DEIMOS
Heave the silver hollow sliver
Deimos’ songs were not often bright, incandescent things. They were dirges and requiems, strains and anthems to ballads of battlefields, marches along plains, one foot in front of the other, eyes up to glance over the mist, over the fog, over the death knells. They were throngs and harmonies spread between funeral beats and long, lonely trumpets, announcing the fall of another, one more put into the ground, amidst the earth, the dust, the desecration. But for her, he composed and orchestrated alternating stanzas, not the cold, primordial, malevolent pieces – these were scattered with as much warmth and affection as he had within the chambers of his broken, nefarious heart (healing, mending, learning how to stitch itself back together). They were not an oeuvres or masterpieces, but a blending of scars and love and devotion, christened and anointed with his blessings, his strength, his confidence, beguiling, alluring, daring to take her places she’d never been. Somewhere along the way he allowed him to be snagged and enraptured by her sonnets and declarations too, not worthy, not deserving, but lingering within her grace, her fire, her divinity, reverent to her. It pulsed through his frame and pervaded through his soul; perhaps one of the few virtues he had left.
They were wild, feral, and hungry, untamed, barbed savages roaming throughout a shelter, and he kept the incensed, the kindled intonations below the surface of his skin, tempted, then tempered with patience. He could hear her following him up the stairs, the snare already tied and tethered to limbs and bones, the depths of an unseen smile lingering along his mouth. The roar of the water cascading into the empty basin, hollow for a few moments, echoed and bounded, covering over the sound of her treads. The Reaper stepped towards a closet within the room, retrieving a few towels, some soap, some shampoo, wrapping them together in a cluster as he turned back towards the bath. The warrior had just enough time to place them down on a nearby stool when his eyes caught her along the wall – then they widened, brow arching upward for a moment before stifling a smirk. Between the time he’d taken to turn on the water and grab materials, she’d already begun to strip, skirt gone, residing on the floor.
There was a challenge there, in her eyes, defiant and silly, one more provocation before some other storm hit. He raised himself to his full height, crossing his arms, ensuring a long, slow drag of his eyes was visible, forthright, voracious, hungry, fervent. He started at her toes and worked his way up, a distant touch, a delectable, savoring promise, appreciating everything he had to see. When he reached her face he tilted his head, an inquiry, a question, left completely unsaid – incitement in the silence. Then his hands took hold of his waistband, fingers sliding to the buttons holding the garments upright over his hips, undoing them gradually, no hint of a rush, slow, steady seduction. He slid them down in a warrior’s grace, fluid and effortless, before tossing them aside, then raised his chin in a seditious, unwinding smirk.
Unite and spread the heart apart
