Burning. (Maude/Koun) (Happy late birthday, Alex!)

It was warmer that night. A fog, thick and grey as pelt hung over Elijah's Pit, taking mercy upon the land made raw by persistent, searing frosts. It slithered through the blackened oak branches entwined above the track, veined with ice, leading to the church. A Romanesque archway clouded by the smoke of a spreading fire. The dimness, however, as the light of the moon weakened in it's battle against the falling mist, did nothing to obscure the coal apparitions that stalked the path beneath. Four legged, sinuous creatures like dogs, their watchful eyes and mouths salivating with threat, flashed through the darkness like the white flames of distant torches.

A man standing erect at the path's centre, who in the feeble light, could be pitied as a man of ill formed feature. He had the face of a dog. He had a tawny, calloused complexion. His eyes, partially hidden by a mat of russet locks, appeared as wet orifices, black as the bodies of the ghostly creatures that wove about his feet. They shone bright above the hairless, yellow protrusion of his muzzle, baring teeth as crooked as the aged headstones of the churchyard half a mile from his back. A sinewy body that stood an intimidating height, crowned by the pearly vapour curling through the branches overhead.

The dog faced man barked an order for the black dogs to sit dormant, in a sharp, unpolished tongue. At his word, the apparitions lowered onto their haunches, though they continued to silently snarl at the unfamiliarity facing their master.

Before the pack stood the vision of a woman. The Dog man thought her a vision, as that was how she appeared. She seemed illuminated in the blackness, as if divine power had laid a candle lit print over the night. She appeared a creature of mingled idealistic beauty. She bore the soft, generous flesh of a Grecian marble, and he found it fanciful, to imagine her hovering her hand silent command over the golden heads of Cerberus. Her expression, however, held none of the gentle, warming seduction of a Greek goddess. A sharpness of the eye, and a slight tightness of the lips an brow. The cold, though elegant poise attributed to a Slavic beauty. In spite of these tantalizing exotic attributes, though, he knew that she was of neither Grecian nor Slavic origin. Before she had even appeared before him, the distant notes of her voice reached his ears in the lilt of an old Gaelic hymn. Her tongue was as his. Her hair hung unbound in an array of auburn curls, so abundant that it seemed they would weigh heavy on her shoulders. She wore a dark bodice, from which billowed a woollen, ivory skirt. A simple garment, though it gave no air of humbleness to this vision of a woman.

“Has this way come under claim?” Though she did not smile, her voice rang oddly cordial in the Dog Man's ears. His answer rumbled through his teeth;

“No.”

“Then you stand in my way with reason?” She made a faint gesture with her hand, closed loosely in guise of twisting the string of her bodice. The black dogs quivered on their haunches, as if waiting for the word to fly at the solitary woman. The Dog man raised a thick  brow in consideration and curiosity as he studied her. His toothy snarl relenting slightly as he spoke.

“If I allowed you to pass, would your flesh not be burned?”

There was a short pause. He could smell the sharp scent of a muted anger, he could feel it smoulder in her gaze.  

“Burned.” She was silent a moment, her eyes drifting about the man. About the dark beings at his feet. Finally her eyes returned to his. A smile, seemingly of gentle amusement, tugged at her lips as she stared into those glinting, black holes. “you heard me sing, yes? What did I sing of?”

“A curtain, torn at it's centre. An old hymn.”

“And yet,” She held her hands out to him, as if to receive the body of a deceased animal. “You assume my body would burn upon passing.”

“A man may hold the word in the same hand he held a vile of poison and shout of justification. Not every heart is lured by songs of a faerie's love.”

“You accuse me seduction where there is no subject present.” She laughed, a sound almost as sweet and lilting as her song, though he saw the dull absence of merriment in her eyes. “I may have been  hungry....starving.” She glided her fingers across her abdomen. “But I do not feast upon mongrels.”


She stepped forward, disturbing the heavy folds of her skirts as she did so. The black dogs were near crazed at the advance. They shuddered like jet arrows upon taut bow strings, their jaws gnashing soundlessly as they would upon her slender limbs, tearing to the bone. Yet they had not been released from their settled positions. The Dog Man spoke no order, but a breathed a growl like a grind of rusted machinery in his chest as the woman came close to him, without a glance wasted on his blood thirsty companions. She stood inches from a body racked with aggression and distrust, holding out her hand to it, as a woman of wealth to a new acquaintance.

“Come.” She murmured, her expression unsmiling, yet emanating the warmth of candle by a learned man's cheek. “See that I do not bite.”

The sensation of fingers, hot as pliable iron, stroking at his innards was what accompanied the thought of sinking his teeth into her flesh. Trapping her hand in his jaw like a baby rabbit and jolting at every snap of brittle bone, as it fluttered on his tongue. Yet he knew of the beautiful creature's nature to deceive. To lull him into a loving, lustful serenity as so many others whose shattered skulls paved Elijah's Pit. Though he shivered, almost whimpered like a sightless pup at it's mother's belly, his head descended closer and closer upon her open hand. His hot muzzle fell onto her palm, which lay still as that of a statue as it cradled it. He whined as he nosed her fragrant flesh, lapping helplessly, pitifully at her fingertips. The Cerberus of his vision. He had not noticed her leaning close to him, until he felt her press a kiss at the crown of his head.

“The flesh of the remorseful does not burn.”