Edge of Starvation
09/30/2020
His life is ruled by hunger. Every troll’s is, from the youngest cub to the oldest among them. His life would be so much easier if it was only meat he craved like them. But he has a taste now for his own kind. A taste born from the edge of starvation and the blood of his brother. A price he never expected to pay for his survival, a taste he can’t afford to indulge.
He dreams of it, often. Dreams so strong they’re more like living memories. Dreams of ripping and tearing and feeling that first hot burst of blood down his throat, the first thing other than snow to enter his body in days, in weeks. It's sweet, and metallic, and the finest thing he’s ever tasted until his brothers flesh hits his tongue and flavor is bursting back into his life again. He barely even feels Hammer’s death throws, barely feels him struggling, weakly, against Slej’s arms, all he can feel is that pulse, pulse, pulse as he drinks. On days when he has that dream he can't stand to be around other trolls. So small, so weak, so full of meat that he wants, needs, can never have again. Those are the days when he all but completely strips the flesh from his own hands, leaves them as raw, aching, open wounds that weep in the air, that sting when he licks them clean of blood, a sting he tries, so, so hard, to focus on. But he has to wait for hours before he can do it again, wait as they itch and burn and heal, never fast enough for his taste.
No other meat comes even close enough to compare, though he tries everything he can to sooth the craving in any other way. The closest is red meat, anything still living when he bites into it. But even that has it’s own flaws. There’s a gritty texture to other trolls that nothing else he’s eaten has ever had. But… red meat will satisfy him, meat has to satisfy him, always raw, never cooked. Slej can’t stand cooked meat anymore. It steals the life from it, steals the blood and iron and taste that he needs to sooth that awful, terrible hunger that builds inside him until he’s forced into self-mutilation.
10/24/2020
Hunger gnaws at him like a disease, an infection. It wears him down the way water wears down stone, destroys mountains, taking bits and pieces at a time until all that is left is sand and gravel and pain. An erosion of self that he holds at bay through iron will. All he has is the trappings of civility he clings to to prevent the ultimate mistake.
He doesn't want to admit the sheer power and joy he feels in this new form of his body, in the size and sheer strength of him. He towers over the others, can grab and rip and tear and destroy them as easily as they destroy a passing human.
art by bmscribbles