#areyto

He found himself smiling, just a little. The vision of destruction calmed his fear and settled his heartbeat. His body throbbed on the right side, remembering pain from whatever dark magic had been done to him by the woman who had kind eyes even while she hurt him. While she made him… this. She had finished and looked tired, swaying on her feet, and left with one final soft touch of her hand to her face.  She had done this to him. The moon would kill her, too. But… she had settled her fingers in his hair, stroking gently, while she had painted over his back with her strange paintbrushes and humming ink. She had held him in her arms when the second agony came, even while the man who held him captive had scolded her. She had soothed him, whispered things he thought must be apologies from her tone, and encouraged him to rest his head on her shoulder. She had murmured soft things, and his captor had not started to truly hurt him until she had taken her leave and gone back to her sleeping-place for the night. Until he and his captor were alone, she had stood between them even as she built the bars of his cage into his body. He… changed his imagining, then.  He let his dream shift and told himself the moon would show her mercy, kill her quickly so she had no time even to know what had come upon her. He wouldn’t eat her. He would lay her out on a sunny rock somewhere higher up, closer to the sky, and let her go back to her own gods that way. A kindness, for holding him while he screamed, even if she had been the reason for the screaming.