Someone else was out here. Halo doesn’t know who, and his nose is working overtime. It’s an effort to distinguish where he is in relation to the smells, how fresh they are, how everything makes itself known inside his head. Things are strange. He doesn’t want to focus on the fact his world is silent, but it’s hard not to. There’s such a big portion missing, how can he function? How can he cope. Easy. He’d do it easily. He’d thrive. That was the part that wasn’t as easy, wasn’t as fundamental, wasn’t as… right. At least Halo had some fight in him. That was what mattered.
The creature doesn’t realize there’s someone else here until it’s moments too late. His head whips around to catch the last portion of the words on the black creature’s lips. It takes him an extra beat to process, as she speaks more quickly than Delya and Dimitri do-- she speaks the way someone normally would. There’s no slowly and clearly for him, this is the real world. One extra heartbeat, and that’s all, before he’s fighting to form words on his own lips. Bright eyes, head cocking to one side, following along as the woman speaks. Yes, he’d follow her words. For now he has to hang onto them in an effort to catch them all.
“This was my home, before.” The words don’t taste quite right, but Halo isn’t bothered by that. The speaking thing has been a battle, and he would win it. Though the words lack color and flavor and all the things that made speaking truly good, he was getting there. It was enough to light a fire inside his body and bring him back to earth. Bring him back to standing before the scarred shewolf, looking her in the face. He understands that she’s larger, he understands that she has an importance to herself, and that draws him in. In this land, this land that was his home in the famed before, she was thriving. He needed her to teach him how.
“They’ve moved on, but I want it to be my home again.” Though the idea of being in one place for too long baffles him, Halo is drawn in by it. Before he can stop himself, the words are out. They hang before his muzzle, and if he could suck them back in, maybe he would. Maybe he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter so much now. He’d be his own man, what a thought. It was Halo’s first step toward growing up. halo
my clothes are still soaking wet from your brother’s tears |