and this is how we'll shatter your bones into salt

( 004 | orestes: prologue, 1,220 words )

strzyga — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:39:56 GMT

an old fic of mine, moved here from my older writing journal to keep everything in the same place. this is pretty simplistic, but i like it.

"My name is Orestes," the noble says. He says nothing of the gaping abyss between his status and Slaid's.

Slaid is six, and he doesn't understand social power, or why the tattoo on Orestes' face frightens his mother so. He's never seen a tattoo before, and doesn't realize they're not meant to move.

orestes, prologue
by strzyga

Slaid Kul is six, and the noble is very, very tall.

He crouches in front of him, though, and Slaid smiles nervously into the man's eyes, because no one ever lowers themselves to his level when they speak to him.

"My name is Orestes," the noble says. He says nothing of the gaping abyss between his status and Slaid's.

Slaid is six, and he doesn't understand social power, or why the tattoo on Orestes' face frightens his mother so. He's never seen a tattoo before, and doesn't realize they're not meant to move.

Slaid is eleven, and very cold.

The day is dark, sky thick with clouds pregnant with rain, and the wind oozes through skeleton trees. He shivers as it slides like eels across his skin.

"Bundle up," his mother had advised. "You'll catch a chill."

It hadn't seemed that cold at first, so he'd ignored his mother's advice and gone out without a coat, instead a simple, heavy jerkin and tunic. He hunches over himself as he walks, arms wrapped tightly against his chest, and he grits his teeth to keep them from chattering. Week-old snow crunches beneath his boots, and he's just thankful the walk to the village isn't overly long.

The sound of horse hooves beating a fast pace against the packed dirt road makes him look up, and he stares as a noble races past. He catches a brief glimpse of dark features against pale skin, an aristocratic nose and a strange tattoo that seems to move across his skin at the corner of the noble's eye.

This time, when he shivers, it's not because of the cold, but he smiles, because he's known Orestes for as long as he can remember.

Slaid is sixteen, and he is deeply in love.

Myrna is fifteen, though, and he's not allowed to see her without her mother there as well. It grits along his nerves, but he accepts it because he loves her.

Orestes smiles when he tells him of her.

Slaid is sixteen, and doesn't recognize the sadness in Orestes' eyes.

Slaid is twenty-four, now, husband to the woman he loves and father of three.

His children are his world, and he toils long and hard in the fields for them. Myrna -- beautiful, glorious Myrna -- works alongside him, sleeves rolled up to her elbows and skirt bunched around her thighs despite the cold. There is a streak of dirt across her cheek, and he loves her for it.

He hears noise behind him and sees the shadow of a man on horseback fall across the wheat. He turns, and high up on the road is Orestes, dark and powerful and glorious in a way Myrna can never be.

Slaid smiles and waves, and feels Myrna go still beside him. When he looks at her in confusion, she says nothing, just raises the scythe.

Slaid is thirty-seven, and feeling old.

His oldest is seventeen and already married, and he's expecting a grandchild in the coming months. He prays the child is born in the summer, when it's warm, and not in the cold dark of winter, when the sun rises mere hours before noon and sinks below the horizon not long after. The days are long, in the summer, and he wants his grandchild to see that first.

Myrna is growing delicate with age and hard work, wrists fragile in his hands and skin growing pale and thin. Such is the life of living so far north, he supposes.

He has to go into the village, now, to see Orestes. Myrna won't allow him in the house, and Slaid doesn't understand why.

Slaid is forty-nine, and Myrna died a year ago, fragile and old as one can wish to be in this place.

He lives on his own, now, with an old, graying sheep dog, and the walk to the village aches in his bones, but any attempt to mount a horse leaves him in such agony he can barely move.

Orestes visits him often, cool and dark and soothing. Slaid's skin is papery beneath his hands as he presses it to his brow, but Orestes' is strong and smooth.

Slaid smiles, and sees pain in Orestes' eyes.

Slaid is fifty-four, and dying.

He's seen his children more often the past week than he has in the last three years, and it is a solid, heavy ache in his chest.

Orestes visits almost daily now, and Slaid can see his children have some misgivings about him, but they say nothing and he is thankful. He notices Orestes is careful to visit when his children are away, and Slaid wonders why the people he loves most cannot love each other.

"Try not to worry so much," Orestes says, seated on a heavy wooden stool Slaid made years ago. If it weren't for his bearing and clothes, Orestes would never look like a noble: He sits with his legs spread wide, a foot hooked around a stool leg, leaning forward and resting against his knees.

Slaid likes to watch the tattoo swirl against his skin. It's a way of distracting himself from Orestes' eyes, how bruised they look against his skin, like old wounds. He can't imagine why Orestes would be in so much pain.

Slaid is fifty-five, and he knows he'll be dead within a week. Breath comes difficultly to his lungs, now, hard and cold. His tongue is thick and heavy in his mouth, and it pains him to swallow.

Orestes spends more time with him than his children do; slowly, they've stopped visiting, as though trying to put their dying father from their mind. He can't honestly blame them; he can only imagine how he must look.

Orestes, though, is with him for most of the day, before and after dark.

Slaid wakes to find Orestes by his bed, watching him with sorrow in his eyes. He tries to smile, but if his lips move at all it turns his face into a grimace, something gruesome.

A strong, pale hand brushes the hair out of his eyes, and Orestes leans forward, presses a kiss to the parchment-skin of his forehead. "I love you, my old friend," he murmurs, and leans back.

Slaid realizes, suddenly, that Orestes has not aged a day since he was six.

He swallows, almost chokes on it, and closes his eyes.

The day is dark, but it's never really been anything different, here. Orestes shivers in the cold, watching the breeze kick up dead, rotting leaves, and pulls his coat tighter around him.

Head down and hands tucked into his pockets, he turns and walks away.

He has no place here, now.

Slaid is eight, ninety-three, forty-seven, twenty-five, one thousand, all at once. He is strong as he has not been in ten, fifty, one hundred years, and the wood of the plow is solid in his hands.

He smiles as he raises the scythe, laughs as he tills good earth. The weather is always warm, here, the sky blue, the sun high in the sky, and the grass greener than anything he can remember. Sweat glistens sleek on his skin.

Sometimes, Orestes visits him, and when Slaid looks deeply enough into his eyes he sees a map of the world on his face. He doesn't understand the sorrow he finds there.

( 003 | the lost astoria pt i., 4,249 words, adult )

strzyga — Wed, 20 May 2009 05:30:09 GMT

something written for my writing fiction class last spring. i'd been trying for weeks to write something for my week's rotation, but nothing was working. then i watched some stupid animated dragonlance movie or whatever with my boyfriend and there were unicorns, and i was like, oh my god, i want to write about unicorns! so i did. 8) but, like, not conventionally. it makes sense, i swear.

uuuuh, there may or may not be more of this in the future. technically it's a wip? but i haven't, like, worked any progress on it since. uhm. i'm planning a huge rewrite at some point, like at some point far, far from now. idk, i guess i should offer a warning that there will be lesbians in the future?

warnings: graphic sex

Three days pass, and they find Rupert Akelsen dead in the middle of the Mendelsens' potato fields, splayed like a broken doll in an irrigation ditch. The corpse is bloated and white, head twisted entirely around and tongue lolling purple against blue lips. Its eyes are gaping holes where the crows have eaten them, and scavengers have picked it clean to the sun-dried bone in more places than the Mendelsens can count.

Jasper shivers when she hears about the body. She's not sure why, but she finds herself thinking of how Rupert had tormented her three days earlier ("Where's your father?" he had asked, eyes dancing with laughter. "I bet he left you because you're so ugly."), and then of the unicorn: a white, white glow in the forest dark, and black eyes slit with gold.

the lost astoria, pt. i
by strzyga

The first time Jasper sees a unicorn, she is eleven and picking flowers in the Jelnisens' back fields, where they let the weeds grow wild. She leans over to grab a cluster of Queen Anne's lace and sees something bright and white flitter through the trees. Startled, she looks to her right.

She drops the flowers.

The unicorn glows white as fresh-fallen snow in the green dark of the woods, mane a cascade of white silk over the gleaming arch of its neck; its hooves glitter like polished silver. The horn is a spike of glimmering pearl, spiraling upwards from the center of its broad forehead. A gentle breeze kicks up, catching in the flowing mane and tail so that they snap like royal banners, strands slipping around the horn and over the eyes like spider-silk.

What's oddest, though, are the unicorn's eyes: pupil-less, a thin slit of smoldering red gold (like hell, like fire) against black sclera.

It stares at her, unblinking.

Jasper bites her lip, and when she runs home, she leaves the flowers where she dropped them.

When she tells her mother, her mother tells her she must have been imagining things. "Unicorns left Fenario," she says. "Long ago." There is a tense frown at the corners of her mouth.

Later, though, Great Aunt Bana pulls her aside. Her hair is gray like rain clouds, coarse and pulled back in a severe bun. The skin on her hands is thin and stretched over the bone, dotted with dark liver spots. Her face is a map of all the years she has seen, a mass of wrinkles spidering in thin lines from the corners of her eyes and mouth.

Great Aunt Bana is old, and very superstitious. Jasper's mother tells her not to listen to Great Aunt Bana, but Jasper has always enjoyed her stories.

"Jasper," she says, voice the rough croak of an old crow. "What color was the unicorn?"

Jasper shifts nervously and says, "White."

Frowning, Great Aunt Bana nods. "Good," she says. "Be careful. A white unicorn will do you no harm, but if you see a black unicorn..." She pauses, looking at the knitting needles in her hands; they glitter like knives in the sunlight that pours through the window. "Do not let its shadow touch your own," she finally says. "It will steal your soul."

Jasper shivers and nods.

Three days pass, and they find Rupert Akelsen dead in the middle of the Mendelsens' potato fields, splayed like a broken doll in an irrigation ditch. The corpse is bloated and white, head twisted entirely around and tongue lolling purple against blue lips. Its eyes are gaping holes where the crows have eaten them, and scavengers have picked it clean to the sun-dried bone in more places than the Mendelsens can count.

They're drawn to the field by the stink of rotting meat, and their daughter's scream startles a lone coyote into dropping the arm it had carried away.

Their daughter, Evangeline, is never the same.

Jasper shivers when she hears about the body. She's not sure why, but she finds herself thinking of how Rupert had tormented her three days earlier ("Where's your father?" he had asked, eyes dancing with laughter. "I bet he left you because you're so ugly."), and then of the unicorn: a white, white glow in the forest dark, and black eyes slit with gold.

The constables are bewildered by how quickly the corpse has decayed; Rupert had been seen mere days ago.

On the night of her fifteenth birthday -- she is a woman, now, and will soon be married to Gregory Eriksen -- she dreams, of blood and fire and death.

War rages on a field red and wet with blood, the sky dark and crimson, reflecting the carnage below. Swords drip blood like rubies, and the world shakes beneath the roar of explosions. The earth is littered with corpses, the air rent with the screams of the dying.

Upon the hill stands a tall, thin woman, clad in brutally elegant plate armor and a violet cape that swirls around her ankles.

She points to her left, and the white unicorn at her side turns its elegant head to look -- eyes black as night, slit with gold -- at the last platoon of soldiers making a stand in the valley. It blinks, and the valley erupts into flames. The soldiers scream as they are burned alive.

The victorious are chanting.

"Astoria! Astoria!"

Jasper wakes in tears, and the chant echoes like thunder in her ears.

Gregory courts her for a year, bringing her flowers and gifts and rare foods or treats from the East. Over the year, his family adds onto their house so that she can live with him under his parents' roof.

The wedding is held on her sixteenth birthday in an open field under the morning sun, and there is birdsong in the trees and the high whisper of insects in the grass. She wears a simple white gown, high collared and swirling like water around her ankles. There is no abundance of embroidery, no lace or any sort of decoration; she prefers it this way.

The whole village attends, but the village is a small one and so is the ceremony. She meets Gregory's eyes when they are pledged to each other, watches as he smiles nervously at her, and fakes a smile in response. All she can feel is dread.

She does not love this man.

Gregory's house is small but cozy, with heavy oaken walls, low ceilings, broad windows in the sitting room, and the hall leading to the room she will share with him is hanging with rich tapestries. She passes them by with hardly a glance, but freezes before she reaches the door to their chambers.

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and steps backwards.

The unicorn stands on the edge of a cliff, spider-silk mane and tail caught high in an invisible breeze. Behind it the sky is scarlet with sunset, the sun a bloated orb on the horizon, and the mountains are dark and purple. The artist included enough detail that the sunset catches fiery highlights across the unicorn's back, threads of gold in its mane and tail.

Jasper frowns.

Its eyes are blue. Blue, like the winter sky, like perfect sapphires, like a butterfly's wings. Blue like flames that burn too hot to stay yellow.

She stares for so long Gregory comes back out of their chambers. He frowns when he sees her and asks, "Is something wrong?"

She swallows and shakes her head. "No," she says. She is thankful Gregory does not know her well enough to recognize the thickness in her voice. "This tapestry is very beautiful," she says, and knows the expression on Gregory's face to be a vaguely patronizing indulgence of what he must believe to be silly feminine whims. She thinks he doesn't mean to be condescending.

All he says, though, is, "Come."

With one last, backward glance -- the eyes are all wrong, why are they so blue? -- she does.

Their chambers are small and cozy, like the rest of the house, and the bedroom is dominated by the enormous heavy oak bed. The windows are obscured by thick brown curtains, the lampshades heavy waxed leather, and the bookcase against the far wall dark oak. The bed terrifies her, so she looks at the books. A History of the Natural World, one of them is called, written in spidery gold lettering on the side of a dark dried-leather book, another Catoptrica: Light, Reflection, and the Use of Mirrors. She is about to reach for one called Creatures of Fantasy: An Encyclopedia when Gregory asks, "What are you doing?"

He sounds more confused than anything, and when Jasper turns around she blinks at him. "I was going to read," she says.

Gregory stares. "Women don't read!" he says, looking utterly flabbergasted. "They clean and cook and garden and sew--"

"My father taught me my letters," she says, back stiff as a board and head held high.

Gregory turns red, fumbles for words for a long moment, and finally regains his composure and says, "I apologize."

He doesn't actually say he's sorry, though. Jasper nods, mouth tight.

Gregory motions to the bed. "Now please, can we--?"

Jasper swallows and looks at the bed. It looks bigger than it really is, a sea of white sheets and bulky brown quilts above a soft goose-down mattress, and she imagines that beneath it is lurking something dark and unimaginable, waiting and eager to devour her whole. After a long, tense moment she nods and sits on its very edge.

When Gregory comes to her, pressing her carefully into the mattress, lips dry and a little chapped against her own, he is very sweet, and very gentle. She finds herself enjoying his lips on her throat, her shoulders, her breasts as he peels the gown from her skin. His fingers are cool against her belly, hands too broad, too rough as he palms her breast, but she cares little when he rolls her nipple between his fingers. She cares even less when they slip into the wet warmth between her thighs, gasping for breath as she pushes against them, wanting more friction. This hot liquid slide is something she thinks she can never get enough of.

Then he is naked between her legs, the skin of his hips rough against the soft of her inner thighs, and she jerks as he pushes inside her. He tries to be gentle, she's sure, but it hurts so much. It is a fullness that leaves her aching, because she does not want this.

As he begins to thrust, she closes her eyes and pretends to enjoy it. The pain slowly eases, but she is too full in a way she does not think she was meant to be. She tries not to feel bitter that he mistakes the noises she makes as ones of genuine pleasure.

He ruts above her, and as she feels him finish on a long, drawn out grunt, his seed spilling inside her, she realizes what this marriage truly is.

It is a prison.

She has never been as relieved as she is when he pulls out of her.

Gregory collapses at her side, one hand curved possessively over her hip; it makes her skin crawl. He smiles sleepily at her and asks, "Are you all right?" The words tumble against her skin. Something seems to occur to him, and his eyes are suddenly alert. "Did you--"

She forces a smile, and if he notices it's not real he makes no show of it. "I'm fine," she says, and feels herself die a little.

He nods and promptly falls asleep.

Jasper hates him.

In the morning they hang the sheets from the window, proof that she had been a virgin. The small stain of blood can be mistaken for nothing else.

Jasper wants to scream.

She wants to be sick.

The first week in Gregory's household passes by in a haze of thinly veiled scorn from his family (he seems not to notice) and nightly sex she does not want. It is only through force of will that she hasn't been ill or simply broken down and wept. She bides her time while Gregory is home by doing the things he expects of her: She washes and folds their dirty clothing, cleans up after Gregory's messes, helps his mother in the kitchen, and washes the dishes after they've finished eating. She starts her own garden below their window, and even asks his mother to teach her to sew and crochet.

His mother's lip curls as she says, "Of course, dear."

Jasper gives her a wooden smile and fakes gratitude.

In the mornings, she helps with the farm work, which she's familiar with. She never thought the feel of a cow's udders in her hands would be so soothing, but the rhythmic motion of milking calms her mind. The pails of milk are heavy, but she does not mind.

When Gregory is off working at the mill or visiting with friends, she holes herself away in their rooms. She hears what his family says to each other, laughing as they mock her for being so lovesick she must surround herself with Gregory's things when he's not near. She thinks they deliberately say it so that she will hear.

What they don't know is that she's poring over the books Gregory owns.

Much to her disappointment, Creatures of Fantasy: An Encyclopedia is exactly what the title claims it to be: A list of fantastic beasts, with a bare minimum of description and the rare accompanying sketch. She frowns and returns it to the bookcase.

As she skims over the titles of other books, she runs her thumb across the spines. She pauses on A History of the Natural World, but something makes her pass it by and she does without pausing to think about why.

Shaking her head, Jasper moves to the window and throws the curtains wide. She falls bonelessly into the chair she'd moved there herself, a beastly thing of old maple she wrestled into the room from the attic one day when everyone else was at market. Gregory has never asked how it came to be there, and said nothing about the bruises and scrapes she'd attained through the effort.

She falls asleep in the chair, with sunlight pouring like warm honey over her face. It is red behind her eyelids.

Jasper dreams:

The woman sits astride a horse that is black as coal, its eyes burning like embers in the lamplight.

She dismounts with ease, swinging one leg over the horse's back, and when she lands, her boots, armored with scale-like lames that flex when she moves, crunch against the earth. Somehow, she looks more intimidating alone here in the lamplight than when standing before an army.

She strides to the door of the hovel and knocks imperiously. Her gauntlets are of beaten iron, lames like the diamond scales of a dragon, and they echo hollowly against the wood.

The door opens with a sudden rush of light, and the woman's armor is clearly visible. Her breastplate, molded around the shape of her breasts, is made up of interlocking diamond lames, the ridges and fans of her shoulder plates resembling dragon wings, the plates curving over her knees and elbows spiked. Her helm bares spikes like beaten knives, and its fluked sides give it an eerie resemblance to a horse's skull.

She says, "I am here for the Loyalist." Her voice is low and rich. "I want to see its face."

The man in the door smiles. His face is smooth, his eyes the clear blue of ice, his hair the shimmering white of a unicorn. "Welcome, Lady Astoria," he says. "We have been expecting you."

Astoria says nothing, but enters the hovel with the air of someone entering a royal banquet. She looks around at the packed dirt floor, the enormous cedar chest they must keep their clothing in, the thin rice mats that serve as beds, the small fire burning in the fireplace and the stone hearth before it. Hanging above the fire from a thin smoke-blackened rod is a small black pot in which is boiling a thick meat stew.

She smiles thinly. "Hello, Norn," she says. "Still living with the pigs, I see."

Norn throws his head back and laughs. "There is no need for war among the pigs," he says. He is grinning. "Pigs are more noble than you or I, Astoria."

"You're a fool," Astoria sneers. "Pigs are what they are because they wallow in their own shit."

"When you say 'pig,'" says a voice from behind her, "certainly you don't mean the peasants who labor in the fields to bring you your food?"

Astoria turns and is met with the sight of a naked back and auburn hair set aflame by the fire in the hearth. The Loyalist shifts, hair sliding like silk over the paper-white skin of its shoulder and baring the line of its spine, the row of parallel piercings on each side, black ribbon looped through each hoop like the ties of a corset.

It turns, hair a burning waterfall cascading over its shoulders and back. Its chest is flat and defined only slightly, tapering to its waist in a sinuous blend of feminine curves and solid masculine lines, but it has no nipples and no naval. It wears only a pair of black silk trousers that shimmer in the firelight.

Its eyes are black.

The Loyalist cocks its head, like a bird might, and smiles the wooden smile of a doll. "Lady," it says, voice as emotionless as its porcelain face. Its face is as androgynous as the rest of its body, the kind of elegance that could be either male or female. "A pleasure to finally meet you."

Astoria snorts. "I'm sure."

The black eyes shift just enough at the sound of her voice that Astoria realizes it had not been looking at her, simply in her direction.

"You're blind," she says.

The doll-like mouth moves in a hollow imitation of a smile. "In a way," it agrees. Then, head tilted to the side so that the firelight casts shadows across its face, "Do not presume to hide your face from me, Lady."

She lifts her chin, but slides the helmet off.

Her hair is black and recently shaved, her face surprisingly delicate. She bears a row of hoop-piercings down the line of her nose, and a small black stud high on her cheekbone, just below the outer corner of her right eye.

Her right eye is a rich blue, the color of a unicorn's.

Her left is a vibrant, molten gold.

Jasper dreams:

The unicorn stands in a field of sunflowers that sway in the breeze, broad faces turned up to the sun.

It is a black so rich it seems to absorb the light around it, blacker than midnight with no moon, blacker than volcanic glass. Light shimmers across its sides, its belly, its flanks as it breathes, and its mane and tail glow as they are caught in the breeze.

Black eyelashes glisten thick around clear, brilliant azure eyes, like the winter sky or flames that burn too hot to stay yellow.

Jasper starts awake, gasps for breath for a long moment in her bed -- Gregory must have moved her before he went to sleep -- and flings herself to her feet. It is only by luck that she doesn't injure herself getting tangled in her sheets. She rips A History of the Natural World from the shelf and opens it to the page she knows in her gut she needs to see.

She shivers, for before her on the page in faded black ink are the Lady Astoria and the two unicorns. Her unicorns, Jasper finds as she reads. The unicorns are mentioned only in passing, but the Lady Astoria is described in more detail.

The Lady Astoria was a tyrant, the book reads, ruling with an iron hand a kingdom so far north I know not the name.

She soon turned to the south. Scholars may never know why -- many assume it was greed, others that it was hatred, even others that there was a hole in her heart so large that only the world could satisfy it. I do not presume to guess, for I am certain that whatever assumptions I make will in the future be proven entirely unfounded in truth.

All inference aside, the Lady had soon conquered much of the known world, and Fenario appeared to be all that stood between her and complete domination.

High King Falchion quickly devised a plan. He ordered his circle of High Enchanters to create a being powerful enough to destroy the Lady Astoria, for already there had been skirmishes at the northern borders that had left the defending armies decimated. The Lady Astoria seemed nigh undefeatable, especially with her unicorns at her side. There were whispers among the ranks that she was invincible.

The creature Falchion's High Enchanters devised was named the Loyalist, a being so powerful it is rumored the one time It met with the Lady outside of the battlefield she bowed before Its will.

The time during which they finally met in battle is one of much debate amongst historical scholars, for it was a time of great chaos. Mere days before the Lady intended to march on the city of Arjen, High King Falchion mysteriously died. There are those, and I happen to be one of them, who believe his death was somehow the work of the Lady and her unicorns. Others believe it to be simple coincidence. All speculation aside, however, what historians know is this: Upon Falchion's death, the Loyalist forged an attack upon the Lady and her army. Not a soul survived, but later searches found the marks of great explosions and the remains of what the search party believed to be the Lady's armor.

Since then, neither hide nor tail have been seen of the Lady Astoria, her unicorns, or the Loyalist.

No one knows what happened to them.

Jasper closes the book with more care than is necessary, swallowing thickly as she replaces it on the bookshelf. She shivers.

Despite the lack of color, she knows the illustration is wrong. The eyes are wrong.

She looks suddenly around the room she has lived in for the past month, her jaw set. This place is killing her, she knows. She cannot stay here any longer.

She needs to know why everyone is so wrong about the unicorns.

It takes her two weeks to prepare.

She sells several of her finished sewing and crocheting projects at the market and uses the money to buy travel-safe bags and canteens, men's clothing, and a set of knives that glitter so brightly they leave sunbursts across her vision. She does all this with the excuse that they are gifts for Gregory's nearing birthday, and though his mother eyes her askance she says nothing. Jasper thinks letting them assume she is love-stupid has worked to her advantage.

In secret she takes apart the clothing she's bought, as well as some of Gregory's older, smaller clothing, and re-sews them so that they will fit her, albeit loosely. She stuffs these into one travel bag, and stocks in another what nonperishable foods she thinks won't be missed.

She leaves on the morning of a warm, dry day in early summer. Gregory and his father are at the mill, and his mother is at the market. She writes Gregory a note and slides it under his pillow so he will find it when he goes to sleep. I know you never meant to hurt me, it reads, and I am thankful for that. But I don't love you, and I cannot stay here any longer.

In the last travel bag she packs her toiletries and other necessities, and she dons a pair of the clothing she has resized for herself.

She climbs out through the bedroom window and crosses the back fields until they roll into her own family's. Beneath Great Aunt Bana's window she shears off her hair with one of her knives so that it reaches no further than the base of her skull. She leaves the trimmings and a note -- I promise you this is what I want -- on the windowsill, weighed down by a rock from the small garden.

She thinks Great Aunt Bana will understand.

The sun is high in the sky as she passes the border of the village, and it beats heavy on her back as she crouches to fill a waxed leather canteen with water from the river.

When she straightens and looks around, the road rolls like water into the distance, the beginning of something she can only imagine.

For the first week she is lucky, avoiding most travelers and surviving off of the food she'd packed and small game she manages to catch by surprise. What travelers she does see are small farmers and merchants, and they pay the young boy on the roadside no heed.

On the seventh night the countryside is slammed with an enormous thunderstorm, and she is lucky enough to be passing by a lone farmhouse when she sees the storm clouds billow up monstrous and black from the west, blotting out the stars like spilled ink. There is a tremendous flash of lightning and a roar of thunder so loud it leaves her ears ringing, and the clouds let loose a torrent of rain as loud as the thunder a mere second after she enters the shelter of the farm's barn.

She sleeps in the hay with the cows and dreams that the Loyalist stands in a crowd, a motionless island amidst a sea of chaotic swirling movement. Its hair has been woven into a false crown atop its head, into a braided mask obscuring its face so that its eyes are orbs of glittering obsidian, and the ends of its hair stream across its white shoulders, fingers of flame frozen in mid-motion.

Behind it the sun is rising; she should not be able to see its face.

It whispers, a siren call that whirlwinds around her ears, a thousand spiders crawling across her skin, "Nothing is over."

( 002 | raven lies, 7001 words, adult )

strzyga — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:36:49 GMT

this fic is my baby. i will say that first and foremost, haha. written originally for the 'genderbender' challenge over at imaginarybeasts, it was first rejected by the mods for not fitting the theme to their satisfaction. which was fine, 'cause they suggested i submit it instead for the 'travel' issue, which gave me a great deal of time to fine-tune and heavily rewrite certain parts more to my satisfaction. naturally i missed the deadline for the 'travel' theme as well, lol, but it recently got posted in their erase/rewind issue. 8) anyway, a lot of work and sweat and blood and all that jazz has gone into this fic. ♥♥
warnings: graphic gore and (disturbing) sex

The crack as the sword breaks his sternum is a sound more felt than heard. His legs turn limp -- he cannot feel them -- and he thinks it ironic that the sword which killed him is all that keeps him upright. He tries to call out, to say something, but all that emerges is a gurgle because his lungs, his mouth, are filled with blood. His heart stops.

Ravenli feels himself die, and it is glorious.

raven lies
by strzyga

Ravenli remembers:

The first time he dies, he is six, and being dedicated to Calam.

It is dark; the sky is bruised, sprinkled with stars like spilled sugar, and the horizon is a splash of crimson where the sun is just beginning to rise.

He is a small boy, slight and pale, with hair the color of milk cream and eyes like old blood. In his left hand he holds a bone dagger, ghostly white in the dark; in his right, a silver needle, thin and glistening like ice. He is naked, a precaution taken so that he can hide no other weapons.

A priest steps forward and wraps black cloth around his eyes, and Ravenli breathes deeply. He smells sweat and rain and linen and sweet peach blossoms and, from somewhere, lilies. White ones, he thinks, for purity; it almost makes him smile. A cool breeze raises gooseflesh across his skin, and damp grass is slick against his bare ankles. Sheep bleat in the distance, and he can hear the whisper of fabric as those around him shift.

He stands motionless, listening to the shimmer of cicadas, and rushes to duck under a blade as it screams over his head. He spins, feels the bite of steel against his ribs and the hot rush of blood. Jabs with the needle, feels it catch in cloth--

Cold steel stabs through his spine and into his heart.

The crack as the sword breaks his sternum is a sound more felt than heard. His legs turn limp -- he cannot feel them -- and he thinks it ironic that the sword which killed him is all that keeps him upright. He tries to call out, to say something, but all that emerges is a gurgle because his lungs, his mouth, are filled with blood. His heart stops.

Ravenli feels himself die, and it is glorious.

When he wakes, there is a subtle but powerful ache in his chest, and it leaves him gasping.

They tell him he has given himself to his god, that Calam is pleased with his sacrifice. They say Calam has given a little of himself unto Ravenli as reward.

Later, a small boy, smaller even than he is, says that, when they had brought Ravenli back to the village, he wore a skeleton grin.

He asks, What?

And the boy says, Your eyes, sir. They were empty, like a skull's.

Ravenli stares, and the boy turns red and ducks his head. From the doorway, Eldest says, Calam is pleased, Ravenli. Tomorrow, you will join the ranks of his Chosen ones.

He smiles.

When he can, Ravenli looks at his chest, and he can almost feel his heart fail again when he sees the scar, glistening and pink against his skin.

Ravenli remembers the words, now, though he has forgotten the voices -- even his own.

Still.

By the time Ravenli is fifteen, he has died more times than he can count. It is a heady thing, feeling his heart stop even as his body begins to heal itself -- the speed with which his cells reform, his bodily functions return, grows and grows.

He finds himself disappointed, though. He has died a myriad times, but he's never been truly destroyed. It is a longing that aches in his bones, as real and physical as the ghost pains of his first death.

He is nineteen the first time he truly kills someone.

Ravenli has forgotten the boy's name, as he has forgotten the sound of his own voice, but he does remember that he had a shock of red hair, morbidly vivid against his pale skin, and eyes like the summer sky after a storm.

They are experimenting, he and this boy, a kind of game to see how much pain they can tolerate. They have long passed mere injury -- Ravenli has had his skull caved in, and there is still blood and bone and brain matter tangled in his hair.

He remembers, after the world came back into focus and he felt himself breathe again, yelling about how much that hurt. The boy is laughing at him, taunting him, and Ravenli sneers and punches through his chest. The boy's ribs break with a sharp, wet snap, and bone and blood burst through his skin as one. Sunlight glitters knife-bright across the boy's smile, frozen and bleeding. Ravenli wraps a fist around his heart and rips it from his chest.

Hot, hot blood pulses into his hand and down his arm. The smell is thick in his nostrils, heavy on his tongue, and over the roaring in his ears he can hear the boy's screams. For a long moment Ravenli watches him writhe, noting the way he twitches.

Eventually, the boy's screams die into pathetic little gurgles, so Ravenli figures the pain has faded. They're still playing the game, though, so he searches for something else to try. His attention is caught by the pyre roaring on the hillside, and he grins as he looks at the heart that falters in his palm. He whispers the key to a fire spell.

The heart erupts into flame, unfolding like a flower at dawn, and the boy's screams begin anew as the fire engulfs Ravenli's hand. He can feel his flesh bubble and pop and split, but there is a desperate note in the boy's screams that makes him stare.

A dull, wet thud snaps his attention from the boy to his hand, where the fire has collapsed in upon itself and only a pile of ashes remains.

He looks at the boy, sees the wound in his chest has stopped leaking blood. A strange feeling is rising within him, and he sits there for hours, waiting.

His hand is entirely healed by the time he realizes the boy is not going to get up. The sky is seared by a burning sunset, and the light turns the hole in the boy's chest into a corpse's mouth, all crooked teeth and rotting lips and swollen tongue.

The strange feeling swells and bursts.

Ravenli laughs.

Three days later he stands before the village pyre, listening to its rumbling howl. He closes his eyes against its brilliance, and thinks of the town sleeping below; the streets are lit only by lamplight and the moon, shining swollen and pale against the midnight sky.

For a long time, he thinks.

The fire's glow catches on his hair, glimmering like smoldering embers, or molten silver. He turns and walks down the hill, through the streets, and pauses at the village garden; the moonlight washes the colors out to shades of gray, but the flowers glitter like jewels against the soil and the two giant peach trees stand solid and firm in the middle of the garden.

He continues on, through the village gates, and turns. He watches the pyre, the way it flares and spits glowing sparks, and thinks of the scripture, how Calam was born from the fire burning upon that hill eons ago, when the world was still young and humans a new race. He thinks of how Calam brought with him a reign of blood and destruction and fire, conquering the world and ruling with a cruel hand until one of his own underlings betrayed him, cutting his heart out in his sleep and tossing it into the flames from which he'd come.

Ravenli is tired of this village. It has given him all it can, and its ways are old and tired. They stifle him, cage him in with tradition-gilded bars.

He calls the fires down upon the village, stands for a long moment and lets them engulf him. His skin boils, cracks and burns, sizzles and pops.

He turns and walks away, leaving the village a roaring inferno behind him.

He has never gone back. Now, he likes to imagine that all that remains of the village are the shattered shells of stone buildings, green with moss and ivy. There will be poppies, he thinks, glowing in the harsh sunlight as they sway in the breeze. They will look like splatters of blood against the decaying stone.

And so the seasons pass, but he cannot tell you how many he has seen. He does not even know how old he is.

It takes him years to find something to do with himself. Eventually he falls into the mercenary life, and he is good at it, better than most of the people he works with. He refuses to join a company -- too many dues and restrictions -- but even as an independent mercenary he has built himself an impressive reputation. His fighting style is old, unorthodox, and generally unrecognizable, but there is no doubt of its power.

His latest assignment is in the highlands of Veralta, where the ocean breaks and foams against black cliffs and the air is bitter with salt and brine. The village is old and wet; the shacks sag against each other as wind whips through the cracks in board and roof, and the roads are dark and narrow and twist around themselves like some sort of ancient sea serpent.

Ravenli looks outside, where iron-bellied clouds drip fat, cold gobs of rain like slime. He glances behind him, into the dark of his room, and then again outside; the world is gray and the edges made soft by rain. He leaves his cloak and shirt crumpled on the bed and steps barefoot into the street, letting the rain slide like eels over his skin.

The castle towers over the village, high on the hillside. It is worn and decaying, the cliffside outer wall crumbling over the edge, and a freezing fog hangs like a shroud over the turrets and bleeds ice crystals like knives down the castle walls.

Even in this cold, he loves the rain. It tastes sweet and clean on his tongue, and cools the burning behind eyes that ache from the sea wind. He thinks he used to play in the rain before he was dedicated, remembers fragments and flashes of splashing in mud puddles and, maybe, his mother. But he long ago lost the ability to tell real memories from the ones he created.

Someone is watching him.

He spins, needle-blade jumping to his palm.

But when he looks, he finds no one.

His employer is balding and fat, his robes bursting at the seams and his forehead glistening with sweat. He has a servant whose entire purpose is to wipe the sweat off his brow. He eyes Ravenli's chest, bare beneath the half-open cloak, and grins like a lecherous pig. He says, You're pretty enough to be my little wife.

Ravenli sneers, says something about how he'd love that, wouldn't he, the fat cow? And he grins, wide and insolent.

The man turns an ugly red against the purple of his robe, sprays out some verbal abuse and a lot of saliva, and then demands an explanation of why the job hasn't been finished.

Smirking, Ravenli apologizes, but his dress hasn't been tailored to fit yet. Broad shoulders, you know. And, in case he'd forgotten, the ball was being held tonight, so he hadn't really had the chance, now, had he?

His employer's thin lips quiver, and the vein Ravenli can barely see in his trembling jowls throbs. Ravenli smiles, and leaves.

Unfortunately, though, he wasn't lying; this assignment requires he disguise himself as a woman, and he may be slight but years of wielding his scythe have thickened his shoulders.

Outside, the rain has stopped. The sun burns white through soft clouds of gray pearl and smoky blue, glittering bright and sharp across ice and glass. He stops by the tailor to purchase his gown, a frilly confection of gray silk and white furs, and ignores the looks the tailor gives him.

When he arrives, decked in his dress and a jester mask of scarlet feathers that sparkle with jewels, the ball is in full flow. People swarm and dance in a sea of ever shifting colors, and in the far corner a group of bards play a lively waltz, only just audible over the crowd. The ballroom is done in shades of polished gold and rich creams, with shimmering gold curtains drawn to each side of the broad windows, and all the hired staff wear uniforms of cream and gold trim.

There is no mistaking Ravenli for a woman, but it is deliberate; his target is whispered to lust after pretty men in women's clothing, and Ravenli knew this when taking the assignment. He takes his time, though, dancing with whoever is willing, and when he finds his target the gilded clock above the massive fireplace reads two hours before midnight. He exchanges pleasantries, curtsies and giggles and blushes like a little girl though his skin is crawling, and fakes shy acceptance when he is asked outside.

On the balcony, obscured by thick golden curtains, the air is cool and dry. The moon is soft and silver behind dark, heavy clouds that scuttle across the night, and Ravenli sees no stars. He watches from beneath his eyelashes, assuming coyness, as his target stretches out a hand and caresses his cheek, telling Ravenli that he is beautiful. Ravenli wants to bite him, can almost feel his teeth sink into flesh and taste the blood burst across his tongue.

He does not.

Instead, he palms the bone dagger he has hidden in his sleeve and slashes it across the man's jugular. Blood gushes forth, splattering hot against his face, and he buries the blade in the man's belly, ripping upward until it snags against his ribs.

He whispers, Calam thanks you for this, and he laughs at the terror and horror in eyes that grow glassy with death.

The man dies with nothing more than a pathetic little gurgle.

Whispering prayers, Ravenli paints symbols on the walls and floor and his own skin with the cooling blood. It is thick and sticky on his face, his arms, his chest, and he shivers.

When he's done, he slides the dagger back up his sleeve and vaults over the balcony railing, hits the cobblestone with a force that breaks his legs like dry branches, and waits until they heal just enough to walk before setting off down the street. He keeps to the shadows, because even simple villagers such as these will notice someone covered in blood, and as he leaves the walls surrounding the castle the cobblestone melts into packed dirt. The frills and lace of his skirt trail in the mud, and the inside layers cling cold to his legs. A cool breeze brings gooseflesh to his skin and dries the blood so that it itches and flakes.

He enters his room through the window, which he'd left unlocked, and he pauses to glance at his reflection in the bedside mirror. Dried blood cements chunks of his hair, turned the color of rust, to his face and neck. Ravenli grins, and remembers:

You had a skeleton's grin, sir.

He laughs, and sinks his bone dagger into his belly. He laughs as the blood boils forth, laughs as it saturates his gown, laughs as it soaks down and down--

Pale hands not his own, gray like ash or the skin of a corpse, catch at the edges of the open wound and pull.

Ravenli feels it like he has felt nothing since his first death. He feels his skin stretch, feels it tear, and pain explodes through his senses, red and hot. Like fire. Like blood. Corpse-like fingers slippery with blood claw at the muscle, ripping him open, and Ravenli collapses as his guts spill out and onto the floor with a heavy, wet smack.

Through eyes hazy and unfocused with pain, Ravenli thinks he is staring into the face of his god. He breathes, "Calam," and feels agony and ecstasy roar through him like a hymn as fingers made warm by his insides bury themselves deep in his abdomen.

His eyes roll back in his head as the world turns white.

When he wakes, his heart is aching beneath the scar and there is a man sitting at the foot of his bed.

Ravenli's first impression is of red hair so vivid it burns. It is a shock against the room's dimness and the man's gray skin. His eyes are a poisonous, glowing green, with no pupil and black sclera. He looks like a corpse-puppet, held together only by the thick black thread Ravenli can see woven through the skin of the joints not hidden by clothing. The seam of his lips stretches almost to his ears, and there is a row of threads binding each side.

He grins like someone has cracked open a rotten melon, and says, "My name is Althemi, but if you like feel free to call me the name of your god."

Ravenli stares.

Althemi's voice is low and rough, and it is the most glorious thing he has ever heard.

Finally, he says, "You ripped me open."

Althemi shrugs and smiles, and it makes Ravenli shudder. "You liked it," he says. Ravenli can't read the expression on his face.

He's opened his mouth to respond when he realizes that not only had he heard Althemi's voice, instead of just the words, he'd heard his own. Ravenli goes still, and for a long moment the world seems to hesitate. He feels something shiver across his skin, and his heart is beating rapidly in his chest, and then he starts speaking. The words boil out of his mouth like vomit, roll off his tongue like crashing waves, and he knows not what he is saying but for the first time he can remember it's not the voice he doesn't hear but the words. His voice -- his voice -- is low and resonant and the tiniest bit raspy, and he thinks it is talking about the sky, gray with clouds like satin worn and old enough that it has lost its sheen.

Althemi's fingers are around his throat before he can comprehend he's even moved, nails biting into his skin, and he says, "If you don't shut up I'm going to rip out your vocal cords."

Ravenli falls silent.

After a moment, Althemi pulls his hand away, and Ravenli catches a glimpse of his fingers.

They are gray, the skin almost translucent, and his nails are glossy like polished glass. His nail beds, though, are a deep, blackish purple.

Like belladonna.

He stares, transfixed and chewing at his lip, and he has to remind himself to breathe.

He leaves with Althemi in the morning, who is on his way to a contract target it Hamunandi, because being with him is a little like dying. They stop just long enough for Ravenli to get his payment, and they leave with blood and fat splattered across the windows and sticking to their skin. Ravenli grimaces and brushes at his cheek with the back of his hand, and only smears the blood further. There is a bubble of fat tangled in his hair, and as he pulls it out and tosses it away he says, "This is fucking gross."

His voice shivers along his spine, and he smiles.

Althemi doesn't look at him. "You make a horrible woman," he says. "Don't act like one."

Ravenli growls and says, "Fuck you."

Their travels lead them to the basins and plateaus of the Salween Desert to the north of Hamunandi, where there is not so much sand as bare, wind-scoured rock, and the sky is blue and clear.

It takes them two weeks to cross the desert. Ravenli talks altogether too much, and Althemi's temper simmers until it boils over and he snaps Ravenli's neck, or makes good on his threat to rip out his vocal cords. Ravenli will swear and curse him if he can still speak, but the truth is that he hasn't died so often since he lived in the village, and it's soothing an ache he hadn't realized was there.

Atop the last plateau, Ravenli pauses.

Before them the plateau joins the valley in a roll of sloping brown cliffs, melting into low round hills and then a broad, grassy plain. The sun is just beginning to set, washing the world in shades of deep purple and gold, and the plateau's shadow is long and dark. Ravenli, though, can still make out the orchard, leaves frosted with gold. In the distance, smoke rises from a chimney in curls of filamented silver, and a cool breeze brings with it the sweet aroma of peaches.

He breathes deeply, feeling something warm rush through him, and lets his eyes fall shut. His thumb runs across the scar on his chest.

When he opens his eyes again, Althemi has already started off down the cliff.

"Have you ever had peaches?" he asks the next morning.

They are walking through the orchard, between carefully cultivated rows of trees, and the scent is wreathed about him.

Althemi looks at him, and when Ravenli sighs he tastes peaches.

So he's surprised when Althemi says, "Once. Long ago."

Ravenli glances at him, eyebrows lifted, and something about the way a shimmer of sunlight lands on Althemi's face turns his blood cold. He remembers burning red hair and screams and so much blood as the heart he holds in his hands catches fire, and he asks, voice shaking, "Have we--"

The words catch in his throat, and he can't even make himself ask, Have we met before?

"What?"

He swallows and shakes his head. "Never mind," he says. "It's nothing."

Venom-green eyes narrow -- Althemi obviously doesn't believe him -- but Ravenli's attention has been caught by a flash of color behind him. He moves around Althemi, lifting a low-hanging branch, and finds a single, delicate pale pink flower. He smiles, cupping the blossom in his palm, and whispers, "I am your captive."

"What?" Althemi repeats, and he sounds angry.

Ravenli plucks the flower and turns around. It looks so small in his hands, but even smaller tucked into the corner of the half-mask Althemi wears to hide his stitches. He runs his hands over Althemi's shoulders, down his arms -- so broad, so much larger than he is; he hadn't really noticed before -- and feels the muscles tense beneath his fingers. The blossom is frail and almost white against the black of Althemi's cloak, but its dozens of thin, deep pink stamen float proudly in the faint breeze.

He says, "Keep it," and can't look away.

Althemi is silent for a long moment before he says, "I told you to stop acting like a woman." But he doesn't move to throw it away.

"Fuck you, Althemi."

As they leave the orchard, Ravenli snags a peach and leaves a small fortune in gold discs in return. He sighs in bliss as he takes the first bite: Soft, soft white flesh that almost melts before his teeth, and a rich sweetness that bursts across his tongue. Its juice glistens sticky on his lips.

They travel for months through Hamunandi.

Through forests of enormous bamboo trees, where Ravenli raves and points until Althemi punches a bamboo branch through his skull. He gives Althemi a bamboo flower, a thin, long, spiky thing of deep reddish purple, and they see one of the legendary bamboo bears.

Across low, forested mountains, thick with the scent of pine. Althemi pushes him down a slope of loose gray rock, where he startles a browsing moon bear. He watches as it mauls him, and makes no move to help. It takes a week for his shattered bones and mangled flesh to heal, and Ravenli shoves a cluster of white rhododendrons in his face and growls, "You're a fucking asshole."

The lowlands of southern Hamunandi are flat and open, cracked gray earth and brittle vegetation whose color seems to have been sucked out by the heat. Slicing through the steppe is the Yellow River, glittering like burnished steel in the blistering sunlight, and it is this they follow into the great city of Bayankali. The roads are old and worn into deep ruts by carriage wheels and the colors are no brighter than the steppe, but the atmosphere is warm and hangs over the city like heat haze.

They eat a dinner of rice and peach-glazed fish, and Ravenli buys oranges and yellow plums and dumplings filled with sweet bean paste from vendors on the street. Nightfall brings with it brightly colored paper lanterns and the summer festival. Althemi waits just long enough for the fireworks to end to remind Ravenli, who is laughing like a child, of the reason they are here.

Ravenli glowers and says, "Thanks for ruining the mood, asshole," but he follows readily enough.

It's almost too easy to slip the poison into the noble's tea, and they watch from a side vendor (Ravenli orders steamed noodles over fried egg) as the man turns purple and starts clawing at his throat. Porcelain shatters as his wife rushes to help, and there is a wet crack and splatter of blood as the man's spasms throw him to the ground. His mouth is speckled with foam, his eyes rolled back in his head so only the whites are visible, and his tongue is black and swollen when it lolls from his gaping mouth.

The wife screams, and Ravenli sneers. "Fucking annoying," he mutters. "And poison's fucking gross, you know that?"

Althemi says, "Shut up."

Ravenli swears and throws a chopstick at him.

They leave before dawn, following the Yellow River until it meets the coastline, watching as it slowly turns the muddy yellow that gives it its name. Along the way, Ravenli spots a splash of pink, and he laughs as he picks a cluster of oleander. Althemi takes it without a word.

Ravenli yawns as Althemi charters a ship, and spends most of the journey sleeping below deck.

Roughly a year later, their travels bring them briefly to the Elladan city-state of Karolos, with its bright, rocky coasts and warm, dry summers. Ravenli eats an orange in the shade of a small building while Althemi speaks inside with the owner of the house (one of his "contacts," he says), and he stands when Althemi leaves. His fingers are sticky with juice, and the smell is sharp and tangy in his nostrils.

Althemi says, "We'll stay the night, and leave for Omari in the morning."

Ravenli blinks. "We're going to Kemet?"

He gets no response, but he follows Althemi to, he assumes, the tavern in which they'll be staying.

He's right.

It's directly off of the central marketplace, and he stays outside while Althemi haggles over prices with the innkeeper. Ravenli finds himself staring at what the natives call the Acropolis: High on a hill brown with rock, it is broad and flat, and upon it stand several buildings, all brightly colored and in the strangely elegant architecture so commonly found in Ellada. What really draws his eye, though, is the enormous temple on the crown of the hill, what looks from his vantage point like a slab of granite held up by nothing more than tall, sweeping columns topped with smooth capitals that flare outwards to meet the ceiling. He watches for a long time as people trickle in and out.

Finally, though, the smell of food draws his attention away from the temple and to the bustle and rush around him. Sometime while he was distracted Althemi has appeared at his side, and for a time they wander aimlessly through the marketplace. Ravenli buys a sack of dried olives, one of various herbs (thyme, basil, fennel, cloves, nutmeg; he likes the smell, and stuffs them in a pouch he wears around his neck), several blocks of cheese, and a wickedly curved dagger that glints bright and sharp in the sunlight.

They eat a large dinner in the tavern, of zucchini flowers stuffed with rice, cheese and herbs; egg-lemon soup; lamb and potatoes; and a strange pie, baked layers of ground lamb, sliced eggplant and tomato, that their serving girl says is called moussaka. Ravenli brings dessert back to their room: fried balls of dough, drenched in honey and sprinkled with cinnamon. He licks his sticky fingers clean as best he can, and wakes in the morning with them stuck in his hair and to the goose feather pillow. Althemi says nothing, but Ravenli knows he's laughing at him.

They leave for Kemet shortly before noon.

The journey, as seafaring ones go, is fairly short.

They're stricken by a quick, angry thunderstorm, halfway through the second day. Ravenli stays on deck, clinging to the side railing, and lets himself be buffeted by rough winds. Beneath them the sea heaves and rolls like an angry serpent, spraying salty water into his face and eyes and open mouth until he chokes on it. Above and around him the boat's crew scurries about shouting orders to each other in a language he doesn't understand.

When the storm passes, Ravenli slinks below deck and shivers in their cabin, grinning wide and vacant-eyed. Althemi watches until his clothes dry, and they are stiff with salt when Ravenli finally moves.

They reach Omari at sunset on the fourth day.

As they pull into port the sun glows warm off of the wide Iteru River, setting the river ablaze and turning what little glass Ravenli can see into liquid gold. The shadows are long and blue, and people scurry about between wide, flat mud-brick buildings. Thin, gauzy cloth flutters in open windows and doorways.

On the cliffside Ravenli sees the palace, where the great and solemn Nefer lives in solitude and enormous wealth, high above the main city like some sort of god. At its side is the High Temple, dedicated to the mighty Amafta, brightly adorned with paintings and carvings and hieroglyphs Ravenli can see even from the river.

Dinner is eaten with the royalty, and it is a complicated affair based entirely on rank and power. Before the food is even served, servants bring each person a hand basin of water, in which to dip their fingers, and cones of scented fat are lit like candles; they smell sweet and inviting. They are given lotus flowers, and Ravenli smiles at the irony.

After a rich dinner of roast oxen and pork, stew, fresh vegetables, bread and beer, entertained by dancers accompanying a small band of musicians, they retreat to the quarters they've been given. Ravenli sits on the wood-framed bed, the mattress stuffed with cotton, and asks, "Who are we killing?"

"The Nefer."

Ravenli chokes on air and stares at him. "What?"

"Our current employer demands the Nefer's head," Althemi says, as though he's speaking of something perfectly normal.

For a long moment Ravenli ponders this. He shrugs. "Alright," he says. "The chaos will be fucking awesome."

"Yes."

"Hey--"

Althemi quirks an eyebrow.

"How are we planning to do this?" Ravenli asks. "How much time will we have?"

Althemi looks sharply at him, eyes narrow and mouth tight. After a moment he says, "The Nefer has made it a nightly habit to walk the grounds of the forbidden halls. He is rarely guarded. He and the guards seem to believe it is a secret."

Ravenli laughs. He looks at the wicked blade he'd gotten in Karolos, rotates it in his hand so that it catches the lamplight. "I want him," he says.

They corner the Nefer in a small alcove of the forbidden halls, and the first thing Ravenli does after he buries the dagger hilt-deep into Nefer's guts is cut out his tongue to stifle the screams. Ravenli laughs as the man gurgles his pain, choking on his own blood. He slides his fingers into the wound and pulls.

As he feels the man's flesh tear beneath his fingers, he understands why Althemi did it to him.

Still laughing, he rips Nefer's intestines from his abdomen, careful not to let the organ break open; the stench would be awful. He coils them around a fist and shoves it down the man's throat until he stops breathing. He whispers, "Calam thanks you for this," lets the intestines fall from his hand to the floor with a wet smack, and smears symbols using Nefer's blood across the floor and walls and his own skin, laughing around the prayers that tumble from his lips.

Althemi watches from across the hall until he's done, then strides over, curls a hand around Ravenli's throat, and throws him against a wall. Ravenli's eyes flash in surprise as a hand punches through his belly, and Althemi growls, "You sacrifice yourself, now, right?"

Ravenli can barely choke out, "What the fuck--"

Althemi slams him against the wall, and Ravenli sees stars. "Right?"

Coughing, he says, "Yes!"

Althemi says nothing, just throws him to the floor and falls upon him like a hawk. He rips Ravenli's stomach open, and Ravenli arches his back and screams as white-hot agony flares along his nerves. Althemi shoves a wad of blood-soaked cloth from Nefer's body into his mouth, snarling, "Shut up."

Ravenli convulses and his eyes roll back in his head. When he bites down on instinct he tastes blood and cloth, and his hands claw at the floor.

Althemi folds over and presses his lips to Ravenli's ear, whispering, low and dangerous, "I'm going to fuck you now."

His mouth is cold against Ravenli's skin, and he shivers violently. Eyes flaring with surprise and a hot rush of desire, Ravenli surges upward, suddenly desperate for contact, and he gasps, "Yes!"

Althemi wrenches Ravenli's trousers off and cleaves his way between his thighs, and Ravenli cries out at the first roll of their hips together. There is a brief moment where Althemi struggles to get the flap of his trousers open, and then--

Oh. Oh.

It hurts, but it's beautiful, glorious, and suddenly the world retracts to the feeling of Althemi between his thighs, cock heavy and cold inside him, driving deep into places that he had never known; Althemi's hands on his hips, a freezing brand across pale skin and bone, forcing their hips together; cool, damp teeth against his throat as Althemi bites, sinking deep into the flesh and raising hot, hot blood to the surface to trickle down his neck.

Althemi is rough; he thrusts hard and fast and Ravenli can feel blood slicking his cock, feels the pain clear and bright, sharp-edged and blending so much with pleasure that he can't tell the difference between the two. Each heavy shove rams into a vulnerable spot, sweet with ecstasy, inside Ravenli, and his hands scrabble for something to hold onto as Althemi fucks him.

He claws at Althemi's back when the corpse-like fingers curl across his chest and nails sink into the skin; slowly, inch by inch, Althemi tears back a strip of his skin, right above his heart. Ravenli screams, muffled only slightly when Althemi shoves his tongue into his mouth, and Althemi shoves his bloody hand through his side and into his abdomen with a force that leaves Ravenli reeling.

His voice cracks on a high whine when he comes.

Short minutes later, after Althemi has thrust so hard he burns the inside of Ravenli's thighs, the feeling of Althemi coming inside him makes him tremble.

For a long time they lay there, Ravenli's skin glistening in the lamplight with a sheen of cooling sweat, semen pooling on his chest. When he finally moves, what seems like hours later, the wound on his chest is mostly healed. The new skin and dried semen pull and stretch at his skin, and he scratches his belly idly.

He is lying in a dry smear of his own blood, lain over the painted symbols of his ritual. Two feet away lies the eviscerated corpse of their target, abdomen gaping wide. He laughs.

From the vicinity of his shoulder, Althemi makes a questioning noise.

He says, "We just fucked next to a corpse," and laughs again.

Althemi snorts.

Very little changes.

They take a contract in the land of the Black Kings, south of Kemet. Ravenli's heard stories, but he never imagined that the people were actually black-skinned; he finds himself staring more often than he should. They worship their cattle, these Black Kings, and it is not easy to kill one of their higher ranking officials. Once he lies dead on the floor, though, thick black liquid oozes from a dozen wounds in Althemi's skin; Ravenli licks it off of him, and Althemi fucks him against the wall, straddling the man's dead body.

From there they pass through Karolos again to trade the Nefer's head for their bounty, and then they set off north toward Masuria, high in the mountains, where the words contain far too many consonants and not enough vowels for Ravenli's preference, and the cities have names like Kruszwica or Swinoujscie. Here they slaughter a young farmer and his family (wife, two sons and three daughters); they leave symbols in blood on the walls, and a series of scratch marks and a dry, flakey puddle on the dirt floor.

In the tropical forests of Pradesh they hear news of the chaos they'd left behind in Kemet, brought all the way here by the trade routes; Ravenli grins. They narrowly escape being mauled by a giant tiger, and the people ride elephants in their ceremonies. Their target, this time, is a middle-class woman, with a large red dot in the center of her forehead close to her eyebrows; she wears cotton saris in brilliant colors, and thin bands of gold around her wrists that clatter and chime as she moves. They wait until her family is away before they poison her, and as they rut on the floor after, Ravenli stares blankly towards her face, where the skin around her mouth has turned black and her eyes are red with blood beneath the cornea. He moans like a whore when Althemi slices his stomach open so that his guts spill out across the floor.

Days turn to months turn to years, and they travel everywhere: Alemagne, with thick pine forests and bitter winters, the natives speaking in a rough, guttural tongue that appeals to Ravenli partially for that very reason; there's something very visceral about it. Jalal, with its hot, dry deserts, where despite the heat people dress entirely in black, and the language rolls liquid off their tongue. They watch the rise of the Holy Illryian Empire, watch as it conquers most of the world.

The years blur together.

Ravenli doesn't know how long he's been traveling with Althemi when he asks, "How did you die?"

Althemi actually drops his bowl. Ravenli stares as he swears under his breath, and when he straightens the expression on his face is harder than ever to read. "How did you know?"

Ravenli shrugs. "You never breathe," he says. "You're always cold, and you have no pulse."

There is silence for such a long time that Ravenli decides to just continue eating.

"Someone set my heart on fire."

Ravenli freezes.

"So the answer to your earlier question--" Ravenli slowly meets Althemi's too-calm gaze, his eyes wide in horror. "--is yes, we have met before."

The breath is stuck in his lungs, and his mouth is dry. He has to swallow several times before he can speak. "What-- How?"

Althemi shrugs. "I don't know the whole of it," he says. "I remember dying. I remember waking, and being very thirsty, and very cold. I remember a man wearing black robes and talking excitedly to himself about how 'it' had worked. I think he was a sorcerer. I killed him, and ate his heart."

Ravenli stares.

"I tried, once, undoing some of the stitches," he continues. "My leg started rotting within seconds. I've never figured out how, but the stitches are the only thing holding me together."

Swallowing, Ravenli asks, "Why don't you just pull out the stitches?"

"Why don't you just set your heart on fire?"

He wipes suddenly damp palms on his trousers. "Ah."

"What do you want, Ravenli?"

He stares helplessly and says, "I want to be destroyed."

It all began in a little village outside of Krona, where dew glistens like diamonds on green, green grass, and poppies glow like blood splatters against stone decaying with age and moss. They slide like silk over his skin as he wades shirtless into the fields of poppies, whispering soft and silver in a breeze that drags cool fingers against his sweat-slick skin.

He'd forgotten how hot it got, here.

Ravenli wanders through the overgrown remains of streets, taking in the broken stone shells and even the occasional rotting wooden beam that crumbles beneath his fingertips. There are two enormous peach trees growing in the center of the village, one on each side of the village well, which has collapsed in upon itself; it's too late for the blossoms, but the smell of peaches hangs rich and sweet in the air.

He finds the old garden and weaves himself a chain of the flowers still growing there: Iris, corn marigold, gladiolus, geranium.

"I remember this," he whispers. He doesn't need to look to know Althemi is behind him. "You knew what I was saying all along, didn't you?"

"Yes," Althemi says.

He nods, absently thumbing the stem of a marigold, and turns. "Alright."

They pass through the village gates again and into the sea of swaying poppies. He slips the chain over his head and stands for a long moment, feeling warm sun and cool breeze and delicate petals against his skin. He turns, and Althemi punches through his chest. Ravenli's eyes roll back in his head as Althemi rips his heart out and whispers the key to a fire spell.

Agony explodes across his nerves.

The last things he sees before the world turns black are the flames dancing in Althemi's eyes.

He smiles.

~~
A note on flower symbolism:
bamboo flowers - Asian cultures believe that the blossom of bamboos is a precursor of coming natural disasters
deadly nightshade/belladonna - deception, danger, death
geranium - melancholy
gladiolus - "you pierce the heart like a sword"
iris - death, faith, valor and wisdom
lotus - estranged love, immortality
marigold - affection, cruelty, grief, jealousy
oleander - beware
peach blossoms - "I am your captive"
poppy - eternal sleep, oblivion, imagination, death; poppies often flourish on battlefields
white lily - innocence

( 001 | what has come over me? what madness taken hold of my heart? )

strzyga — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:17:51 GMT

ah, the odious task of writing a first entry. welcome, wanderers, to godhead, a personal comm which strzyga will be turning into an original writing archive. here you will find original works of a fantastical and, likely, horrifying nature. pay close attention to the individual adult content levels, as i have been told that some of the writing you'll find here is disturbing. feel free to wander as you like; the collection is small, for the moment, but will likely grow.

overrides, ftr, came from spire.