coyote (sister_coyote) wrote in ironman7, @ 2007-09-27 18:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | digital devil saga, sister_coyote, week 6: prompt 2 |
Digital Devil Saga (Jinana, Bat) [week 6, prompt 2]
Title: Flesh
Author: Sister Coyote
Length: 500 words
Rating: Worksafe
Warnings: Mention of cannibalism.
Summary: She could condemn Bat, though, for the pleasure he took in it.
There were a lot of people in the Maribel who were eating the dead. Jinana didn't like that, but she couldn't really condemn them; it was difficult -- it was almost impossibly difficult -- for her to refrain from eating the dead, and she could not judge them for a weakness that was just a few breaths shy of her own weakness.
She could condemn Bat, though, for the pleasure he took in it. The way he moaned -- and that moaning brought something else to mind, some half-forgotten memory, some other kind of moaning -- that made her shudder, the similarity between that and this, the wet red flesh, and the differences. The differences.
He snarled off the other members of her tribe as he bent over a corpse, his teeth deep in the flesh, purring with pleasure even as he lashed out with the spurs of his wings. Jinana didn't bother to transform; she kicked him, hard, with her booted human foot, and then again when he hissed at her and tried to cover the corpse with his wings, as though to keep it from her.
"I don't want your food," she snarled.
"You can't stop me," Bat-Camazotz said, fangs bloody, eyes shining. "You will never have the strength I have from this. You aren't strong enough to take it."
"Maybe not," she said, "but I'm still your tribe leader." He bent his head to the flesh again, and she kicked him once more, hard, onto his back. "I'm still your tribe leader," she said.
His wings flapped against the ground and he started to lunge, and she put her foot on his throat until he shone bright with lines of fire and shrank into his human body. He looked up at her, eyes glittering. "You're too merciful," he said, even with her foot on his neck.
She reached down and hauled him to his knees, but no higher. "Feed if you must," she said, "eat flesh if you're too weak to resist it, but I am still your tribe leader, and you will respect me."
He said nothing still, and so she put pressure on his shoulder, his throat, intensely aware of the stares of all the Maribel around her. Watching to see if their leader was strong enough.
"You will respect me," she said, leaning into him; she was not an eater of corpses, she was not cruel, but she was no weakling either. She had fought hard to earn respect for her tribe and her people and she would not cede it just because the monsters had come crawling out of the cracks in the walls -- and out of the flesh of her most trusted underlings. "You are not my equal. I am your leader, and you will acknowledge me as such."
"Yes," Bat finally said, bending his head, "Jinana."
Still she did not trust the tenor of his voice, but she let go his throat, and left him to his kill.