Discordant serenity shattered and fragmented into the aura of the skyline, where the chiseled walls of his resolute, debauched soul tore against the world, the rush of the soil sinking into the depths of his desecration, and where she, vernal tranquility, watched from the callous wings of doleful quandaries. In the still realm of destruction and repose, he yearned for calamity, the pitch, the divide, the rift of anarchy and insurrection, for otherwise he was lost, bearing weight in the refined expanse of elegiac shards. What would he be without the resolution, the dissolution and the revolution of lethality, mortality, defeat at the hands of a mute rapier? But she didn’t provide it, that yearning, aching brew of sedition, of derision, of gall and treachery, of perilous punctures that sealed doom, that paralyzed and choked, that lacerated until the world overflowed with death, delivering a requiem for another void soul. Instead, she smiled, stirring, incensing irony in the grasp of all rancorous fools, all bitter delusions of opulence and decadence, whispering heartache, sculpting despair from snow and ice, and his winter grace became consumed in that lament for solitude once more. What was he without the clamor of insurgence, without the din of provocation, without the stifling, devouring, rapacious cling of ravenous rapture, unholy disorder, contorting, distorting immorality? Always the predator amore, always the carnivore reverie, always the despondent, forlorn, desolate soldier slinking in the midnight oils, soaked in Stygian ardor, cloaked in the irreverent, wicked shades of corruption and dissipation, infernal, chaotic bliss locked in a scabbard. He was pariah and power, composure and control, and this unwinding palisade, the slinking apertures of paradoxes and incongruity, would not change him, would not unravel him into the many sinuous layers beneath the meticulous, grinding puissance and pernicious slate of his heathenous creation. He would ravage, he would ruin, he would demolish and wreak havoc until the world collapsed upon itself, degenerate and debauched, slain in the brutality of his might. Her smiles wouldn’t change that.

Yet, he still watched her, the hushed overseer of strife and woe, terror and fear, looming in the disgrace of weakness, of humanity, never wondering where his had gone, vanished and vanquished, renounced and abhorred. She doesn’t flinch from his foul tides, from his irreverent, infidel enmity, the quiet, unwavering poise grasped and ensnared from some other core of strength, where the virtuous vessels of life are scarred, helpless, seething tombs and tomes of perseverance. The chilling void of his gaze, the hallowed, hollow shell of savagery follows each movement, the dawning comprehension, the looming understanding of his odious soul, and he almost moved away from her piercing absorption and awareness so that she may not see, view, anymore of his faults and flaws. Yet, he stayed, not straying from the keen interstice of blue, of rain and ocean all over again, the languid, listless creed of lapping waves and discourse of storms. Her brow arched over his query, over that strange, novel question that dabbled over his lips in a moment of inquiry that still managed to surround and pervade his senses, and her features drown in the wake of irresolution. Had he found a weakness of hers, a herald that beseeches the torrent of her design? He found himself listening more intently than before, ears twisting to caress the hitch in her voice, the uncertainty in her song, to know that he’d somehow found a way to pierce the wholesome spring, the genuine cordiality, ruffling and tearing foundations away from vestal pedestals. Shadows mingled over her countenance, mantles drawn over harpsichord melodies and harmonious bliss, and for one scarce moment, he wondered if somehow, someway, they were the same – sketched into a world that lingered with nefarious interludes and brutal immersions, and while he slayed, she overcame.

Huyana, her name coasted from broken barriers, but he didn’t recognize it, couldn’t muster it from the chimes of memories echoing amongst his mind. The grin that followed told him secrets had been absconded and placed in his grasp, pondered over what he would do with the ruminations, the clandestine throngs, the tedious overtures of private, undisclosed daydreams and lucidities. Destroy her? Betray her? Ensnare her? Beguile and deceive, trap and murder? No – he tucked it neatly within his ramparts, where the wind howled its bestial chords and he stalked with meticulous, scrupulous lacerations, where the rest of the realm could not see, could not touch, could not feel. Then he practiced the word across his lips, parted his quiet mouth, breathing the name in one sumptuous, poisonous murmur, silent and strung to the rafters of air and earth. Again, he conjured it across the enchantments of his vile contortions, allowed it to ring in the brusque, haunting vocals of his resonating chaos, bedlam and corruption. “Huyana.” What did it sound like to her, touched by the sinful slight, the enticing mania, of his satanic power, tainted by his dissolute darkness, stained by his iniquitous allure? And still, his eyes refused to stray. “Why do you follow me?”