eat sh*t and die } LUPEI

[Ribcage]

Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
He is hunched, his big body rocked back on his strong hind, his great, round paws worrying the mire at his feet. He scratches his agitation out in the soft, giving footing – blood, ash, mud; his mouth is filled with these things: blood, ash, mud. He is ready. But around him things are happening that he never imagined possible. He has known simply this: her red side (and the other’s red ribs – he knows them in more ways than one, now), sister (now brother), the pinewood that fluxes around them (first fire and black smoke; now closed in with extra ironwood soldiers, coming together in tight formation, only relenting a small clearing… a single bloody pit). He knew first the minimalism of darkness, where sound and scent became so a part of him, that he could sometimes imagine in his mind the world around him, in the way a bat creates a image with his cries.
He made it out of strange colours he could not understand and angular shapes.

He is shivering. He is surely afraid, somewhere deep down where the eyeless boy has been relegated. Somewhere in the heart of a damp and dark cave, where his brother and sister are hiding. Somewhere… somewhere, wherever mother is. 

He is excited. More than anything. The animal has wrested the body from the boy.
Blood stings his palette. The lioness’ offering had been decidedly sour. She had not been real. She was a conjuration and when he bit into her, her fur and meat were like dirt in his mouth. It hadn’t been satisfying. (They say once they have the taste for blood.) His mouth is stained with her red, but it is a queer, unnatural thing that congeals and dries on his chin and ruff now. He aches to replace it, to fill his mouth with the hot and sticky delight that had sampled only once before. He had left her alive, as per mother’s request.

He sees her before she bumps into him.
She is not much different from him and sister. The same season had brought them to quicken and when he looks at her, a part of him sees sister and is repulsed.

—repulsed by the part of him that springs from his hole in the mud and lands, lightly, nearer to her. He pulls back his lips and growls, swiping at her and he circles around so they are face to face. This was foolish, but she must know that. (The boy retreats further, pulling the covers over his hollowed out eyes.) The tiger spits and hisses, and then rears up at her, sinking claws into her neck, his hinds paws still grounded.

He wraps his mouth around her neck, just below her throatlatch and squeezes. He applies pressure, that taste flooding his mouth and pooling around his lips. He holds, for a moment – long enough to cleave any possibility of recovery – and then turns, maneuvers his body awkwardly to try and drag her somewhere safe in the woods…

The tiger lets her go, dead weight thudding softly to the ground. He looks down, her tongue falls from the corner of her mouth, slightly swollen looking… blue. He tilts his head, moves to circle around her, placing a big, bloody paw on her shoulder and pushing roughly. He leans closer, smelling her skin (and the blood), watching her ribs for motion. But they are still and airless. Dead. He lets out a low, melancholy rumble. Hello? He jerks back, the desire to scour flesh from her bones colliding with the way he sees sister in the deadness on her eyes. He backs up, chirping soft, sorry sounds and shaking his great, patterned head.


RIBCAGE
- tiger-son of Atrox & Crone -

original art © raph04art

Ribcage has killed Larken, does not feel great about it.