Someone Always Knows Your Secret.

He hadn’t walked this trail for some time, but the bog-frogs, snakes and small furry wild-things remembered him. Delicate sundews, snapping shut as he passed, knew the shadow-less figure too. They remembered the stench of death floating with him when he came. Even worse, they had all cowered in the moonlight; witnessing what he did.

Bog-water glistened like burnished sap in starlight as he picked his way carefully through the squelch of mud.

Smiling, he kicked carefully at the peat. 

It looked like a log, but he knew it was a leg from the body he’d buried there years before.

Awakening

Unwrapped, one eye flutters into wakefulness

while the other quivers against soil,

shifting and grinding alongside rock in motion.

Within the unlocked, cave-cracked, glistening deep,

toothy, fire-kissed lips yawn and leak blistered steam.

Wakeful now, The Ancient One spirals hot breath

through sooty, snouted, scales, into the baked air.

Pouched and powdered as ashes trailing over black-burned bones,

Her petal-pleated skin gathers in sulphur-scented blossoms

of sweat flamed folds, drenched in ichor.

Tapping out times secret melody of memories, long forgot,

Cautious claws click rhythmically over fire-seared stones.

Then, diaphanous as thought, brittle as flame, she summons darkness   

as she moves into starlight

and unravels colossal, bright, wings against the sallow moon.