Chapter Text
Lena is true to her word. That is truth Pallas clings to.
Candid is the cage; in Pallas's sight, she feels by eye her numb jaw enveloped, enclosed, metal mesh that allows no more than a finger through. —Hum for me. You can hum for me, can't you, dear Pallas?
Yes, there is a thawing quiver, the slightest, all Pallas may sing with in her seized throat. Yes, I can hum for you.
Next is the belt; a circlet to a buckle nestled below her nape to a circlet again, a perfect loop that completes itself about her neck. —Morning dew, peppermint, shaved ice showers…
A simple tune, an idle tune, a symbol of Lena the mind is liable to relive on its own no matter how far removed. Hum of her, now. Setting sun, jasmine, honey flowers…
Then is the orbit; fingers brushing through hair again and again, a garden pathway laid along the midway of her head, strap running over the ears and under the horns. —Hm-hmm… hmm…
Extol her, Priestess of Minos. Elevate her. Close your eyes and become as devout. There is only one whom you worship in a cage. Hm-hmm, hm-hmm…
—Very good. How about we give you an offering, now?
Her eyes fly wide open. No, that isn't right. She makes the faintest shake of her head, strains her gaze to tell of this. Lena listens, caresses one caring hand down through the valley of her horn and up to the top of her head, just shy of her crowning blossom. The other, to an uncorked bottle.
—Drink, Pallas. Be revered.
This bottle was to be given in libation, yes, but the libation was to be hers to give, was it not? Mead, sweet and deep in the low of their surroundings, drips thickly from a bottle stopped only by the thumb of the one Pallas had thought herself below. It trickles through the cage, coats each curve and straight it touches and hangs between the spaces.
The altar does not serve the devotee. This is wrong. Pallas shakes, the hint of life willed into her jaw too slow to cry it. She is not this. —You don't mean to insult me, do you? How cruel to make a worshipper beg, Pallas. Drink.
It is the scent of sunset, and Pallas is frail in her attempt to inhale deeply. Lena's visage swims in her eyes as glazen as an emptied vessel.
A touch. Pallas's head is tilted back, far back, pushed up and up and up from beneath the tip of the muzzle until Pallas's eyes meet the sky as far back as she can go, and Lena's voice sinks in husken command. —Speak to me, priestess. Tell me where you stand.
Stinging direct, lights waver. Sunset. Pallas cannot help but extinguish her vision. This is the dark of prayer, yet it is only right she obeys, only right. Pallas cannot extol herself, elevate herself, but the sound of the perfumer and her senses enclosed in nectar drag her open, force her to heed devotion she has never known before. The slightest formation of a fledgling icon's whisper. "Where do I stand?"
—Stand over me, and tell me.
It dims. Pallas opens her eyes once more, and over her does Lena stand to blot out the light, force down the muzzle that throws Pallas's head back, continue to enchain Pallas beneath her in gilded wine that spills, deep past the sides of her collar and the hollow of her throat. Lena bids that libation bathe her.
Pallas is sacred. Tears fill her. She is lowly here, a venerated symbol that must beam, a Helios below her hand. Yes, she is demanded.
"I am above you," she croaks, in the catalect of one forced to take flight on broken wings. "Worship me."
Lena smiles in satisfaction and obliges her, pokes a single finger through her cage, puts an offering to her lips.
This time only, it ruins her.
The taste of honey.