DARIEN VALENTINE
“ I think my passion is misinterpreted as anger sometimes. And I don't think people are ready for the message that I'm delivering, and delivering with a sense of violent love.”
~
The Valentines are not gentle, loving creatures. It is not in their nature to change, or adapt, to accept others. Their love is not what we would call love, and lust consumes them on a level we will never understand. They do not grow old as we do, but age as stone does: They gradually weather, slowly perish, so slowly it is unnoticeable. But in the end, the stone is a fixture forever… As they are.
~
It was so hard to find it in me to care; fishing in an empty tank for something that wasn’t there. I should have been worried that the shivers had subsided so fast, and the tremors come so abruptly.
But I didn’t.
Now the ache of my muscles was the only thing left to remind me of the strident pains, and my awareness stood high and proud, untouched by the prior episode. If anything, I was bored; bored out of my mind, with the kind of tedium that sent me up a wall looking for something to entertain, that could amuse like my unconscious mind did so well. My smile fell, just as unhappy as I was with the conclusion that had come up:
If something was to be done, it must be done by myself- otherwise, nothing would be done at all.
And that was what I thought about as my feet drew themselves over the same path for the umpteenth time and my tail swept the evidence of my indifferent footsteps away.
I’ve never acquired the taste for sociability; there was too much disorder for me to be able to ever enjoy myself, so I tended to keep my predatory fetishes to myself. I didn’t need to publicize, I didn’t need to be proud. Pride was a weed meant to choke out the fruits of concentration and rare persistent doggedness. I didn’t need it to know the functions my body could serve, or the effect it could bring to others. It wasn’t hard to know things. I knew that the most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.
I knew that didn’t apply to me, and I knew I could exert the information against others in the interest of bettering of myself.
The afternoon waned, but my pace was as nonchalant as my steps at what time it was. I thrived on being nocturnal, on being in cold, dry climates. It was where I was at my best, and furthering myself was an obsession I’d taken on lately.
I remember, just days before coming here, I was asked by a dying fae if I worshiped any God besides myself. I knew it was a jab at my self-worth, but I’d answered truthfully all the same. I worshiped Orcus; The Punisher. My religious life had always been more along the lines of ‘hobby’ than ‘cult’, and it was only by chance that I’d stumbled upon the God’s name.
After I understood what he stood for I quickly took him up as my divine counterpart.
Orcus was not a law-abiding God, he kept far away from the decency that most people liked to believe they had in them, and favored theatric, bloody sacrifices. Though a slightly conceited and ungenerous Deity, Orcus was a pinpoint of purpose bound, savage brutality and not an easily forgetful Spirit.
I revered him because he was like me; misunderstood and underestimated. So misunderstood.
SNAP!
My paw hung midair, my breathing came to a halt, my tail held perfectly still and my ears swiveled to the left, the right, the front and the back, searching for the source of the sound. I was, technically, in pack grounds but that didn’t mean the threat of violence was gone, or even less at all. Fighting wasn’t something I enjoyed, I’d rather have it at uneven odds, where I was doing the killing, and they were dying.
And that was usually how it played out. After a few seconds, I hesitantly started off again, assuming that whatever or whoever it had been had moved on.
I was wrong.
Abruptly a wolf appeared at my side, her fur smelling of death and blood and her words smelling of mocking danger. You shouldn’t mock danger. Her voice was nimble and silvery, almost like if I tried to hold on to her metallic lyrics they would slip through my grasp, falling from my memory. I was surprised; I’d been walking by myself only seconds ago, and suddenly she was there. With no explanation other than she wanted to talk? Otherwise in circumstances, I would have been irritated. Because if there was one thing I didn’t like, it was being surprised. I liked to know what was happening. Not only that, but I had the feeling of being a lion walking next to a lamb. It was hard to recognize one deer from the next, but she had something that I knew I would remember from now on- the fact that she smelled like blood.
That was the only thing keeping me from leaving her traveling alone with a sharp comment; she smelled like blood.
Blood was what turned me over from fight to feed.
I knew I’d seen her at the meeting, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t seem to place it. I needed something to pour my stress into, anyways. She would be my outlet.
Two black eyes made to look down at her, onyx kissers swept into a Cheshire smile and a soft rhythm took up by my tail. ”I’d be anything you wanted me to”
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