Page 7 of Monster's Obsessive Hunger
Tonight, she tells me a story about the sea, a place I have not seen in centuries. She describes the taste of salt on the wind and the endless blue expanse, and I can almost feel it, almost remember it. I watch the way her hands move as she speaks, graceful arcs in the lantern light that seem to be weaving the tale into the very air around us. I am memorizing her. Not as a predator studies the habits of its prey, but as a scholar memorizes a sacred text. The way a single strand of dark hair falls across her cheek, the way her eyes soften when she speaks of something beautiful, the small, determined set of her jaw. Every detail is a treasure I hoard against the coming silence.
The physical hunger is still here, of course. It is a dull, constant ache in my gut, a low crimson burn in my chest. It is the curse I will carry for eternity. But it is a distant thing now, a background noise to the sharper, more immediate hunger I feel for her presence. The hollowness inside me is no longer a simple void. It has taken on her shape. When she is here, telling her stories, the space is filled with the warm, golden light of her voice. But I know, as the night wears on, that she will have to leave. The thought of her departure is a cold dread that begins to build in my chest, a physical pressure that makes it hard to draw breath. The silence she will leave behind will be more profound, more painful, than the centuries of silence that came before.
“I have to go,” she says. “My sister will notice if I’m gone too long.”
The words are a physical blow. The warmth that has filled my chest for the last hour vanishes in an instant, and the vast, crushing hollowness rushes back in. My rib sputters, colors cough replaced by the anxious green of impending loss. A raw, desperate need claws its way up my throat.
“Stay,” I say, My voice a rough, pleading growl that sounds pathetic even to my own ears. “Longer. Just one more story.”
She gives me a sad, gentle smile. “I can’t, Thorrin. I have to be back before the sun rises.” She begins to gather her cloak around her, the simple movement an act of profound abandonment. Panic, cold and sharp, grips me. I cannot let her go. Not yet. The emptiness she will leave behind is too vast to contemplate.
My instincts take over. I have learned to mimic her voice to perfection, to capture its every nuance and inflection. I have used it as a tool, a lure, a way to taste her emotions. Now, I use it as a plea.
“Don’t go,” I whisper. The voice that emerges is not my own. It is hers. A perfect, heartbreaking echo of her own gentle tone,laced with a desperation that is entirely my own. “Please. Don’t leave me alone.”
She freezes, her hand halfway to the clasp of her cloak. I watch her face in the moonlight, see the way her expression shatters. She is shocked, shaken to her core. To hear her own voice, begging her not to go, is a violation, a cruel manipulation. I know this. But it is the only way I can show her the sheer, terrifying depth of what I am feeling. It is the only way to translate the alien agony of my loneliness into a language she can understand. Her face softens, the shock giving way to a dawning, horrified empathy. She is not looking at a monster anymore. She is looking at a prisoner, and my cage is made of unending solitude.
She lowers her hand from her cloak, her movements slow, uncertain. She takes a hesitant step closer, her eyes fixed on the flickering, anxious light in my chest. Her own voice, when she speaks, is a fragile whisper, but it cuts through my internal chaos like a blade.
“Do you ever get lonely?”
The word is a ghost. A forgotten artifact from a language I no longer speak. Lonely. For centuries, I have been alone. The concepts are similar, but not the same. To be alone is a state of being. To be lonely is to feel the pain of that state. Before her, I was simply alone. It was the fundamental truth of my existence, as immutable as the stone of these mountains. I did not feel it as a lack, because I had nothing to compare it to. There was only the gray void and the hunger.
But now… now I have her. I have the memory of her voice filling the silence, the warmth of her presence pushing back the eternal cold. Now, her absence is not just a return to the default state. It is a loss. A tearing away of the only color I have ever known. The silence she leaves is no longer empty; it is filled with the echo of her.
I look at this small, fragile human who has trespassed into the desolate landscape of my soul and somehow planted a single, impossible flower. She is waiting for an answer, her expression a mixture of fear and a compassion so profound it makes my chest ache. I owe her the truth.
“Only when you’re gone,” I reply.
The admission costs me more than she will ever know. It is a confession of my own pathetic weakness, an acknowledgment of the power she now holds over me. I watch her absorb the words, see the pity and understanding dawn in her eyes. I should hate the pity. A predator should not be pitied by its prey. But I don't. I crave the connection it represents, the shared moment of understanding that bridges the vast, impossible gulf between what we are. She is the first living thing in centuries to see me as something more than just a monster. She sees a creature that can feel loneliness. And in her eyes, I see that this does not make me pathetic. It makes me real.
11
THORRIN
My confession of loneliness is fragile and terrible bridge. Lyssa stares at me, her eyes reflecting the anxious green-gold light of my heart. I expect her to leave now, to finally retreat from the pathetic, needy monster she has unearthed beneath the layers of my predatory nature. Instead, she does the impossible. She takes a step closer.
I remain perfectly still, a statue carved from ancient bone and regret, every part of my being screaming at the proximity of her warmth, her life. She moves with a slow, deliberate grace that speaks not of fear, but of a decision made. Her hand, small and pale in the moonlight, rises slowly. My entire existence narrows to that single point of motion. I expect her to touch my arm, my shoulder—the parts of me that are most solid, least monstrous.
But her fingers drift toward my chest, toward the very source of my curse and my life. Toward the light.
The moment her skin makes contact, a shockwave jolts through my entire frame. It is not pain. It is not pleasure. It is… feeling. A pure, unadulterated jolt of sensation in a body that has been numb for millennia, a dead nerve screaming back to life. The light beneath her palm explodes, flaring from anxious greento a brilliant, startled gold so bright it illuminates the entire clearing. She gasps, but she doesn’t pull away.
Her fingers are impossibly soft, impossibly warm against the cold, hard lines of my ribs. She traces the line of bone, her touch a feather-light exploration. I can feel the faint tremor in her hand, the last vestiges of her fear, but it is overshadowed by a powerful, clinical curiosity. She is not touching a monster to soothe it; she is touching a mystery to understand it. I watch her, mesmerized. Her gaze is not on my skull-face but on her own hand, on the place where her life touches my curse. I see the wonder in her expression as the light shifts and swirls beneath her fingertips in response to her touch. She is mapping my soul with her skin, and every gentle press, every hesitant stroke, is rewriting the ancient, desolate landscape of my being.
This new sensation, this alien jolt of life in my dead flesh, awakens something else. A deeper, more primal stirring that has been dormant for so long I did not know it still existed. It is a feeling completely separate from the curse’s hunger for blood. This is not a craving to consume, but a desire to connect. A need for the warmth of her skin, the scent of her hair, the soft, living texture of her. It is an ache that starts not in my gut, but lower, a heavy, coiling heat that is both terrifying and exhilarating. Desire. A word I had forgotten.
My own hand rises, moving with a slowness that feels agonizing. I am so afraid of my claws that can tear through steel, of the power that could shatter her delicate bones without a thought. She watches my hand approach, her breath catching, but she does not move away. She is giving me her trust, a gift so precious it makes my chest ache with a terrible, beautiful light.
My claws are retracted, the tips of my fingers brushing the line of her jaw. The contrast is staggering. My hand is a thing of death and shadow, impossibly large against the delicate curve of her face. Her skin is soft as fresh-fallen snow, warm with thesteady, pulsing rhythm of her life. Her pulse flutters beneath my touch like a trapped bird, and the sensation is the most intoxicating thing I have ever felt.
I explore her as she has explored me. I trace the elegant line of her throat, the fragile curve of her collarbone, the gentle slope of her shoulder. Every inch of her is a new discovery, a new texture, a new wonder. The rough wool of her cloak gives way to the softer linen of her tunic beneath, and underneath that, the incredible warmth of her body. My light shifts, the pure gold darkening then swirling into a deep, passionate purple. The air between us grows thick, heavy with unspoken needs, with a new and dangerous kind of hunger.
The gentle exploration is no longer enough. A desperate, clawing need takes over, a craving to erase the distance between us, to feel her warmth pressed against the cold eternity of my form. I pull her to me, my movements urgent but still checked by the terror of hurting her. She comes without resistance, a soft gasp escaping her lips as her body meets mine. She is so small, so fragile against my towering frame. I can feel the frantic beat of her heart against my ribs, a rhythm that syncates with the pulsing of my own light.
I lower my head, driven by an instinct I can’t name. A kiss is impossible for a creature with a skull, but the need for that intimacy is overwhelming. I press my face to hers, the cold bone of my cheek against the soft warmth of her skin. I breathe her in, the scent of her filling the hollowness inside me. It is a desperate, clumsy imitation of a human kiss, but she seems to understand. Her hands come up to cup my skull, her fingers tracing the jagged lines, pulling me closer.
My control frays, the careful restraint I have maintained for weeks unraveling thread by thread. My hands roam her body, no longer gentle, but possessive, desperate. I push aside her cloak, my fingers tangling in the rough fabric of her tunic, needing tofeel the shape of her, the reality of her. She makes a small sound in the back of her throat, a soft, broken moan that shatters the last of my composure.
