hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive
He was not surprised when she had left—he so rarely is. After years of settling into this existence with her, of learning her patterns and letting her learn his in return, he nearly expects these absences. There is a part of him—a part that still surprises him—that worries after her, but he is able to quiet it usually. He knows that he could no more keep her from leaving than she could keep him from the hunt, and he knows that he would not love her as deeply as he does if she was any different than she was. So he watches her recede in the background and waits for when she returns, hoping that she returns in a single piece.
This time though, the worry is deeper.
It has more teeth.
So he finds that his aggression rises to match it. Violence that comes up his throat and lashes out. He shifts into his panther form and lunges into the darkness. He finds the monsters that thrash in the darkness and he gladly finds himself into their midst. He is all teeth and claws in these moments. He finds that some of them are more physical than others and he can sink his teeth into them and rip and tear. Others he moves through like water. All of them though leave their mark on him—some shredding his coat until his blood splatters the Hyaline floor and others leaving him icy cold and shivering when they move on.
It is only when he feels her coming, something in his empty chest reverberating in response, that he pulls back, bloodied and sore and exhilarated. He snarls as he tosses one off of him and limps forward toward her, shifting into his more familiar form, one yellow eye swollen shut. “Ryatah,” her name has a tangible relief as he comes closer, but there’s a panic that quickly follows when he focuses on her, when he sees that she’s not as she was before—that there is so much of her now missing from the last time he saw her.
He swallows, hard, a muscle jumping in his jaw.
He comes close enough that he could reach out to her, but his nose passes right through her.
Pulling back, breath catching on his tongue, as he realizes he cannot pull her close. Cannot hold her and tell her that it’s going to be okay—that they’re going to be able to fix this somehow.
Instead he just stands there, breathing in unison with her, bleeding and aching.
@[The Monsters] - I feel chaotic. let's mess with his soul summoning.