Omen of Rose

Journal of a Paranoid Succubus

To Malachite,

It now has been almost sixty years of your absence and still, I can't seem to find a potent way to erase my single -but deadly- mistake. I've tried working alone, like we used to, together, but things only worsened. How could I possibly achieve anything without you? Did you only think, for one second, what would happen to me, once you would be gone? Even the best of us make some "faux pas", it seems... I am tired. My efforts have pulled me a long way from my life outside society, but never pushed me closer to a solution to my problem. I'll admit, I'm growing out of patience and even desperate. Since you are not there to level me back, I know I will over react and the consequences will probably be devastating. To hell! What can I do?! I know, I even managed to lie in my writing... but I know you understand my lies.

It has already been done. I've found a potential way to bring you back, or at least assure your well-being. I've signed a contract with Hatred, and at the end of it, you shall be saved. He's despicable and backstabbing, but I trust in the nature of the contract. It has to be fulfilled on both sides, just like the ones I seal with my victims. The price is high, but I deserve to suffer for what I have done. I fully accept the problems that will come out of it. Family being Family, and you being my only true one, this is the only rule I will live and die for. Others don't understand and I don't expect them to. You, you already understand...

For the first time since you died Malachite, I felt -happy-. Perhaps it is true that you led me there to show me a different side. The best ones are always hidden away. I know now, because you were, back then. I don't know how this alliance will end up, but I trust it can be a little different, this time. After all, they share the same opinions I have on so many levels, especially about Perfection.

The musical tinkling bugles of the gaman filled the dwindling twilight like wind chimes, riding upon the summer breeze that swept through the valley from the bay. Their mild cries were accompanied by the woody chirps and clicks of frogs and cicadas and the whoo-waa-whoo-whoo-whoo of a mourning dove, all paying homage to the dwindling day. While the waxing moon crested the rim of the mountains another sound rose over the others, a plaintive howl silencing their airy symphony and laying its own claim; the night belongs to the wolf.

A funnel of thick steam tumbled from the wolf's maw as it cast its howl upwards to the crescent moon; an ancient, primal sound that shivered through the blooming plutonian night, its head lowering as the echoes faded to silence. Erik knew there would be no reply, no chorus of pack to announce his exit and return to the vast yet desolate den; the ones he called out to were a world away.

He lowered his muzzle, his nose twitching as he sorted through the scents that wafted by on the breeze. The musk of the great horned gaman and cows. The salt of the ocean bay. The earthen scent of the deeper forests. Cinnamon.

He snorted, tossing his head to cast the scent and memory away. Another scent caught his attention; the sickly, copper scent of fresh blood. He leaped down from the knoll, falling into a loping gait alongside the bay's edge. Keeping to the shadows he skirted the herds of ponderous gaman which grazed through the night, large as elephants. As the mountains retreated and the valley widened he turned from the shore, running through the short grassed fields and the edges of the deep forest.

His amber eyes glowed in the moonlight, and to his sharp eyes so did the narrow strands of silver which twisted around and over the thick mossy logs within the gloom of the woods. The silk of innumerable spiders and their even more countless eyes felt upon him, waiting for him to make a single wrong step closer so that they might ensnare him. That was all it took, one wrong mindless step for one to find themselves enchained, their neck bared to the fangs of the world.

He had felt that in her, the desire to ensnare. A little spider that thought it was closing in on the vibrations of one caught in its web only to realize too late that she was instead a moth dancing too close to the flames.