Meadow

cw // blood mention

The giant's voice was sonorous, reverberating like thunder in Boone's chest, but it fell on deaf ears. Boone gaped at him wordlessly, his eyes wild and glazed as he beheld the beast in the dim light of twilight. In his mind it was several years prior; the meadow had become a wide valley blanketed in snow, the vast shell of white marred by shining patches of deep crimson all around them. Boone looked into the giant's mouth, where condensation billowed in clouds, and saw the blood dripping from between his lips, staining his teeth red. Hot, stinking copper burned in Boone's nostrils.

He lunged.

With teeth and hooves he raged at the hard wall of muscle before him, his movements as erratic as they were fierce; sometimes it seemed almost that he was reaching for something—an ear, a throat, a leg—that was not there, and his teeth clacked on empty air. Then there was a blow to his body—he could not have said where—and the dawn sky was tilting before his eyes, his head hitting the earth with an impact that rattled his bones.

He gasped, spitting blood; he'd bitten his own tongue, but he was back in the present again with a huge stranger looking down on him. The snow was gone; the only smells were of sweat and dirt. The meadow was utterly silent. He rolled onto his feet, snorting dust from his nostrils and swallowing against the thick, copper taste in his mouth. He backed away, every breath aching in his chest. His white legs trembled with the effort of holding him upright.

"All right, you made your point," he said with a grimace. "Bloody big bastard, ain't you?"