#Brier G. Donnell (OC)

[ostensiblywhump]

Hands and Eyes, Hearts and Hurts

Whumpuary day 3: choice | storm | black eye

Word count: 1,041

Content warnings: minor injury

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Thick-fingered hands tugged too hard on the knot of her bandages; Zoé cringed, flinching despite herself.

“Brier,” she breathed, less scolding and more pleading, nearly quiet enough to be lost in the rain.

Eyes looked up at her, poisonously bright green and casting strange light. Maybe it was the shadows that made Brier look otherworldly and striking, a wild thing aching to crack her human shell, starting from her slit pupils. Maybe it was just her expression, wide-eyed and empty, humanity fleeing what currently did not welcome it. Maybe it was just their general disarray, a haze of fatigue and pain settled over their senses, and only the dangerous stood out. Here this fey one crouched, clawed and fanged and all too ready to use that sharpness.

Brier simply looked down again, and her next tug at the knot was gentler.

Zoé’s exhale shuddered as it left her. “Brier,” she said again, and thunder rolled. “We need to ….”

Those hands left her bandaged arm. Zoé watched Brier’s fingers swipe into an opened container of salve; the antiseptic sting seared, as it was rubbed into the cuts all over her forearms and hands. Curse those bushes, and their spines.

“I know,” Brier said, low and stony.

“Karmic,” Zoé kept going, unable to stop. “Sor, Sim … those motherfu—”

“Don’ ge’ me in trouble with Bion,” Brier said, a dimple flickering into view as a corner of her lips twitched up. Her pupils dilated, just a bit, and it made the hair on the back of Zoé’s neck stop prickling.

“Ugh,” she mock-huffed. “I’ve been punched, cut, thrown into the bushes. I deserve sayin’ some bad words.”

The dimple fled into hiding; everything became eerily silent, even with the constant downpour. In hindsight, it was definitely the wrong thing to say, talking about the injuries dealt to her.

“So how will we do this?” Zoé said. “We saw … how many of them? Around thirty? Was hard to see, it was already gettin’ dark. We’ve gotten a few, Karmic and the others have captured some.” The sight of those thugs trapped against trees or muddy ground by webs of ice was hard to miss, and relieving to see, after they’d gotten split up. “We’ll have a nice chance of trackin’ the rest, with your ears an’ my vibration sense. If we use the cover of the trees an’ shado—mph!”

A hand, still sticky with salve, clapped over her mouth. Green eyes met hers, widening, too wide again, pupils paper-thin. Brier stared into her very being for a long moment, then her gaze flicked over to the right, unblinking. Zoé looked too, despite having no chance of hearing whatever Brier heard, and saw only the moist bark of the den under tree roots that Brier had carved out.

Ten seconds later, she heard it—a shorter interval than she expected, but the rain was probably dampening Brier’s ability to hear. Splashing, squelching footsteps, heavy and unsubtle but still a ways off. Coming closer—Brier had raised the dark clay of the dirt into walls high enough that they couldn’t be seen, but they weren’t the only people with heightened senses, and that wasn’t even mentioning magic sensing, or locator spells.

The dirt was wet enough to hold a rune well; slowly, Zoé’s hand lowered to the ground, ready to trace.

A long, deep groan threaded through her ears. Zoé sympathized. She was pretty displeased about trekking through a storm-damp forest, too. But then the groan got louder, went creaking; a cry rang out, and her eyes snapped over to the predator-still figure crouched before her.

Unbidden, her hand pressed flat to the ground, and she felt it: vibrations, the earth itself trembling as the trees woke up at the command of the one who asked them. The cry rose into a scream, then cut off at a muted boom that made her tremor in tandem with the clay and sent a chill down her spine.

The rain, alone in its concert once more. Light flickered; thunder rumbled in brief concerto.

The hand over her mouth finally unclasped its unyielding grip. Zoé sucked in air, hyperaware of the claw-tipped thumb skating over her cheek, her breaths ghosting over callused palm. Brier’s hand settled, careful, over the bone-deep ache surrounding Zoé’s eye, one that would be spectacularly purple-black when she next looked in a mirror, and with the softest pressure, rubbed over the developing bruise like her care and the remnant salve could help the blood dying under Zoé’s skin.

Zoé inhaled, unbearably loud in this hush. “You have issues with excessive force, even when you can see what you’re doin’ to your enemy,” she murmured. Warned.

Brier’s head slowly cocked to one side. Menacingly vivid, her eyes studied Zoé, all her hurts and her soul.

“I find it hard caring,” she said, ponderous, “about people that hurt my friends.”

Zoé’s breath left her in a hiss. “Well, start carin’,” she said, pressing forward into Brier’s grasp, no matter if it made her wince. “If we get someone killed—what are you doin’? Brier?”

Wood grated, as Brier’s hand left Zoé’s face, as she stood, looming over Zoé. The scent of petrichor and mud grew stronger; the walls rushed away to leave a gap large enough to walk through. One of Brier bare, dirty feet shuffled towards that gap, and Zoé lurched towards her.

“You can’t fight like that, Brier!” she said. “If you go out there, thinkin’ you don’ care if people die—!”

“Ward this place,” Brier said, stepping backwards. Raindrops pelted her, streaking dark spots over the last dry parts of her clothes. “Make it safe. I’ll bring Sor an’ Sim here. If anyone comes, an’ it’s not me or Karmic ….”

She didn’t smile. Brier didn’t know how to, when she was like this. She bared her teeth, all her canines on display, threatening and intent on what Zoé’s wards could do to someone that tripped them, and the pale gleam of those teeth was Zoé’s last glimpse of the outside world as the walls shot back up, sealing the way out.

Quiet. Brier’s footsteps didn’t make a sound. Zoé was alone with the rain and the roaring thunder.