09-22-2018, 02:09 PM
 During exchanged words the long-limbed wolf in their midst has stilled. Her keen eyes follow them, watching intently while she remains crouched at the perimeter Daemron had set. Watching; waiting. A silent witness as the years of cold frustration and hard bitterness between the chestnut and the bay begin to fall away. Pyxis admits she wants to stay, wants to try – the wolf’s ears twitch, expectant. And, finally, the invisible barrier keeping Red at bay is no more. She senses the change in him and rises. Yet it is not Daemron’s side she goes to – she goes to Pyxis, wending sleekly between the mare’s legs. A low and familiar sound rises from the dog’s belly, and for a brief moment she presses her nose to a white hock as though in reassurance. Then, with a look exchanged between old companions, the maned wolf slips away into a nearby thicket, flecks of snow caught in her ruddy fur. Red’s departure doesn’t seem to bother the stallion. She hasn’t gone far – not this time (and never again). He can sense her movements in a corner of his mind, though his focus quickly shifts from wolf to woman. Everything she says has him daring to hope. “That’s all I’m asking, love,” he murmurs to her, returning the word she’d tried to use against him with unrestrained feeling. “All I want is for you to give this – us – a chance. A real one.” In their sudden privacy, Daemron becomes hyperaware of Pyxis’ warm breath on his cool skin. She asks him if he will teach her. The light of serious eyes casts a faint glow against his irregular blaze. There is a dull roar in his ears, a fire burning in his blood. “Come here,” he says, snow whispering underfoot as he moves to wrap her protectively. “To start, you don’t have to hide yourself from me.” His lips find the base of her throat and rest upon her pulse. Was hers racing, too? The way she is pressed against the hard lines of his body makes him ache for her, and all he knows is that mere words aren’t enough anymore. “Pyxis,” he breathes then, his need for her too great to ignore – her name on heady lips both a question and a promise. And in the chill of winter, they find each other. In the greying light, they are together at last. He wakes in a dusky glow, startled by stray nightmares (familiar haunts of blood and death and ruin). Still, he marvels at how quickly these fade when he realizes that Pyxis’ warmth is at his side. The wolf, too, is nearby, keeping guard out of sight. An alarming jolt of fear strikes him when he considers the reality of everything he now stood to lose. All she’d said was that she would try – which meant there was still a chance he could lose her all over again. Impulsively he bends, pressing his mouth to the sleekness of her side and feeling her stir. “Where have you been all these years, Pyxis?” It is meant to sound light, posed in half-jest, though he remains quite serious about hearing an answer. Though still wary of scaring her off, Daemron worries that if he doesn’t keep asking her to open up to him, she might just decide to shut him out completely (perhaps forever). “When was the last time you saw your family?” daemronlost to the hunt as I was to you |