Even with the sound of the falling stone still reverberating in her ears, she watched as the monster locked his eyes on her face, his growl rippling through the cooling air. Then they were both silent for a long moment, calculating the risks of their next possible moves, taking each other in. She eyed him anxiously, face otherwise neutral. Fathom had this crazy idea that she didn’t want to seem weak or afraid, even with the situation being what it was: one wolf already dead, his killer caught mangling the body. The kill in and of itself wasn’t strange to her. It was the mutilation of the corpse. The victor bathing in his opponent’s blood.
The stranger broke the silence, his voice heavy with the promise of pain...if she talked. She blinked at him, at first more confused than threatened. This isn’t an assassination, then? He isn’t the winner of a battle or the survivor of an ambush? What...? Her eyes went somewhat wider, and she caught a breath in her throat. This was for fun, she concluded, misunderstanding as the ignorant can. She couldn’t know about the blood and what it meant to him. Maybe it was better that way. At least she could understand murder.
“And, uh, what was his crime?” she asked, voice steadier than she expected. She stole a glance at the body going cold beneath his bloody chest. “Did he surprise you, too?”
Brave talk. But there were no ranks here, and she had never been a lowly creature. She didn’t shrink back when he moved toward her, instead rising to her full height - what there was of it. She kept her eyes on him, unwilling to break eye contact. She steeled her resolve, pushing out anything that wasn’t the stranger in front of her; she was more stone than wolf. This was a key moment. She couldn’t afford mistakes. Fathom could die here. And she knew that he might try to kill her; but she wanted him to know that it would be one hell of a fight.
| 4 years | Homeless | Quite Alone | No Young |
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