[mature] tell that devil to take you back; ryatah

[atrox]

hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

There is a strange weight on him—a heavy thing that settles in him and twists his stomach. It has been so long since he has felt any kind of weight, of any kind of anything that he almost doesn’t know how to comprehend it. Almost doesn’t know how to wrap his mind around the reality of it—something that is not his own floating through life. It reminds him of a life long ago, a life when there were consequences and matters of import. A life where he fought for things and died for things, where things mattered.

He frowns slightly, brow furrowing, but says nothing.

Instead, he continues to look out across the lake, the silence stretching between them.

“I have my own company which I find to be pretty entertaining,” he quips, the lighthearted jest coming easily, rolling off his tongue. He shrugs a shoulder, feeling that strange tightening, the desire to find some kind of outlet, but is caught off guard when she speaks next. He laughs under his breath, a husky sound that catches the edge of his tongue, heavy-jawed head angling slightly to the side to consider her. “That doesn’t sound too different from the ordinary,” one corner of his mouth pulls into a lopsided smile.

The laugh dies quickly though, fading as it ripples out, yellow eyes studying her for a second before they go back to the lake. There are questions that he wants to ask—he is an infinitely curious creature, after all—but it doesn’t feel right to ask them. It doesn’t feel right to press them into the silence that feels like its own entity. So, instead, he just lets them breathe, gives the silence the space it needs to grow.

He wonders, not for the first time, about the gravity pressing into his spine.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING