[ P ] voices in the dark

B

odies broke upon the prison gates, and the silent cells were filled with the rhythmic breaths of the new, penitent prisoners. The guards had gifted her an influx of company, and the kingdom's sacrificial lambs now filled the dungeon with voice and veracity. It was more stimulation than Third had been forced to endure for a long, lonely while.

At times, she loathed these transient, traitorous visitors, these intruders to her domain. The darkness was hers, to wear and writhe within; sharing the space was....difficult. Controlling the impulse to wail and rage was a war, her humanity poised in an indelicate balance, and her preferences danced at the edge of a sword - as did so many other things. What was the world but a weapon? What was the night but a knife?

Third pressed against the cell door, away from her sleeping cellmate. Monochrome bled through the bars, skeletal filigree pushing through the iron and old lace. Her eyes stared through the shadows at the dark figure that lurked in the room across from her - unfamiliar and unknown, a point of interest in an otherwise stagnant pool.

Eyes wide. Unblinking.

She watched, and waited, and wondered. And her voice, when she spoke, was hushed and halted, a question poised at the edge of a carnal cliff.

"We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry, thirsty roots?"

It was a rhyme, a song, not her own. She borrowed it. Indefinitely. One of her crimes, among many. Perhaps the beast beyond the bars would appreciate it.

art and code by Yahtzee-Penguiduck