[CW Animal gore]

You intended to help with the scout patrol that ventured out into the woods for intel on the horde. That does not happen. What happens instead is this. You meet with Colby some hours prior to your joint kidnapping plot to tie up nets, and you take the largest, sturdiest one with you and hook it up to a tree further into the woods. You clamber into the tree branches for extra protection, drop half your venison down into the trap area with a wet thud, and wait.

And wait, in the penetrating, all-consuming silence of nightfall.

They usually flock to food. Eric appreciates a thoughtful meal, especially one hunted for him – it's beyond you why, a good twenty minutes later, not a single creature has been attracted by the scent. Maybe there aren't any. Maybe you picked a bad spot. You descend, unwilling to waste the venison on the ants in the forest undergrowth, and as soon as your heel crushes a stick like the crack of a ringmaster's whip, you realise your mistake. Suddenly, this is no longer your circus. You're in the lion's circle, and you are the prey.

It is on you. The jagged cracks of broken fingernails dig themselves into your back through your clothes and the howl in the air could be yours or its. You swing blindly, wildly around, flailing with your elbows pulled out as tight as you can till you hit its ribcage with a sickening crunch. It falls away and you see a chunk of your shoulder go with it, blood glistening in droplets through the air along with a scrap off your sleeve, and you don't have time to think, to see anything more than its spotted, mottled, hairless scalp and the snarl of the mangled teeth in its mouth before you have to dive again, no time to grab your knife, knee-first into its ribcage, because its face would be safer for you but fatal, and you have yet to even speak to it, to ask it its name, to ask where it comes from, to ask if, if, if–

You hack away at one leg with your blunt knife till it separates from the body, and the creature is weakened by blood loss. Its sedated face swims in your vision – maybe you're weakened, too. No time to think about it. The pool of your blood glitters with starlight, and for a moment, safe in the soft, pained groans of your tied-up friend, you forget yourself, forget where you are, and stare, transfixed, at Dearr's light at your feet.

As you walk to your meeting-point with Colby, the path ahead of you is lit brightly by her. The body bumps against grass knolls and loose stones behind you, and you ignore it except when you pause to admire twilight reflected in stray dewdrops and the drip of your own blood from your arm onto the grass, and the sound of its breathing reminds you it is there at all. Once, you pause, transfixed, and turn around to check that its wrapped-up body is still moving, and it is not, not even twitching, no weak breaths to lift and lower the tarpaulin you wrapped it in.

“… are you okay?”

“Hrrrngh.”

“It's okay.” Your voice is eerie to you, in the silence. You try to sound warm, reassuring, to echo the warmth in your chest into your voice instead of letting your words warble and shake. “You're okay. I have you. I've got you, see?”

It groans, excruciating. Dearr was always concerned with placating her sister, you recall, words of comfort and acts to support them by. Tentatively, though not scared at all, you approach it, knowing that under the wraps his limbs must be quivering, ribs heaving with pain, breaths tense with fear, eyes fraught with panic. You rub your hand across where his side should be and find instead the hole left by his leg.

“I've got you. It's not far now.”

You drag him by the leftover leg to the hole in the ground where he will rest, speaking to him all the while. Colby is waiting for you. You ignore them, speaking instead to the Eric in your arms.

“There, made that space for you, see? It's comfortable. You'll be safe.”

You lift him carefully, pulling the wraps tenderly back over him where they've peeled to reveal the splinter in his pelvic joint and the leaking cross-section of his flesh and blood, eyeing Colby to make sure they're equally gentle with his legs, and lower him into Talamh's earth. You remember the meal, too, lowering the venison into the ditch behind him, but Eric stays limp. Colby's gift of a headless squirrel doesn't cause him to stir either, and you worry. He must be hungry, having walked all this way while ill. He has to eat. He can't go without food, he needs it to heal, and he needs– he needs–

Dearr answers you. The blue breast of a bird flies out of the darkness of the night sky into your grasp. You don't move, however – this gift is not for you, but for Eric. You watch with relief as he tears at his confines to seize it, tearing it from mid-air, and is at last both safe and fed. At last, he can be put to rest. At last, you can let him.

You slash the rope and the cage falls over him in the ditch. It's not a perfect fit – he's not central in the ditch, having half-clambered out of it to grasp the bird with breast now reddening as it bleeds out onto itself, and the cage snaps down midway up his back with a sickening snap that disturbs the peace of the night.

The spell breaks.

Colby's panting, having fallen to the floor.

The creature cannot be interrogated for it has stopped breathing and is dead. Dearr's gift is clutched so tightly in its hands that the bird's intestines are spilling from the hole in its chest.

You are alone and exposed in the night, and as Dearr turns the globe in her hand so the moon wanes and the sun waxes upon the horizon, you realise that you have been away from the encampment, unable to help them prepare for the horde.

{[]}