little red.
two sisters, dark and light, red and white
She was too young once, small like candy: tart mouth and sweet inside, a gumdrop shrouded in a tatty red coat. She was everything that her sister wasn't, a shadowed speck next to a golden-haired nymph. But she demanded complexity, to be more than the dark to a kin's light. She was light too — had been light. Light that bloomed so fast it consumed itself, consumed them all, consumed him, a black hole that ripped his attention from his control and pressed it against his eyes until they bulged.
It drew him to her: the provocation in her gaze, the rebelling for rebellion's sake, the determination to consume herself so that no one else could.
And so she trapped the men looking for candy. She bottled her blood and tipped it into their mouths with a kiss, the drop of Veela poison enough to drive them mad. It had filled his throat like cough syrup, viscous and choking, curing his fang-toothed bark. She made him docile. She made him hers when he was not hers, when he belonged to the golden-haired nymph, standing tall and grim on slippery legs, shrouded in priestess white so pure, so clean, so cold. Too good for the world, they said. Too good for him.
But the nymph was not good enough to keep him hers and keep him tame. She was not a shadowed speck, consumingly sweet. She could not freeze the tainted blood in his veins and on his tongue. She could only keep him collared on the path, while the girl in tattered red strayed, picking flowers and plucking petals.
He gnashed and beat his tail, whining and snarling. Instinct was incurable, the girl would mock, and her golden-haired sister would respond by pulling the leash tighter. But he had tasted blood, and sweet blood was his wish, and so he gnawed at the rope until it frayed. She held him by the collar and so he sunk his teeth into her flesh. She retreated and he lunged.
A nymphet's kiss for a nymph's death. She was too good for the world anyway.
But when he searched for the flutter of red, he could not find it, only the ghost of girl feet pressing the leaves of bare flower beds. She was where her sister fell on the path, shrouded in bloodied white, pool of red cloth at her feet, rebirthed to complete death's cycle. He approached pawing, asking why. She responded with pity.
"I was young, Teddy."
In a snap of blood-lust, he sprang and she fled. She did not return. Flowers stems turned brittle, watered with blood and spit and thirst, as he stalked in his new forest prison. What would it take for Little Red to pick up her coat and stray from the path again?
She appeared in spring, gliding down the path in white. They were new robes. Healer robes. In her hand was a vial of hissing liquid, whispering guilt. She had come to cure his blood.
Feet bare, she stepped into the thorns. Fresh blood pricked the air and he stood rigid, poison lust bubbling in his veins. She unstopped the vial and lifted it toward his mouth.
The trance snapped when the first drop fell. He clenched his jaw, but she pried it open, no consoling kiss to dull the pain of the new poison burning down his throat. It spilled from the cracks of his teeth as he lashed, rabid — but he calmed.
She won. He was cleansed.
She stayed to soothe him now that he was docile again. Hers. He licked at her hand, trailing down her sweet leg, to her thorn-scratched feet. He licked until her blood soaked his tongue. If she felt his veins boiling anew under her fingers, she did not show it. Like sister, like ice, fingers so carelessly combing the knots from his fur.
Turbulence rumbled in his heartbeat. His blood whispered instinct. Instinct was incurable.
He devoured her scream whole.