the lambs were screaming

*Lecter* · September 20, 2013, 12:07 AM

He watched the colour of her innermost being shift — though Clarice kept to her own, he was still her father, and sensed such things with paternal intuition — but he was silent. He recalled briefly the child she had been, already then death-touched, her mind all but spirited away by the souls that surrounded her. A strange girl, but his child nonetheless, and not for the first time since their meeting, he wished to touch her, to allow his cold love for her be manifested.

And so he reached out, intending to brush her pale cheek with the end of his muzzle. She was his, blood of his blood, and while Clarice perhaps would disappear again, driven by her own inner voices, Lecter would remain her father, would remain rooted, a rock against which her chaotic storms could lash.

The man could not help the chill that kissed the base of his spine and sent sprang the fur on his nape upright; he himself had received such visions in his dehydrated, drug-induced haze upon the mountain cliffs, and it struck him that they had shared such dreams. But he did not ask her what it was that she meant; he understood, well enough, and his icewater eyes remained impassive.

"Will you stay?"