there are names for what binds us.
Through their bond, Pravda knows only this:
His creature is hunting.
Pravda’s mind envisions sporadic images of the hunt: the rush of foliage, too-fast, and the blur of animals as they leap frantically from Prigovora’s path. Everything is a blur of colour and sound, and the effect is nearly nauseating for the young stallion as he walks quietly through Eluetheria Plains. What he sees before him is quite a contrary image; the scenic beauty of a setting sun and grass that sways waist-high. He is walking through an ocean of bright green, where it dips and rises with the soft breeze. He has never seen anything so vast, aside from the sea—and he marvels at it, doing everything within his power to focus on this, in front of him. There had been pictures in the Biblioteka Svyashchennikov, but they did nothing to capture the largeness of it, how it was all encompassing—
Prigovora lunges at a fawn somewhere in the dense plain, bedded down, and Pravda feels a second rush of nausea at the violence. He flinches at the abrupt attack. He hadn’t even seen or sensed the creature was there! A mass of dozing does and fawns burst from the grass where they lay, stampeding in a blind panic from Prigovora. One doe leaves her child. Pravda feels it, martyred, in the jaws of his monster. Pravda heart swells, almost as though it were his own sentiment, his creature’s delight. This was nothing compared to their bond in Dobrodetel’Nyy—and it was sickening to nearly feel the crack of bone as Prigovora’s teeth slice, razor-like, through hot flesh. Stop showing me, Pravda pleaded, closing his eyes.
It was too late. He nearly retched.
Somehow, he didn’t. Pravda focuses on his breathing behind closed lids, in the darkness. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. The raptor finishes feasting, rapidly, ripping off entire chunks of flesh and bone to swallow whole. From their bond, Pravda does not receive words in answer, only feelings, and the feelings are this:
A wendigo’s hunger. Prigovora is not satisfied. The creature feels the coolness of the night settling on the grassland, and the strength of his own limbs. He wants to hunt, to feast.
Pravda hates himself for it. Fine, he thinks. Go.
And the primordial beast is off, cutting a sharp line through the grass that disguises him. Pravda follows at an easy, mile-eating lope from some distance behind. He sees the images as they come:
Prigovora nears a small cluster of trees. He slows, gouging the earth beneath his claws, and drops to all four limbs. Quadrupedal, the raptor edges into the trees and dense undergrowth, nostrils flaring. There is something here, in the decaying leaves—the scent of rot cannot disguise the scent of flesh. The raptor blinks, and now everything Pravda sees is what the raptor sees--the grassland before him is replaced with the forest in front of Prigovora. Pravda stumbles so hard he falls to his knees, but recovers after a moment, shaking his head. For now, nothing is wrong. Prigovora is only hunting. Prigovora is only hungry.
The raptor blinks again, and every image between their bond now comes in the raptor's infrared. Pravda is nauseated all over again, but the archaic and reptilian method. His muzzle is held close to the earth, and the ground is muted purples and violets from the lingering heat of the sun, and above Pravda sees through Prigovora’s eyes—there is a small shape half-hidden under fallen leaves. The creature looks like another fawn—
Pravda attempts to sever the mental bond, focusing on rising from the earth. He is bleeding, but only slightly. He feels something sinking in his stomach; he feels it in Prigovora’s strange glee as the raptor moves, whisper quiet, through the long grass and brush. Every step is methodical, almost slithering, and the dark iridescence of his scales must be camouflage enough in the undergrowth and rapidly fading light. It is that pivotal point at sunset, where the celestial body has dipped just beneath the horizon. The shift is nearly instantaneous from light, to dark. Everything is suddenly twilight, subdued, and Pravda feels even more concern as he trots after his creature.
He sees another flash of Prigovora’s moment. The fawn in the underbrush is stirring. It lifts its head—
The silhouette, even seen through Prigovora’s strange, primordial infrared is not the small, delicate head of a fawn, but more robust. A foal. One wing shifts, and Pravda recognises the silhouette as a winged equine. Prigovora has feasted on such beasts before. The raptor's lips wrinkle back from his teeth and he salivates in long strands as he nears the colt, stalking quietly, so quietly—the colt looks toward him, and Prigovora freezes. But then the colt looks away, settling back down into his bed of leaves.
Pravda is galloping now. A full sprint toward the treeline he can now just see. No, no, no! he is thinking, but his creature has grown distant in this new world, has grown more wild—and Prigovora does not stop. His reptilian mouth only twists into what could be a smile, in a world more twisted. The raptor repositions, backtracking to flank the colt. The foal is resting within an alcove of a fallen tree and Prigovora tests the distant base. It holds his weight. Still so, so quiet. So still. He moves with the methodical, reptilian stillness of Time. He possesses a dinosaur’s patience. Slowly, Prigovora moves down the fallen log. He is a shadow against it, dark and large but somehow not so different from the other shadows in the ever fading light.
And Pravda is running harder than he has ever before. Stop! he is screaming through their bond, and he feels the raptor’s cold laughter. He is reminded of the cellar, so many years ago. He is reminded of the way Prigovora’s breath once brushed Pravda's own cheek, and it was full of sweltering, wet heat. It smelled of meat, always of meat, and the sharp, stinging copper of blood. He is reminded of how it feels to be so close—and Prigovora laughs through their bond again. Pravda can feel his excitement, his joy. Such easy prey is this! And what’s more—it angers his master!
Pravda is in the treeline now; he does not slow, but tears through the branches and brush with the savagery of a man possessed, a man devoted. Prigovora is stretching one long limb from the tree, reaching toward the foal—a claw, so very delicate, traces the jugular vein. Wake up the gentle touch seems to say. It mimics a mother, and Prigovora knows it. A long string of saliva drops from Prigovora’s open jaws and he begins to shift. One large foreleg is planted on the earth beside the foal, and then the other. A final, slinking motion places all of Prigovora’s body above the colt with a finality like death.
Prigovora’s jaws are gaping in an ugly smile, made uglier still by the remnant blood of his last kill. The raptor hisses, long and loud, and with bright red eyes dares the foal to run.
But Pravda is breaking through the trees, reaching the scene—and his voice is loud, when he screams, “Stop!” And Prigovora’s head jerks upright, but he does not move from the foal. There is something resentful in the raptor’s eyes, something challenging. You left me—! but those primordial eyes do not say that, they do not acknowledge betrayal, do they? Pravda does not know, but the resentment that stretches their bond seems too much like salt in a wound. “We do not harm the innocent, Prigovora.” Pravda’s voice is stern, and hard, and desperate.
@Pravda "speaks"
@
