Sarkan The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped. As men have done perhaps since time began, Sarkan went down to the river to wash himself clean. It was a lonely part of the Rapax, rushing over rocks and tumbling in furious white foam into a slower, wider band with ice creeping over it further downriver. He had taken care the last weeks to do his hunting far from the city, in a remote part of the forest hours from a main road. So far he had been lucky: no patrols, and no more snow. Still, he lit no fires at his makeshift camp, and did his best to stay beneath the canopy, casting an eye skyward any time an especially wide-winged shadow passed overhead. A few more days, a few more filled snares, and he would take what he’d collected southwest to Solterra - and hopefully find some warmth as well as coin. Sarkan was curious after what he’d heard of the warrior culture and their new sovereign. And it would probably be best to winter well outside the Dawn Court. For now he stood on a narrow spit of bank, studded with rocks, and eyed the rushing water. Blood streaked the pale fur of his shoulders, forelegs and neck. By now he was unbothered smell of it, but grateful for the lack of flies - still, he might trade their nuisance for water a few degrees warmer. With a sigh, he approached the river’s edge. First he removed his hunting knife, a long, broad weapon whose material reflected the slate winter sky with a peculiar sheen. Blood flecked its surface, dark as rust. Sarkan lowered it almost reverently, tilting the edge so that it gleamed up at him from beneath the clear water. It was unblemished when he lifted it, but he showed no sign of hurry as he pulled a leather cloth from his pack dried and polished the blade. After he slid it back into its sheath, he set both it and the pack down carefully onto a flat rock along the shore. No part of him particularly wanted to subject himself to a frigid river, but neither did he want to draw a scavenger. Nor was wearing a coating of week-old blood a way to endear himself to any strangers he met, at least those who acquaintance he would be interested in making. Sarkan blew out another breath, his ears twisting back, and stepped into the water. This could be said of him: once he was decided, he did not hesitate. He walked out, placing his hooves with care on the stones that made of the riverbed here, until the water ran up over his knees and he could feel the current pulling at him. His breathing was coming shallow and high; he forced one deep breath, then another, and then thought wryly that he should have checked whether there were hot springs in Delumine. Then he plunged his head below the water, held it down as long as he could bear it, and flung up gasping, every cell shocked awake. @Messalina |
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 if our grave was watered by the rain
would roses bloom? Without leaving a trace of your existence, do you still exist? she wondered. Like the age-old tree that fell in a clearing question. If no one was there to hear it fall, did it make sound? She knew the answer—yes—and the reasoning behind it—sound is merely the physical disruption of airwaves, and depends not on the existence of a listener and their eardrums—but found comfort in pondering it over anyway, as she wove between a felled pine and its hollowed stump. A skin of frost covered the soft ground, hoof-deep with fall's detritus. Her breath fogged in clouds. The fur-lined white cloak she had thrown on before tiptoeing from her room hung loosely off her, ribbons that used to be snug now slack, tailoring that used to be flattering now crude. She wasn't eating nearly enough. Slight of build she had always been, bird-boned and lean-muscled, but she had crossed the line between 'slender' and 'gaunt' weeks ago. Despite that, she was doing... better. Mitrofan's red pills—dropped at her doorstep every month by the warlock's ghost-white barn owl—helped to suppress the blood-lust. She fed according to a schedule, worked out through trial and error (errors that had led to multiple fainting spells; once, she had startled awake at the bottom of the Rapax). But what had truly saved her was the ice bow. She glanced over at it. The mid-winter chill was made ever colder with the silvery bow's presence, slipped over her neck to rest just above her shoulder bone, but having it with her gave her comfort. A sense of control. Even, company. Smelling the blood was like ramming head-first into a wall. "Shit," she gasped; the profanity slipped past her lips butterfly-soft. Her heart jolted. Her mouth watered, and Messalina swallowed viciously as her head began to swim. It was too much—too much blood, too quickly, too— She moved without realizing it, lightning fast, deathly silent: one moment she had been in a copse of trees, and the next—the Rapax spewed white froth at her hooves. The smell, of iron and death and an animal-stink, was so strong she nearly retched. Her breath came in short, bursting pants, and the world melted into colors. Her vision tinged red. Her hoof struck down on—nothing. Splash! Ice-cold water flooded her lungs and forced her scream back under. The shock of it, falling into a near-frozen river, prevented her body from changing. She couldn't breathe—frantically Messalina pawed towards the surface and emerged gasping, teeth chattering so hard she could hear nothing else. The current roared in her ear as she made towards the bank and dragged herself out, coughing, her cloak stuck fast to her skin, her bow clattering against her shoulder. Her mane, originally braided in two rosettes, one behind each ear, drooped like ram's horns by her cheeks. She wiped water from her eyes and tried not to bite her own tongue off. She had lost control, just like that. Profanity wasn't enough to express her fury. And... the poacher! She knew the blood had to have come from their blade. Days she had tracked them, and— The water had tasted of blood. Her eyes widened; she snapped her head back towards the river. He appeared as a dark shape bobbing above the crystalline current, grey as a winter sea. Beads of water dripped off his cropped mane, pasted to his seal-sleek neck; he had been washing himself. Silently, Messalina stared at the blood pluming away from his body, swept downriver in a continuous, inky streak. Silently, she swallowed as her teeth began aching. Lengthening. Sharpening. She stepped towards the lapping riverbed, and her hoof clicked on a pebble. "Are you not—" she said slowly, river water dripping from her parted mouth. "Cold, sir?"
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