can you hear that wonderful sound?
The Ferris wheel has started, now we’re stuck going round and round…
Carnival enjoyed simple conversation like she enjoyed a good run; it was mindless at the best of times, bordering on painful at the worst, but all the same an exercise that lightened both her body and her soul. Unlike her frequent good runs, however, exchanges with other wolves were not common in her life. Desolation had a dampening effect on the vocals; to open one’s mouth was to inhale a mouthful of cotton where air should be, sitting thick and indestructible in the throat. No such barrier existed now. This was a gentle night despite the burden it had once deposited on her shoulders. Midnight had come and gone, and with its passing the male had arrived and he too, in a shrewd manner, offered to lighten her load.
Surrender instigated an unknown sense of joy, one that came accompanied by darkening eyes, and the heat of shared breaths.
When he sighed she felt it in her breast, the heaviness of it misleading when he continued with his at once dark and sly tone remarking of the devil’s plans. His plans for the earth made her laugh, a laugh without the hint of an impending psychotic break that colored the rest. It was her joy again, clawing out of her throat, sparkling in her eyes. Damn joy, a conniving emotion. Carn repressed it to respond, forced to nod appreciatively his way at his bold statements. “There is nothing else I’d rather do than put this dirt in its grave.” (Maybe a few things, but I won’t mention them. Can he see my eyes darkening? Feel the heat from my breath?) “You’re so kind to extend such an esteemed invitation. As for the devil…” A quick shrug. “He has my name.”
He was a study, this black menace with the easy words. Was she being fooled even now, by the sincerity of his questions? He couldn’t really be listening, what a boring tale she had told him. And why had she? It must have been the identity thing. No matter how she tried to shrug it, the saying was inevitably true: we are the sum of our parts. Her hunger to tell him was sated, however, by the tango of stories, the delightful wordplay. Having led last song, he took the reins, and suddenly she was learning; learning of an orphan, watching closely his smile falter and then change into a smirk, change as he once had from a pup to a wolf. How could she possibly answer the question he posed? Where was her cold heart now?
“Who’s to say what doesn’t need to be said,” she murmured, clear eyed though sympathetic. “Your type of fun sounds like a treat, for the maid who watches without getting her paws dirty at all is a self-centered bitch, but she who shares leaves with her own pride. As for the one she shares it with…well I’d just call him a lucky bastard.” She heard the question he instigated in his coy assumptions; couldn’t avoid it, wrap it in cryptic words, with such a direct statement. So Carn didn’t try, thinking reflectively for a second before replying. “My mother taught me many things, but where I grew up gave Desolation a name but not a face. There was no one. To share was to share with her, and though her love for me was that of a mother, I could not give her the love of a daughter. I left her in my teens, and definitely did not know how to share. Oh, if you had seen me then. The red on my pelt, and the gleam in my eye.” She let out a short laugh.
Where is your cold heart now?
When she looked into his gaze, he hadn’t been affronted or upset. No, formerly he had flashed his pearly whites and sent a wink her way, and then proceeded to stoic observation when their eyes met. It was comforting in a way, she felt buoyed up, yet allowed to fall.
Did she want her cold heart back, or was it time to surrender?
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