Kennius watched Velexie sleep, caressing her cheek with one of his talons. She smiled in her slumber, nuzzling back against his palm. He leaned down to kiss her forehead, smiling back at her. Slowly he stood, making sure not to wake his sleeping beauty. He quietly made his way to the fireplace, stoking the hot coals underneath the logs. The Priest cast a look about the room, frowning at the cracked, silver-backed mirror hanging on a wall.
It cast his frown into a bit of a sneer, and he narrowed his eyes at the mirror. The darker Kennius that looked back scared him, and he turned away, grunting as he pulled at the stitching across his chest. The Forsaken shrugged off his shirt, looking in Velexie's untarnished mirror on the other side of the room.
An abomination stared back at him, as unpassive as the being who stared at the pure reflection. His face had been sown together from whatever heaps of skin he could find to repair it, and his chest was now held together by a massive, cross shaped bandage, died black with his dead blood. The stitching pulled tightly at his skin, as the excess bandage draped over his arms, winding around them so he wouldn't be caught in it.
Mis-matched eyes stared at the reflection, both filled with a sense of self-loathing. Taloned, skinned hands reached out towards the mirror, grasping and at the same time pushing away the terrifying image. The silver burned into his eye flashed from the moonlight coming through the window, startling him.
He was a monstrosity, cobbled together from the parts of every corpse.
Quietly, he drifted back over to Velexie, watching her sleep. She was perfect in every way, from her seamless, flawless skin, to her tinkling laughter. From her kind, soothing words, to her brilliant, powerful mind. She was radiant in the moon, while he was a monstrosity in the shadow.
How could she stand to look at him? In life he was handsome, gorgeous; his skin was as flawless as marble, and as warm as a summer day. Now... Now he was something trying to hold himself together from what he could scrounge. In comparison to Velexie, he was ugly, unsightly, a mold upon the world.
She was a beauty, and he was a beast.
In her sleep, she mumbled his name, and Kennius smiled. For whatever reason, she cared for him, and he for her. He entwined his fingers with hers under the sheets, smiling at her.
Whenever she talked about having her hands 'done,' it unnerved him. He wanted to retain that perfection she had, as much as he knew it would one day vanish. What was worst, was that the damage it would do to her skin was irriversible; she would forever have the talons.
Velexie opened her milky green eyes just a crack, murmuring for him to come back to bed. Kennius kissed her cheek, and their lips met soon after in an innocent touch, as their hands sought the other in the embrace. Slowly, Kennius crawled in beside her, holding her tight against him.
After all, his beauty could be very persuasive.
