[:x this post got way off track from my original intention, but never fear she will connect with Confu next post, first she had to sort of, rediscover herself but next she'll notice that Cofu does resemble him, especially now that she has lineage on the brain, so she'll likely connect the dots even if Confu doesn't say something outright.]

The weight of eyes upon me settles like an odd tingle upon my spine, gathering like condensation upon the morning grass. I pause, lending an ear to the woods who speak in crow caws and rat chatters. The give nothing away, at first, my shitty friends, but in time even they prove some benefit to this forsaken relationship.

The silence stutters as the imposing eyes break my friend's finger with equally imposing feet. I toss a careless glance across my shoulder and in that moment my attempt at sly nonchalance is holstered like a gun in a church. Here has come my God.

I am frozen in this web of disbelief, a fly that ceases to writhe in a fate sealed with a venemous kiss and a captor with eyes, eyes, eyes. My spider crawls forward, my wolf, my "DEMON KING!" I hail. My bead slithers between my bowing knees while my tail does similar between the backward ones behind. I exhale and dust motes stir. The earth's dandruff tickles at my nose and I sneeze.

The motion jerks my head up and against my will my eyes coast upon his glorious frame. I cannot deny I wanted to steal a look. My wants mean little then as I gape in horror, snot dribbling down to my chin like the unceremonious hang of the noose above the thirteen steps. This is not my savior, this is not my king, this is not my father.

I take a step back, visibly shaken. The sight, like a sweet caress of lips to a lover starved is not a reeling slap to the face and my emotions do teeter like a boat at see from going so fast to bow and stern, love and hate. I want to weep not for the absence of him, that pain I know all to well, but for the cruel hope that he had returned. There is no fate so worse as to return hope to that whom has long forsaken it. A drug it shocks my system and I fall back into the abyss of need

"A lie" I manage to stutter out. My body has balled into itself, trying to absorb all my limbs and joints into one shaft of mortal flesh, black and black and white. Lost in my misery I almost do not see the lighthouse calling for me. A spark in the din, if only I were a moth. Alas, I am a bat, blind as can be and flame or glow or light of any kind I do not see.

It is the act of crashing upon the rocks that shakes me from my drowning fate. I understand now the melancholy that has begun to taint my soul like like rust to a fine vehicle. I have been searching for a purpose to enact in his name. Too long I have sat idle, permitting the rust to settle with all my inactivity. I was crafted to pour blood from the living and let the earth drink the dying wine but I have let that elixir sour into meager booze. I have become a shadow rimmed with specks of light rather than cackle with a jack-o-lantern face, emitting light from within and in so, bathing the vicinity in darkness.

I know what I must do now. I need to serve my lord as I have not yet been able to. If I am incapable in striking fear or egregious injury, then I must use what natural assets I have always had. The very ones that flushed earlier and that ignite at just the mention of his name. I must recreate myself. No, I am not so worthy as that. I must re-create him.

His bones lie as ash in that overrun land, unreachable by my magic, but his blood hums in me still and with that I can craft his nature and his form once more.

I smile and the delight on my face is wicked with the jigsaw pieces curling; my lips writhe like worms on a fresh corpse, such is the joy to finally feast on the rot.

Worn out places, worn out faces
No expression, no expression
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
O C T O B E R :

The liar calls out to me the garbled noise of impatience and command. It rolls easily off my frame, no allegiance owed to her or her tongue. I am too busy being lost within my own mind, fighting against the tides of sanity that ebb and flow upon the beach of my consciousness.

The liar begins to fade from my attention.

In the moment when I grin victorious into the night, the new plan fresh at feet like a recent kill split open, she steps back into my awareness. I haven't had the pleasure of dipping my maw in the red soup of my kill, my plan, this scavenger has come to lie and take. My ears slick back in defiance, but my wolf teeth bare themselves in greeting. Come my smile insists, yet my stomach roils, hunger guiding me to gorge on two feasts tonight.

I recognize in that moment when my gaze settles back upon her what had brought me to call her in falsehood to begin with. The similarity she shares with him is real, in as much as anything is real, which in some cases I have learned they are not. Is her face a shrine of false hope on this moonlight night eternal, or is it a sign from him, a lighthouse lit by a ghost to guide the wayward fleet he set sail so long ago?

Maybe neither

Another idea snarls into a voice, my wolf's grin sputtering into a pale line on my face. What if her bone-white color is just a suggestion of what she should look like? I could certainly help alleviate her of some of that skin.

My ears slip up, a feign at indifference to lure her closer and give meaning to the colors her head boast's of. I'll tear her face clean off; tear and tear and tear until all the hide has sunken to the earth, until all the muscle has withered to the ground, until all the ligaments and the nerves have snapped and all the blood has run down, leaving only one thing left, the blank canvas of her mortal composure.

She speaks in that moment when my hearing is forward, and I catch a phrase that sets the ideas in my brain all in a spin. Father her mouth speaks. I see the image of her lips placing that word into the air over and over as the realization floods me like a cold dread that overtakes a doomed hare beneath the pursuit of a hungry wolf. Only this time I'm the hare, and Oblivion, well, he's always the wolf.

I almost committed the worst crime against him. I almost took his blood, my blood. In all things good or evil or even nothing at all, the pack stands as one.

I trembled away from her, shying at the pain her frame suggested on my psyche. She does not relent though and her words hound upon me like fists on a barred door. With every syllable the wood yields bit by bit and the splinters come flying at me. The wriggle under my skin and dig in deeper, deeper, deeper until I'm no longer made of anything but wood and then CRACK the door splits and there she stands, unavoidable.

I blink. Black and orange wash and mix and in the haze there is the bone white of Confutatis staring me down. "Come, sister."
I proffer the word like a hand in the dark and if she grips it we will run.

We will run and in the night so drunk with stars and hope I'll whisper my name and that of my father's, our father's. Our fate is sealed with blood, and so it will continue to bind us in an unbreakable pact.
An unbreakable pack.

Howl.

Worn out places, worn out faces
No expression, no expression
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
O C T O B E R :