Just a little. She says, and Tunnel’s lip twitches. Shroud’s rarely heard laughter is thick strangled sound she tries not let out as she speaks, but he knows it is there, feels the way she shudders with sickness and wry amusement. Tunnels teeth pinch at the nape of her neck briefly and swiftly. He pushes away, leads her to the river without bothering to respond.
Shroud drifts after him toward the river, its rushing is muted and his attention is more focused on the rhythm of her footfalls behind him, the rale and rattle of her breathing. The river flows clear before them and she takes a long drink that appears to be uncomfortable. His brows are furrowed in irritation, grey eyes intense. The creature lowers his own lips to drink from the cold river. Water drip from his dark mouth as he stares at the sabino girl when she turns to face him.
She has been to Pangea, that risen kingdom naked and dead. Summoned there, unable and unwilling to resist the lure set out for the blood-hungry masses. She shivers and shifts her beautiful wings into a glorious bramble as her body recalls a vicious thrill. His eyes trace the slender dimensions of her, a hungry and slow inspection that is cut short, disappointed by the way she shivers back to herself (showing him a child once more), the memory of bloodlust not enough to sustain her. Crimson droplets on her piebald sides draw his eyes as her lungs heave and struggle against weariness. She is tired, and says as much in a small voice. A weak voice. Tunnel merely rumbles and drops his head to drink again.
He comes to her slowly and when he does it is to groom her sweat soaked neck with his wet lips, teeth scraping, tongue rasping. He has not done this before, leaving her to attend to herself unless he is meting out punishment. He is rough as he has been rough the night she found him, muzzle butting her tired body heedless of the way she might be put off balance. Shroud’s blood tastes of copper and sickness as he cleans it away from her shoulders and sides. There among the tangled willows on the river bank and it would almost seem a tender moment if it weren’t for the way he drops his teeth against her neck, just above her withers, hard and insistent, to drag her to the ground. To drag her to the soft green earth with its close growing grasses and wild strawberries, their leaves red with pearls of blood dripped from her wounded sides.
There is, even in her smug return, an absence of defiance and of attempts to placate him that angers Tunnel. If he could tear Shroud apart to satisfy that anger he would, but the illness clinging to her is what inspires his fury and there is nothing he can do to punish it. If she settles near him he reaches out bathe and nip at her, needing the softness of her beneath his teeth. “Did you kill him, Shroud?” He says at last, voice a soft deep rumble, like he is asking a child about their day at play. “Did you like disobeying me?”
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves
as though we were drowning inside our hearts
@[shroud] poor tunnel, his little puppy is sick so he is bite her to help his worrying.
