There was no softness in this embrace. His arms around her body were firm and tense. She, the product of violence and rape from the start, was unable to be anything but brutal. He understood this. Her body was narrow and slim. Her curves were the subtle curves of the killing blade. Nails curled into flesh where she held him but he made no protest. His grip was bruising, crushing her against himself.

And yet within the violence there was tenderness. He was a solid, protective body. He was warm, and alive, and he would not release her. She was kept safe. She was so thin, so fragile, but real. She was the embodiment of truth for him. He could feel her bones under his fingers. Every part of her was open to him -- her pain, her torments which did not torment her. She had taken them in, accepted them; she used them like tools to shape herself. She was so very real.

That is not to say they trusted one another. There is no trust in anything feral. This was beyond trust. It required nothing be given. The tenderness was the recognition of another with the same lack. She was beyond the touch of humanity. He was unable to recognize it in himself. She was the purity of the madness in him he could not quite attain. In the contours of his soul he found the barest shreds of kindness and mercy -- her doing. He could never find them except by comparison to her. His dark mirror. How he envied her.

In the darkness, they parted. She would go, having seen into his soul and found the flaw there, shining like diamond. He would not stop her, having found that he could not drive that piece of himself away. They would come together again in some future moment, seeking the comfort only wild things can provide.

There were no words to mark the leaving.

~Robyn Lefkowitz