Private all the kings horses, all the kings men [M]

When one mourns the loss of innocence, there is an audible sound that accompanies the breaking of hearts. Scales fall from your eyes, and you put the rose colored glasses away. Reality shifts into black and white, and the color of the world is dulled just slightly. The joy of love is no longer the simple task of saying I love you to someone who has always been there—like a child to a mother—but instead it becomes a desperate clamoring up a vertical precipice, grasping at any straws for some semblance of happiness.

Thiago’s life has not been happy. He has chosen his life underneath the ground, away from most others. He is alone, and prefers his own company much more than that of others. Without an ability to build a burrow, he finds himself topside, walking through the trees, finding solace in their canopy, as if they provided some sense of cover—it was not a burrow, but it would do for the time being. He is a loner, and he is aloof.

But one thing he cannot stand is injustice.

He is cold, but he is not coldhearted. He is a highly-functioning sociopath, and perhaps a bit disjointed—but there is nothing evil about him. He just wants to be left alone.

This day, Thiago is sleeping in a makeshift lean-to that he has created out of the branches of a nearby fallen tree. Something to shelter him from the falling snow. There are tree limbs everywhere… and the rustling. Always with the rustling. A gasp, and a cry. Thiago tries to sleep through the night, but the ever present sound of rustling sets him on edge. Makes him uneasy.

When morning comes calling and the rabbit emerges from his burrow, Thiago looks back on his handiwork and frowns at it. He would never be a carpenter. He turns back towards the sound where the rustling had been all night. It is eerily quiet now, except for the sound of breathing.

In.

Out.

And finally, a hiss, as if some disjointed thing were whispering mystically through the trees. Lacey.

Thiago’s eyes narrow, and he finds he cannot help himself. He rolls his eyes at his own curiosity—because he has never given in to it before—and comes around behind the shadow of a fallen redwood. In the leigh of the massive trunk’s shadow, lays a thing. Beside her, a pile of hair, viscera, sinew, and blood.

It would have looked like a pile of spaghetti and noodles if the scene weren’t quite so tragic. The wind, it is whispering again… disembodied. Lacey.

He approaches the stench of blood is vile to his sensitive nostrils but his mouth is familiar with the taste. His fangs—they knew. And even without them, that coppery taste could never quite be washed away. He would assume that the ~~pile of spaghetti~~ thing were dead, except that he remembered that it was still breathing—hence what had drawn him here in the first place.

Another mail has approached, and immediately Thiago’s hackles are on the rise. He jerks his head from the pile of fur, to the male, and back again, before closing the gap quickly and taking a stance over her. Of all the times to not have teeth. You wish something away for years, and the first time it becomes useful…

The grass is always greener.

Thiago snorts. Jumping to the most logical—although incorrect—conclusion, he glares at Reilly. “You better have a good explanation for this.”

THIAGO

here comes peter cotton tail, hoppin down the bunny trail