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]
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