Leavings of the Wolf

The gaze rose, a stare turning as it settled upon the golden brows so sharply furrowed.

“You owe me a new one.” She remarked. She scowled at him momentarily before handing him the cloth and bent to pick up the shards. She was swift in this,  and spoke,’ Sit there.” and indicated to one of he chairs at her table.

She’s a flexible one, her joints bending to the point of shatter, her spine turning great arcs of impossible  fluidity. How she managed to withstand the winds of her union, even backed as she was by divinity, the stubborn god would never understand.

Even in his ignorance, he manages to smile, appreciation  for her iron showing on the subtle turn of haggard lips. A singular grasp dips into warm waters, wetting the offered cloth before dragging it over grimly painted flesh. 

She does not move from her stance, allowing him to sit before her, allowing her gaze to trail downward to follow the path of his words from his lips to the borders of her perception, ready to be plucked from thin air by a mind always hungering for new things, for energy, for graciousness, for war’s spoils.

She has yet to sheathe her daggers, made by her hands with her sweat and her occasional curse when she would break the iron by banging too hard on the anvil and have to start again, and she has no intention of sheathing them anytime soon.

This man— this one, in front of her, with his icy blue eyes and the hands that speak of decades that ran, clawing, through them and the jaw that is marked by stubble, clenched in its strength and its apparent sincerity, this man who she does not comprehend, like all of them, because men are difficult in their sharpness and their brutal, quickening heartbeat. Men are confusion, men are something she has heard of rarely and seen even less, men are newborn children staring at the sun who have not yet realised that the sun will burn their eyes.

Children.

There is a truth in that, surely. The reality of his former breed is a short one when compared to the vast living of the world. A bright blip towards the end of an aged story, their flare vibrant but meager when placed beside the inferno of this woman’s world.

The god, who has known ages in lands all his own, who has seen race and culture flare and fall with the same frequency as this warrior has seen the dawn, settles against the broad bark of his perch, legs sprawling through the moss and undergrowth in  an easy lean. 

From his side satchel he produced a wineskin, the  stopper carved of bone, the body sewn of leather.  It’s a thing that has withstood generations, one  of the final relics of his abandoned humanity. 

There is a smirk that builds slow and biting, those narrow lips that so often fend off their lesser impulses falling to the break of taunt.

He lets the grin that rises in impulse settle against his lips, a light thing that passes with the truth of her nervousness.  He forgets, this God of War, that blood isn’t a thing that most minds know with the  same comfortable intimacy as he.

‘It’s not mine.’ 

Even as the cloth collects the streams that have settled upon his forearm, the rivulets bright and harsh over pale sinew.

ASK ME TO DESCRIBE A COLOR WITHOUT USING THAT COLOR

But she knows how to survive the summer too, and she lifts her shoulders in a faint shrug, stares out at the slick street, bathed in red and green stripes of light from hanging traffic signs. 

                           ”In some ways… Some people thrive better.” 

Had he not enjoyed the summers once?

Had he not shed the layers that had  accumulated through the winter like strays upon a giving stoop? 

Had he not drawn his pale shoulders to what gold the sort months offered, stripping bare to slip between the warm waves? It had been a beautiful time, a breath in his short life.

Humanity and summer had been a happy  marriage.

But with his divinity had come a divorce  from the sweet winds. They were a lull that dulled the senses, they were a tonic for an ill he had already mastered.

‘I can’t imagine you in a dress.’

I can’t imagine you bright, your cheeks  flushed with sun.

I can’t imagine your beautiful ivory turned warm and yellow in the summer.

I don’t want to, you’re a winter mut.

His importance to her has spiked and they have only been aware of one another for a day, a night, and half a morning. Is this how it felt to love Christ? How the Christians always felt so carnal and zealous in their adoration that some felt their tongue loosen into flame, and others would grow quiet and meditate in silence for all the rest of their lives because of that desire for their god.

Tyr is her god, she decides, and she wants both to speak until there is a fire on her tongue and to sit in the comfort of his shadow, quiet and sweetly giving, giving, giving. Why does he think she called him that as if he were not somehow above her? Does he not want to be seen that way? He is a god, how else is she to see him?

And if he is also a lover..

Astraea has always been a frightfully demanding sort of lover. A girl who took kisses, didn’t give them. But here she wants something else entirely, so much so that she feels it thick in her blood, hot and roaring.

How could so fallible a thing as iron hope to convey the sick electricity that soared between the storm fronts?

Violence and peace.

Control and abandon.

With each beat of a heart made weary and worn they raise their voices, in times of silence they murmur the inferno, flirtations of their battle flickering through his bones.

Settling in his gut. 

Constricting his throat.

But quiet, quiet was the calmest of times. For they fed on noise, these savage  selves. They heard that catalyst of their cacophony and rushed forth, their  excitement turning to bile upon his lips.

This girl, with her words and her eyes and her lost tremble that seemed to shake the  very foundations of this temporary home,  she fed them fare so fine it made the  demons mad. 

His hand quakes with it, his eyes close. The strain is adamantine for a long and  bitter moment. 

In those seconds he sees the agony of  her potential, sees the hurts that could come with a tide sweeping and absolute to these small golden shores.

In those moments he sees the peace she could usher, the soft coos and laughs, the  trace of those long fingers with their chewed down nails, the way she would squirm like  a bored child, the way she would ache for adventure.

A break, for even gods have seams which  this madness can find, which it can extort.

 He spreads like concrete permeated by ice, the bindings that had seemed so firm before the frost torn asunder by the thaw.

A breath, a groan. 

modir dauda

                  mother of death                    let her spawn claw the nine to their bones                   let them tear their ribs asunder                   let the feast upon the hearts of those that would damn them 

as monsters

                    indie angrboda                     mother of fenris, jörmungandr, and hela                     hagia of the ironwood                    master of the liar