20: Crazy.

On Livejournal, I'm doing the 100 Moods writing challenge. Basically, I've got as long as I want to write one hundred fics about Greek Mythological characters. (You can view my list here - but be warned that things there can be anything from PG to 18.)

This fic is mood #20, and is about a character from the Greek Myths called Lyssa. (Also featuring the Maniai and Zeus.)

*

Saliva gathered at the corners of her mouth, and rolled down her chin, leaving thin trails of smoky-white across her golden skin. Manacles clung to her wrists, and her wild-children, the Maniai, clustered around her, keeping her alive (though not sane) as her eyes rolled and her teeth click-clicked hungrily together.

One of her children offered her a mouse (still alive, still trembling, still squeaking: the way that Lyssa liked them), but his fingers weren’t fast enough. Her teeth latched onto him, scraping skin from blood and bone with hooked, rotten teeth. He shrieked at her (she wanted to cover her ears; he was so loud!), pulled his bloody fingers free of her snapping jaws, and fled.

She cackled, and her Maniai turned hissing mouths and gleaming eyes on the young boy as he tried to flee. (Kill, kill, kill, she sang silently to them, and they bared their teeth at their unlucky brother.) She wanted blood, so they wanted blood. The needs of the individual counted for nothing against the whims of their mother.

He turned toward her, his eyes begging – but he didn’t once speak. (Because he couldn’t, because she didn’t want that; they weren’t allowed to have their own lives, their own consciousnesses, for what would she be without them?) He simply stared at her, screaming wordlessly, as his fellows leapt at him.

For hours after, death clung to the walls of her cell as vividly as the drying blood, and Lyssa and her children screeched with laughter. They were still laughing when Zeus deigned to enter the cell, days later, and then their smiles dropped instantly and they turned deadly snarls on him.

The King ignored the Maniai, and approached Lyssa. They only let him come within a metre of her before surging forwards, raising their overgrown, curling nails to him (try it if you dare, their eyes raged). “Artemis requires your services, Lady Madness,” he said slowly, his tongue tripping over the unfamiliar respect in his voice. He had to respect her, though: he’d seen more than once what she was capable of, what her Maniai were capable of, and he didn’t want that turned against him.

She coughed, an almost delicate sound in contrast to her hissing children, and her rolling eyes focused on Zeus for just a second, just a moment – and then the moment passed and she almost choked on her own coughed-up blood. (She didn’t seem to have felt anything; but Zeus, beneath his calm, cool mask, was shaken. Lyssa didn’t look at you – not now, not ever.)

“Why?” she rasped. The Maniai echoed the sound with increased hissing, sounding like a thousand snakes, ready to leap at Zeus and tear him apart with just a stray thought from their mother. “Ah, aha! She neeeeeds me, doesn’t she?” The goddess screamed with laughter and flung her head wildly about. Her skull cracked against the stone wall, but she didn’t notice; and Zeus pretended not to notice (and not to care) when a string of saliva slapped across his face.

He saw her eyes go blank, then; and two of her children leapt at him. He flung up his arms, and they sank into his skin. He could feel them inside – laughing at him, feeding him their darkness, their shadows. He thanked her and left, with her crazed laughter still ringing in his ears.

But he knew – he knew. On the outside, she may have been laughing; but inside she was dying. It was only a matter of time.