Blitzkrieg: aww, you talk as if I cared! --

The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain;
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.

The pain’s sharp, almost like a spark of lightning bursting through the flesh and sinking deeper into my jaws.

That’s how we begin this time, with the wind and the debris like a dark maëlstrom around us, groaning into our ears in an endless lament. It doesn’t matter to me that it’s warm, that heat suffuses my back and shoulders in an impossible golden glow, that the winds themselves seem to have conquered the world we stand in.

It’s another day in Blitzkrieg and everything’s the same.

He comes to me, all aggressiveness and ostentation.

But he can’t hide. Even above the sound and the mayhem of the wind, he cannot hide his heat – the one that surges from him like a furnace’s mouth, blends with my own and sings along my body like one red-hot beacon. This, more than anything else, orients me. I wonder if he can feel me, too.

I was born into fire; his is an acquired taste.

And here we are, back to the beginning – there is a sharp flurry of motion when he rises into attack and I…

Well, I jump to the side, out of his way, as any horse worth its salt would, relying on reflexes and the testament of my senses over even the reason that would delay me. A million years of evolution springs through my muscles and shove me to the side seemingly against my own will – sheer instinct: something rapidly accelerating in my direction, after all, sounds like a Bad Thing.

There is a moment when I panic; when the ground seems to crash and collapse under my feet, unheeded as I stumble into a world of blind, searing pain, tilting topsy-turvy into darkness.

In the breathless moment it takes for me to register what has happened, he’s changing positions.

There is a sharp ache riding the side of my knee, thrumming in counterpoint to the sharp slash against my cheek where – I presume – his teeth fell and failed to find purchase; my neck went down as I sidewinded out of harm’s way. I don’t know yet what has happened, but it’s enough to remind me where we are and what are we doing.

This, I remind myself, is battle. This is what I chose.

This close, his heat is no reference – I fight not only crippled but half-blind with the wind’s pressure against my face. It doesn’t matter. I don’t fight for titles, I don’t fight for ranks, kingdom, queen, accomplishment, glory, name, ephemeral things, unimportant things.

I fight because I can.

It’s a good thing he is to my left – as I move – was moving, really, even before he made his intentions know, right out of the leap – forward and to the side in an arc, less out of a need to defend myself and more out of need to do something in this mad, chaotic dance, his feet catch me and shoves my body out of alignment once again, my hindquarters hinging out for balance as he pushes into me, unresisting of the packed force of his kick, but pliable. The meat in my ribs is a dead, cold slab heating dangerously as fresh blood pools and sinks there. Sunbursts of pain, information from my entire left, explode into my mind with every step I take.

The dead whine deep within my crippled limb is what begins this movement.

He is angled roughly perpendicular to me and, with the unresisting push that had my hindquarters skid behind me, it’s not all that hard to sway my body into alignment with him – arcing towards his thigh, cupping it like it’s something precious. Takes awhile to do so – the motion threw us aschew – but then, I’m in no hurry.

It’s exquisitely painful when I balance precariously and low into my hindquarters, crouching low into them to spring into his gaskin and hip. It could be stifle, it could be the point of his hock, the delicate curve where his muscles melt into it – it doesn’t matter. The angle is awkward, as I lash both up-down and edge-wise into him, but I have done worse things in my life. Doesn’t matter. I am flexible and there’s not only the weight of my torso crashing into his delicate nerves, tendons, muscles (low enough that the meatier part of his buttocks and thigh are out of range, as to speak, leaving him no choice), but also the whole weight catapulted from my hindquarters and into his ass, his right limb.

He could move forward; sheer inertia and the closeness of my motion (plus the fact I am charging into him, not a mere rise and fall) would take care of it. Moving either way (if he even has room to do such a thing) would be virtually pointless – merely expose other interesting parts of him, such as his fragile-looking hock.

Simple, really.

Not easy, but I have done worse things.

Such as, say, breathing.

I nearly pass out when I land; I fear my forelimb will give, my muscles unbraid themselves and fall apart.

But I am more resilient than this.

The wind is upon me, upon us and the fire nestled within me since I was born delights in it, devours it, leaves incandescent afterimages that somehow blend into the unending flow of pain as I move. Fire coalesces into white-hot pinpricks down the length of my ribs, where the flesh is bruised, into my knee, where the skin is torn and abraded, not enough to impede my motion other than acid spirals of pain, into the deadness of my back left.

Needs must, and it’ll be a hot day in Hel when I give up.

Inertia is a beautiful thing as I slide nearly seamlessly from my charge into his back leg’s ruination and this time close into him into another purpose. I curve inwards (remember, I arced out and now, into him), moving blindly, groping for heat like a viper (the irony!), until my chest is roughly pressed into his shoulder, slightly off-center so that my injured left can rest behind his elbow (incidently impeding his motion somewhat, as his elbow would meet my limb when he tries to articulate motion), harmlessly, whereas the right one…

I rise again, same as before and the muscles in my ribs and left side serenade sweet retribution and roaring Hel to come as my left hind trembles and begs under me, ready to give; it always does. Once again I charge into him bodily, but it’s my right forehand that runs the show: it slashes edge-wise, much as he did before, high into his forearm and down to where it connects to the knee.

While at the same time, in a combo, my teeth seek purchase into his withers and neck and I lower my head for balance (and protection to my most beauteous eyes) – so he won’t be so ready to get away, as I was. Even if he does, I am right behind – physics is one’s best friend, always. my teeth are not sharp and I no longer have fangs, but it’s not unconceivable that biting that sensible bundle of nerves and muscles will cause an ache to be reckoned with.

The nutcracker effect, if you will.

And with that, we’re done, and the actors can leave the stage, heaving and panting as I sink into the unforgiving arms of pain.

Silly boy, Voraer.

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of eros and of dust