DRETCH
html © dante.
| ... and from your lips she drew your hallelujah |
| I am not sure why Set and Niklas leave me near the river this morning. I am not even sure that it is morning. Niklas had gone first. He had drifted away much like the shadows he loves so much, that maddeningly vacant look in his hollow eyes, nary a whisper of a sound to speak of his departure. Set, the rawboned piebald, always knows when one of us gets too far away, though, and he had stirred to consciousness only moments later, blinking sleep from bleary eyes as he moved out from underneath the dozing pile of creatures that tend to surround us every night. A feline stretch and a yawn, lips peeled back from fangs that resemble my own natural-borne ones, he had winked at me and promptly disappeared. It took me a few – ok, several – minutes longer to roll to my feet and stretch the cobwebs away, but by the time I did, I surmised that they weren’t coming back. Not just then, at least. In the two summers since my mother disappeared, after which I took to (read: was forced to) roaming the shadows and outskirts of Beqanna with the two magical jackasses, I have learned to appreciate the finer things in life. The most prominent of the finer things being not having said jackasses breathing down my back every second of every day. Erm, night? Several paces from our sleeping quarters, I ease into something more comfortable than my equid form – the small spotted body of a fishing cat. I grit my teeth against the inevitable pain as bone and muscle and hide pull apart before knitting back together. Where once I trembled and raged, I now welcome the familiar ache. It means experiences, adventures, a different world with every shift. I pad along the riverbank, winding upstream over root and rock. Though it moves much more slowly here where it rounds a bend, the sound of the water still muffles the distant cries of unfortunate encounters with the monsters. It raises the hair along my spine. When the darkness had first come, I blamed Niklas. Now, I am still not entirely convinced that the demon had nothing to do with it, he who loves darkness entirely too much, but knowing where to lay the blame does not help in dealing with the creatures that had come with the darkness. A few nights ago, while practicing shifting on the wing, I was a barn owl on a high bough, with a black mane and tail. A behomoth of a snake had passed beneath me. I say a snake because it is the only this-world creature I could compare it to. Its massive, scaled body rasped across the forest floor with a sound that made me want to lick your lips and swallow. Though certain animal forms afford me some modicum of sight in this never-ending night, I still cannot see as clearly as I had before, and that night, for once, I did not leave my perch until Set had finally come to fetch me. FUCK! I crouch down defensively, sensitive ears downturned at the sudden exclamation, searching the nearby darkness for the sound of the scuffle that now ensues. The stench of the underworld, the one that precedes most of the monsters that I’ve encountered, mingles with the sounds of the scuffle. Rasping and groaning seem to fill the dark and I flatten myself against the damp earth when the snake-creature slides past me. I resist the urge to hiss and growl, my impetuous nature warring momentarily with my sense of self-preservation. They don’t belong here, these monsters, and though I have adapted as well as I can, I hate the darkness they’ve brought with them. I don’t know how long I wait but my legs are tingling once I finally move from my impromptu hiding place. I backtrack the things trail, the ground churned up and furrowed from the weight of its passage. The stench of death lingers with that of the underworld and caution slows my steps as the trail changes to that of a single – seemingly injured as the prints turn to drag marks – leads me back to the water’s edge. Here the river isn’t too deep here, but it runs faster, the foaming rapids barely visible in the gloom. In order to cross without getting swept away I let go of the fishing cat form, returning to familiarity of my own, and wade into it the water. I cannot see as well in my own body and I don’t notice yet the blank-eyed souls lingering on the far bank. The stench of blood and ichor leads me to the victim. Its head is held above the surface by a stone. What injuries it might have after its raucous encounter are not immediately apparent, but a closer inspection with my muzzle bumps up against something sharp protruding from its flesh. Back to his head, I trace the masculine lines of his skull, blowing softly. “Wake up!” I shout, my demand not in words but in the deafening trumpet of the elephants trunk my muzzle briefly shifts to. Fully me again, I retreat only just enough distance to watch for a reaction, lips drawn back from my fangs in a wild grin. |
@[Chemdog]