She hadn’t meant to track him here like this, like a predator chasing prey, like one of his wolves gone completely feral. But when day had found them again and the sun had illuminated even the furthest corners of her hiding places, she had emerged to find his familiar face almost entirely unchanged. She did not understand how he had survived the viciousness of those twisted wrathful beasts, not when she had been driven into every form she could imagine to hide and survive.
Only once had she fought, and the tangle of poorly healed scars at the base of her neck where it hollowed and became shoulder is the only testament to how poorly that had gone. She had been careful not to let herself be cornered into a situation like that again, instead taking to the trees as a falcon or disappearing into deep burrows as a field mouse. For a while she had even lived as a bat in a cave with a hundred others, but eventually the sound of sharp chirps and chittering had driven her to other places.
She’d only thought of him once in all that time. Once when the dark was still new and she could not find him and she’d wondered if he had already fallen. Then the memory of him faded as she disappeared into more basal minds, finding ways to survive in a world not made for it. Losing her sense of self, of sanity, losing her grip on what it meant to live again.
Living was different than surviving.
She had survived, but not without other losses.
But she is certain as she lopes through the shadows nearby, those pale blue eyes a study of wonder as they remain fixed on his face, that if anyone knows how to live it’s him. He’s humming, actually humming, and if she could roll her eyes at him she is sure she would. Except that it is also that same levity that draws her to him irrevocably, his lightness a thing she wants to tether herself to. When was the last time she had been content? Happy? She frowns, though on her wolf it looks more like a grim snarl.
She lopes ahead, a mottled mix of black and steel grey and pale winter blue as she is momentarily distracted by the way he lifts his wings. They are all pale and soft feather, illuminated bright in the warm spring sunshine. Beautiful on him, she supposes reluctantly but does not dwell on it. She darts carefully to intersect his path, pausing as though she is startled to see him there. As though she hadn’t followed him all the way from his home just so she could understand the roots of his happiness. It is happiness, isn’t it?
She sits where she had paused across his path, her tail wrapping around her body to settle over her paws. It is the same way she had sat in front of him on their first encounter, and she does it to will him to remember her. To recall the way she had called him Bird after he had called her Sky, or that she had eventually given him her real name. He is still the only one she’s ever shared that with. Her head cocks slightly to the side, and when she speaks softly to him, made guarded by that desire in her chest to be remembered by him, her teeth flash just shy of a smile that almost curls her lips. “Hello Tamlin.”
the devil in my arms said feed me to the wolves tonight
@[Tamlin]