The smell of sand has started to twist itself around the fresh smell of fern and moss. It started slowly when Eligos begged for mercy and followed her home. Like a poltergeist it follows her steps, another shadow, another trail weaving through the forest that should not be there. She's hunting it even now, following the river-bed with its halo of branches and its furious current.
But even that still pales beneath the hunger of her aching and the way it wants, and falls silent, and wants again. And it's wanting now, gnawing at the marrow of her bones and the cells of her blood. Thana can feel it spreading, like anemia, like the desert, like the trail of sulfur left in the wake of her. And it's still spreading when she comes upon him by the banks of the racing, rushing river.
She doesn't call to him, although the urge is there, to whisper at his back like a wolf begging entrance to a den of rabbits. Thana only steps closer, and closer, and closer. Eligos follows as he always does and there is that word again, please, slipping between them as easy as violence slips from their forms like breath. Thana's hungry aching is echoing the word back at him.
Today, underneath a halo of branches with sunlight dappling her form like scars, she wants to finally say yes to the monster of fury. Perhaps he knows the same thing her body does, perhaps he is tired of hunting tracks in the forest and finding only gore at the end of them.
Perhaps they have both had enough of civility. Perhaps they are too wild to stay tame, to stand by spring blooms and pretend everything in them is not wilting in the sun for such stillness. Perhaps it's why Thana lowers her horn, and why Eligos bares his teeth.
“This is not your home.” Her blood is roaring,yes, and it's the loveliest sound she's heard all day. Perhaps. Perhaps. Thana's tail blade rises at her back like a viper and even that sounds like yes when she taps it against her hipbone like a knock.
The wolf has grown weary of begging. She is aching.
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