to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
For August touch has always been a kind of tool - something only rarely used without calculation or motive. Even among his friends (and those friends were as good as family) they were all guarded in some way, spending gestures like nose-to-cheek like currency. Even when he’d broken from the Scarab, when he sought the press or teeth of another for pleasure and not payment, he knew the impulse was a selfish one.
So it is strange, to be touched by Warset so carelessly. He wonders what she wants, and why she’d agreed so quickly to help him. He welcomes the warmth when her wing spreads over his back, like a mother; he tells himself he won’t miss it when it’s gone. August knew, intellectually, that the desert got cold at night (how quickly Solis turns his face away), but he is still surprised by the chill. The walls, the sand, they all try to hold the heat in as long as they can, but the sun is gone now.
When she stops he does too; his heart skips quicker at the touch of her nose. August wants to look at her but lets her guide head up, where the sky is a deepening lake, and the stars are emerging. It takes him a moment, staring at that distant point of light, to understand what she’s saying. Then he does look at her, surprised, but all her strangeness starts to make sense because -
“You’re one of the shed-stars,” he says, his voice soft and round with wonder, and if he is wrong there is no time for her to correct him.
The sharp slap of the door draws both their attention, and when the stallion steps out August stiffens like an eager hound. He recognizes that silhouette, or at least wants too badly enough that it doesn’t matter. There is something familiar about the rage that flickers between them when the tiger’s-eyes meet his own, just for a moment. He swears he sees the man sneer -
Things happen very quickly, then. There is a flurry of movement that makes August shiver and shy like a racehorse at the gate, but what he sees, smudged by shadow, makes no sense to his adrenaline-surging mind. Warset is gone; there is a jungle-cat in her place, a deeper black than the rest of the night, and their quarry is running, a sudden drumbeat that echoes in his bloodstream.
August’s instincts tell him to flee, too, from that snarling predator, and have not quite accepted that the girl has become the beast; still, when his mind grasps for other explanations it comes up empty. And there is no time. So he just gnashes his teeth together and cries ”catch him”, then gathers his hindquarters and launches after the other stallion. As he plunges into the darkness, he only hopes not to feel claws sink into his own flesh.
@warset | <3
