Lilith could physically feel her dear brothers vexation. That anger simmering beneath him was like a living, breathing organism you could see and touch and taste in the air. It permeated the cab of the sleek ride and resonated into her chest the way she imagined an impending earthquake did the feet of those on the brink of experiencing the shift in the earth that would put the sky coming down on your head. And his temper, it was hot in his throat. Lilith felt that too since her forehead was in the curve of his neck but she did not move. Didn’t even feel inclined to move. What she felt was trepidation; hopeful--<i>no</i>--<b>resolved </b>to believe Salace would realize that, all his baleful, menacing energy? Could not be expelled unto her simply because she was there with him. It had to be saved for someone else. Someone worthy. She’d have smiled when Moira’s face came to mind but the girl wasn’t so selfish as that. Lilith was worried for him. Every jostle of her body when he would throttle the roof of the car as if it’d been taunting him with the threat to cave down on his head.<br/><br/>The girl didn't want him to fucking think of Devana! And when he said that she sound like their mother, her arms that were already like a vice around his body to keep herself steadily in place when he thrashed the upholstered ceiling tightened even more. It made her chest clench. Made her stomach twist. Throat burn. Pulse palpitate.<br/><i><b>Sometimes I feel like her, </b></i>Lilith thought but never said aloud. She thought it a lot, actually, but had never told anyone that least of all him. For one, she wouldn't know how to explain it; how does one feel like someone else? Hell, she didn't know what it meant only knew it for a fact. Two? Salace<i>would</i>understand. He wouldn't need an explanation. He could go as far as explaining it to her but Lilith was afraid to know…afraid for<b>him</b>to know. So she went into the city and played around like an ancient thing but the fact remained she was young, most especially when she was with Sol did that ring so true. He was a stark reminder that there was so much to fucking learn, but to know that she reminded him<i><b>of her</b></i>? Lilith couldn't stand that!<br/>Devana did not appreciate her son! The woman didn't even know what it meant to be blessed with the boy who'd been the fruit of her loins first.<br/><br/>He was magnificent.<br/>He was remarkable.<br/>He was divine.<br/>He was everything; alpha, omega.<br/>Lilith fucking worshipped him like he was the physical manifestation of an altar.<br/>Revered him the way she did, if not more than, the old ones in their oldest scrolls.<br/>Once had came a wanderer, a man of many seeing as Devana was not easily satisfied and became bored even easier. He had called Salace's mind and moral compass a deformity when he was only a long, thinner than he was now, like rubber the way he leaned and righted effortlessly - like fluid -<i>boy</i>. When Lilith, not much smaller than she was now, a little girl and when she'd heard that it stunned her. Enraged her. BAFFLED her. The only reason he dared to ever utter the words aloud was because the man was frightened by a boy and held himself in higher regard for reasons she couldn't remember now and what did they matter anyways? He'd become part of a compost that fertilized their earth in the end.<br/>But, from that point on, little sister here had praised Salace. Literally. He was the altar and the pulpit and the sermon and the choir and the congregation and the one she reached for, prayed to, put on a pedestal to aggrandize and lionize and idolize for all of Yga to know who their true one was.<br/><br/>Wasn't their mother.<br/>And contrary to mama's words, wasn't her either.<br/>The female blood was a hoax, invented to palliate his potential.<br/>It hadn't been until the wanderer came 'round their parts Lilith saw that in Devana - the manipulation, the neglected power her brother possessed in spades, the faux admiration and adoration that, when flowed out from her own person? Was very, very real.<br/><br/>She knew his strength but she also knew a sliver of his weakness and just in case those empty words spoken from a goddamned nobody sown a seed in Sol's mind she had slipped out of her bed and in to his that same night so she could blanket him with herself instead of the tattered quilt, leveling her gaze on the beautiful onyx abyss in his sockets.<br/><br/><i>"your 'deformity", she'd began slowly, lacing the word with <b>blasphemy </b>because that's what it was, "it means that <b>the God's.favor.YOU</b>, i've always known that. you are a very special boy, nobody here is like you! to me, you are a God. Above all men, above all others. the God's, have made, <b>you</b>." Lilith sat herself up then and reached back behind her, withdrawing the oldest of daggers that had remained fully intact from hilt to point when it made the voyage over with their ancestors from the old worlds all those centuries ago and took his left hand in her right one, "by <b>your </b>blood--" the girl who shouldn't be old enough for a mind to speak such things, know such things,     <br/>
<b>b e l i e v e </b>such things spoke as if he were a separate entity with blood of its own design not shared in her veins, in Devana's veins. Whether that was a stroke for his ego, or because she whole heartedly believed it, was left to be decided and translated however he saw fit. The razors point punctured the skin in his palm below his smallest finger and she drug it all the way down to just below the pulse in his thumb, "we will thrive. and by <b>your </b>blood, if you wish--" then she made the same mark in her own palm but Lilith winced and hissed and clamped her knees around his ribs until the pain receded to a delicious burn that made her shudder. She dropped the blade, welded their hands together for the blood to mix and mingle and dance inside each other, "--then one day you will have a son. he'll be a God too, an embodiment of my love and he will never, leave, your, side."  so long as he's born of the true and proper womb, Lilith left out but was the bloodletting not enough for emphasis? </i><br/><br/>Her pupils came back into focus and her head left the memory of that years-old night whenever the air changed after Alchem cracked the window to light a smoke, letting some of it lift the ends of her hair. Lilith had thought of that the whole way home, and wondered if she could play on it now but when she slid away and looked around she realized they had already made it. The telling signs were the rusty trucks rotting in empty, brush overgrown fields like some childs toy set aside after they found new means of entertainment to pass the time. She looked at Sol and smiled, blissfully ignorant and happily naive to see him settled and to feel how lax her own body was from his petting. Warmer too, most especially between her slick thighs. She opened her hand, fingers fanned out wide, and traced the scar there since it was tingling and when they were out of the stopped car, when she felt dirt and sparse gravel under her bare feet that could run for miles over them without ever feeling a prick in the soles, when he grabbed her hand and made her hop to keep up with his stride, Lilith traced his too with her thumb. Like she wanted to remind him it was there. Remind him what she told him.<br/><br/>Remind him what he was.<br/><br/>"Hmmmm," Lily hummed while filling her lungs with air that smelled like mud and bitter weeds and the ever so subtle hint salty sweet copper, "I'm sure<i>somebody's </i>awake." She said without much enthusiasm at all and a little wrinkle indented the bridge of her nose. Obvious who that somebody was she was referring to, "But they can wait. They all slept like sound little sheep while the wollf." him, of course. She didn't consider Alchem that, neither did he himself consider such a notion regardless of how useful and just plain fucking mean he could be, "hunted for their feast, so."<b>SO</b>, it was his prerogative as to when they all got to count their coin. Lick his hand. Kiss his fucking ring.<br/>Whenever Al's lamp luminated the rotted, barnwood sign that had been put up years ago and read the poetic warning which didn't so much as warn as intrigue, Lily let go of Sol and sped up to pluck the pack of smokes out of his back pocket. The lighter was in it the half empty box and she stopped in front of the wood, eyes on the words as she snapped the Zippo's lid back and struck the flame to the tobacco.<br/><br/><i>There are strange things done in the midnight sun by men who moil for gold <br/>
These black trails have their secret tales and makes your blood turn cold.</i><br/><br/>Still didn't know who was responsible for creating the rhyme, nobody ever said, but she liked them.  Didn't matter to her who though anymore, not like when she was a kid, "Ya very sore with me?" Lilith finally asked and tapped the pack on the back of Al's shoulder who looked surprised, yet not surprised at all, to look behind himself and find that she had his precious Menthols and he'd never felt them leave his person, because she fucking sucked at pretenses with Sol and wasn't able to to not ask him. He had to say it.