~chkchkchk~ ~chkchkchk~
~chkchkchk~ ~chkchkchk~
“The truth is noisy. Is intrusive. Is jarring. Is unsettling. Is a call to battle. Is wounding. Is sight among the blind. Is a blow upon the dumb. Is hard to grasp.”
~chkchkchk~ ~chkchkchk~
“You have denied me many times, Raven. Why do you come to my fires now?”
“Because the lies I have swallowed have choked me. Because they have made my hands weak and my flesh soft.”
“You want revenge, Raven. You want to make a mark upon her cheek so you can dance about the great blow you wish you had sundered her with instead.” ~chkchkchk~
“Yes. No. I want the lies broken off me.”
“Which lie is that, Raven?”
“That I am bound by fealty. That the acts of apparent kindness binds me to a debt that entitles her to debase me. That my love for her is love, a restraining love that holds me from treating her as any other that has marked me.”
~chkchkchk~ “What is the truth, Raven?”
“I owe her, and hers, no fealty. She has admitted freely that I owe her no debt for anything she has done for me, as the sole reason she keeps me here is to have a victim that will not strike back. That my love for her is a learned helplessness, a vicious example of Stockholm Syndrome where I feel obligated to allow her to hurt me because she has had to deal with the repercussions of hurting me before and cries that it is all my fault. The truth is, [She Strikes With Truth], [the Betrayer] abandoned her motherhood of me many decades ago. I owe her nothing, but revenge.”
~chkchkchk~ “What kind of revenge, Raven?”
“… … Devastation.”
~chkchkchk~ “That’s not a mark on her cheek, Raven.”
“No. It’s not.”
~chkchkchk~ “Tell me the names you will have to surrender, Raven.”
“Loyal. Faithful. Dedicated. True. Abiding. Patient. Daughter. Beloved. Slave. Servant. Lesser. Ineffective. Discarded. Half-breed. Mongrel. Debased. Victim. [birth name].”
~chkchkchk~ “Tell me the names you will not be able to avoid, Raven.”
“Monster. Devourer. Blood-breaker. Betrayer. Flesh-render. Unclean. Oathbreaker. Faithless. Mercenary. Unsafe. Trust-breaker. Monster.”
~chkchkchk~ “Some of those name you will not surrender. Some of those names you will not take up. But you will be alone as you have never been alone in this life.”
“[She Rattles The Bones], I shall be as the Furies if I have to. I am already screeching into the devouring darkness. What is left of me to consume? I am mad, and maddening. I am pain, and painful. I am bled, and I bleed. Yes, each time before I swore to the sky that I would bring it all down, only to settle for a token strike on the cheek. I do not seek her death. Not yet. I want her to live a long, long life. But I want her to have her due. All of it. I want to be free of the cycle and the abuse. For each step I make away from her, she redoubles the manipulation and the salting of the ground around me. If I must become Destruction, I shall destroy. There is no chivalry in her bones. There is no mercy, no rules of engagement in her mouth. She devours and I am the daughter of devouring. She lays traps with her mouth and I am the daughter of deceit. She poisons her gifts and I am the daughter of decay. So be it. I will be true to what I am, to all the traits she has twisted into me, to all the darkness and the evil that she has taught me. And I shall be better at it than she is. And she will be brought to nothing.”
~chkchkchk~ ~chkchkchk~ ~chk~ “What do you ultimately want, Raven?”
“I want her to beg me to allow her to die.”
“Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” ~chkchkchk~ ~chkchkchk~