Monster

.4.

She had shown softness tempered by steel, a true being shaped by the world we lived in. Despair and pain had been our lives and she was the monster stamping it out. I had accompanied her to pick up females, to help mend the broken, and to help shape the mind of those too young to understand why. I had seen her many forms, had seen her eyes, those magical blue, shift and twist.

Oceans of rage, calm pools reflecting the sky, turbulent oceans with white caps of tears. I had witnessed them all and I had stayed. Following behind her, keeping away from the brilliance she held because I knew she had the power to destroy me utterly. The males had torn my form and made me bleed but I knew she had the power to destroy my soul.

I still flirted with the danger, doing my best to make her proud, to notice me just a bit. Her eyes never moved from forward. She never looked around, eyes always ahead, always looking towards the next task. At times they hardened, at others they softened but they never strayed from their position.

I had watched her smith blades that were sharper than the fangs of the males, taking in every detail, trying to learn but only learning about how her skin glowed in the red hot coals of the forge. How the sweat would trail down her form, following the planes and curves of her body that I wanted to explore as they did. I learned how her hair never did as it was told, strands falling from her braids to swirl around her face, moving from her puffs of exertion and the waves of heat from the forge.

I learned there was beauty in the hardness, in the scars and craters she had on her skin. She was my sun and I was flying too close but I knew the others saw the moon. She had blessed her with a beauty she did not seem to realize.

It was not a beauty males would fight each other to have, I knew that. Her nose hung slightly crooked on her face, a bump on it letting me know that it had been broken one too many times. Her cheekbones were high and sharp, a warning to those around to stay away. Her lips would occasionally pull up into a snarl, rarely pulling up into a grin. She had lines around her eyes but you failed to see them as her eyes were large and filled with the knowings of the universe.

She was not a beauty males would fight each other for but she was one I would die for all the same.

She had no flaws, everything about her made her that much more. Each scar had a story. It was something she told me as I helped her at the forge. She would pound steel into shape, wiping her forehead with her arm as I honed the edges of her blades, whetstone in hand.

My movements had been clumsy at first, until she showed me how, then they were just clumsy when she spoke to me. Tremors in my fingers, elation in my heart as she addressed me and me alone.

She told me of her scars. "I've noticed you looking." A statement that brought a rush of embarrassment and shame at being caught straight to my face. She just shook her head, a small smile tugging up the corner of her mouth that usually only pulled up into a snarl. "Each one holds a story." She had paused, looking at me with blue that reflected my image back at me and it had caught my breath in my chest, making me unable to breathe until she had looked away.

She had told me about the scars on her arms, on her face, on her neck. The story from the scars I could see. She told me the stories behind each one and with each new discovery, each set of words that describe each mark their beauty grew before me. I wanted to trace the marks with my finger tips, wanted to make her skin shiver underneath my touch.

My longing was going to kill me.

It was something I knew.

I never knew such an intense feeling could exist deep within me but it did. Perhaps the others sensed it, or perhaps just the one.

On a night of celebration, a juvenile female earning her sword, I had been approached by a confident female, her hair in ragged hanks around her face. She was a beauty that males must have fought over and I knew that was not a beauty to envy. She did not truly speak to me. Her eyes had trailed over me in a gaze that spoke of want I had only seen in males. Her brown eyes were dark and heated, holding her hand out for me to take.

I did.

She allowed me to express my longing.

Feminine fingers dancing over flesh. I watched her skin goosebump underneath my touch. I watched her breath hitch in her chest as I let my lips skin over her form. I did not know why I took her hand but I did not regret it. She showed me the tenderness that should have been there within the touch of the males, she showed me the newness to the feelings I did not quite understand.

She took my lips with her own, murmured words I could not hear against my neck, my breasts, my belly, my inner thighs. But when she looked up at me all I wanted was the blue and I closed my eyes.

The blue that had saved me.

The blue that would drown me.

I wanted the blue that would kill me.