The matters of disgust and moral objecture is not one he considers as he is pulling tendon from meat, fangs shredding the fraying strings of fat. The consideration of a vegetarian lion is an unthought of absurdity, and so he does not mind an audience. What he does mind is a thief, and it is the only sense of wariness he has when he sees a daydream tuck itself somewhere in the obscure depths of her stare - not appalled, not furious, and... not hungry?

When @Elswyth pulls herself from the mile-long venture into the slick rind of meats that are tugged festively apart, that tender pixie light is reignited. Gauthier watches between crunches of gristle and sinew, gnawing on a shank with a mild look of curiosity. When she goes on about her friend Nessie the drone of her voice is a backset to the shifting patters of rain. The tree shudders just beyond, the groan of thunder rolling its way through the heavens.

A healer that lives in a swamp. A bird who brings eyes. Useful bird, he mumbles between the roll of his tongue and the click of his teeth, picking the leg clean like a chicken drumstick. Does Nessie often take to decorating trees? Perhaps she was another mad Devorre, pleasing the old gods, gurgling inane laments to the crack of thunder, leaving carcasses to rot wasted in the shadow of ancient trees. An eye passed back over the grinning wildebeest skull, the sheen of its pale nose glimmering wet in the sudden glare of lightning._{BG — ART — CODE}

There wasn't a whole lot to say as he tore apart his meal, though she wondered how long it had been since he had properly eaten. He did not smell of any pride (not that she knew them well) and she wondered if he needed a group to join. This thought was chased away as quickly as it appeared, a tiny shake of her head at the very notion that somebody like him would need them.

Useful? Elswyth imagined that nobody other than Inessa would have ever thought of Blackwell as useful, and then she thinks that this Nessuno (@Gauthier) should have met her swamp-dwelling friend and not her. All the same she was intrigued by him, drawn in a way that made no sense. The same way she had been drawn to Nessie, perhaps.

"Weeeelll," her lips pursed as she gave this a thought, and then she shrugged, "I don't think so... but her den in the swamp had all kinds of trinkets strewn about... so maybe now that we are settled here she wanted to... decorate." It sounded ridiculous even to her, and her voice by the time she finished speaking was more than a little sheepish.

Her gaze turned back to the tree and its macabre array -- "what do you think did this?" What, not who, because she got the impression it was not the first tree like this that he had seen.

image by moogle, code by corvus

His tongue is pressing to the crevices of his teeth as she muses the extent of his question - or perhaps the consideration of gift-giving birds, or a thousand sparrow ribs at the root of an old oak. Perhaps not. She may not know the things that lay in darker ruts of the imagination, so donned by the steadlight of her eyes dimmed only by a curiosity for the unweaving of meat and fiber. There is little in the world that interests him, as gauche as the lack of solitude may be in simple pleasures; but the little ticks of importance do not go unmet, and often not unexplored.

As it is, he isn't one for many words - much less one for interruptions, and so he lets her speak as he picks his teeth with a splintered femur.

Nessie... the bird? No, the lion. If it was a lion, as it could well have been a monkey, or a hyena, though he had never seen one of those in a swamp. But was @Elswyth the type to debase herself with the company of a mangy, sordid, stinking cur of a hyena? A corner of his lip curled in disgust at the thought, and he pulled his mind back into the drone of her voice.

What do you think did this, she says. He catches the influence on what, he prizes attention to detail and it is not one he cares to miss. There's a gruff sort of exhale at this, a mannered chuckle, a sorted snort at the consideration for what and not who. A zealot. he answers simply, shearing a fang against the smooth ivory of the bone. Certainly not a bird. My... family he grits, shoving the harsh cowardly vice of Vicario blood from its pure line, all Devorre, all Deivalun, all insane. There are those who would believe that this ground is sacred. They mark it accordingly. But not I, he lies, the breath curdling in his chest, the heat of the skull's stare burning into his shoulder, and shrugged._{BG — ART — CODE}

he is quiet -- polite? the word seems odd for one such as him -- and elsie takes advantage of it by saying all she needs to say. then he gives her a word she has never heard before (zealot) and immediately her interest is piqued.

he goes on to explain, in essence, that a zealot believes in sacred places and this is new for the flop-eared girl. elswyth loves a lot of things; stories... especially those from places she had never been... were her absolute favorite. it is all she can do to stay still, to not bound around him like a madman and ask a thousand questions. Nessuno would not like that, she thinks. much like she would with nessie she does her best to slow down and ask more thoughtful questions.

"what makes a place sacred to them?" it is what intrigues her the most, this concept of sacred places. indeed back in willowbrook they had a place of prayer, where they could talk to the spirits and energies of the universe and beg for guidance or prosperity. elswyth had always been a little too distracted to sit for long, and found she would much rather frolic through a field than engage in any kind of meditation or prayer.

a tip of her head, then, as she asks one more thing: "are you... a zealot?" she doesn't think so, but he sure seemed to know an awful lot.

@Gauthier

image by moogle, code by corvus

Her sense of naivety has not gone unnoticed. Dismissed perhaps, as she was cordial enough to wait until each sentence finished and his meal was slipping down his gullet before assailing whatever facet of their conversation brought them. But the inkling of wonder in each countering breath was a trickling thing, like penny-drops in the well of his patience. She is careful - and rightfully so perhaps, considering he is a reckless creature himself.

The bell-tenor of her voice is a trill of, what makes a place sacred, and this is welcome naivety. A question in a many spring of questions, but he knows that at any point he could finish his meal and move on - and when the thought occurs to him, he resolves that he may stay only a little while more. His coat was drenched as it was, and the cold northern breeze was becoming a stronger wind.

He contemplated the answer for a moment. To him, nothing made a place sacred. To him, only sustenance was sacred. Blood, meat, and pleasure.

Are you... a zealot? @Elswyth asks quieter, and his eyes find the patchwork over her eye once more, stark in the contrast of a lightning's streak. No. he says, and shrugs with the consideration for her earlier question. Could be a place their grandfather pissed. Bad batch of rotten meat gone to their brain. Who knows what goes on in their mi-how did you acquire that? he diverts, gesturing the toss of his skull in the direction of her marred facade._{BG — ART — CODE}

could be a place their grandfather pissed.

at first she giggles -- it is a preposterous thought -- and then she snaps her teeth shut and flashes him a sheepish grin. her nose wrinkles, too, rather disgusted by the idea of making such a place sacred, but perhaps she shouldn't dwell too much on it. surely he was just joking.

elswyth studies him as if she is looking for some sign of this joke, before that train of thought is derailed as he asks the inevitable question. the same question that haunts her through every meeting, every encounter. it was the very reason brecc had marked her so. he had succeeded, then, she thought; no one else will want her like this.

steeling her expression she drew herself up, as if her diminutive size could be anything but entertaining even when she stood tall. "his name was brecc. he didn't like that i was leaving." elswyth did what she could to monitor her tone, to keep at bay any indication of just how much he had hurt her. "he didn't want anybody else to have me, either, so he made me ugly." a shrug, and her gaze finally dances away. a hard swallow that she tries to hide, as she looks to the bones nestled in to the towering tree.

@Gauthier

image by moogle, code by corvus

The airy lilt of her laughter draws to a close at the jut of his question, one he did not expect to stagger. He does not mind the shadow of his own crimes as it were, the cuts and stitchings of flesh pulled taut, gruesome tattoos of a bygone rage. A pause made in the ripping of the fawn's soft belly comes only because of the way she changes; she folds somewhere, but straightens out, stiffens and stretches for all her measure is worth. He watches @Elswyth then with a curious gaze. One vigilant, one speculative. Both cold, unyielding to the curtain, the shield, waiting for a blow to follow.

brecc, he gathers. --didn't like that i was leaving. Ripples in the flesh between his brows; the name is nothing, the intention is nothing. Leave for what? And why bother? Gauthier is a simple thing, the concept of marring someone not out of hate, hunger, or hilarity escapes him.

This naivety is what loses sense to him in the manner of not letting anyone else have her, as if there weren't jackals in the world who cared less whether you missed half a face or half a brain. She shrugs, and he mirrors the gesture only in a disconnect - still puzzled by the logic in it. His cheek twitches with an expression of mild bafflement.

Ugly. he repeats flatly, with a snort. He couldn't imagine a time when he worried about his own scar being ugly, but if it kept anyone from having him he found that to be a pleasant enough reward for being so. And then what did you do to him? he asks, plucking open a few spindles of fawn rib._{BG — ART — CODE}

elswyth does not pay much attention to his feelings of the matter, engrossed in her own and not particularly keen to see his reaction. there had been a number that had pitied her, and she loathed it -- hated to see their kindness turn to sympathy that she did not want. elsie did not want to be known for her scar, and so she hated that it was one of the first things that was asked about.

sometimes she made up grandiose stories, spinning a tale about an unfortunate tussle with an elephant or some other creature, but for him she gives truth. if pressed for a reason she would not be able to provide one, unable to determine if it was the company itself or the nerving presence of the tree they stood beneath. or if, perhaps, it was the sameness they had, even if their stories were as different as night and day.

yin and yang and elsie could hardly make sense of it.

"so he said," she scoffs, as if she did not believe it, as if the words did not haunt her. elswyth acts like she is not bothered and she has spent so many days pretending she is surprisingly good at it.

and then what did you do to him?

it is the first time she has been asked that question and so she falters. "I..." a pause, flop-ears pressing flat to her head as she unearths her deepest shame, "I ran." Ushered along by her friends with blood in her eyes and her vision half-gone, Elsie had fled. She was no trained fighter -- that much was obvious at the mere sight of her -- and she had ran from the ruins of Willowbrook with fear in her throat. "I.." There were a thousand things she wanted to say, words in her defense or perhaps some way to make him see her as not some pathetic and unworthy creature, but she stalls again.

And her head drops and her shoulders slump and she withers.

image by moogle, code by corvus

she breaks. It's something he, too self-absorbed to notice the measure of others for anything but his own gain, does not notice right away. But it is there, the trembling whisper of I-- and the falter of what follows, the cascade of tanzanite, the crumble, the crashing wave. Instead, Gauthier is slurping down the fawn-heart and chewing on the meaty goodness of a little lung while she's backpedaling so much he almost misses the tiny confession of, I ran. But when it does come to him, he rises from the carcass, his lips bloody and expression pinched by dissatisfaction and criticism. You ran... he repeats below her stuttering I's, her form crunching by every dawn of the admittance.

When @Elswyth collapses into herself he doesn't change expression or lean into it with the gifted sympathy of a blistered angel, coddling her with words of acceptance and validation. Instead he's still looking to her for an explanation, as if everyone should maul, maim, or murder their abusers by any means necessary, and done right. It was the only acceptable finality to him. He did not turn the other cheek - that was obvious. The hedonistic creature that he is would bite back, claw back, rip and shred and cut and eat until there was pulp and satisfaction. This small thing...

Should have at least given him a matching set. he says apathetically, chewing the second lung, savoring each bite. Why did you run? but it is not judgmental, simply a question, insight._{BG — ART — CODE}

so used to it, by now, she expects the sympathy. prepares to reject it, to assure him that all was well and okay and fine. it was easier to spin the web of lies than it was to accept the pity and condolences.

so used to it is she that she hardly realizes it has not come, that instead he has questioned her more.

questioned her with blood on his lips and the ground and her eyes find it, are drawn to it. elswyth drifts in to silence as her eyes focus on the blood, pulled abruptly in to her past. it is a combination of the questions and the blood and her breath quickens despite herself because all of a sudden she sees her mother's body before her. all of a sudden she hears the screams and smells the death in the air.

a shudder traces down her spine and she realizes she has not answered him. "everybody.... everybody was d-dying." the words come out uncertain, whispered and broken and touched with the grief of that day.

"i had to go.... with my friends. i... i don't know how to fight." the last admission is touched with shame, a reminder that she will never be able to protect them as they have protected her. a reminder that she was a hindrance.


@Gauthier

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