the lambs were screaming

*Clarice* · September 17, 2013, 12:49 PM

It was beautiful here. The meadow was dotted with flowers that would soon wither away with winters cold, chapped-lipped kiss. Clarice moves through the field, blood still matted to her furs from the foxes. She was not at all self-aware, as she typically was; her appearance was secondary, now, to her primary goal. The night of Sos and Atka had passed. Clarice had learned plenty of magic from the house of the Rising Sun; she was ripe and wild with it.
xxxxShe sought baneberry. Baneberry and other poisonous crop that she could make her elixir with, crush and rind the plant into meat to bring to Sos another grand sacrifice. The unfaithful had no place, none, and she would wipe them from His green earth (perhaps many saw it to be Hers, Atka's, but Clarice attributed everything to Him). The sky was darkening, promising to bring a storm. But she could not be distracted in her ultimate task.
xxxxShe combed through the flowers, swatting the ones that were not of use to her. From the woods she had found she would seek an elder tree to begin her conjuring. Then maybe the voices would speak again.

*Lecter* · September 17, 2013, 03:07 PM

He had wanted too long for his God to feel the lash of his anger; Jinx was correct. Lecter had been the most devoted of his kith to the causes of Sos. And yet, as he bathed the wound in his shoulder, and spat crushed comfrey into it, he understood that he could no longer be angry with the Dark One for His decisions. It was not for the madman to know, the inner workings of Sos, and Lecter swallowed this knowledge, though a bitter cup it was.

He picked his way effortlessly through the sea of wildflowers, lifting a scornful lip at the clinging desperate beauty of the last spring blossoms. The night prior, he had stalked and killed a hare, dropped from an impossible height by a bantling hawk; Lecter had been surprised the small beast was still alive, let alone uninjured enough to attempt an escape from the snap of his jaws.

His eyes swam with sudden confusion; he drew himself up, halting in his steps. She was here, and shock mingled with awe and an icy sort of joyous relief in his heart. But he was silent; the girl, like her mother, was unmoved by the physicality. Lecter moved to her side, limp lessened by time and by his delight at seeing his daughter once more, and kept pace with her in quietude as the dying sounds of the summerkissed lands danced around them.

*Clarice* · September 17, 2013, 03:20 PM

Lips purse as she notes how very difficult it is to find what she seeks. It is then Clarice notices a bush, and from it is red baneberry; a true surprise. She had recalled too late that baneberry could be found near streams and thickets. This was open land. And this was the only baneberry to be found. The witch leaves it, knowing an unsuspecting being would be hungry and sooner choke upon what they perceived to be berries than try their hand at typical flowers. She could reap more benefits from letting it alone...
xxxxSo she searches for other poisonous items. She would find Foxglove, but not here—
xxxx(You are walking. He is coming, he is beside you.)
xxxxShe turns to look to the old man, her father, who she had left many-a-time behind. Perhaps once it was spite. But Clarice, the next time, was simply a selfish woman. Not even he had been a part of her designs. She lived to please Him and no other. Still, she had been looking for him. And so her own gaze lights up. He has brought you to me, she chirps, I have pleased Him. This she says with pride, and her chest swells. She notes the caked blood upon her chest and furrows her brow, stopping, and beginning to clean it roughly with her tongue. (You have pleased Him.) Her icewater eyes glow as she hears this, white furs clinging to her tongue as she presses them down into subordination to her will, begone, fox blood—you have served your purpose.

*Lecter* · September 17, 2013, 10:40 PM

Lecter was too taken with his daughter's continued existence in the foul world to correct her piping praise of Sos, though his jaw tightened somewhat. But perhaps He had not discarded Clarice; the girl had always traveled a straight path, a narrow path, carved out no doubt by the Dark One himself. The pale shaman watched his pet oddity clean the foxblood from her chestfur for a moment; she was at once both the same and changed.

"How did you find your way here?" he inquired softly, fighting the foreign urge to embrace her and chastise her for ever leaving his side.

"Jinx has come as well," Lecter proffered; perhaps the name would evoke the more pleasant memories of her childhood.

*Clarice* · September 19, 2013, 11:42 PM

Too consumed was she in her task to note the tension in his jaw. That Sos had left him on his lonesome was unknown to her; and had she known, the cruel girl would have laughed. She was detached from it all. Reality was an illusion to her; she lived within her head. It was Loa that she loved, that she cared for. It was they who guided her, moreso than her father. That she believed; the voices made it so, had reasoned with her. Her coming and going was not her design. It was not her that left. It was them. She was a mere vessel. A body for their bidding.
xxxxI am always guided, she murmurs ambiguously, but surely he would understand as only those who knew their devotion would. The voices had been silent for so long. But they were always in control. And now, now they spoke again. Truly she had brought Sos pleasure, and the Loa, too. That she and her father reunited was right. Oh, but how different things would have gone had they not spoken to her. She would believe anything in desperation. How she blamed and harmed so many in the belief that it was their fault they were quiet. Their existence was not meant. Not even the spirits would whisper in their presence, that was how much of an abomination they were! A curse. A terrible curse...
xxxxIt is not his words that lure her from her memories, her gaze distant even as her fangs preen and comb the cleaned furs, it is the name. Jinx, she echoes, and swings her muzzle toward her father, her eyes assessing, searching for emotion, paranoia seeping into her being, an invisible but possessive ghost—as possessive as she herself could be—and she blinks. (The Bay has fallen to flame), the words pour from her lips. It was not literal. Without the true spiritual leader, the Bay would be consumed by heresy. But Clarice grins. Jinx was an ardent follower of Sos, from what she could remember, and her worries fall to the ground in waves. We are its ashes. How sage! She looks to her father. Had she known of his lack of communication with Sos, she would have believed it to be because he had wandered from the Bay at all, and so Sos turned his cheek cruelly. But now! That could not be so.
xxxxFor the three together were His. Atka had no part in their grand designs.

*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?"

*Clarice* · September 20, 2013, 01:01 AM

As he reaches out to her, Clarice has fallen into her reverie. When physical contact occurs, she withdraws and snaps at the open air, her eyes wild, electric—
xxxxDO
xxxxxNOT
xxxxxxTOUCH
xxxxHer being expressed this, foreleg pulling to her chest, eyes narrowing, revolted, until the expression melts, softens, and she reaches out to him, though never bridges the divide from open air to touch. We do not like it, being touched. She withdraws, ears swiveling atop her head, refusing to look away. His question causes her to draw within herself for an instant, and then she returns to him, Clarice again. They are quiet, she murmurs mournfully.
xxxxShe was theirs. His by blood, theirs by spirit and soul and divine will. But she was more than a prophet and a puppet. There was purpose. We cannot say.

*Lecter* · September 20, 2013, 01:10 AM

His jaw tightened in shock; here was a side of Clarice that he had not seen before, and he watched, bereft, as she drew into herself, both physically and mentally. She could not answer him, and somehow he knew that she would not. And so, attempting to scrape her expression of revulsion from his mind's eye, Lecter motioned with a careful muzzle toward the formerly stained fur of her chest. "A hex?" the madman inquired, wanting on some level to relate to his strange child, to grasp hold of some aspect of Clarice before she was gone, carried off by her voices and their thrall upon her.

*Clarice* · September 20, 2013, 01:24 AM

He motions to her chest, and she remembers. It is a true surprise that she does, or perhaps it is not; she is unaware, but so many times, Clarice forgets. She was not herself that day. But she is rewarded with the memory, the slaughter.
xxxxMany sacrifices for a spell, she responds, a ruthless edge to her voice as she begins, but as she continues, it softens. I have called to Him, have made a beacon. And I asked for you. Clarice does not speak to comfort. That is not her way. She watches him. Her head tilts, and her eyes are bright. She is here! Clarice had yearned for him so, without knowing! She would never let him go.

*Lecter* · September 20, 2013, 01:28 AM

Lecter was still somewhat grieved by her reaction to him, but Clarice quickly redeemed herself with her piping little voice, so disjointed and yet full of passion and verve for her voices, her Loa. His grim face slid grudgingly into a small smile; he settled his haunches on the ground and nodded in her direction. "I asked of Him your life, to preserve it. When you did not follow us here, when you departed and did not return, I —"

His throat clenched with the remembrance of the fear he had experienced that day, the thought that his odd little girl had been lost forever. "I thought you had died in the Fire," the madman finished simply. Her words.

*Clarice* · September 20, 2013, 01:36 AM

He speaks, and she listens, strangely still, strangely tame; for her spirit is a wily thing, full of turmoil and angst, anger and energy. Clarice feels nothing pulling at her heartstrings, because she held no compassion or understanding of it. She also did not know the permanence of death. Mortality was foreign to her. Those that died, she could bring back. She believed everything she thought, and so she is fearless, stupidly so. At the very least, she does not act on it.
xxxxFire for the faithless, she whispers. It is they who are burned, devoured by the flame. We cannot pass that way— witches, burned at the stake, how fitting a fate! But no, Do you not think there is some plan? He had believed her dead. Now, she is aggrieved. You could live without me... she is distracted, and her eyes shift left, shift right, and it is though something has gone off within her. I live for you. She was his witch; none could change that, not even the God she so adored and obeyed.

*Lecter* · September 20, 2013, 01:43 AM

"No!" he hissed suddenly, then caught himself. "No," Lecter repeated, shutting his eyes for a long moment at the shifting of her own clear gaze. "I could not." He had lost Shearwater, Koios, Nanuq, Valkari. He had lost Starling. He had even lost his God, and his faith had been in danger of waning before he had discovered the three lost souls besides himself who had straggled here. Damned he would be if he lost Clarice, also.

But his body, perhaps it would go on swelling his lungs with air, forcing him to eat, to slumber, even to breed. "I do not wish to live without you, Clarice," he muttered, quite put off by his own rusted and incomprehensible emotions. I love you, his icewater gaze whispered momentarily, but he did not speak in such concrete terms to his little one because she did not understand them. The world was evershifting, and Freyja Clarice had melded herself to its movements; she was as fluid as the Loa, and he marvelled that she had held so long to reality.

*Clarice* · September 20, 2013, 01:57 AM

She does not hear him at first, her mind numb, muting the sounds around her; the world was incoherent, spotted, blurring... but his voice comes to her again, brings her to clarity. There would be two in this life that could do this; he, one, and the other yet unknown. She would often lose herself, but her father, her madman, was a man who could find her, pull her.
xxxxHer eyes are distant, but he speaks, and she hears. I could not, she echoes, her voice a wisp of air, so very thin and fragile, breaking at the thought that he might have. And then he speaks again, of his wish, and her weepy eyes lift, seeing. You do not have to, she whines. They could be together always. Life, and death. If I thought you dead, I would die. He had brought her life, somehow; was that not the way of things?

*Lecter* · September 20, 2013, 02:01 AM

Her emotions shook him so; she was cold for a moment; then filled with tears the next, her small voice breaking, reminding Lecter of her childhood and the chaos she had struggled with even then. The breath was all but knocked from him; pale audits slid back against his skull, and he held her eyes with his own for a gentle heartbeat, for what seemed an infinite amount of time, a millennia, before he locked back his own churning heart and proffered her a small grim smile.

"It is settled, then, but neither of us have passed on yet. We are both still breathing. Tell me what you have learned." And with that, the weathered shaman turned their conversation onto its proper track, one that would surely be of interest to his wayward oddity.

*Clarice* · September 20, 2013, 02:12 AM

She brightens at their grim decision, their morbid plan. It was settled. Her tail waves, left and right, and there is not a single line of displeasure upon her.
xxxxI was a part of a coven. From them, I learned of black magic; they were devoted to the Earth, but I was devoted to Sos. I could not teach them, but I did not want to, though she had enjoyed them, the coven women were incredibly simple with their minds. She was much the same, but was not self-aware enough to see that. They would not have listened if she spoke of Sos; too devoted were they to their faith. But it worked for them. Just as hers worked for her. I know more of herbs, now, she thinks. They have been quiet for a while, now, they spoke only when I came here again... and still, they were quiet, not near so loud as they were in her youth, but ever-present. Is there more to learn? She queries, eyes looking to him, wanting always to be her best; she knew so very much, and had grown to become a frightening creature. But could there be more?

*Lecter* · September 20, 2013, 02:17 AM

Lecter listened quietly, for this was the most coherent she had been thus far. He secretly wished she would expound upon this coven to him, these women who had obviously been far beneath his pet in skill, but she seemed happy enough rambling to her father, and so he allowed this with pleasure. Always the pupil, her bright mad eyes glinted upwards into his, and he nodded. "Always."

In the service of one so brash and shifting as Sos, a true follower must be ever-ready to be educated further in His wants, His demands. Clarice knew this, as did he himself. "Your knowledge of herbs, how far does it reach?" By which he meant to extend an invitation for the girl to list that which she knew about the surrounding foliage and its uses.