”I’ll come with you,” she untangles herself hastily from the slumberous bodies of Rake and Woven, each moaning crossly and hiding their face in the crook of the other’s neck.
The mouth of the cave is brightening, filling with stark, orange light. “I know where I am going.” He is no longer the boy that needed her for every step. Beqanna had reformed itself years ago now, long enough for him to have charted the way from their stone home at the foot of the mountains to the wild commons beyond in his mind.
”Are you sure? The melt… there might still be ice…”
“I said no, Lilin,” it rips from his throat like a hot snarl and she knows better than to argue with him. They all know what lays between the lines of those flat, grazing teeth, though none of them think he would ever harm them. She looks at him, startled and ashamed, and she can see the sleek slink of tight, strong shoulder blades; the patterned, orange and black, pelt—she can see that mouth, lined with sharp, ripping dentition. She flushes and looks down from his hulking, black form, hemmed in morning. ”Sorry....”
“It’s... fine. I’ll be back.”
He creeps past the lip of the cave, sure-footed enough, though he cannot shake the age-old anxiety that builds up in his chest—he cannot see; if he cannot see, he is vulnerable. He lives, now, in untempered darkness; a nothing he has long come accustomed to. As a boy, he had grown in that utter black with the help of Lilin, his nose stuck to her blue hip as if glued. (And mother, too, her wet, lewd mouth circling his forehead—cooing gently at him, ‘my boy’—lipping the hollow, leathery space where his eyes never were.)
Mother had gone, shortly after the war that had filled the pinewoods and his furious, capable mouth with blood. Gone to follow ‘Wind’ and the sour, commanding scent of someone’s skin to hinterlands beyond. He had refused to go with her. Ribcage had never denied Aurane anything before. This angered her greatly.
He had pulled back his black lips and flashed his savage weapons—weapons she had used as hers liberally his whole life—and she had acquiesced, leaving him with his brother and sisters. In that duty, the tiger had grown, choosing to relegate the complicated, sanguine memories of his young life in favor of protecting the simple, native existence of his family.
When he walks, he feels the phantoms of that limber, skulking body; that haughty quietness, with each step threatening like a spring pulled tight. He feels those orange, bright eyes moving around, frantically, behind their prison of dark, thin flesh. In truth, Ribcage looks like prey as he enters the cold, wet meadow. The first to be selected by the carnivorous—singled out for the kill because some cruel god had chosen to sew shut his eyelids.
And he is.
He is, for now.
The mouth of the cave is brightening, filling with stark, orange light. “I know where I am going.” He is no longer the boy that needed her for every step. Beqanna had reformed itself years ago now, long enough for him to have charted the way from their stone home at the foot of the mountains to the wild commons beyond in his mind.
”Are you sure? The melt… there might still be ice…”
“I said no, Lilin,” it rips from his throat like a hot snarl and she knows better than to argue with him. They all know what lays between the lines of those flat, grazing teeth, though none of them think he would ever harm them. She looks at him, startled and ashamed, and she can see the sleek slink of tight, strong shoulder blades; the patterned, orange and black, pelt—she can see that mouth, lined with sharp, ripping dentition. She flushes and looks down from his hulking, black form, hemmed in morning. ”Sorry....”
“It’s... fine. I’ll be back.”
He creeps past the lip of the cave, sure-footed enough, though he cannot shake the age-old anxiety that builds up in his chest—he cannot see; if he cannot see, he is vulnerable. He lives, now, in untempered darkness; a nothing he has long come accustomed to. As a boy, he had grown in that utter black with the help of Lilin, his nose stuck to her blue hip as if glued. (And mother, too, her wet, lewd mouth circling his forehead—cooing gently at him, ‘my boy’—lipping the hollow, leathery space where his eyes never were.)
Mother had gone, shortly after the war that had filled the pinewoods and his furious, capable mouth with blood. Gone to follow ‘Wind’ and the sour, commanding scent of someone’s skin to hinterlands beyond. He had refused to go with her. Ribcage had never denied Aurane anything before. This angered her greatly.
He had pulled back his black lips and flashed his savage weapons—weapons she had used as hers liberally his whole life—and she had acquiesced, leaving him with his brother and sisters. In that duty, the tiger had grown, choosing to relegate the complicated, sanguine memories of his young life in favor of protecting the simple, native existence of his family.
When he walks, he feels the phantoms of that limber, skulking body; that haughty quietness, with each step threatening like a spring pulled tight. He feels those orange, bright eyes moving around, frantically, behind their prison of dark, thin flesh. In truth, Ribcage looks like prey as he enters the cold, wet meadow. The first to be selected by the carnivorous—singled out for the kill because some cruel god had chosen to sew shut his eyelids.
And he is.
He is, for now.
misery loves company and madness calls it forth
@[Kirin]
![[Image: sAxX94g.png]](http://i.imgur.com/sAxX94g.png)