fall toward the rat and its flames. He knows flames; his fear has evaporated in their heat.






Speak

Heaven is furious—destroyed by its own indignation, perhaps, by the two children who throb with something ancient. The sky weeps hot tears, illuminated by the whip of lightning, searing across the rainbow panes, sparkling and enraged, engulfing, blinding, surging the world into chaos. Reginald does not remember the howl of the wind, how it tousles his mane; he cannot feel the drip of the water traveling down his hock, his barrel, the contour of his shoulder and neck. The world, chaotic and alive, jubilant with fury, bountiful with life giving, death giving rain—it is dead to him, nothing more than blackness in the corner of his eye, dissolved into shadow, dead, dead, dead. For he has never felt so alive before then, confronting the image and idol of his unadulterated hate.

His heart pounds deeply—yet it does not draw him to his knee, as it was wont to do in seasons passed, constricting him, imprisoning him in a shell of cold, delicate clay. The heat had been contained, then; now he feels it curling and sputtering out of him, out of his eyes, his ears, the hot soles of his frogs; his sides and legs and withers, the line of his back, the craggy wisps off the end of his tail. Everything is heat, inside and out; he’s been swallowed, freed from the confines of a weak lung and shuddering heart, only to be imprisoned once more into a blazing hell of something more. It is alive. He is alive.

The louse escapes him; he is alit from underneath, torched by the scrawny, rattish tails of the vermin creature, singing the hairs of a body that’s already so inflamed by something. The rat is forgotten, instantly, almost gladly, when he collides forcefully into the sun-dripped wretch of a filly—but it is stone that he collides with, and not the bony flesh he would’ve expected if he had seen it coming. The breath gushes out of him, stung by the impact; he stumbles against her momentarily, the memory of their previous acquaintance all too near, all too poignant. He vaguely remembers the stone on her face, how ugly she had been with it; he feels her now, against his neck and chest, cold, crumbling stone, a child of stone, nothing but stone, stone. Just stone—but he can still smell her scent, somewhat damp against the furious wind he does not notice, does not remember. No, she is not stone; she is merely nothing.

He growls—then roars against her stony ear, the fox long gone behind him, in the blackness of the sides of his vision. He bites at a stone neck, teeth uselessly scraping at gray earth; he struggles against her, attempting to shove her—but one cannot shove a mountain, even one as small as this. He steps back from her; then lets hooves fly at her, attempting to flay something solid and immovable; her scent lingers, dirty, disgusting, insulting. His roar turns into something frustrated, rattled, manic. Behind his eyes, he loses something crucial.

“What ARE you!?” he screams at her, spitting passed the whisper of his calm; the animal of his voice rakes at stone, just as hooves had. “What are you to do this to me?” The stone offends him; her rat offends him; everything, her stupid braids, her mangy fur, her insufferable scent, her scent, her gravelly voice, her eyes deep and idiotic, a cesspool for mongrels—everything about her, all of her throws him into a wild, desperate rage, in every way, by every method. She was born, it seems, to anger him. The gods were perfect in her design.

“You intrude upon my world, throw me to the ground, stand in my piss, then have the nerve--” his voice cracks, falters, for he has never shouted so much before; he has never cared to shout, for no one mattered before now; everyone before had been meaningless. Before. “You have the nerve,” he says again, softer, simmering with venom and daggers, “to find me contemptable, you clumsy, ignorant bitch--you, who bumble in my path, doing nothing but making me trip—“ his voice cracks again; his throat cannot handle this passionate outburst. He’s on fire, everywhere. The contours of his body seethe, agonizing. He swipes at her again, his ears screaming for something more he cannot deliver.

“I will kill you,” he hisses, sides quivering, shoulders hunched, tail lashing everywhere, a furious serpent, “I will kill you, one day; I will burst from the shadow as you sleep, and crash into you. I will crush you—you, and that pathetic mutt of yours.” It was depraved; his confession blazed from his lips, and the worst tasted good on his tongue—comforting, of all things, to speak his mind to this horrid creature. “I will twist your neck, and make music from your bones; I will eat your heart and piss your blood.”

He speaks these things, and in his heart he finds that he wants nothing as much as these oaths he swears, these omens he weaves about the face of stone. The joy that surges through his breast stops his breath; his eyes glitter, again without that crucial something that was lost. The wind howls, mute and wild; it swirls around him, and her scent is faint. Mocking.




@[Tandavi]
Speak