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Deep in the forest he had retreated. The fiery chestnut of his coat dulled by the cast shadow of branches and the promise of a deepening night. He stood as still as the old and gnarly trunks that called this place home, only the rapid swelling and deswelling of his ribs betrayed movement as he drew breath ragged with anger, and his eyes pierced the ever-looming darkness with a vindictiveness he could not quench, perhaps did not want to. “Damn Lucrezia! Damn her, damn her!” He rage whispered into the night. If she hadn’t appeared… if she hadn’t meddled in it… distracted him… who gave her the right to be so high and mighty? Who gave her the right to decide what could be denied to him? “Never her.” He snarled through gritted teeth, never anyone. So badly he wanted her to pay for what she had done, to make her regret every single time her tongue had formed the word fool at his expense. It was the how that was the question. Perhaps if he hadn’t been such an emotional beast and had been taught the art of restraint, his actions now would be different. But his life had mostly been ruled by his own urges, which had only been bolstered by the time he’d endured in the form of that creature. His lips curled into a sneer. Etojo had cursed his time as such a beast, and yet, in this moment, he’d discovered himself a perk. He knew how to hunt. And whilst he had been stripped of the tools to hunt effectively, he realised one does not lose the intuitional sense of how. He would find Lucrezia, he would track her down. Beneath the shadow of nightfall, Etojo retraced his steps to the den and the hollow within. The inhabitants were long gone now, though a tinge of their scents still lingered on the leaves and twigs which had cocooned this place from the wider world. With a triumphant grunt, he found Lucrezia’s smell amongst the others. Both familiar and different, it was no longer the same smell she wore in her childhood, but he knew it was still distinctly her. The wheel was in motion, and with her scent riding within the nook of his nostrils, finding her was a matter of when rather than how. Etojo tracked her with angry purpose, Lucrezia’s scent grew fresher, and the mark of a hoof imprinted in the damp soil of the forest floor solidified his direction. She was close… so close… And yet, a tiny thought, cloaked in a veil of hesitancy began to stir on the outer rim of his consciousness. Etojo tried to keep it at bay, his anger and frustration was what fuelled him in this hunt when his desire for bloody satiation had vacated him. But the thought broke through as a rainbow does through a sun shower. And amidst the cloud of his anger, behind the deep burrows of his frown, bringing harm upon Lucrezia suddenly made his mouth turn dry and his pulse thrum with an uneasiness that he couldn’t ignore. No, hurting her would only bring forth more pain, more regret, further failings. From the moment he had spied her, smelling of pine needles and cavorting in a whirlwind of ice and snowfall all those years ago, as King Rodrik’s daughter it had only seemed natural to him that he should want to guard and protect her - if it had ever come to that. The thought made him scoff and simpered his anger, he hadn’t hung around long enough to do any protecting. And Lucrezia, well, she had made it clear she could handle herself, his best intentions had always come across as meddling. In the darkness, as he stalked her smell from leaf to branch to trunk, in the fulcrum of his pursuit of her, he suddenly found irony in that. And Etojo paused his irrational hunt of her. He would track her no further though her scent remained irresistibly strong. Too strong… “Lucrezia…” he called out into the darkness, his voice gruff though it didn’t leave his tongue with anger. “Lucrezia…” he called out again. The dark and stillness swallowed his words as easily as it threatened to swallow his past. |
@[Lucrezia]