Pressure builds inside him. Eats away from the inside, as magma devours iron, acid scourges the flesh. He thinks it fury, but he cannot place it; he growls deep in his throat, but it does not soothe the fire in his breast. He lashes the tree; he stomps the tranquil waters, pristine in their perfection, scornful of his unrest with its careful stillness. Water flies around him; crystals of it splash and cling to his coat, the ends of his mane, the wisp of a beard. He remains angry, passionate with something he cannot place.

Around him, the scene is quiet and contrary to him, opposite of him, demeaning of him. Birds twitter—but they’re quiet in their tittering. The wind blows—but it’s a gentle caress of a breeze, the sort that dances around the ear and plays with the locks jumbled around the eyes. Baby things crawl around his hooves, tiny mice that emerge from their hidden den, days old and just dressed in their first soft coat of life; little tadpoles darting about the shallows of the crystal pool; petals of some tree or some plant wafting about, getting caught and stuck in his feathers, landing lightly upon mirror-smooth surface of the water. His fire—the fire burning within a furnace that has trouble keeping this fury at bay—it wishes to destroy this scene, to bathe it in venom, flay it at the stake, end its mocking existence. For heburnsand he’s haunted by it, and he is sick of its haunting.

“Come here,” he growls—spits into the calm and the tranquility. His tone is biting; there is no mistake of it. There is only one who has bended the knee to him; one who has pledged themselves his loyal servant. He is angry, and she will fix it if it’s the last thing she ever does in his shadow.


@[Jorogumo]
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The air thrums mauve around him, fluttering and pulsating—the heartbeat of some great, napping beast, submerged underneath a pristine waterline. The chittering of birdsong whirls in his head, becoming a panic, a harrowing tune; he feels the discarded petals fall across his back, down his side, his skin sensitive with some anticipation. She finally arrives, sliding from the shadow of some dew-laden bough; he looks at her, scowling venom into her eyes, for her appearance alone, prompt as it is, gives no satisfaction for him.

“Hush,” he spits; he paces something feverish, stalking the shore of pool, the tips of willow branches reaching down for him, caressing the madness bursting from his skin. “I did not ask for your words.” His words slip from his tongue, gravel in the back of his throat; a growl that rumbles and threatens to throttle that insolent purr of hers, that infuriating whine that taunts him, or beckons. He does not know which. He ponders this madness, the rage that her appearance has brought to him. He strives to remember—what was it that she has done to him, for him, that angers him so? Her transgressions slip from the eyes of his mind, pushed away by the allure of Birdsong matters; for this is the first season where he has breathed in the heat of springtime, the heat that so many other lesser creatures bask in, revel in, rejoice. He is oblivious to the absolute success of her gambit; he is ensnared by something.

I have something for you to do, he thinks, the words in his mouth forming, ready to be unleashed, to lace direction for his little spider bitch to dance about his whim. But he breathes it again, the springtime that threatens to clog his voice, his lungs with cotton—a gentle sort of suffocation. He grinds his teeth; the curve of her shoulder becomes apparent, the line of her back, straight and sturdy, sloping toward a well-formed quarter etched from obsidian. His head swims; his vision goes mauve and the world freckles with bloodspots. He is suffocating, after all.

“Come here,” are the words he says instead—whispers against the grain of his original intention, snarls against the bubbling, bubbling, bubbling of something that must be unleashed, something he must let loose, something that begs for freedom. His pacing ceases; suddenly he is beside her, teeth rushing for the poll of her neck, for he must touch her somehow; his body must be in proximity to hers, and he is not a gentle creature.



@[Jorogumo]
talk talk talk

The brim of his cauldron overflows; the lid blows from the pot of boiling tar and brimstone. It is unleashed, he is unhinged finally, for it must be destiny that he would be so ignited.

She pulls herself out of his teeth; bristling black fur is stuck in-between the long white fangs, her taste lingering far too long against his tongue, clogging the back of his throat, gagging him. He touched her—the touch was supposed to promise the release of this pressure, the agony of this heat within! I does no such thing, and worse, she’s speaking again, things flying from her mouth in a display of useless stupidity, fiery insolence. He had thought they were passed this willfulness of a slave girl—what sort of pride does she expect herself to hold? For she belongs to him, and he did not ask for her words; here they tumble, and she is away from him, where she should not be, where the seeping fire of his belly cannot reach her, claw her, reel her in its devastating, agonizing blaze of black smoke--

“SHUT UP!!” he finally shouts, unable to keep the roar sealed behind his lips: he hates her. He flies at her again, and this time his rage will not be denied: hooves flail her, teeth bite at her, tug her skin, endeavor to spill the blood and taste its mediocrity. Kicks are thrown and her body is pummeled with the strength of his rage, blind and wild—and none of it helps, none of it eases the pressure in his breast, the bubbling of his gut, the rising levels of something that will surely explode if he doesn’t do—if he—

It is finally Nature’s hand that steps in and saves the black widow’s life—for he had been working to end it, such was his frustration, his wrath and the need for something that he does not understand. It is a small hand, cool and porcelain, that caresses the broken mind of the Grey-Eye’d prince—twists it under quick and knowing fingers, long and gentle against his consciousness, forming a plot, an idea that strikes him as it has never struck before. He stops trying to maul his mistress, trying to close her mouth once and for all; he leaps at her, onto a back that slopes gracefully toward a well-formed quarter etched from obsidian. His body is lost from all control, and Nature’s hand wields it as a puppeteer masterfully wields the strings and wires of their grey-eye’d quarry, bending some, twisting others, flexing and arching the wooden cross to fulfill the sacrament of every mortal being, etched into stone since the beginning of time.

He is not a gentle creature.




@[Jorogumo]
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