there's a whisper in my bones
keeping me restless and whole
His panic is bitter in the air around them, lingering in the wake of the dream. She can taste it as assuredly as she had been able to taste the rabbit she had breakfasted on hours earlier. She has always been able to feel it, their fear. Always been able to sense it alongside the ever-present urge to ease it. Yet she does not. She doesn’t know what had caused the pungent halo of panic, so she does not know how he might react to having it erased.
For a long moment, they simply stare at one another, pink eyes clashing against gold. He does not move, so neither does she.
The moment his muscles bunch and golden skin ripples however, she reacts. She cannot help herself. His snarling face comes at her, and she recoils in a defensive crouch, round ears pressing flat. Though he stops just before reaching her, the paw that bats at her is met with a smack of her own paw and a louder warning hiss.
She is prepared to launch at him if he so much as flicks a whisker, but she is instead taken aback by his grumbling words filling the space between them. For a moment, she stares at him, frozen in her defensive, flat-eared posture. When it becomes clear he won’t immediately resume his attack however, she coughs. The harsh sound dispels the barest trace of tension from her body, and she wrinkles her nose as his words finally register.
“You think I wanted to eat you?” Though she doesn’t say it, her incredulous tone perfectly conveys how disturbing she finds that notion. Chuffing out her disdain at the very thought, she eyes him skeptically. “I was sleeping, like you.” Another chuff. “You woke me.”
istrid
@litotes