[private] where you gonna run to?

[breach]

for so long had my teeth held my tongue from a venomous voice
but the poison has passed from my lips to my hands, an incendiary point

The depth of Mazikeen’s relief does not quite register with Breach who has never had any reason to think the other would doubt her faith in them. Breach has never had any second of concern or worry about her friend and so she doesn’t fully understand the way that Mazikeen’s voice grows strangled and her voice a little thick. She blinks a little before focusing on her again, trying to study the angles of her face as though the answer for her questions could be hidden there, underneath the orange of her eyes.

“There’s no need to thank you me,” she says, opening her mouth to speak again when she feels something brush against her—something cold. She inhales sharply, shifting into her tigress form before she can even connect the two thoughts. The growl is low and deep in her throat, tail twitching behind her when something else rushes past. This time, the growl erupts, lips peeling back over her sharpened incisors.

The third one jumps on her and she feels its breath hot on her face.

Snarling, she rolls with it, feeling something like teeth against the thick fur around her throat and then something ripping through flesh. She howls and gets her feet under it, kicking it off her as she rolls back up again. There’s something cold that races through her veins, something shifting as she feels a shock of…something. She whirls toward the sound, but it’s already retreating and it’s just the two of them again.

Panting, she shifts back to herself, as frazzled by the suddenness of the attack as she is by its end.

When she stands, she winces, looking back at the jagged wounds across her haunches—claw marks that bleed freely. “Don’t worry,” she says out of habit more than anything, feeling for her healing.

It doesn’t answer.

So she frowns, trying again…but only emptiness responds.

“Maze…” her voice trails off, something building in her chest.

“My healing. It isn’t working.”

If she crackles, if she begins to emit a light glow, she doesn’t realize it.

though ritual pyre sending smoke to the sky as the building continues to burn
though rapt in the ruin, the pain in the grave, is lies you leave tied to the earth