In the thick blue black of night the creature Tunnel’s attention is drawn by the indistinct glow of what might be flame in the trees a ways beyond him. Dark nostrils flare to draw in the scents of death, forest rot, and cold air but nothing of acrid smoke. He does not focus on the light, does not sacrifice his night vision for this oddity. The flames die and he waits. Sounds of rustling, of movement through the low growing plants and the deep beds of brown needles come to him before the child does. How unmoved he is by the sight of her, tiny thing scrabbling through the forest on knobby legs during the witching hour. Something is probably going to eat her.
She stumbles into him, and in the quiet darkness she snuffs about his shoulder and face ineptly. He tolerates this with cold disinterest and the girl makes a meaningless noise. His expression closed he lowers his head to smell the girl, drawing deep the scent of newborn foal. As he breathes her in, this misplaced infant, his muzzle butts careless and rough against her slender neck and angular shoulder, dragging, pressing, absent gentleness. He inspects her, not with tenderness but with an almost clinical detachment. Someone has misplaced their precious thing. He could make it his now. He could destroy it.
His lips return to the crest of her neck where the ridge of her mane curls softly. Baring his teeth he moves to bite down on that delicate young arch, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard, hard enough that he could grip and shake the child off into death. He doesn’t. This precious thing is his now, and he won't destroy her yet. Instead he releases the babe from his administrations. His voice low when he admonishes. ”You should not wander away, girl.”
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves
as though we were drowning inside our hearts
@[shroud] So he is a weirdo, of course he doesn't bite her or shove her around to much if you don't want him to. <3
