holiday party; sabra

[sochi]

Sochi

darling, you're wild-eyed, empty, and tongue-tied
maybe you need me or maybe you don't

Sochi doesn’t know if the other’s confession is expected to surprise her or rattle her or invoke anything within her, but they don’t. The tigress barely bats an eyelash, her sterling eyes maintaining that same curiosity, that same hunger she can’t quite define. She rolls a muscled shoulder, a casual dismissal of whatever cruel things Sabra was attempting to point at herself, at whatever challenge was in her eyes.

“She will either grow strong or she will die,” her throaty voice has no inflection, no sorrow or pity or glee. It’s merely a fact of life, and she doesn’t attempt to soften it—to coat it in sugar as if the acid of it would not eat it away, would not rip at the lips of those who dared to speak it. “That is the way of nature. There is no point in pretending it is otherwise.” Sochi is glad Reia had not been born weak (she was as fierce as her parents, as sharp-toothed and head-strong and wild as the com). She knows in her heart that she would have responded in much the same way as Sabra had her daughter been born frail and ill.

Sochi simply does not believe in pretending just to make someone feel better.

The anger though—that surprises her, and she tilts her head in curiosity, touches her tongue to her lip as she considers Sabra. “And where do you go to be yourself?” she asks suddenly, her voice of smoke and ash billowing between them. “Have you felt like yourself at all recently?” Sochi takes a step forward, not tasting the scent of a shifter in Sabra but knowing that something just as dark and hungry stirred beneath the surface. Something that felt trapped. Suppressed. Something that just needed a release.

Sochi’s teeth shift, the wicked curve of ivory beginning to show, her eyes brightening.

Her blood boils and simmers, predator mind beginning to sharpen. There’s more to say—more prompting, more asking, more things she could press on Sabra, but Sochi has never been overly interested in such things. Instead, she shifts slightly, her scarred, compact body widening the angle between them. As if gesturing the mare forward, although whether the motion was designed to engage in a fight or was an invitation to something else—something darker, something more primal—was entirely unknown.

Perhaps even unknown to Sochi herself.

playing the slow rooms, howling at half moons
if you are a Queen then, honey, I am a wolf

@[Sabra]