======A Perfect Love====== [Content Warning: Animal Abuse and Extreme Gore]\\ The mass inside your head pulses as electric signals trace out new connections; another observation has been made, curious. All the people of the Bastion are so unique, so strange, but perhaps you are the only one who notices. You hope you are the only person who notices; it would make everything so much easier.\\ The still-bruised Verity flinches as you fail to walk right past her, and instead, turn to ask how she is doing; her bloodshot eyes do not meet your own as she mutters something that mixes with the wind in an impossible to decipher fashion.\\ “What was that? Speak up, I can’t hear you dear.”\\ Her skin is pallid, drained under your vampiric presence. You notice her rosy fingertips crinkle a rough sketched map and messily jotted down description of a place that feels like it stares back at you in recognition, but the split second you have to view it confirms nothing.\\ “Oh, I’m fine.” She lifts her sleeves, revealing purple-red jagged sanguine crystals and the white flaky skin of wounds in the process of healing, but there’s no more of them than last time you saw; shame, it could’ve been an excuse to examine her further. The two of you stay locked in a stalemate, seconds passing like stray bullets, until Verity cups her hands together and finds the strength to break free from your sight; at least, that is what she believes. \\ You watch her, you watch her: as she rounds the corner, out of sight; as she enters the Scotts' tent; as she attends a sermon by Marlowe; as she finds a quiet spot in the Bastion to bow to her deity of light, sunrise, sunset, every day. You wonder if she knows The Priestess is not the only one who watches over her. \\ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your brain reaches for reality, trying to wake, as you stare at the ceiling of tent with no light filtering through its microscopic imperfections, as dawn has yet to break. You find a dirtied square of cloth, heavy with dust and speckled with an unknowable history of stains; it’ll have to do, you suppose. The metal of the fence digs into the crevices of your hands as you feel the weight of ascension, bringing you closer to danger; you sling the material over the man-made brambles, tasting the earth as a cloud of dirt almost chokes you, but nevertheless you make it over the fence. Pulling the rag down, tearing part of it to ribbons, you wrap it around you, obscuring your figure in a shroud of filth, the things you do for love. \\ The forest is dark and quiet, so quiet it's almost boring, trees, leaves, bark, moss, mushrooms, vines, it’s all the same thriving monotony; until you hear a rustling not your own. Again, you draw the gun, becoming nothing but an animal once more; how fortuitous, for you to encounter a stranger in these woods, after all it is more tedious to sacrifice someone unmissed than someone unknow. Alas, that is not what you find. The scrappy form of a red squirrel jolts in attempted escape of the wire trap constricting its leg, pulling, lacerating, struggling, it’s hardly the ideal offering, but it’s something, nonetheless. You hold its small, delicate form in your hand, slowly pressing your thumb into the softest part of its neck, throttling its consciousness, good, this way it won't bite; animals always were so much easier to work with than humans. \\ Finally, making it to that dense part of the forest you might call comforting, your dearest beloved almost in reach of your gaze. \\ Within the pit you so generously constructed for her, carved out of the world with your own two hands, a home all her own, the rim decorated with moss and ivy. There she stands, or sits really, defeated a thousand times already by the pit you have her trapped in; she is silent, motionless, her gangrenous husk almost glowing in the dregs of moonlight, casting her as icy pale, a beauty fairer than Aetalag, your beauty.((In Jotaman stories, Aetalag is a woman said to be so stunning she was turned to stone by an alchemist so that her beauty might live on forever.[Yeah it’s just Galatea backwards])). She is unresponsive to your presence, it makes sense, after all you had been so careful not to frighten her; since her turning she’s been so temperamental, “soon, my love,” you think, “soon I will fix you.” \\ The tranquility is disturbed as you throw the still-warm squirrel in front of her, motion catching like sparks to kindling, her joints crackle as she moves to observe your gift. Milky eyes stare at the limp creature, there is almost a sadness in her eyes, could it really be sadness? Or has the rot just eaten enough of her muscles that she is locked in a permanent state of sorrow, if only you might get closer to see, if only you could ask. \\ Small paws twitch as the squirrel awakes from its forced slumber, stumbling to its 3 functional legs, it scopes the surrounding for a safe place, looking up for a tree to scurry to, or mound to hide under. Unlike your wife, the steep walls pose little issue to a squirrel, as it makes its first movement to leave, muscles primed like an archer, it is snatched up once more. Yellowed, serrated fingernails pierce through its coat, turning its red fur an even richer shade of crimson that drips down its attacker's mottled green-black fingers; it bites desperately at whatever beast has caught it this time, but as they each rend each other’s flesh into unrecognisable, swollen blood fountains, it is clear who is going to win, one creature shrieks in pain, the other revels in it. Her lips are smeared with the still pulsing organs of her meal, you think back to the lipstick she used to wear, wondering how you might acquire more, should she… when she is back to normal. Twitching again, the mound of mauled flesh with legs formerly called a squirrel gives up its fight for life and falls still, forever this time, at peace. Your wife has finished her meal. \\ {[]}{{tag>writeup2 gm_izzy complete}}