And the WIP:
The Scarred Man drew himself to his knees and opened a familiar line across his skin. Blood fountained, jetting and smoking as if it would burst into flame on contact with the open air, to wash the wound that Cole had made. He pressed his own opened skin against the crocodile's, and felt the freight of their veins merge in a cold, exotic agony which was both completely novel and hauntingly familiar. And still he burned as if once more diving down into the very core of the Beast - the old Beast.
Sorrow moaned, its eye rolling as if to find a painless road to heaven. Benjobi pressed himself close, a contact almost sexual, beyond sexual, while a muttering crowd gathered around them. After a time which stretched beyond the boundary of the second and hours of the day, he felt an ebbing, a sense of being stretched back into the proper proportions of a man, equalized and rationalized and set free within his own skin.
Around him, Song saw the madfolk kneeling in prayer. Even the carnies were silent, respectful, as they had never been when they'd seen him only as a paymaster and a violent man to be feared.
| Originally published at jlake.com. |