Re: antique store: louis/claire
How did a lovely young woman come to be in possession of such a lethal looking object? He didn't know - aside from the distinct sensation that it belonged in her hands, he couldn't explain why she might have had it. This didn't seem like the passion of a collector. She spoke to the spear as if it were a precious childhood toy, or a friend restored to her after years apart.
She nicked herself, and he frowned. He would get her a plaster, he thought - but it was such a small cut. "You've hurt yourself," he said. He felt muted, but not tired. On the contrary. He felt vivid.
He watched that drop of blood when she asked him where he'd seen the spear, watched it roll along the wicked edge and disappear into the metal.
"I saw that spear," he said. Clipped, utter conviction. He smelled ozone and filth, hot wind, grains of dust. "I saw it in the desert, in the hand of a man who knew not what he held. He cut his brother with it, spilled his entrails on the sand. His viscera, blood, and shit soaked into the hungry desert as your blood blesses that thing now, like rainwater. I saw them mark the head of an adulteress with it and put her in the bog, push her head down and down until she was submerged. They dropped heather and lilies of the valley over the spot where they pushed her in, and they sang her a hymn. It was taken from them by a knight who killed his lover with it, left him impaled on its end and gaping at the sky in the yard of his beautiful house, at the top of the yard, where it could be seen from the drive. It is violent. Whatever they have told you, it kills. Men and horses, birds and dogs. They drive to its bright edge. Or once, they did. Or was it -"
He stopped.
"Was it not this spear?"
Disappointment. "Perhaps not."
He reached up to prick his finger, eyes lit with a flush of gold light.