DESPOINA
Sleep does not often come to Despoina.
It is an illusive thing—a shadowy thing. She chases it and does not often find it between her teeth. But tonight, she has. Perhaps it is merely exhaustion masquerading as sleep, the black dregs of her fatigue pulling her under, but whatever the reason, she finds herself firmly tucked into the folds of it. Her breathing is low and deep, even, and the dreams do not find her. Do not haunt her with memories.
With things that may come to be.
But sleep is not the only thing to come to Despoina this night. She wakes with a start, the words ringing in her ears, and it takes her several moments to settle herself enough to know where she is—to recognize that she is home and her children are near and Torryn somewhere close. (She does not dwell on whether he has gone out hunting on his own tonight. She does not think about what she would bring home for him either—the fuzzy borders of her moral code disappearing and dissolving with the slightest provocation.)
When her heart has settled, she unfolds her legs and heaves herself to her feet. She angles her head toward the source of the noise and although no one has ever accused her of being a curious creature, an adventurous one, she feels a pull low and deep in her belly. Unable to stop herself, she takes a few steps forward and then another, making her way through the night and toward the cluster of trees.
She sees the fabric hanging in the breeze and halts, heart racing.
Feeling uneasy, she shifts into her hound form and lifts her head to sniff. She comes across something that looks…familiar. Her head angles to the side and she frowns at the caricature, this dumbed down version of something she has known so intimately. Whining low under her breath, she grabs at it with her teeth and begins to wrestle with it, squirming and fighting against the contraption until she feels it settle.
She rolls to her feet and feels it drape into place.
There are ears that hang off the side of her head, pushing her own down, and a tail that pokes out next to her own, wagging lamely. If she were to step back, she would see the costume of a dog hanging loosely off her own hellhound form and laugh until her stomach ached. The comical, soft features of the puppy jarring against the hellish angles of her own face, but thankfully, she cannot see such things.
So she just steps forward awkwardly, her movement stilted, as she steps toward the trees.
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do