Meadow

Whatever peace the winter-hushed world had held was gone now, lost, twisted into something dark and sinister. In the brief silence that preceded his words, Jaskier heard the harsh rattle of his own breath, the rapid drumming of his own heart, and the approaching hoofbeats that echoed its erratic rhythm. Hissing his warning, the buckskin fell back to his nameless companion’s side, and from there instinct seized control of his quivering body. From there, the less-important functions of speech and social courtesy were struck from his brain, and his slender body pressed against the red mare’s with no regard for her personal space. Safe; they were safe as long as they stuck together. There was strength in numbers, and a measure of security in combining their senses. More eyes to watch, more nostrils to smell, more ears to— What is?

Lips curling back in an equine snarl, the striped stallion whipped his head toward the sound of that voice before recognition stilled him. The palomino mare was not the danger that he could still smell, no more than the golden woman (Enya, he knew her, even though his fear-blanked mind showed no signs of that familiarity) who arrived after her, or the smoke-and-ash creature who was last to join them. As they crowded into the meadow, bodies and scents and voices swirled around Jaskier, but he took no more notice of them than the chill that had crept down to his bones. None of it mattered. When it came to the grey mare’s suggestion— of flight, of trying to outrun the death that stalked them— there was no choice at all, at least not for him.

No matter what came, he would stand. He would fight.

The white-flecked chestnut stood her ground as well, and the electricity he could feel beneath her copper-red skin told Jaskier conveyed everything that he missed in her words. Because at the same moment that she spoke, his ears pitched forwards to catch the soft, rasping sound of a growl, and his gaze caught the faintest flash of taupe fur moving through the brush. Then the shadows just beyond the tight cluster they had formed erupted, leapt forward to consume them. And the wary-eyed male— still coiled and waiting for such an attack— exploded into motion as well.

Thrusting his body forward, the buckskin’s dark hooves sent a spray of snow into the air; a spray that resembled the white-capped waves of his home. The coyote had leapt for the red mare, but Jaskier lunged between them, twisting so that his shoulder would meet the furred figure mid-leap. Snapping teeth missed the curve of his neck by inches, and then the creature was tumbling backwards and downwards, snarling as it went. And where the stallion might have ended its threat with a single stomp, he froze instead, the warm wall of his body turning to stone. Sticky flecks of saliva clung to the skin where his neck ended and his shoulder began, and the sickly-sweet scent overwhelmed him, suffocated him.

Shuddering as the courage fled from him and the fear of his own mortality returned, Jaskier jerked away from the snow-covered wraith that scrabbled to rise again.

And the struggles of his own heart to continue beating were just as desperate.