01-11-2021, 07:55 PM
. |
. |
. |
It is quiet within the cave; at first, she only hears the beating of her heart and the clatter of her hooves on the stone. Their midnight-clad world has become eerie since the sunlight had plunged into the dark. The normal activity of their country had suddenly sputtered out and confident social butterflies had curled themselves into cocoons to hide from the long night. Yet at the same time, the darkest edges of the world have become loud with howling and groaning even Nexu cannot identify. Her long muscled legs come to a nimble halt and she relishes in the silence for a moment. It is heavy and peaceful, resting over her armored body like silk.
She almost falls asleep in the quiet, cradled like an infant in swaddling cloth, but the sound of feet catching the layers of stone pulls her mind away from the soft drowsiness.
Nexu’s head snaps toward the mouth of the cavern, knived tail flicking at her heels in preparation to strike. And she would have if it weren’t for his familiar scent drifting into her flared nostrils. It feels like a memory at first, as if his damp, crisp cologne had permeated the stone so deeply she can see him resurfacing from his watery depths in her mind’s eye. This smell is faintly different somehow, and it speaks of places outside their autumnal home — of puddles and lakes and oceans that he has traveled distant from this land.
She knows it is him (Partner, her mind chitters) but she waits for another moment in the darkness, a behemoth shadow of her own in the darker corners of the cavern.
Just when his eyes might be able to pick her looming shape out of the night, she springs. There is only the scuffle of her feet on the rocks before she jumps at him like an armored, twisted, nightmarish panther. The emotions that might’ve brewed within her — betrayal at his abandonment, anger at her failure to procreate, delight at seeing him once more — are too complex for her predatory mind to untangle at this moment.
So she aims to hit Partner; she has seen him melt into nothing but moisture before and she is certain he could avoid her now. Yet wherever she lands — whether on him or beside him — her prehinsle tail flicks across her side to aim its pointed edge at wherever he might be.
She almost falls asleep in the quiet, cradled like an infant in swaddling cloth, but the sound of feet catching the layers of stone pulls her mind away from the soft drowsiness.
Nexu’s head snaps toward the mouth of the cavern, knived tail flicking at her heels in preparation to strike. And she would have if it weren’t for his familiar scent drifting into her flared nostrils. It feels like a memory at first, as if his damp, crisp cologne had permeated the stone so deeply she can see him resurfacing from his watery depths in her mind’s eye. This smell is faintly different somehow, and it speaks of places outside their autumnal home — of puddles and lakes and oceans that he has traveled distant from this land.
She knows it is him (Partner, her mind chitters) but she waits for another moment in the darkness, a behemoth shadow of her own in the darker corners of the cavern.
Just when his eyes might be able to pick her looming shape out of the night, she springs. There is only the scuffle of her feet on the rocks before she jumps at him like an armored, twisted, nightmarish panther. The emotions that might’ve brewed within her — betrayal at his abandonment, anger at her failure to procreate, delight at seeing him once more — are too complex for her predatory mind to untangle at this moment.
So she aims to hit Partner; she has seen him melt into nothing but moisture before and she is certain he could avoid her now. Yet wherever she lands — whether on him or beside him — her prehinsle tail flicks across her side to aim its pointed edge at wherever he might be.
@[Maugrim]