demigod split

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14TH DAY OF MIDSUMMER

The stars are gone. 

The black expanse of 4 a.m. has never felt as frigid as it does to Lore tonight. He can only manage one thought: it’s good the stars are gone, because starlight was too gorgeous for a night like this. Starlight was glimmering and boundless; starlight was wonderful, starlight was love’s wild answer to the dark chasm of the cosmos and tonight is…

Well.

Yeah, it’s super fucked up.

One sickle blade of moonlight slits the darkness. Lore follows its silent drip down, down, down, to the corpse in front of him.

Every one of its bones is split open down the centerline. The body is a rose blossom of blood, insides flowering out, half-clad with shredded robes like petals of silver silk. Moonlight glosses the marrow of each dissected humerus and each flayed finger bone.  

Lore takes one blood-wet hand between his. It’s already clammy with the humid glaze of summer. He brings the hand to his mouth and ghosts his lips over the wrist. It smells like iron and jasmine and endings. If he could dwell in this last cherished moment, he would, but his thoughts are returning to static.

Still, he commits it to memory.

He takes two deep breaths that drench his throat in the tang of metal. 

He commits it, burning, to memory.

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