with her sweetened breath and her tongue so mean
she's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
Death is an ugly thing, like sharp barbs that try to snake through her veins, try to widen in the marrow of her bones. It is impossible for her to miss - she knows Woolf must feel it, too, wherever he is - as it saps their magic like a heavy, wet blanket. She should turn and disappear into the forest, should try to put distance between herself and the cause of such ugliness. It has killed her before, death en masse, it had been enough to split her soul from her body and sling-shot her into the afterlife. That was different than this, of course, that had been war, brutal and violent, this was something different. Something worse, perhaps. Death without purpose.
She splits abruptly from her dark grey companion, giving him no warning or reason before she slips off at a cautious run. She knows without a doubt that she is too late to intervene, death is already prickling at her skin and even she cannot reverse such things. But something else pulls her forward, a reluctant instinct she would rather ignore, except in the body of the wolf, instinct rules her.
The scene she comes upon is gruesome, and she is careful to remain invisible and untraceable to them as she tucks into the thickest undergrowth tangling beneath the trees. A mare, a stallion, a boy, and a very red, unrecognizable body. She can guess at what has happened by the way the adults taunt the boy, a thing that sends a ripple of hatred up the length of her spine. She bristles, immediately furious and knotted and teleports the child to her side, leaving a duplicate in his place. There is no gap between him disappearing and the duplicate appearing, no way to know or suspect that anything has been altered, that it is not still the boy they taunt instead of a soulless echo, a perfect, tangible illusion. It has the appearance of flesh and blood, is soft and warm where they touch it and even mimics the wide-eyed stare of the boy at her feet, disoriented by things he cannot possibly fathom. But it is empty and soulless and nothing more than a perfect physical clone.
Having shifted to stand over the true-boy, to warm him with the gem-bright purple of her wolf fur and guard him from the world while she works, she focuses her attention on satisfying the roan and the cremello with this boy-puppet at their feet. But they turn, already bored, and with one final threat they disappear into the forest again. The threat is enough to make her glance down at the boy though, the clench in her jaw telling of the vein of wariness snaking through her chest. Now what was she supposed to do with it? Him. Soldat, they had called him. She notices the blood on his skin, the wide-eyed way he watches her, and some instinct she never knew she had forces her down beside him. She curls, large enough to pull him into the curve of her canid body, and then cleans the blood from him with the soft of her long tongue. She starts at his face, careful of her teeth around those eyes, and then works her way across his neck and over his barrel, his legs, everywhere until he is clean and dry and warm. Safe, she admits begrudgingly to herself as she pulls him possessively closer to ease the knot of something treacherous in her gut.
Her skin prickles and her hackles raise, a snarl on her lips before she realizes that the silhouette in the shadows is that of a deep grey and tawny wolf, of Ruan. There is no way to know how long he had been standing there, and her amethyst eyes narrow to venomous slits as she dares him to say anything about the scene he must surely have so many thoughts on. Instead she turns back to the boy, reaches into his mind with a gentle kind of grace she reserves for so few, and finds the memories she wants. Everything before the moment she teleported him to her side is gone, all the faces and scents, every single detail but for one single whispered phrase. ‘Soldat, I love you.’ She would have taken that, too, for the questions it risks in the future, for the danger it could impose if he ever considered it too closely. But it is his, from his mother, and she cannot bring herself to strip him of it.
When she is finished, she frowns again, remembering their threat, their promise to come back for him. She rises, stretches, noses his forelock and frowns because it is an affectionate reflex that should not exist within her. Has never existed within her. Her eyes find Ruan’s and narrow slightly, her jaw tensing when she grinds her teeth together. There is such a knot of emotion tangling in her belly, more than just the possessive arrogance, and it muddies her thoughts in a way that twists her mouth in a hard frown. But then she looks at Ruan again, really looks at him, and the frown curves upward into a more familiar wicked smile. She shifts them abruptly, back to horse form, back to how they had been before except for one tiny detail. His color. He is no longer sooty black and spotted, but the same steel and pewter and tawny of the wolf he had been moments ago. She flinches though, winces when a large slash opens across the gleaming purple of her chest. It isn’t deep yet, more like a shallow slice, stinging and uncomfortable. But she knows it’ll be much deeper by the time she is done.
Finished with Ruan, she turns from him, steps close to the small, dark boy and runs weary lips from the whorl of forelock between his ears to the base of his soft tail. Color seems to blossom from the brush of her touch, spilling down over his skin like warm water until the black is soft and faded, dimmed by a blanket of white and spotted in purple. He looks just like Ruan had, an identical replica because the color was not just inspired by the stallion, it was borrowed. Stolen? Given. He wouldn't need it anymore anyway now that he was the color of his deep gray wolf. Something to remember her by, she thinks with a satisfied smile as she turns her smug expression on him. “Let us see them try and track him down now.” She says sharply, shaking out her mane so it falls smoothly across her deep purple neck. But then the breeze shifts and carries his scent to her and she pauses, stiffening, blinking just a moment before that is gone too and she has replaced it with a mix of her own scent and Ruans. She's pushing her limits now though and she can feel the wound on her chest deepen and widen, can feel the damp warmth of blood beading like rubies at the edges. She sucks in a breath, just the quiet hiss of pain as she very carefully, very deliberately turns herself away from Ruan.
It isn't that she finds him untrustworthy so much as it is that she doesn't want her limits known. This secret belongs to only herself and Woolf, no one else. So she turns her back on the mottled gray man and focuses her attention on coaxing Soldat to stand. They need to get moving, and quickly, before the pair from earlier change their minds and return. They haven't yet, she can tell by her magic which flows in spiderweb patterns out from her body letting her know what is nearby. Reaching down, she nudges him firmly (his shoulder, his belly, his hips) and then thinks better of it, softening to gentler nuzzles and lips that wander over the landscape of his small spotted form. It feels awkward to her, not even her own mother had done this for her - the twins had not allowed it, teleporting halfway across the kingdom as soon as she had birthed them - but she does it anyway because that is what she knows to be correct, what he needs. And, though she refuses to acknowledge this particular truth, what she wants.
“Up now, little bear,” she whispers in a voice of velvet, nuzzling ears that seem so small and perfect perched atop his dark head, “come with me.” They go together, all three, back to the border of Taiga - and though she tries to conceal her exhaustion from Ruan, she knows this is why she stays with him still. Knows this is why she will stay in his home, in a kingdom as she had promised herself she would never be bound by. But when she looks down at the boy tucked against her legs, traces her lips absently down the length of his spine, lingering a moment over the shades of purple buried there, she knows something has changed. That her priorities feel different, altered around him.
Stranger is that she finds she doesn't mind.
Something pings further out in the web of magic, a horse near the border, and her expression darkens as she touches Ruan’s neck and says, “There's someone just beyond those trees,” a pause as she watches him turn in the direction she indicated, a bemused smile ghosting her amethyst lips. “find us when you’re finished?” She is surprised by the note of need in her tone, but blames it on the wound in her chest and the weariness burdening her bones. She's never needed anyone. She doesn't need him now either, but this boy does. Her boy. She touches him again, guides him in the opposite direction, picking an overgrown tangle of the Taigan forest to hide them away in from prying eyes. Her boy? The thought tugs at her again, a burr pressed to her skin. But then he noses her flank and she feels his lips searching her belly for milk.
Something inside her flares, a possessiveness thus far unmatched, and she uses the last of her fading magic to fill her bag with the milk he will need to keep him healthy. Mine, she thinks sharply, ferociously, feeling his lips close around her teat. My boy. He must be finished, full, but it is as if he can hear her thoughts when he pulls back to lift his small, dark face to her again. She takes a breath to say his name, but something holds her back, a wary instinct that draws lines of tension in the brilliant purple of her beautiful cheeks. “Little one,” she greets him instead, nuzzles his forehead and notices the milk beaded like pearls on his whiskered nose, “come here.” Her legs buckle beneath her and she settles wearily into the moss and fern, drawing him close to the curve of her belly. There is a strange knot in her belly as she watches him nestle close, rubs her lips down his spine and through the soft tufts of his mane. It's worry, perhaps, though she does not recognize it. Concern for this little boy, her little boy, and the wickedness of the world he's been born to. But he is hers, and she knows (even if she cannot understand why) that she will keep him, and he will be safe.
“Mine.” She tells him with a kiss, a whisper, a promise pressed to the soft of his forehead. “Mine.”
They wake sometime later to the throes of a forest come alive, to tree and root and undergrowth knit together in a wall just yards away that locks them in. She does not stand at first, only tightens her body defensively against the magic that seeps from the strange barrier, blocking Soldat from it until she is sure it is only a measure of defense and will not lash out at them. Only then does she rouse him with the sweep of her lips across his face, rising to stand between him and the magic out of some innate instinct she cannot define. It takes a moment for him to wake and steady, so she lips at the length of his spine, gentle and soothing to hide the uneasy impatience she can feel building like electricity beneath her skin. There is so much magic knit into this unnatural wall, so much power, and it calls to hers in a way that makes her flesh prickle and crawl. “Time to go.” She says finally, abruptly, steering him deeper into Taiga, away from this barrier and the way it feels like bugs scurrying across her skin. “Time to find daddy.” Despite herself, a bemused smile slips across those perfect amethyst lips.
It takes only a few minutes to get to Ruan - she had located him easily enough with a strand of her somewhat rested magic drawing her to him like a thread - and when they draw to a halt beside the man, it is with Soldat tucked safely between them. “I assume you felt that?” She asks quietly, though there isn’t much of a question in her tone and she does not wait for an answer. “It’s a wall, fairly impenetrable, very magical.” Her jaw tightens again, teeth grinding together at the riot of her own magic thrashing beneath her skin. “I know it isn’t yours or we would have had so much more fun.” There is a hungry look that flashes quickly through those violet eyes as she runs her lips along the arch of Ruan’s neck and beneath his mane, a wildness that deepens as the magic inside her reacts to that which has been poured into sustaining the barrier. But a nose against her belly grounds her again, tempers the chaos in her soul as she shifts to smooth down Soldat’s forelock. Her breathing is ragged, her jaw tense, but her voice is steady when she says, “I think you have guests, Ruan.” Then to Soldat, “Stay with mommy and daddy, darling Rian.” She is certain she does not need to explain her decision to the man at her shoulder, certain he understands that the boy is safest if this is what he believes, what he knows. Certain, too, that he is not interested in knowing her fury should he argue. It would be believable enough to some if only for that fact that the boy looks so much like him (or, like he had - he now wore the colors of a grey wolf) and for the fact that he nursed from her belly and settled so comfortably against her legs.
Still, there is something wildly possessive that thrashes at the thought of bringing him anywhere near these guests, whoever they were, something that snarls at her to take him and hide. But the same possessiveness seems to have also taken a liking to the man at her side (she blames their time together, his amusing disregard for her obvious superiority) and she finds she is reluctant to leave him on his own. With a sigh so that he knows what an inconvenience this is, and touch to the soft grey of his neck that betrays her true feelings, she says, “Shall we go say hello?”
bright
