private GOD OF ULTRAVIOLENCE | hawthorn

CYGNET'S CRY

DOLOROSO
Apr 23, 2024
23
14
3

In my restless dreams, I see it so clearly... My mother's comforting fur, stained with blood. My own tears, blurring my eyes. And that horrible thing from the clans, the one whose talons were the judge of death itself... I swore I would find you one day. I swore that I would never let you or your filth lay claim to me or all that I hold dear. I swore that I would kill you, Beast Bathed in Red.

Cygnet's Cry's grief was his arrow, his guide, his moonlight - and it was the only thing that truly belonged to the grey point. He did not lay claim to anything else, not his family nor his lover nor the land that he traversed. They would surely fade, just as the sun gave way to the night and vice versa. Life was a cycle, though a cycle brought only misfortune. After all, if one were to circle luck's bobbing tail, they would find themselves forever in the shadow it cast. The man allowed his grief to eat at his very soul, as though sorrow nocked at his ribs in the cadence of a bullish bird, continual ache that grew into him rather than outwards. It was his grief that honed his beliefs into a blade to harness against those he deemed unworthy of scarce sympathy, giving him what little power he could glean from the cruel womb that birthed him. His grief was his claws and his teeth, and had allowed him to survive beyond that fateful day. The nomad spent his entire life seeking whatever could absolve his past, as lamentation barbed at bleeding heart like a thorn, sharpened and hardened by the throes of his own vengeance. He had convinced himself that avenging his mother would culminate into his salvation, as though it were the only thing holding him back from happiness - unaware that he held such a thing in his hands, though had never unballed his fists long enough for him to see it.

He searched and searched to no avail, until his tragedy steered him into the demon of his own creation.

The rogue had practiced standing on his own, though his steps still wobbled as silent footfall straddled the cold earth below, like a one-winged bird wailing and mourning for the freedom of its flight. The seal point had healed quite quickly, much to his surprise. It had been hard to adjust to fleet movements without his tail, though at least it had not been his throat or his head within the fox's mouth. There was little hope, he found, in the least expected of places. At least it had brought him even closer to Valleysong, though he cursed his bad fortunes nevertheless. Cygnet's Cry had just been about to sit down when a flash of orange-eyed stare crossed his periphery, and gunmetal-grey gaze faced what awaited for him at the mouth of the makeshift den, as if his afflictions and his ails had only fledged into the monster that stood before him. Heart seemed to stop for a moment, frozen in wrenched time, as his breath began to rouse. "You." The single word came out as a shot of ice, a shiver down one's spine, terse and terribly unkind - even for the man who allowed little into his stony walls. He had hoped so much that he had almost forgotten that the Beast Bathed in Red was not some abstract fairytale nor some delusion of his own kindling. She was real, and she had come for him again.

@hawthorncry