Weythran

theophage, shaman, the horror in the night. murmurs spread, in fear, in shame- devourer, devourer. promises as sweet as marrow hang on her scarlet teeth. you could be remade, she sings, you could become, and would that not be beautiful? it is already too late when you realize she never said, what, exactly, you would become. meat sloughs off the bone. rot does not stop at the core.

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weythran lived as though a vulture. the weak would never survive, and when they didn't, she was there, bone-thin and slavering. in the leaner days, when even the marrow had already been picked over by stronger creatures, she would tear the scar tissue that made the wasteland's ground to pieces in her desperation. it tasted like filth. it tasted like survival.
her family, before they left her in the wastes, always warned her of how vile the outside world was. how their lands were cold and dead, their inhabitants grotesque and decadent. they maimed their deities, her mother told her when she asked, gouging their bodies to make shelter instead of relying on what they had been provided. she had weythran lay her claws on the ground. listen, she murmured, feel, feel the pulse of our mother, our creator, our god.
she would have been horrified to see weythran in those bleak days. those days that blurred into each other, hot and sticky with blood and sweat. weythran thought she might kill the plaguebringer with her own teeth if that would make it stop.

she didn't have to- the crone took her in, her and another disgrace of the wastelands. she taught them like she cared, taught them that she cared, told weythran that the visions that forced her family to leave her behind were not a blessing, nor were they a curse. they were something she should learn to use. learn to live with. they left the unyielding heartbeat behind, and weythran regained her senses.
flesh covered her crooked ribs. her hunger did not cease. the crone sold fortunes and charms and promises, and weythran joined, desperate to ease the burden of keeping her. she hunted in secret, when the wagon rested. fish. potatoes. rabbits. she gouged trees open to devour the bark and still felt a gnawing in the depths of her stomach.
the next vision that seized her in its merciless claws taught her why. a woman, an angel, with fire-gold wings tore into a twin image of her own self, hands and teeth alike stained a raw, awful red. and then, she stopped.

"You're watching me."

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