#I can clean this skull I found on the side of the road and honor it’s memory and that’s what matters

[blackberryhound]

Quick shoutout to taxidermists and those who work with deceased animals whether it be spiritually or otherwise. I can see the love and care put into every cleaned skull or mounted pelt and it really shows how much one cares about the animal.

[partyinthemysterymachine]

Harry + betrayed (looks at a&s au stuff like :3c)

looks at you like 🔪

===

Every time the mug came out of the steaming hot dishwasher, Harry clasped it in both hands. The ceramic was always scalding, and his palms always threatened to blister. Clouds reeking of dishwasher detergent lifted and swept over his forearm, humid as a summer’s stifling rain, its pungency sickening his heart. 

He hated to wash this mug. 

Bright and early at six o’clock every morning, Harry made coffee. It steeped dark and bitter, just how they liked it. The first pour went into his mug; the second filled his own. Then both were taken to the small, round table in the corner of their kitchen. Harry set the mug down on the wood itself to the right of the round, rattan woven placemats they’d found in a bargain bin at Williams-Sonoma. Harry’s coffee went on the placemat itself, edging the rim, at his left.

How charming it was to have their mugs across from each other like that. He always liked how they seemed to be having a conversation through the coffee’s dissipating flames of white steam. As they drained their caffeine and burned their throats, the heat shocking their stomachs, they’d talk. 

Talking didn’t necessarily mean words were used. No, words weren’t his forte, though he relished every sound that rolled off his tongue. He spoke with his face and through his hands, and if Harry ever had his way, he’d spend the hours morn to midnight simply gazing at his face.

Two hours later, Harry stood and took the cold, untouched mugs to the sink. Down the drain went the wasted coffee, dumped out at the same time. A swish of water from the faucet did a quick and fine job of cleaning them out, and Harry’s went, dripping, onto the counter. Then he ran the water again to piping hot, abusing skin rough and chapped from this daily ritual of cleaning, cleaning out his ice cold coffee, cleaning, cleaning out the dots of mold he’d let grow for two weeks because he couldn’t let that go, cleaning, cleaning out that damn spot, that damn spot, that damn spot.

The mug was as hot as it was when it came out of the dishwasher, and Harry clasped it in both hands. His teeth tried to send their roots into his skull with his jaw clamped like that, and he wished his tongue, sucked hard to the roof of his mouth and tastebuds rough as sandpaper, would swell and choke him. Every time it didn’t, which was every morning, every single morning for the past three years, Harry called it betrayal.

His kiss held tender on the warm rim. It was the last place his lips had laid where Harry could kiss him, for he couldn’t kiss his own cheek. Like every morning, his eyes slipped closed and he thought of their daily coffee date at their kitchen table. Autumn was in full golden, fiery bloom. People swarmed to Vermont to lose their breath to the vast garden of nature’s heavenly, untamed wildfire that never burned. 

Every single fucking morning it was autumn again, the mug had been scorching hot, then chilly, the phantom pressure of his kiss lingered on his cheek, and Harry tried to kiss him back too on ceramic that had been the last tangible thing to experience his lips.

Today, he set the mug down on the counter alongside the one in its puddle. The water brimmed its mismatched mate immediately and would leave an incomplete circle in its wake after Harry would take it up and wrap it in a soft towel. That puddle would dry on its lonesome over the course of as many minutes; Harry wrapped up his personal mug, too.

Remaining coffee got poured and locked in a thermos. They were placed in the coveted seat beside the driver’s - shotgun! one’s supposed to yell to reserve it for themselves - tucked safely behind a plain old box. 

The ignition chittered on. Rancid boomed and rattled the Jeep’s speakers. Harry absently wiggled the shiny, custom-made Magic Eight Ball fortune teller stick shift knob. He glanced down. ‘It is decidedly so,’ promised the triangular face washed behind blue, its text pressed on the circular window. 

A draw; and exhale. The YJ Wrangler shifted into gear, easing back out of the driveway, Harry’s arm slung around the shotgun seat and head turned to watch over his shoulder as he safely maneuvered to their personal gravel road leading to and from their remote, comfortable Vermont hideaway.

It’d probably take five, six hours, give or take, to get to Maine. He was looking forward to their coffee date. Five out of the seven days of the week Harry drove to Maine to hang out on the shore of Toluca Lake. Coffee was served into their mugs; he kept his at his side, and his tucked into the sand and mud at the water’s breach. 

Sometimes he’d talk, update his husband on his books, their daughter, the latest news that did and didn’t matter. Other times he’d sit in silence, listening and watching the new face of a man he loved. Harry was there in rain, sleet, and snow. He’d all but frozen his ass off before out there and sweated buckets in the heat. But they had their spot, and that’s where he’d always sit.

Silent Hill rested to the south. They took a vacation there once. Harry hates how it looks out across Toluca. Take your fucking eyes somewhere else, he regularly thinks. Don’t fucking look at him.

It oversees. One day, Harry’s promised five days out of the seven in the week, he’s going to tear that town asunder by his own bare hands. 

Tomorrow might be that day. Harry rises to his feet. It is decidedly so. He fetches the Jeep’s constant tenant for the last three years. It is decidedly so. 

“I hope you liked your coffee, honey,” he says to the lake lapping at his boots as he wades into snapping cold. “So, I asked the eight ball if I’d see you today,” Harry Mason offhandedly tells his husband residing in the lake. “Guess what it said? ‘It is decidedly so.’ Take that as you will. I know you know what I’ve planned to do, honeylove. Don’t get up in my tits about it,” warns the older man, now appropriately submerged mid-chest. “I’m not gonna do it today. Doesn’t feel right. But I thought it’d be nice to see you, anyway.”

“So you’re wondering why I brought the box in with me? Well, I’m glad you asked! For one, I fixed it up and made it waterproof,” he smirks, cradling it in his arm and popping it open. “And two.. c’mon, now. You know I’d lose these if I didn’t keep ‘em in here.”

Two pendants, no bigger than his thumbnail, each on their own thin chain, dangled just skimming the water’s surface. Two pendants, amber and glinting, somehow even in the thick grey mist rolling in from Silent Hill. “Check these out. I got ‘em made a few months ago and I’ve just now had the balls to bring ‘em out. It’s because the eight ball said I’d see you today. So.. here. One of them’s for you. I figure you can make yours glow in there, firefly. You have a knack for lightin’ up the dark.”

Harry chuckles, wagging his head back and forth, mocking himself. “Yeah, yeah, mushy, whatever, I’m a dork. Thbhtghbh. What’re you gonna do, divorce me? Shoulda thought about that before you went fishing, babe.” He collects the chains and their sculpted fireflies into his fist. One kiss is enough for both. Then he smiled, looked into the lake, and felt comforted by the thought that that sweet, pale man with yellow wheat field hair was watching him.

Projection is a very real, very psychedelic thing, for sometimes, Harry thinks he can see his face.

The water sways around his wrist. He gazes into Toluca Lake and waits, and hopes that the magic of the eight ball is true.

Will I get to see James today?

It is decidedly so.

If he were to do it all over again from the top, do you think he’d still do it this way?

It is decidedly so.

Does he know I love him?

It is decidedly so.

Does he know I’ll never forgive him?

It is decidedly so.

When the day comes, I’ll kill that motherfucker myself. I dunno how it’s gonna happen, but it’s gonna happen. Fucking asshole. He knows that, right?

….

.. right?

“I gotta go soon, babe,” Harry murmurs to his husband, James Mason (formerly Sunderland). “I’m gonna leave one with you. I’ll be back tomorrow. If you wanna trade, we can. Fuck, I don’t wanna get a fuckin’ yeast infection out here,” he gripes, turning to wade out of the lake. “Seriously, James. Not like a yeast infection wouldn’t stop me from comin’ out here but you bet your ass you’re gonna hear all fucking about it, because it will be your fault, and I fucking hate you, so goddamn fucking much, honeylove.”

Harry makes it out to the shore. He takes the box to its honored seat in shotgun! James’s coffee gets thrown into Toluca; he pours his out where he’d sat. Then the mason with rusted tools scans his exhausted, old, heavily lined eyes across the scenic lake where an orange (rare, so rare, extremely rare and mean everything) firefly swims. He’ll never get over the betrayal. It doesn’t matter if he understands it. It doesn’t matter that he’s (and he’s) been waiting for it long before they’d met. 

After all those thousands of years of looking for each other, this is how he chooses to betray him: like Judas, with a kiss.

A kiss on a ceramic mug that is going to be washed again today, and tomorrow morning, and will scald his hands.

A kiss, a kiss, a kiss from a man whose lips promised I love you with a simple brush. Lips Harry hasn’t felt in three years; his heart can break even more.

Will I ever get to kiss him again? Harry asks his stick shift as he drives towards his six (give or take) hour journey home to Vermont.

It is decidedly so, replies the eight ball.

Will it be soon? inquires a widowed man, widowed for the second time.

It is decidedly so, soothes the inky window.

When?

Turn right off this street, guides the knob too small to say so. Fifty miles out. It won’t take long.

Huh? I can barely see with all this fog. Where am I going?

To see James. 

James? What’s he doing all the way out here?

Waiting for you.

.. waiting for me? I’ll get to see him again?! Jeez.. damn, I’ve got a splitting headache all of a sudden .. fifty miles to Silent Hill.. hrm, seems farther than I remember, but.. 

He’s waiting for you.

.. forgot to clean up the coffee at home.. m’sure it’ll be fine.. Cheryl’ll be over at some point.. heh.. can’t believe he wants to spend our anniversary in Silent Hill.. fuckin’ weirdo.. a vow renewal? And he calls me disgusting..

He’s waiting.

I’m comin’. I’ll be there soon, James. It’s gonna be alright. I can’t wait to see you. We’re gonna have a great vacation, just the two of us, aren’t we, sweetheart?  

It is decidedly so.

[absoluteyoongit]

I really love your angst style and was wondering if you’ve heard of or would be willing to do a Drabble based on a hanahaki au? If so , possibly with jin , but only if you’d like😊💕

you marry someone else// hanahakiau // seokjin x fem!reader // angst // wc: 1.5k // warnings: MCD, this is sad // barely edited // you wanted angst and you got angst. (i honestly had to look up this au so i hope i did it some justice// thanks @breadoffoxy for reading this real quick

~

Roots dig deep into the ground, strengthening the hold flowers have, letting them grow strong. 

The roots in Jin’s lungs were deep. Day after day he could feel the flowers bloom; he remembered when he coughed up the first petal.

He doesn’t regret anything though.

You were happy and in love with someone else. Of course, he knew you loved him, just not in the way he loved you.

The two of you had been together since you were in diapers. Jin thought it was a cliche that he fell in love with his childhood best friend but he couldn’t help it. You were everything he could ever want and more, he knew though it wasn’t the same for you.

He remembered the day he met your now-fiancé Jung Hoseok. you had been dating him for a couple weeks before introducing him to your best friend. The smile you wore that day could not compare to any that was ever directed towards him. He could also see the looks Hoseok gave back to you, and Jin knew it was mutual.

Seeing you happy was all that Jin needed so he decided to never tell you about his feelings. It would ruin everything and it wouldn’t help his situation either, not when he could see you already falling in love with Hoseok.

Four years later and now he here he was sitting on a stool with your mother while you tried on wedding dresses.

“Hey, what do you guys think about this one?” 

Your voice snapped him out from his stupor as you exited the dressing room. He smiled seeing you, like always. 

“I kinda think it’s too tight around the butt area.” You twirled around, looking in the mirror as the dress bellowed at your feet. Your palms resting on your butt as you gazed disheartened at it.

“I think it looks good honey but it’s your dress, you should feel comfortable,” your mother mused. 

You hummed, “What do you think, Jin?” Turning to gaze at him, you cocked your head. 

Jin just shook his head and smiled, “I just want you to be comfortable. I know that you’re going to want to get out of that dress as soon as possible so you can match your man on the dance floor,” Your grin widens, knowing Jin was right, “So, that being said I think you should pick a dress that you can get out of quickly.”

“You're so right Jin, who needs a really frilly dress anyway when the real show is later,” you wiggled your eyebrows at him, "Let me go look at some other ones." 

Jin sat quietly, watching as your smile brightened the room. He tried to smile like he always did when he saw you but the aching pain in his chest only brought him a somber look on his face. It was getting harder and harder to accept the truth. Jin’s days were numbered.

Jin woke up with a gasp, his chest heaving as he struggled for breath. He sat up slowly, his body was covered in a cold sweat. His breath was ragged, the sound of him wheezing filled the otherwise silent room. 

He shuddered and then a violent hack racked his body. He felt his throat constricting as he continued to shake from his cough. He gasped and finally expelled the cause of his fit; several white flower petals littered the space in front of him but what caused him more concern was the splashed with drops of blood. 

The painful episode may have ended but the heaviness of Jin’s breath was worrisome. His eyes were wide as he tried to focus on the petals before him. This wasn’t the first time he woke up violently like this; it wasn’t even exclusive to the night when he was alone. 

It had become more apparent as the months counted down to the date of your wedding that his condition got worse. He would tell you about what was happening to him if only to be able to say goodbye, but he couldn’t risk your happiness. You were about to marry someone you loved more than anything and Jin was prepared to die for that happiness because he loved you. 

Jin loved you so much it was killing him. 

It was three days until your wedding. He desperately wanted to make it till then but the amount of blood he coughed up and the struggle it was to breathe made the truth so clear. Jin was dying. 

He needed to collect himself for the wedding. You had asked him jokingly to be your maid of honor since there was no one in the world besides Hoseok that you would rather have at your side. Jin would not and could not disappoint you. He would rather die than be the reason for your sadness. 

Jin shook his head, trying to calm himself. He had to last a couple more days and with that Jin cleaned up and did the best he could to fall asleep again.

Jin knew he would die today. There was no escape. The wedding was today and he knew the moment you would kiss the groom would be the last straw. It would crush his body and spirit.

The coughing fits got worse, peaking last night where Jin could not get any sleep at all. He was kept awake from the thoughts of you, his death, and the constant pressure in his lungs. 

Still, here he was, sitting in his finest suit with a flower tucked in his lapel, the same color as the rest of the bridesmaid dresses, waiting for you to finish getting ready.

"Hey, Jinnie? I'm ready, what do you think?" 

Jin looked up at the sound of your voice and his mouth dropped open in a gasp. He stood up with great effort, hoping you didn't notice and walked over to you. "Y/n— I–," Jin paused, taking a once over of your image again, trying to commit it to memory, "You look beautiful—just perfect as always."

Your eyes started watering as you saw the sad but genuine smile on your best friend's face, "I love you Jin, so much," you whispered, leaning up to capture him in a hug. 

Jin brought his arms around your back, surrounding you in his presence. "I love you too, so much," he whispered back. Jin's eyes teared up as he rested his head against your shoulder. This was it. The last time he was going to be with you. he could feel the aching in his chest. The pain was becoming unbearable as he tried to control his breathing around you. 

"Please know that I will always love you and that I will always be here for you." 

Jin knew that was partly a lie but he couldn't help the words spilling out of him. He would be there in any way he could after he died, whether that be a guardian angel or just a comforting memory. 

The two of you stayed in each other's embrace for what felt like hours but was probably no more than 30 seconds. 

"Y/n? It's time," your mother entered, squealing and breaking the moment the two of you were sharing, "I'll just wait outside." just like that you and Jin were alone again. 

Jin's hand found themselves on your cheeks as he stared into your eyes once more. Something about his gaze unsettled you, like something was wrong but you couldn't put your finger on it. You resigned to talk about it with him later, after all, today was your special day. 

Jin's gaze relaxed as he closed his eyes, leaning forward to place a lingering kiss on your forehead. You smiled at him, happy and content from that chaste action. He matched yours and released you, "Go on, He's waiting for you." 

Your smile turned blinding as you hiked up your dress and walked out the room, confident that Jin would be there in the audience to support you. 

Jin watched as your figure exited from his view for the last time. The moment the door closed behind you Jin collapsed, heaving and coughing heavily from trying to suppress his condition for so long. 

The tears that Jin kept away flowed freely now as he tried to regain any composure. He needed to leave; he did not want you to find him like this. He wanted to at least be there for the ceremony but there was no more time. 

With the last of his strength, Jin pushed himself off the floor and stumbled out of the church, careful to not be seen by anyone. His vision blurred as he shuffled on the sidewalk. He just needed to get away.

He did not know how long he walked for but he came across a patch of wildflowers on the side of the road. Oh, the irony he thought. He swayed towards the flowers, tripping as he stepped off the sidewalk into the bed. 

He felt his throat closing up as he turned over onto his back, staring up at the sky. He tried focusing on the clouds, looking for shapes in them like he used to do with you. The pressure in the back of his skull became unbearable as the roots in his lungs dug deeper and the flowers in his throat bloomed. 

He gazed unfocused as he gasped for the last time with one thing on his mind...

you.

[tysonrunningfox]

Toothless: Return to the Black Pony of Second Chances: Part 7

This is fast but also I am practicing. 

Ao3

I didn’t expect Astrid to actually come find me the next time she has to go into town. 

Honestly, I expected her to pretend that we never ran into each other in the barn.  And she basically did, barring the fact that she now critiques how I pet Toothless at least once a day. 

I picked his feet.  He didn’t like it at all, and I wish I’d spent longer practicing with Stormfly.  I’d risk going into Stormfly’s stall when Astrid isn’t there, except I already feel endangered by the fact I’m aware of her summer school status.  I guess Fishlegs is still alive, but also, he’s been on chicken coop duty for the last three mornings, so I don’t want to trade. 

Anyway, I didn’t expect an invitation to town when Astrid found me after morning chores. 

She looks the best and the scariest that any teenage girl has ever looked with mud smudged under her jaw and in her hair.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen her clean, or not since church lunches a decade ago, because by the time I’m up she’s already halfway through her pre-morning set of chores.  Seeing her clean would be like seeing Heather without dark makeup and chipped nail polish.  Maybe mud and cow poop is just the Wyoming version. 

I don’t expect Heather to text and I don’t know how to feel about that.  I don’t really want her to when Astrid might get nosy again. 

“Ok, can I trust you to drop the stack of orders in the back at the post office?”  She looks up abruptly, opening the truck door and climbing halfway out before I can even attempt to answer.  There are muddy handprints on the back of her thighs and hay sticking out of her back pocket and I look away at the stack of envelopes in the backseat.  

“Do I look like I’m six?”  

“You act like it,” she counts a stack of money in the envelope she pulled the list out of, frowning a tight frown that would make me feel bad for her if she weren’t always on my ass.  “Meet me in Gobber’s store when you’re done.”  

“You trust me to cross the street all by myself, it’s an honor, Master Hofferson—”

“And don’t talk to anyone in there,” she cuts across me without looking, “we need them to like us in case we need any favors.”  

“I’m glad you reminded me because I was going to ask each and every individual about their cows.”  

She shakes her head and walks off without saying anything else and I hate that more than anything.  I’m pretty sure only one person has ever been done with me before and that was my mom when she drove me to the airport because she couldn’t handle me anymore, but that took a hard-fought decade.  Astrid’s past that point in less than three weeks, her steps smooth and unaffected as she opens the door to Gobber’s store, picking up a basket inside.  

I do what she says and go to the post office, dropping the stack of bills and packages on the counter and waiting for the man behind it to check each one for proper postage.  

“Stoick’s boy, right?”  He asks, checking an address like it’s his job and not someone else’s problem.  

“Uh, yeah.”  

“Heard you were back for the summer,” he looks up and grins slightly, “you don’t happen to remember me, do you?  I babysat you once, you were barely knee high.”  

“I…sorry, I don’t,” I look back at Gobber’s store, hoping Astrid is coming out after efficiently getting everything we need and giving me an excuse to exit this conversation.  

I miss anonymity.  Already.  I miss notoriety being a choice even more.  Here everyone stares because I’m Stoick’s son and because they all remember the accident and because I’m new in town and that practically makes me a bigger tourist attraction than the world’s biggest cow turd or whatever passes for interesting around here.  I could drop my pants on the side of the road and if anyone was around to see it they’d just pass it off on the city ruining me, when really it’s an almost insufferable lack of self control only made worse by the fact Astrid sees me as a responsibility to keep busy and out of trouble.  And the fact is that when everything is boring, trouble is obvious.  

“Bucket,” he taps the side of his head and it clangs like skulls don’t, “old army nickname, you might remember that at least.”  

“Oh yeah,” I lie, because the only thing worse than people acting like my leg doesn’t make me different is acting like I should feel the same, “I bet I got a kick out of that.”  

“All the kids do,” he finally drops the packages in a bin behind the counter, “I’ll let your father know if he gets anything else in, maybe I’ll see you again when you come to pick it up.”  

“Yeah, sure.  Maybe.”  I feel like I’m supposed to say goodbye because it doesn’t matter what I do, it all feels rude in some way.  Like I’m in a minefield of backcountry etiquette laser triggers and tripping one means one of those bored, withering looks from Astrid.  And probably an assignment to clean the next most disgusting poop to what she already made me clean.  

“See you around!”  Bucket does wave and I sort of raise my hand as I’m opening the door and stumbling out into the wind-blown parking lot.  

There’s an honest to god tumbleweed against the tire of the truck and I sigh, opening the door to Gobber’s store and flinching at the loud bell that jingles and announces me.  Astrid and two guys I don’t recognize all look over and she’s the first to look away.  One of the guys is younger and behind the counter, leaning on his elbows like he needs to see Astrid’s list.  The other is older and the first person I’ve seen wearing anything but filthy jeans since I crossed the state border.  It’s just slacks and a button up shirt and tie, but it stands out as much as the fact that he’s the kind of attractive that only appears in proximity to girls as hot as Astrid.  

That’s how it always was with Heather, at least, the zone ten feet around her in all directions instantaneously populated with GQ rejects and aspiring young actors or influencers or whatever other title inspires a guy to wake up and do a thousand crunches.  

Astrid glares at me as I approach and I almost want to warn them both, like yes, she’s unreasonably pretty, but at what cost?  Don’t they realize they’d have to deal with her personality too?  And that she snoops and bosses and if you’re ever randomly, instantaneously better than her at something she seethes about it for literal weeks.  

“I mean, normally, shipping on that would be an extra twenty bucks to get it here by Friday, but I think I can take that off as a discount,” the kid behind the counter types something into the geriatric computer and it whirs ominously, “for you, especially.”  

The man in the tie looks irritated.  

“Thanks Gustav,” Astrid flips through her list, apparently clueless and not even looking at me as I walk up to stand next to her, “did you get the mail sent?”  

“Yep, Bucket clanged his head for me and everything.”  

“Mr. Haddock’s son, right?”  The man who is even more clearly not a boy when he opens his mouth and literally talks in a British accent like this all isn’t already ridiculous holds his hand out and I shake it, trying not to wince at that unnecessarily bruising grip.  “I heard you were coming back to town.  I’m Eret.”  

“Back to town?  It doesn’t quite sound like you’re from town.”  

“He’s with the bank,” Astrid says flatly, setting her list on the counter and looking back at me, “and you actually saw Bucket put the envelopes in the bin?  He didn’t just leave them on the counter?”

“I think I know how to mail things.”  It feels oddly like being chastised by my dad in front of people, and more than that, people who apparently don’t like me just for standing reasonably close to Astrid and talking to her.  

“You’re lucky to have Astrid watching out,” Eret, the mysteriously well-dressed British banker man who is honestly reading like a glitch in the Wyoming matrix, says like he wants nothing more than for Astrid to break that unusually bland even for her expression.  “I don’t know how anything would get done without her around.”  

“It wouldn’t,” the guy behind the counter, Gustav, apparently, agrees, giving me a similar glare.  “She practically keeps inventory around here.”  

I feel vaguely like taking off my once white sock and waving it like a flag of surrender.  

“That’s because you don’t,” Astrid rolls her eyes and she’s either mean to everyone or literally so clueless I shouldn’t be mad for her telling everyone that Heather is my girlfriend because maybe she actually thinks that.  

It’s a little weird to see, honestly, because I’ve seen Heather surrounded by hopeful guys dozens if not hundreds of times and she always knows.  She always looks at them differently and ends up with something from the experience, like a date or a free meal or tickets to something impossible.  But Astrid is just standing there, her usual angry, uptight self, like she doesn’t realize what’s going on at all.  

It might be halfway endearing, like all that hard-working self-sacrifice is actually the result of nothing going to her head, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s practically impossible.  She has to know, she has to have some sort of opinion about it.  

Either that or she’s literally incapable of any opinion but annoyance and unattainable expectations.  

“So, ah…” Eret pauses and looks at me like he’s just remembering I’m unfortunately still here.  I know that face too, the one where he’s trying to tell if I’m just incomprehensibly lucky or if I’m following Astrid around like a lost little duckling.  

The answer is neither, and I almost want to tell them that.  I am merely a referee and witness who will probably be on their side at the trial.  

“Hiccup.”  

“Hiccup, right, how long will you be around?”  

“Hopefully just the summer.”  I try to sound bored.  I succeed.  Astrid digs into her pocket for the stack of bills my dad gave her and counts them carefully.  

“That’s what I said, now I’ve been here a year,” he says like he’s claiming some sort of badge over me and I take a step away from Astrid, like proximity is enough to re-state the disinterest my expression obviously isn’t yelling loud enough.  

“I’ve been here fifteen,” Gustav says smugly, counting Astrid’s stack of twenties, “and you’re a little short.  Sorry.”  

“Here,” she reaches over the counter and pulls a pack of socks out of one of the paper bags, “how’s that?”  

“I can just delete the socks from the inventory, you know, it’s not like anyone counts it around here.”  Gustav looks worried, for a second, glaring at Eret about something other than standing too close to probably the only girl who’s going to come in here today.  

“Like I’m going to let you get away with that,” Astrid scoffs, and I don’t think I’ve heard her closer to joking.  It’s not close, by any means, but it’s better.  Less wooden and bossy and proper and it makes me uncomfortable how much it shocks me.  

“True,” Gustav sighs, “five dollars and twenty-five cents is your change.”  

“Thank you,” Astrid puts it right back into the envelope from my dad instead of pocketing it, like five dollars or a pack of socks matter in the long run and I don’t know the last time I’ve felt more out of place, which is really saying something.  “I’m sure I’ll be back like…tomorrow, with how much we run out of things.”  

“I’m not working again until Thursday, if you could like…wait,” Gustav smiles.  I feel for the kid, because at fifteen I sort of was him, thinking Heather would turn around and look if I was there reliably enough.  

And I don’t know Astrid, not in any of the ways that matter, but I also know that giant, attractive, misplaced, well-dressed Brits almost always take precedence over kids willing to steal socks or gum or banana rum shooters from the corner store.  

“Right,” Astrid picks up one of the bags and practically drops it into my arms before I’m ready and picks up the other two herself, “we have to get back, the last couple of cows should be calving any minute and I left Ruffnut all alone with them.”  

“Sounds serious,” Eret moves like he’s going to open the door for her,  but she kicks it open before he can, rolling her eyes when I barely slip through before it closes.  

She buckles the jug of orange juice into the backseat so that it doesn’t fall on the bumpy road and I’m surprised that I know that, that something weird and pastoral and every day is sticking into my mind.  The same way that I know the name of three or four different brushes that all look almost the same and I know how to check Toothless’s gums for how hydrated he is.  

Maybe this is how someone comes here for the summer and ends up staying longer.  

Astrid is buckling her seatbelt when Eret comes back out of the store and practically jogs to her side of the car.  She frowns before rolling down the window, and maybe there’s something to the absolutely, untouchably frigid act because he sticks that package of socks through.  

“Here.”  

“What are you doing?”  

“They were seven dollars, just take them, it’s the least I can do.”  He says it like there’s some veiled importance, like in his year of study he’s learned that packages of calf-length women’s athletic socks are important to Wyoming mating rituals.  Astrid crosses her arms.  

“I’m not a charity case.”  She turns the key in the ignition and jams the truck into reverse like she’s actually going to peel out of the parking lot and take his arm with her.  And as much as I’m inherently uncomfortable in this situation, I’m more uncomfortable being an accomplice to a crazy person literally running someone’s anachronistic, dress shoe clad foot over, so I hold out my hand.  

“I know where her dresser is.”  

He frowns.  He tosses them to me anyway and I actually manage to catch them.  He lingers for a second longer while she refuses to look at him and then pats the side of the truck before walking away.  

“That took longer than it was supposed to,” she rolls up her window as soon as she’s back on the road, turning the radio up a few clicks like attacking me with some ridiculous song about stomping in a corn field is going to keep me from asking questions.  

“That’s what happens when you stop to flirt for fifteen minutes.”  

“What?”  She looks at me, half confused and half her normal accusatory.  

“Come on, even you aren’t that clueless,” I toss the package of socks into the backseat with everything else, “Mr. Statutory and ‘I’ll embezzle for you especially’ Gustav.”  

“Embezzle?”  She frowns, turning too fast onto a dirt road and spewing dust up behind us.  It’s the same sort of confidence she has with Stormfly, like she’s not actually doing anything dangerous because she’s done exactly this so many times that the boundaries are more like brick walls to her.  I don’t think I’ve done anything that repetitively ever and no wonder she’s insane.  “Gustav’s just a kid, and the only kid who would let Gobber hire him instead of making more money on a ranch somewhere.”  

“Because he wants to talk to you, obviously,” I don’t know why I’m doing this, it feels more like advice than an argument, so I turn it back around, “just like the attractive British guy who, of course, would only brave the tiny square of this state that’s directly next to you.”  

“Eret works for the bank.”  

“Yeah, and you have so much banking business to take care of, right, that’s why he’s buying you socks, to win responsibility for your assets.”  

She grits her teeth, signaling again even though there’s no one around and turning left onto another dirt road I don’t think I’ve been on.  

“You really shouldn’t talk about things you don’t understand.”  

“Yeah, and I really appreciate you telling everyone I have a girlfriend that I don’t.”  

“You’re still on that?”  She scoffs, “I said I was sorry.”  

“And it felt so authentic, really.  I’ll be the bigger person and not tell everyone that you’re practically sharing expenses with Mr. Statutory—”

“Stop calling him that, he’s like twenty-three or something,” she glares at him, “you sound crazy.  He’s just someone I know because he works at the bank that has all of the loans for land around here.”  

“Because teenagers know so many bankers.”  

“Why do you care so much?”  She turns again, past the first fence line I recognize as Haddock property.  “Don’t you have anything better to do than worry about who I talk to in town?”  

“Not really.  There’s literally nothing else to do, I don’t get why no one else understands that.”  

“There’s plenty to do, did you forget that you’re the only one who can touch a dangerous horse that’s taking up food and resources?  That’s something to fix, right there, something no one else can even bother you about.”  

“Right, because I know so much about training horses.”  

“You could ask,” she scoffs, “I’m sure someone taught you to do that at some point.”  

I almost blurt out that I’ve never really needed to but that’s a bad idea when there are no witnesses and she’s already mad at me.  

“Who would I ask?”  

“I’ll help you.”  It’s less of an offer and more of an order, “I have an old saddle you can use.”  

“Ok, fine.”  I shrug and look out the window at those two warped trees by my dad’s dingy, wind-blown house.  

“Don’t tell anyone I talked to Eret,” her voice is a little softer, a little more unsure, “Ruffnut’s all about him, I don’t want to deal with that today.”  

00000

I grew up hearing about how beautiful baby animals are. 

And yes, the cow that I helped um…retrieve from the rear of a groaning cow is cute after the cow licked all of the…stuff off of it, but it didn’t seem beautiful, necessarily.  Useful, maybe.  Important. 

More important than handing out flyers outside of a meat-packing plant or avoiding chicken nuggets, but not beautiful. 

Functional. 

Gratifying, especially when Astrid left me alone with it for a second to check the other cow.  Like she might trust me.  Like proving that I can in fact give stacks of letters to a person actually did start to establish some base layer of trust. 

Of course, that all proved false the next morning after mucking stalls when she announced it was time to start training Toothless.

“Do you know if he’s green-broke?”  She asks, hanging the pitchfork back on the wall and wiping her palms on her jeans, seemingly unaware of the hay in her hair. 

“He’s…black.”  I say, pointing through his stall bars. 

“No, is he—green-broke means that he’s comfortable with a saddle.”  She clarifies, already a bit annoyed with me, and honestly it’s more familiar than her being halfway trusting, so I’ll take it. 

I shrug, “I wouldn’t know.” 

She takes a frustrated, determined step towards his stall and Toothless’s nostrils flare, whites of his eyes showing as he tosses his head. 

It seems like Astrid can’t think when she’s standing still. 

I get it, in a way that I think it might be the only glimmer of a thing that we have in common, and she shoves her hands into muddy pockets, looking at me like she hates that she’s depending on me for the concept of a landline. 

A landline she probably doesn’t believe in because what wire survives the wind howling outside. 

“Why are you helping me?”  I ask, the question that’s been on my mind boiling over like the milk Ruffnut didn’t buckle in yesterday when she volunteered to fall on the flirting with Gustav sword. 

It catches Astrid off guard and she sputters for a second before taking a step back from Toothless’s stall, and shrugging. 

“You’ve been…surprisingly non-whiny.”  She shrugs, gesturing pointedly at my arms, sunburned and peeling slightly where they peek out from under the sleeves of my torn H&M flannel that’s rolled halfway up my forearms.  “All things considered.” 

“All things?” 

“For a city kid, you’re surprisingly useful.”  It’s more backhand than compliment, but I don’t hate it, necessarily. 

It’s honest. 

There’s no commentary about potential or effort or how I’m wasting either. 

“Useful.”  I echo the word that’s never been applied to me before. 

“You can’t tell if a horse is green-broke or not but…that’s not your fault.”  She pulls the insult like it’s heavy for her and she expects me to help her heft it and maybe the frosty, general inaccessible thing has its charm, because right now it’s like she’s gesturing to a hay rope that I might even be allowed to access if I weren’t so scrawny. 

“It’s the city’s fault, I know.  Can’t fight the corruption of places being open past 8pm with biceps like these.”  I flex. 

She blinks at me, exhausted, and I don’t know why I suddenly realize that she always has been.  She’s all dark circles and scowl, all slightly too skinny angles in her cheeks, like I always felt when my mom insisted on a stricter than usual vegan kick with no more cooking lessons than she’d had previously. 

“Come on, you can learn on Stormfly.”  She waves me after her, purposeful again, boots clunking heavy on the barn floor as she takes Stormfly’s halter off of its hook.  “We’ll deal with Toothless when you know some of what you’re doing.” 

She says the name with the same tone that her eyes had when she acknowledged my arms and my jeans and my general unacceptability.  Like she accepts it, despite initial reservations. 

Acceptance.  Yet another word I don’t know I’ve had directly applied. 

It’s heavy, like the saddle she promptly plops into my arms.  Which I drop. 

She doesn’t laugh and it feels like an assignment. 

[breadcaaat]

part five

part five

Jeongguk x hybrid!reader

| part one | part two | part three | part four | part five | part six

Words: 5.4k

Genre: action, fluff, angst, violence... eventual smut

Warnings: buckets o’ blood, more nudity, foul language, discussion of human trafficking 

Jeongguk was on his knees, face mask and headband on, fat yellow sponge in hand, surrounded by rosy suds. He already knew he’d be throwing these clothes out at the end of the day. That was fine. He could buy new ones, especially now that he was financially set for the next few years.

Yes. You read that right.

On Y/N’s flight from the auction center, she’d crawled out a vent she had hid in to escape the guarddogs and dropped into an office, where a woman had been running cash through a money counter. One choke to unconsciousness later, and she’d packed away a full cargo of pure, fat, dirty cash from the sales that night into the backpack Jeongguk had spotted on the floor earlier.

“We can’t use this,” he’d said.

“Why not?”

“Because people were sold to make this money.”

“Not people; person, singular. About one moderately-priced hybrid.” 

Jeongguk looked at her uneasily. 

“Aish,” she muttered, “ - doesn’t matter. Think of it this way: we’re keeping their sellers from making profit and supporting one - ” she’d pointed at herself “ - of their products. Consider it ironic. And you can finally quit that job at the moving company.”

He still wasn’t sure where he stood on that topic, but for now his focus was simple. Leave no trace. 

There was blood on the tile (thankfully no more than a few spots on the carpet) but it hadn't dried yet and so was relatively easy to mop up. His biggest concern wasn’t the staining, though. Y/N had told him that most all these hybrid crime centers had guarddogs: dog hybrids with sharp noses that made sure nothing unauthorized left any of the sites alive. His tiger girl had left a big, fat, smelly trail leading down the streets, up the walls of his building, and straight into his apartment through the balcony, so if they had any chance of remaining undiscovered they needed to blast any and all traces of smelliness to the fucking exosphere.

So, while he scrubbed away, she ran to a convenience store (clean, not covered in blood anymore, with her hood up and some sunglasses on) with a fresh wad of cash to buy four big jugs of bleach.

By the time she returned, he was already packing away all the towels and the sponge he’d used to mop everything up into a trash bag. They worked quietly, efficiently. Next, the bleach.

His most immediate concern was the apartment and any smelliness that lingered about it, so he as he bleached down their living space, she climbed down the piping she’d clambered up in the first place and bleached away all traces of blood and any previous scent-markings. (She’d pouted a little at this, knowing it was necessary but mourning the loss.) They decided to work on the alley together.

It was about five o’clock - an hour and a half later - when she deemed the apartment sufficiently un-smelly, so Jeongguk packed up the trash bag with all the unsalvageable, bloody materials and packed it down to the alley.

Halfway down the first flight of stairs, he sighed and noticed something not totally interesting, but notable. It was fucking late. He’d been up late before, of course, with long work hours and everything, but never this late. Walking down the echoey, concrete stairwell made him feel like the only man on earth and it wasn’t… a bad feeling. He was starting to understand the appeal of late night walks. Maybe he should join her on her next one.

When he got down there, he could already smell the bleach. She’d uncapped a jug and was currently splashing it along the apartment-side wall, getting rid of any blood-smells or previous scent marks. He caught her attention by setting the bag near the dumpster and scooping up a jug for himself.

“We’ll have to burn that. I can smell us both on it. Ever lit a trash-fire?” she asked, and he found himself chuckling despite everything.

“Sure, I’ve lit things on fire. Most boys do.”

“Good. Dump it on top of that drain instead.”

He did, and it landed with a thump and a squish, which made his stomach twist a little. “Ew,” he muttered. Y/N handed him a matchbook and pulled out a tube of firestarter.

“It’s going to rain in the morning.” She uncapped the tube and doused the garbage bag.

“When?

“I’d say in the next hour or so.”

He nodded. That saved them from hosing away the bleach. It’d also - presumably - wash away any obvious bleachy or burnt scents left behind by their cleaning.

Finished with the tube, she tossed it on the pile. “Before we light this, I’m gonna clean up my trail back a couple blocks. We still have two and a half jugs and that should be enough.”

“It’d be good to burn the jugs too, is what you’re saying?”

“Exactly. Be right back. Check for any details we missed. The bleach is stinging my nose and I can’t smell anything.”

He nodded, and she lugged off the remaining jugs of bleach to clean the rest of her mess.

🐯

Jeongguk got the honor of flicking the match onto their little trash fire, and it took quickly. Unbidden, a sense of relief flooded him. This should be the last of it. All we do now is wait for the rain.

Y/N sat next to him, stripped down to her skivvies once again. Her clothes were in the pile right now. “They smell like I just cleaned up a crime scene,” she’d told him when he’d asked why she was stripping again. He’d decided to just shrug it away this time. It was alarming how quickly he was becoming desensitized to nudity and blood.

“Have you ever done this before?” he asked. The sounds around them were almost ambient; like a campfire near a road. Except this was an alleyway and the trash fire was lit to destroy evidence. Potato, tomato.

“No. Why?”

“You’re good at it.”

She scoffed incredulously. “I just crawled into your apartment early in the morning covered in blood - which I know makes you nauseous - after having committed three gruesome murders in which I tore two victims open by the rib cage and used their entrails to kill the last one, then also a major robbery of an organized crime syndicate and - ” she tipped her head to look at him, eyes gleaming with the peacock sheen of her cat’s-eye night vision “ - you commend me on how good I am at concealing the evidence?”

He scratched his nose. It did sound a little ridiculous. I’m probably in shock, so. “... Just thought it was clever how you burnt it over the grate so it doesn’t leave any ashes. I wouldn’t have thought to do that.”

She giggled. “You’re the ride or die type, huh?” There was a shuffle as she shifted to lean on him, tucking her head between his shoulder and neck. “I know I’ve put you through a lot of shit - and I’m sorry - but I’m glad it was you in the restaurant, and I’m glad you fell in the river.” She nipped at the column of his neck and he had to remind himself that It’s platonic, she’s part animal, animals nip at each other platonically. “I’d probably be dead of fever in an alleyway had you not taken me in.”

She wrapped her arm around his, and they stared down at the trash fire as it died away, burning away quickly.

“Thank you,” she finished with a murmur.

He didn’t answer, but set his head on top of hers. She chuffed, and a little purr rumbled up through her chest.

🐯

“I’m sorry Mrs. Gim,” Jeongguk rasped “ - but I can’t come in today.” His voice sounded downright pitiful. It might’ve been the fake coughing or the toilet paper stuffed up his nose that had her convinced and already fussing, but that’s not important. Was he actually sick? Absolutely not. Tired? Absolutely.

In order to wake up early enough to make this call and skip on his morning shift he’d had to set NO MORE than eight alarms, each two minutes apart, and really they hadn’t been what’d woken him up; Y/N had by biting his ear with a growl that’d rumbled through his skull, just hard enough to make him yelp.

“ - Should I bring you some soup? You weren’t out in the rain last night, were you? Tell me you didn’t go outside with an umbrella or so help me - ”

Jeongguk latched onto that last bit and faked a nervous laugh.

“Jeongguk,” the woman hissed, and he almost felt sorry for himself.

“I can call in Jaesoo to cover?” he whimpered, and Sunghyun hissed again (Aish! Sure. Stay in bed and don’t leave it.)

A few goodbyes and reassurances to take care of himself later, Jeongguk hung up the phone call, picked out the toilet paper, and flopped back into bed.

“Is Gim’s your only shift today?” Y/N asked.

He grunted a negative, voice rough in the morning-time.

“What else then?”

“Night shift at Gloss. Then I gotta go deposit the money so it can rack up interest, pay off our rent - and that’ll take a couple different accounts, maybe banks.”

“Why not just one?”

“That much cash is suspicious.” He giggled then. “It’ll look like I robbed an organized crime syndicate or something.” She growled and jabbed at his ribs, and he giggled a bit more before quieting down again.

More than anything, he wanted to go back to sleep. The past few weeks compounded upon last night had exhaustion dripping off his every bone and pore, but realistically he knew there were errands he had to run today. Last night’s trash fire wasn’t the end of their clean-up, though it’d felt like it. His sense of caution still flared. There were loose ends that needed clipping.

The money was probably the biggest. With his situation, there was no way he could’ve acquired it in the eyes of the bank without having robbed a place, and revealing Y/N’s existence was out of the question completely. He needed a good excuse. And better clothes.

An idea flickered to life, but he rushed to tamper that flame before he did something impulsive.

It was no secret that Yoongi - his boss and friend - had connections underground. Though Jeongguk hadn’t seen it with his own eyes he knew his hyung had done plenty of gang tattoos, and he was many a kingpin’s go-to. Gloss was not only neutral ground in all the territory-mongering that went on, but also Yoongi’s pseudonym. None of his clients knew his real name and that was for safety. That was the type of crowd he’d been surrounded by since fourteen, when he’d done that first tattoo.

He must’ve learned something through by osmosis through all those - what - eleven years? If Jeongguk confided in him, he could learn how to go about this clean-up neatly.

On the flip-side, Yoongi might also fire him and cut ties. Another safety precaution. He wouldn’t - couldn’t - blame him for it. That was Gloss’s tried and true method for making sure his shop stayed neutral through all the crime and conflict of Seoul’s underground, and he’d kept it up for his whole career.

There was a shuffle in the sheets beside him as Y/N shifted to look at him. She was laying on top of the covers - too hot - and he’d zoned out on her tail as it had curled up and thumped idly on the duvet in a steady rhythm.

“You’re juggling something.” It was an observation, not a question.

“Yeah,” he murmured.

“Penny for your thoughts then?”

“I was just thinking about all I have to do today.” He stared up at the ceiling, hand on his chest and index finger tapping a quiet beat.

“We,” she murmured quietly, and he smiled.

“I don’t know if you can help me in what I have to do. It’s all legal and money stuff. I’m just trying to figure out where to start, I guess.” They were silent for a moment as he debated telling her about Yoongi.

Well, what’s the harm, huh? “I know someone that might be able to help us. Just, advice-wise.”

She hummed and fluffed her pillow. “Tell me about him then.”

“His name’s Yoongi, but at the shop he’s called Gloss.”

“You work there, right?”

“Yeah. He’s pretty much run the place since he was a kid. Dropped out of high school to do it. Since he wasn’t trained professionally his tattoo operation is underground and I mean, the guy’s been tattooing gangsters since forever. He must know something, you know?”

She nodded thoughtfully, and her eyes drifted shut after a moment. “I bet you he’ll still know something in a couple hours so… it won’t hurt if we sleep a bit more.”

“Yeah, good idea.” He yawned. “I’m exhausted. Gotta call Jaesoo first…”

🐯

It was about ten now. An hour ago, he’d written up a resignation letter and had just delivered it to the moving company, now meandering his way over to Yoongi’s shop to start up what would probably be a fucking monumental disaster. He was having Y/N meet him in the alley near there, both having decided their story would probably be more believable with her presence. He just hoped things would go well. Jeongguk knew he was putting a lot of trust in Yoongi telling him all this - he’d have to rely on Gloss’s neutral nature to not let on about him to anyone who came asking, which was a risk.

“There it is,” he murmured to himself as he spotted the storefront, and drew in a deep breath, adjusting the strap of the back pack on his shoulder. Shit, this is making me nervous. He let the breath out as a loud sigh, not too unlike a war cry. Let’s go. We got this! Yoongi’s my friend and he’ll handle it somehow. We’ll be fine.

The bell jingled as he marched in.

Yoongi was currently at one of the stations giving a client a trim, and he looked up at the kid with the usual greeting for customers on his lips, fading off the moment he saw his face. Curiosity replaced it.

“Jeongguk?”

“Can we talk?” His eyebrows were furrowed and he looked like he was hyperfocusing on something.

Didn’t even say hi. “Mm. Sure. Meet me in the back, I gotta finish up here first.” This’ll be interesting. He turned back to the client.

Jeongguk nodded, and briskly strode into the hall at the back of the shop, eyebrows furrowed cutely. Yoongi idly counted his footsteps, only to hear a little screech of rubber on tile as Jeongguk stopped and skidded back into the main area. “Hi hyung!” A little wave, and he disappeared again. Yoongi smiled faintly and shook his head.

Down the hallway, Jeongguk bypassed Yoongi’s office and scooted further down the hallway to an iron door. It provided access into the alley out back and could only be opened from the inside. He pushed it open and ducked his head out.

Y/N was nowhere to be seen. Good. She’s stayed hidden.

Jeongguk whistled a small tune.

A shadow dropped down from the fire escape, near-silent, and slid past him into the building. “Good to see you. On the left,” he murmured, and she disappeared into Yoongi’s office right as the man turned the corner, wiping his hands after a quick wash.

Seeing Jeongguk, he asked, “Why are you here so early?”

“I had something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh? Are you quitting?”

“What? No.” He shook his head, opening the door for Yoongi who moved past him to his liquor cabinet, not noticing the figure lounging on his couch. “You might understand better why it is I took on a fourth part-time, though.”

“Oh yeah? Shoot.” He pulled out a crystal decanter of bourbon and poured them both a glass. “Two pinkies or three?” He didn’t notice how tense it was Jeongguk got then, or if he did, decided not to comment.

Jeongguk’s hand tightened around the strap of his pack. This is it. Tell him everything. He decided to just act first before he chickened out.

He unzipped it and upended the contents on Yoongi’s desk. Actions do speak louder than words, right?

Yoongi paused his pour.

He may have had his back turned, but the sound of tumbling money is something he’s familiar with. He decided to knock back the glass before pouring another refill. “That better not be what I think it is Jeongguk. That better be you spilling a stack of flyers for a poetry slam or some shit.” He knocked back the second glass and poured another. “Two or three pinkies, you goddamned punk?”

“Two please.”Jeongguk murmured.

Yoongi kneels and pulls out a second glass from the liquor cabinet. Y/N chooses then to speak up.

“I’ll take two also.”

There’s a clatter as he bangs his head on the cabinet, spinning around with the widest eyes Jeongguk’s ever seen on him. “Who the hell - ?”

“I let her in,” Jeongguk murmured, shifting to stand in front of the door to block Yoongi from making a run for it. “She’s a friend of mine. Yoongi, meet Y/N.”

There’s silence for a moment. The tiger girl sits soundlessly on the couch, completely covered from head to toe in clothing - her face is even concealed by a dark pair of shades and a face mask. Besides her name and voice, there’s little to differentiate whether she’s a boy or girl. Yoongi recovers his composure quickly, standing up from the ground and picking up two cups as he does.

“Alright, two pinkies each and four for me. Why’s she here Jeongguk, and who is she?”

“Well, uh, her name’s Y/N - ”

“We covered that already. Who is she, Jeongguk?” Finished with his pours, he handed him their drinks and took his own, sitting down at his desk. Jeongguk sank into the cushions next to Y/N and handed her her drink. Surprisingly, she decided to take charge of the conversation.

“Do you know what hybrids are, Mr. Yoongi?” Idly, she took a sip of the alcohol and grimaced, thinking better of it and handing to Jeongguk.

Yoongi leaned back in his chair, crossing his ankle over one of his knees. He sipped at his drink. A tense moment passed.

“Sure. I heard of ‘em.”

Jeongguk blinked. “You have, hyung?”

“Yeah, people talk. I keep my nose out of it though, and that’s for safety.” He sipped at his drink again, then narrowed his eyes a bit. “Why are you asking?”

“Well - ” she started, taking off her shades, face mask, and hood. “I am one.”

Yoongi’s face remained impassive, masked, calculated. It was his business face, the one he used with customers. Neither removed or engaged. He nodded, but made no effort to continue the conversation.

Y/N took the lead.

“I’ve been… this, for about four years now. Started out as a pet whore then demoted to a cagedog. You know what cagedoggers are?”

Yoongi nodded again, and Jeongguk felt the hair at the back of his neck prickle.

“So, I did that for three years. In the last four months before I got out of it - the cagedogging, I mean - I purposely lost fights so I’d get resold and resold to the cheapest cagedoggers. The last deal took place at night in a restaurant Jeongguk was eating at, and he helped me escape.”

“That was the day I broke up with Bora,” Jeongguk interjected, and Yoongi nodded thoughtfully. He didn’t really know exactly when that was since his presence in the kid’s life was minimal outside of Gloss - but it gave him a rough timeline. A little less than six weeks ago.

“ - Right,” she continued. “So, after that night I didn’t really have anywhere to go, so I just kinda…” a little blush, and her ears fluttered back, “... followed him around for a day. Figured I’d return the favor somehow, and I wanted to thank him but he’s so goddamn busy all the time it’s hard to get a word in.”

Yoongi chuckled a little, tipping back the rest of his drink.

“So then he fell in a river, and - ”

Yoongi choked on his drink. “What did he do?”

Jeongguk grimaced, and picked at his bangs guiltily. “Uh.”

“When did it happen?”

“A day after I escaped.”

Yoongi narrowed his eyes at Jeongguk, who avoided making eye contact like the plague. Y/N rushed to move on with a heavy exhale before Yoongi started wasting time scolding him.

“Anyway,” she continued. “He fell in a river and I saved him. Brought him back to his apartment and ended up staying the night. We’ve been denning together since then.”

Jeongguk giggled a little. Denning. What a cute word choice.

“How’d you know where he lives again?” Yoongi asked, and Jeongguk perked up a little. He should’ve asked that question before and hadn’t, somehow. God, that’s such an important detail. I hope I haven’t skipped over anything else like that. He bit his lip in nervous thought, spaced out and distracted for a second.

“I’d been following him around, remember? The night at the restaurant, I circled back and made sure he got home safe. That’s how I learned where it was.”

Yoongi nodded a bit, satisfied.

“So,” he drawled, leaning forward to ruffle through the pile of cash on his desk. “Where the fuck did you get this?”

“I revisited an old auction site.”

“You’re talking abandoned storage auctions or slave auctions?”

“Slave auctions. Specifically hybrid.”

“Ah. Continue. Also, why?”

“I needed closure, I guess. It was the one place I solidly remember the location of.” She picked at the elastic strings on her facemask, uncomfortable showing any measure of vulnerability to someone not-Jeongguk. It’s okay, she assured herself despite wanting to swallow those words back up. He trusts him. I can trust him. Move on.

“So - ” she forced herself to look up, “ - there was a situation, and I hurt a few people and had to escape.”

“Y/N, you killed three people. They didn’t scrape their knees because you pushed them,” Jeongguk murmured, and Yoongi was surprised to hear the words come from his mouth more so than the fact Y/N had killed someone - he’d made a comment about murder so… casually.

“Right. Yeah. And, uh, on the way out I grabbed this. Now we’re here.”

There was silence for a moment as everyone digested the situation. Yoongi picked at the rubber band circling one of the cash bundles, evaluating the figures in front of him. Y/N sat still as a shadow, eyes on him. Jeongguk fidgeted with his bangs.

Yoongi took a deep breath.

“Why’d you come here?” he asked.

“... I’m in over my head, hyung.” Barely a whisper. Jeongguk wouldn’t meet his eyes, face flushed in shame. This isn’t going to work. I’m going to lose a friend today. “You’re the only person in Seoul I trust that can help us.”

Yoongi looked at him thoughtfully, poker face on in force. Jeongguk felt like he was being watched by a cat.

Finally, he let up with a sigh.

“Clean this up.”

Jeongguk’s heart sank.

Silently, and with a burning face, he scooped the cash back into the bag. Some of Yoongi’s sketches got pushed off with it and he scrambled to pick them up. “Ah - “ he put them back, disorganized, on the desk, “ - I, uh, sorry hyung. We’ll just… get going.” He zipped the last of it up.

“Alright,” Yoongi murmured. “Gimme that before you go.”

Unbidden, a small, suspicious growl crawled its way up from Y/N’s chest. Jeongguk, confused, asked, “Hyung?”

Yoongi sighed and took it from his hands, ignoring the snarl shot at him.

“I can tell you have no clue how to launder money, so I’m gonna do it for you. Can’t leave loose ends in business like this. Sloppiness’ll get you killed.”

She stopped snarling abruptly, and Jeongguk froze in surprise. “Hyung?”

Yoongi smirked, soft and a little bitter like he wanted to swat a younger sibling over the head for doing something troublesome. “I’m older than you, so it’s my job to take care of you. Pull some stupid shit like this again, though, and I’m tossing you in a closet or something.”

Wow. I honestly thought we were gonna get booted to the curb, Jeongguk thought. He was too speechless to say thank you, but Yoongi could see it in the way his eyes twinkled, watery at the edges.

Taking the bag, he made some space in his liquor cabinet and stashed it away. He’d deal with it after hours.

Still turned away, he said, “Go on, git. Don’t you have work, punk?”

“No. Off day.” Jeongguk paused, overcome with this immense sense of gratitude - he was so goddamn lucky to have the people in his life that he did. “Can… can I come in early?”

“Sure,” Yoongi grunted, with a soft smile. I hope this shit doesn’t get him killed. 

“Now git.”

They gitted.

🐯

The police station was having a quiet day, which was honestly the worst in Hoseok’s opinion. It made him jumpy and restless. He sat at his desk, tapping his pen across a notepad and bouncing his knee. And - with a glance at the clock - he realized it wasn’t even lunch time yet. He had a whole two hours until he could - what, eat more and get more energy? Run a lap around the station? Offer the chief a lap dance, just for the exercise?

Hoseok tossed the pen away, buried his head in his hands and moaned, blowing a long sherbert into his palms. The office remained not-busy - probably out of spite.

“You know, Jung - “ his partner commented idly from where he sat across from him, feet propped up on the desk with his nose buried in a racy hentai - some shameless tentacle number; “ - usually, it’s a good thing when we’re not busy.”

Hoseok moaned into his hands again.

Officer Ri Doyeon’s thin eyes flicked up at him over the rim of the book in his hands, and Hoseok started to make little tooting noises. A piece of Doyeon’s soul leaked out and slithered away when he recognized the tune as Darude’s “Sandstorm.”

“Dude,” he whispered in exasperation.

The tooting morphed into what sounded like “Fur Elise,” reaching a grand, existential crisis-inducing crescendo before fading off into one positively grand finale of a sherbert.

Doyeon was overcome by the impulse to choke out his partner with the tie around his neck. “Are you done?” he asked.

Hoseok didn’t answer, head still in his hands. Doyeon returned to his manga.

“Ri-sunbae?” Hoseok murmured after a moment. Doyeon hummed.

“Do you think kazoos like getting blown?”

“Out,” Doyeon hissed. The book in his hands clapped shut with the finality of a man driven to the edge of sanity. “Get - get out. Go take a smoke or a run or jack off in the bathrooms - whatever the fuck men in their twenties do - I don’t fucking care just burn some of this goddamn energy you fucking middle-schooler.”

“So that’s a no?”

Doyeon belted the book at poor, bored little Hoseok who broke the silence of the office with a yelp, scrabbling out of his chair. “A smoke, Hoseok!” Doyeon barked.

“Got it, got it,” he placated, retreating from the office. His grumpy partner huffed and circled the desk to snatch his manga back up from the floor, returning to his earlier position.

Hoseok wandered through the station, looking for something to do. Lately, this is all work had been for him. Boring. Unsatisfying. Unrushed.

The KNP's (Korean National Police’s) Sex Crimes Division was not a good place to work for someone like Hoseok because it was - due to multiple factors, none of them good - not very busy. The situation was not nearly as optimistic as Doyeon made it sound. There are still plenty of sex crimes in South Korea. So many it’s downright shameful. But this is a culture where we don’t talk about those things. No one reports anything, he thought sadly.

His mind wandered back to a case he’d been forced to drop last week. A woman, at a company dinner on her second day at a new job, had been lured away by a supervisor, raped, and then subjected to revenge lawsuits on the charges of defamation when she’d spoken up, yelled and worn into dropping all charges. Yesterday, he’d learned that she’d lost that job. Life ruined in a week. And he couldn’t help. I don’t blame them, I guess. The law doesn’t exactly do much to help. The thought was a bitter one.

His wandering lead him to the roof, and he stepped out with a sigh. I thought I’d be able to help more with this job.

I feel more useless than ever.

He gazed over the balcony, propping his elbows up on the railing. Maybe a bit lonely, too.

All his friends were busy and his family was based back in Gwangju, so he didn’t really get to socialize much anymore. Most of his time was spent with grumpy, middle-aged Doyeon, who was so inclined to social reclusion and coping with all of his failed marriages through nasty hentais that he wasn’t that fun to hang out with.

When was the last time Jeongguk and I hung out? As thoughts turned to his best friend from college, he flushed a little in guilt. Five weeks ago, Jeongguk had broken up with his girlfriend of a year and called him at midnight to cry and babble for a bit, only to hang up a few minutes later because he “... Gotta go, wan’ ramen…” (Sniff.) “Gunna get ramen… bye Hobi-hyung.” Those had been the last words he’d heard from him since - not counting the odd text here and there. I should be a better friend, sheesh.

“Let’s call him,” he murmured to himself, and pulled out his phone.

Jeongguk picked up after three rings. “Hyung?”

“Hey Ggukie!”

“Oh, hey! Haven’t heard from you in awhile.”

“Yeah, sorry for checking out as long as I did. Thought I’d check up on you.”

“Ah hyung, no worries. Seoul’s a busy place to live. Where are you?”

“The station, as usual. You?”

“The station.”

Hoseok perked up. “Wait - really?”

“Yeah, the train one.”

“Oh, you little pest. I got excited there for a second.”

“Aw,” Jeongguk bit out cheekily, and Hoseok could picture so clearly that competitive and endearing little smirk. “Has hyung missed Jeonggukie? Lil’ ol’ me, tiny little Ggukie? Bunny-boy Guk?”

“Oh shut it - I miss kicking your ass in Smash Bros, that’s all.”

“Aish! Shut up hyung - you literally only ever play as Waluigi or Kirby and I always win.”

“I love Waluigi and Kirby more than I love you.”

“Well then I’m a slut for Link. Glad everything’s in the open.” A giggle. “Love me a man in a tunic.”

Hoseok laughed, and they both relaxed into a comfortable pause - softly tuning into private thoughts and the sounds of each others’ environment.

“We should have a tournament again, me an’ you. Waluigi and Kirby vs. Link,” Hoseok joked. Opposite to what he expected, Jeongguk sighed in response. “Hey,” Hoseok murmured, brows knitting. “What’s up?”

“I had to pawn off my PlayStation last month for rent.”

There was a pause again, not as comfortable as the last. Hoseok frowned watched the street down below. He was realizing how far they’d grown apart in this last year, as he’d invested his time in becoming a policeman and Jeongguk had dropped out of college to escape the relentless, malicious rumors targeting him. Touchy subject, that last one.

The world is full of injustices.

By the day, Hoseok’s starting to feel more and more powerless to fix any of it.

“Hobi-hyung…” Jeongguk started, soft voice drawing them both out of their melancholy daze before they sank any further. “We can grab drinks later? If you like?”

He’s such a sweetheart, Hoseok thought.

“Sounds great, Guk,” he hummed. “Usual place?”

“Usual place.”

“When are you free?”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Works for me; text me when. I’ll see ya, Guk.”

“See ya then, hyung.”

They hung up, and Hoseok put his phone away to gaze at the skyline for awhile.

A/N: i have three-ish weeks until i disappear into the wilderness of alaska, so either i finish it in that time or organize an adminship with someone to post my updates. we’ll see

also, thanks for all the support!! yall’re lovely 💞

Taglist: @feed-my-geek-soul @starryannaaa @not-novoa @astronomyturtle @anoushe01 @seokchella @dinorahrodriguez @mischiefmakerliesmith5

Taglist Glitches: @infiresssnct 

[ellebeebee]

Indelible Valor

My first bit of tinkering w @queenscrownvn‘s game, which even as a demo is one of my absolute faves.  Uhm.  I’ve actually been sitting on this for a while and keep adjusting, but at this point I think I just want to post and be done with it.  Mostly self conscious because I play a lot with things that are purely my headcanons for background info.  Also, I know jack-all about horses, so please suspend disbelief while reading lol...

2,595 words, Noah/MC, general rating, on AO3

-

Behind them the palace sat high, and before them cold fog obscured the path wound down and around the hill.  Like a salt-heavy ocean in furious flux, the air shivered inscrutable before them, squeezing and stifling their world.  Still, his companion seemed to know her way, and her loyal guards were silent.

That pricked him, to be sure.  The two men riding behind, their small movements and the quiet of their oiled armor, not to mention their belonging to a previously enemy nation-- their presence rankled Noah on an instinctual level. But they were enemies no longer.  He would never turn down a friendly sword at his back, and, of course--

“Propriety” had to be followed.

The way they treated women here had a clear point of origin: their fixation on bloodline and the purity thereof-- or at least the appearance of purity.  Any perceived dishonor endangered their nobles’ power, both political and economical, and invited “outsiders” into the inner circle of the elite.  A most grievous state of affairs by Sinado standards.

He still puzzled over the incident with the former queen.

He glanced over.  Black hair pinned up simply behind the pale shells of her ears, she wore a modest riding habit.  They all dressed like that here.  Their sleeves covered their arms and their skirts swept the ground.  She in particular, though, seemed disinterested in finery or jewels or even colors.  If not for the requirements of her position, he felt sure she would deposit herself completely of all things superfluous.

Some years ago, they had been on the road in winter and came across a lake. A thin coating of ice gilded its surface, so perfect and crystalline that it did not obscure at all the dark, deep, and frigid waters.  The lake resembled a great expanse of night brought low to the earth.

Sometimes she reminded him of that lake.  Her serene face so immutable and still, her dark eyes glacial.  But should you take one wrong step, her surface would crack and drag you down into an inescapable undertow.

To think, if he was one to trust first appearances, he would have taken her as dull.

This morning though, the slightly deeper set of her mouth read as particularly pensive.  She turned to him.

“I wish to give you something,” she said.

She did not mince words.  Yes, she could weave a wickedly witty line, dry as the steppe in summer, but when she meant it she did not embellish.

He raised a brow, and knew his expression pulled in because he could feel it in his chest.

She continued, heedless. “I hesitate to call it a gift, though.  Because it requires a price of you.”

She stilled her horse and turned slightly in her saddle to look at him.  How many times had he faced that serious look she’d given him and turned it into a flush and a small twitch of a smile with a bit of teasing?  But he couldn’t summon the habit.  Not now, when he could feel the chill seeping up from mirror-thin ice.

“Of course,” she said. “It’s a price that you aren’t obligated to pay.  I leave the choice to you.”

He frowned, and for once found himself struggling for words. “You know that in Tawar…”

“I know.  You told me.  But this isn’t quite a gift.”

“And is this a custom of Sinado?  To court with not-quite-a-gift?”

“No,” she said, cutting down his attempt at a smirk. “Perhaps this hasn’t anything to do with Tawar or Sinado.  Perhaps this has everything to do with who I am, as an individual person.  And my personal intentions.”

The fog pressed around them, amplifying their small sounds: the calm whuffing of the horses, the creak of leather as the younger guard shifted in his saddle some paces away, her small exhalation into the icy morning air.  She glanced away.

“I know it is a strange concept to you,” she said. “But I have so rarely felt the compulsion for personal agenda.  Duty, above all.  That’s what we grew up with. Not until… I have not felt the need to have something of my own-- truly of my own-- until you.”

He was grateful for his own physical dexterity.  He was grateful for the docile responsiveness of his borrowed steed.  It made an effortless, natural thing of his sidle close, and his reach across to her.  His fingers cradled her hand like a fresh-cut flower, as if its petals should bruise if handled with anything but the softest touch.  His own ears thumping in the silent air, he brushed against the underside of her wrist.  Her pulse ran hot.

After all, she only appeared like an icy lake.

The older guard cleared his throat loudly.  She pulled her hand away, turning her heated face away.

He smiled. “Show me.”

Her boots nudged her gentle gelding forward as they followed.  The worn-smooth path descended down the hill, and forked off into slightly lumpy foothills. Sparse groupings of silver aspens and little golden maples fell in beside them. The smell of manure and the bays of livestock were the only things to alert him to their destination.

They passed several pens with unseen or skittish habitants absent from their view, and at the end of an overgrown path she stopped them by a large paddock. The chipped and dark wood fence rolled far into the distance, its boundaries obscured by mist.  She dismounted, so he did as well.  The guards remained several paces away.

The woolen pleats of her split skirt gathered the dew from grass gone slightly wild and long.  The trail of a single horseman, just an hour or two old, was the only clue that any human ever tread this far from the palace main.  She stepped up on the lower fence rung and gazed out into the empty pen.

Noah joined her, but he just propped his arms up and still his eyes grazed over the top of her head.

She was silent, so he said nothing.  He listened to the wind lapping at the brittle trees.  The heavy sway of the thick heath swept up across his boots and out over gentle knolls.

He heard it before he saw it.  One too many breaths huffing warmly, and the soft fall of heavy feet in an unusual rhythm.  Asymmetrical and deeper on one beat. The white fog condensed in a single point.  That white density hardened, moving with its uneven padding from the depths of the paddock.

It was a horse.  As the fog stripped away, he saw its yellowed hide did not actually refract like condensation.  It stopped, still quite far, and considered them.  He saw now it had a strange device on a hind leg, connecting it from the hock to the ground.  Bracken tangled in its mane, and he thought its tail looked somewhat ragged.

Its head lowered slowly and fog misted from its nostrils.

She turned to him.  “This is Indelible Valor.”

Her voice held a low, soft note. “He’s nearly two score old.  We hold our lineages very dear here, as you’ve found.  He’s the product of centuries of careful breeding by the royal family.”

She paused. “He was the last horse my father owned.”

His eyes broke from the slow sway of the horse’s great head.  She still stared over the drifting wisps over the grass.

“He’s a warhorse.  Knows how to toss a rider from their own horse, and whirl to crush their skull.  But it’s been many years since he’s done that.  He was already retired and put to stud before my father died.  But once Father was gone…” She shook her head. “He mourned.  He was never docile, but since then he’s bit and kicked so many stablehands.  There’s only one left that can approach him.  My mother and I can sometimes.  Roy had the best relationship with Valor.”

She stumbled a bit on the words.  And even with the guards at their back, Noah reached out to run a thumb over her knuckles.

“Roy’s horse, Dauntless, is Valor’s grandson.  My own Chi-Chi-- um, Chivalry-- came from him.  Anyway--”

She cleared her throat.  She stepped down from the fence rung and moved closer.  He gazed down at her, struck by her clean scent.

“Noah, my family has trusted this horse’s ancestors and offspring with their lives.  We’re like two families interwoven.  He doesn’t look like much now, but this horse saved my father’s life more times than he could count.  I’d like to give you the chance to know him.”

He gazed back at her. “So this is not so much a gift, as-- a test.”

“No-- well, not in the sense of the old fables.  ‘If you are pure of heart’ and all that.  It is more…”

She stopped.  If she were a woman from Tawar she would grunt in frustration or curse.  As it was, she looked to the side with a small knit in her brow.  His fingers found a strangling lock by her cheek and swept it back behind her ear.  She returned to him.

“Perhaps,” she said. “This moment here is the important part.  My telling you this.  What comes after is up to you, but ultimately this was what I wanted most.”

Her hand reached to his, his fingers lightly feathering her hair, and she pressed his palm more firmly against her cheek.  His chest lept with the rare contact, as small as it seemed, and with the tangles of their mingled gazes.

He grinned. “What would your people say, skirla, to know of such blatant selfishness expressed by their noble queen?  Shocking.”

“Surely not so shocking if we consider the more flagrant of the world’s rulers,” she smiled. “Why, if I am to be queen, proper abuse of power and classical greed are time-honored skills I must cultivate.”

He laughed.

She dropped his hand and stepped away.

“I must go.  Follow if you will, or don’t.  But I am expected elsewhere.”

She remounted her gelding with an elegant swing of her legs.  It struck him that, in billowing split skirts, that was the most he’d seen of them.  Yet.

“Wait,” he called.

Halfway back to her guards she turned in the saddle.

“How did he lose the leg?”

She raised a brow. “It wasn’t a battle wound.  It was his last cover.  The mare kicked him and quite put an end to his stud days.”

Her heels set her horse back along the path, and the guards circled to follow. Noah would laugh at her words except they were a touch too dark for even being darkly comic.

He went back to the fence.  Valor still watched him, yellow and ragged and shifting on his hooves.  The false leg pawed at the grass.  It struck him that perhaps she had been lying.  The thought thrilled him, that he could not be certain and she left him with a puzzle of mental sparring.

If she had been lying, then-- not a test, indeed.

He considered Valor.  Valor considered him.

-

The first time he climbed the fence, he immediately had to vault back to safety as a great weight of barrelling beast rammed the fence a few hand spans from where he’d been.

Noah laughed, let the horse see him laugh.  His blood raced.

“Good,” he said loudly. “Try what you will, you old pony.  But you will find me entirely different than these soft Sinado creatures.”

Valor huffed with a vile eye rolling at him.  He hobbled away into the mist without sparing a second glance.

Noah strolled around the paddock’s perimeter and found it generous in size with a small barn for what little currying the absent stablehand could manage. A broad creek ran through the enclosure, and a dense copse provided a lair for whatever machinations the beast was brewing.

He lingered for several hours until warm sunlight dappled by the surrounding foliage cut away the fog.  He watched the strange shape of the horse lurking in the copse, catching glimpses now and then.

He finally left near noon with his thoughts turning.

-

For a week, he spent his mornings at the paddock among the silvery trees.  His companions turned curious, but he shrugged it off.  She hadn’t said anything about keeping it secret, but something about the silent mists and the yellow-white apparition limping through the dark morning shadows made him want to keep it to himself.  How had she phrased it?  Something truly of their own.

He brought treats.  Valor ran him out of his territory.  Sometimes the old horse would let him tread a few steps through the grass on the other side, even disappear for a long stretch.  But then the rumbling of those uneven hooves and Noah had to bolt to avoid getting smashed into the dirt.

He started to notice things.  Old scars along that patchy hide, marks from swords and pikes and daggers.  An uneven set in his long face like a broken nose.  He could imagine the wet crunching thump from another horse’s hoof.  A constellation of nicks and indents.  Tough knots of ropey tissue.  His weight, and his broad shoulders and flanks, made him a terrifying battering ram.

This was no horse.  It was a warrior.

How many old men and women had he known so like this creature back home? How many, in fact, of those same people had faced this very creature on some old bloody field?

He could not summon any enmity though.  Not when he leaned against the fence and watched that noble form sway with cunning majesty and gleaming eyes attended as closely to his hands and feet as any sparring partner.

He admonished himself of the idea of owning Valor; how could such a spirit ever be owned?

-

She rode up the path and stopped her horse where he had tied his.  Dewdrops caught on the embroidery of her riding habit as she came to where he sat on the top fence rung.  A heavy basket sat on his knee.

She leaned near him. “So?  You’ve made progress in all this time?”

Noah held a finger to his lips.  He pulled an apple from the basket, splotched with pink and yellow and red.  He tossed it out into the field where it landed with an audible thump.

They waited.  The scent of damp and mud, and the seep of chill pressed on them.

Indelible Valor finally appeared, like a ghost.  He lowered his great wedge of a head and watched them.

Leisurely, as if doing them a great favor, Valor rolled forward on his truculent uneven stride.  His nose swept the ground and his white breath wafted over the grass.  He found the apple, and chewed on it.  

Noah smiled at her.  She smiled back.

“So you are pure of heart,” she said.

He laughed. “Ah.  I was afraid, actually, that it wouldn’t be enough.”

She climbed up to sit on the fence as well.  She took an apple as well. “No. This is about all even I can manage a lot of days.”

She tossed the apple near Valor, already bucking his head and snorting.  She picked another one from the basket and handed it to him.  Noah accepted it.  His smile lingering, soft, he let his fingers deliberately feather over hers.

“Thank you,” he said.

She hesitated.  But her dark eyes communicated that warm night sky brought low, and her fingers let go to run over his knuckles, over his hot pulse.

“I’m glad,” she said.

[cyberapothecary]

Wildwood Apothecary: Item Collection

Item: Various Animal Bones and Teeth

Category: Land, Bone, Teeth, Animal

Uses: Divination, Spell Casting, Energy, Offerings

Examples: Using bones with your space/altar, connecting to the animal that has passed, giving honor to deities, attaining characteristics of the animal, paying respect, energy focusing.

Tips: Gathering bones from your local forest, railroad tracks, and even along the side of the road are great ways to attain what you’re looking for without spending money. Cleaning bones can be done in an assortment of ways. If the skeleton of the animal is old and dried out, then boiling water with soap will do the drink, but I would try to do this outside to avoid the smell in my space. Carcasses that are decomposing would be best if put into a drying box and left for several months, so you will get a clean skeleton, and then you can proceed to clean. Bones perform as a vessel for an animal’s spirit after they have passed, so take this into consideration with how you treat your bones out of respect. Combining bones is a good way to attain differing characteristics amongst animals when casting spells, invoking the spirits of mystical creatures (griffins, hydras, dragons, unicorns, etc.), and bones perform differently depending on the type that you’re working with. Teeth, vertebrae, skulls, claws, ribs, etc. are good examples. Attributes will follow an animal into the afterlife, so research your findings to understand what it is that you have found.  Ribs from a fish could be used for better breathing when it comes to water. Teeth of a coyote could be used for strength and hunting. The skull of a bird could be used for heightened eyesight and senses. For example, combining the teeth of a raccoon with the claw of a cat could result in better agility, stealth, and scavenging. These attributes are very useful when it comes to spell-casting and divination, because the witch will be able to choose and understand the animal that they are working with on a spiritual level.

[beeswritinghive]

The Price of Failure

Two blades met on a field of scarred rock. There was no dance or finesse as they charged, the earth drank deep as they collided and fell. The vultures were soon to follow, emboldened by the scent of gore. For any warrior it would have been a fitting end. Perhaps not a glorious one, but fitting. Delirium set in from the loss of blood swiftly, and the world rolled in tumbling until darkness swallowed sight. She was not dead. It was the first thought that drifted through her pounding skull. The Pandaren tried to move, tried to think. The effort only brought sharp, searing flame across her side, her limbs shuddered and found pressure locking them down. Her maw stretched wide and her ursine roots expelled her agony. There was darkness all around. It was unclear if her eyes were open or shut, not like the outcome would matter much either way. Through the searing hurt and aching skull she managed to pick up a few scarce observations. The air was exceptionally dry, the immediate space reeked of smoke and herbs. Something like wind occasionally breezed outside her darkness and kicked up what she imagined was dust, or ash. It also jingled a strange clattering, something hanging nearby. Of what she did know was that she was alone. Bound tightly in some sort of cocoon, no quiet breathing or occasional twitching to give away some hovering body. She was trapped in a tomb made from her own failure, too weak to struggle free and too prideful to call for answers. Meditation as a practice generally came about much easier in better circumstances. Being locked at the limbs and stretched out prevent her preferred posture. The aching pain and searing heat didn't make focus unattainable so much as it required an intense understanding to compartmentalize. Understanding failure was a bitter thing to choke down. The process of reaching any sort of zen required breaking down the memories she had and what she could feel in the present. Flashes of cracked, red earth, the sun high in a dusty sky, some large monstrosity between her and the road. Her journey was halted regardless at this point, there was no meaning in holding bitter regret and anger. She let them simmer on the edge of her consciousness. Her skin was raw in several places. Particularly her knees, her elbows and paws. The only notable wound though was along her right side. Where it started and ended was tough to guess, but the pain clawed deep into her gut and her whole body howled with the recognition of it's hurt. Worse than being large, it had gouged deep. That she was alive was some sort of miracle perhaps, moreover though it left only questions. She accepted her pain and the discomfort of her prison, it boiled in joining the edge of her senses. Meditation was a gift as much as it was a curse, at least as far as the Pandaren was concerned. Her mastery of spiritual endeavors was spotty at best, and best utilized as an extension of her blade. Much that she understood reflection was a necessary part of empowerment, that did not mean her meditation was so flawless she could hear a pin drop a mile past. Such it was that her focus didn't snap, no matter how many minutes or hours it was, until a sudden roughness was peeling open her cocoon. With a particularly primal gurgle, she attempted some weak growl as the pressure released her arms. both hands were merely swatted aside as the body looming over her grunted and tugged at the bandages around her gut. "Be still. Your dressing requires changing." The command caught the Pandaren off guard. For several reasons. Most notably the fact it took her a moment to recall that she understood the common tongue. Grudgingly she went still as the crusty, pungent bindings were pulled away. "Let us see what's left of the damage." With a snap there was a brief illumination, a tiny flickering flame in the center of a massive jade palm. The Pandaren didn't bother glancing down as the other huffed and hummed, rolling the flame as they inspected the matter fur and stitched flesh. Discoloured and crusty from a mix of blood and poultices. The hand receded but the flame did not, it danced over the skin with an oddly comforting warmth, causing the shadows around to dance and twist. Half shaded, thick tusks jutted up between rough green lips, pursed as much as they could be into a pensive expression and the calloused hands returned, wringing a damp cloth over the wounded flesh. She was busy glancing around the single sized tent, trying to determine what sorts of hides made up the siding. She hissed at the starkly chill water that dripped over her wound, it earned her a hushing grunt from her tender. The looming figure was oddly meticulous despite it's hulking shadow in the flickering dimness, brushing through the fur that did remain, carefully cleaning the wound, reapplying the poultice, nudging the heavy set bear to shift her and wind bandages again. It was a largely quiet thing, the Pandaren largely obedient, if pained and huffing with every twitch and prod. The Orc appeared content to complete the task without any need to direct the aching woman. Then the task was done, the hides wrapped back tightly leaving the Pandaren locked away in her soft prison. "How long?" The Pandaren asked, straining to tilt her head enough as the figure turned to leave. There was no pause as blinding light flared, the tent pulled open for the Orc to depart. "As long as it takes." Was his reply.

"We will start easy. Your name." The Orc sat, legs crossed and posture as straight as the low hanging tent would allow.

"Suyo of the Blade." The Pandaren rasped, barely managing to sit up herself and still surrounded by the hides of her bedding. The Orc grunted, rubbing a hand over his chin before slapping a palm over his bare chest.

"Vrash of the Frostwolves."

"I owe you a debt, Vrash of Frostwolves. But I must ask why you have healed me." Suyo groaned, reaching down and lifting the skin to her maw. As much as the water trickling into her throat washed down the dust, it was the chill that soothed her flesh much more.

"It was a... Difficult decision. We decided that bringing our warrior back, wounded as he was, was worth keeping you alive to gain answers. Or collect justice." The words seemed like the sort that should be grave, the Orc though merely chuckled in his gruff tone.

"Your warrior... We clashed..." The Pandaren coughed, Vrash was ready and picked up as she took another drink.

"You faced Moxra of the Burning Blade... Long diluted of that blood." There was a harsh snort in pause. "He lives too. Though his healing has been slower, he refuses to settle and lengthens the process. His word is what keeps you a guest rather than prisoner." Suyo frowned a moment, processing slowly before shifting despite the stabbing pain to bow low over her knees. "Don't rip those stitches! Ancestors damned if I have to replace them before the sun's rise... Easy to see why you two carried each other here." An exasperated sigh rippled out from the Orc as his palm scrubbed over his face.

"We... Carried each other...?" Her focus was torn from the Orc's tone as she rose and set into a perplexed stare. Her confusion only doubled when Vrash erupted into a full sort of heartfelt laughter.

"That you did. You each had one hand around the other's guts, holding them in as you wobbled on those knives across the rock. Collapsed on the edge of camp in quite the mess, the vultures were licking your blood trail up before you hit the ground."

Suyo couldn't quite comprehend what of the situation was so humorous, but at least there was some context to her arrival. The memories were still hazy, more clues might piece it together if meditation did not first. Vrash caught the uncertainty in her features, though his assumption was not in the same line.

"Honor demanded we fix the pair of you. As much as the Horde needs every body we have left after the last few years, the Valley isn't the most secure location yet. Moxra tells it that you purged the Quillboar on the southern bluff. Those were his task. But that is his problem, and what it meant was that perhaps you could be an ally for us here... You are an ally, yes?"

Suyo did not hesitate with her reply, as steely as she could manage with lungs full of fire and dust.

"So long as I have honor in me, I am indebted for the life you have spared. Beyond that, so long as your "Horde" shows honor... I can be considered their Blade."

Vrash clapped his hands together with a laugh. "A little wordy, but acceptable. Glad I don't have to send you out to the pit. Haven't seen a bear like you in some time... Big guy came through once, they say he was something else. Love a challenge, but just as well, always glad to have another pair of hands." The Pandaren merely remained as perplexed and pensive in expression as she began, though at least the Orc's enthusiasm was vaguely encouraging. It was the most emotion she'd seen in the days following her first waking. She tried to dip in another bow but a sudden sharp growl from Vrash cut that in it's tracks. Seemed some seriousness was left in the big guy. The burning question remained of course.

"When do I start?"

Vrash's grin was wide as he responded. "Whenever you have healed."

It was exhilarating to feel adrenaline in her veins again. Not like trying to walk for the first time in days. Not just swinging her sword for the first time in weeks. Real combat. Life or death combat. Her opponent wasn't the most glorious challenge. A snap forward and she barely stumbled back from the sharp pincer, Scorpid clattering and hissing in rage as it skittered about and tried to impale with it's poison dripping stinger. Her wrist flicked and she knocked the strike aside with her blade, the very motion caused her side to erupt in agony, but it was a fight between life and death, there was no room for comfort. It wasn't the most graceful dance, but for the first time in weeks she was dancing the blade again. The beast surged and snapped, and she had to match step to keep her limbs in tact. The mere stretch and stress on her muscles, all of them, was an exercise in fortitude as much as rehabilitation. Pain clawed across the whole of her form, her fur was slick with sweat and matted down across her body. Her breathing was heavy and rough, her posture was slouched and stance pitiful. In all she was a mess, covered only in tight bindings over her torso and a ragged cloth hanging from her waist. But by the gods, Suyo knew she was alive.

"Stop dancing with it and kill the damn bug!"

Her colleague was not so patient. The perpetual scowl on his face caused by the sharp rend in his lip was only deepened by an actual scowl as her glowered from across the field.

"Do not bark at me just because you can not walk without a crutch." Her retort was sharp and swift, and clear by the reddening to Moxra's face that it stung true. She allowed that amusement to curl her lips in a smirk. He was not wrong though, there wasn't enough time in the day to dance with scorpids and meet with the Shaman. Plus whatever task he may have been storing to keep them earning place. With a swift stab she pierced the chitin and scrambled the bug's brain, taking care to back away from it's dying lashes before offering it a gentle dip in bowing. Not the most appropriate but she couldn't manage proper form if her life depended on it, which it luckily did not quite.

Not that proper form meant much where she had landed. If she had learned one thing in her few weeks in the Valley of Trials, as the Orcs had taken to calling it apparently, it was that structure was incredibly lax. The sort of inspired chaos was breath taking, in it's own right. Orders came down from on high but the nature of how anything really got done or the order to rank and file was jumbled and without law. Groups of peons were tasked by overseers, actual 'Seers' were some sort of mystics but it was a term she'd learned was both somehow at once and not synonymous with the other Shaman. Raiders had wolves, but there didn't seem to be a great deal of raiding to be done which made for an incredibly vague position to hold. There were grunts, there were taskmasters, there were overlords. The only real constant she'd learned is that any higher order was to be treated as such, and superseded the lower ones. Not that she was always quite sure who's title was more weighted than the other's. What she did know though was that her keeper was the one relaying most of her objectives, and that was enough direction to start.

Moxra had been paired to her as soon as she was fit to walk again. Initially of course there was tension, even still the young grunt wasn't particularly proud of his position or his shameful return to camp. Part of him clearly despised her swift recovery, every opportunity she took to stretch her limbs he tried to double the act and stay ahead. Each time he'd get pulled aside to have his stitches checked, fussed at by the Shaman, or gradually beat down by his own flagging body until he had to stop and lean aside something stable.

The walk to the rise where Vrash sat in meditation was a long and fairly vertical one around the valley's edge. As per the usual he seemed to know they were there long before they spoke. As the pair rounded the corner they were met with a drenching blast, water spraying across their faces and dripping down their bodies as the good natured keeper chuckled. Fire and rocks circled the air around his head as he motioned them forward over his shoulder.

"The day boils. I figured you two could use the refreshment."

The other Orc merely grunted at the humour, brushing himself off and leaning against the cliff face at his side. Suyo took stance toward the other and stared over the Valley and it's small sea of tents.

"It is good to see you're faring well Pandaren. Although I heard your feet dancing in the dust. We expect tasks to get completed, not toyed with." Suyo's head dipped at the Shaman's words, frowning to herself as she exhaled in a frustrated sigh. "And you in the back. Don't think I can't smell the blood on you. You tried your own hand at one of the bugs thinking to take the Pandaren's task?" Moxra's scowl deepened, if such a thing were possible, the gruff sort keeping whatever dour opinion to himself as his own head briefly bowed to their overseer. The accusation and sharpness of tone didn't last long. The Shaman rose with a reserved chuckle, hands clapping together as the elements dispersed around him and the earth clunked back to the ground it came from. "It will do the pair of you some good to be reminded of humility. As well as accept some cooperation into your pride. The majority of peons are busy carving out the rock that will serve as home. You two will carry rocks for the front gate while they are busy."

Moxra immediately erupted with fury, barking and snarling in Orcish as he stomped forward without the support of his crutch. Vrash turned about with an oddly calm posture, but his tone snapped into a steely and commanding sort. Or so Suyo had to imagine given how guttural the Orcish tongue was on it's own. Back and forth they went. Moxra would stomp and throw an arm, the Shaman would snort and bark something curt in return. Vrash crossed arms at his chest, the younger Orc snarled and postured as if contemplating a strike. From the tales she'd been told, Suyo was surprised when the two merely turned backs to each other. The younger, arrogant body hobbled his way down the cliff in pain and anger, the Shaman simply drifted back to his meditative stance with a rumbling hum under his breath.

"What... Was the nature of that argument?" The Pandaren inquired.

"Hrmph? Oh. You are still here. Go on, off with you, there is work that needs to be done. If you want to know what the source of Moxra the Arrogant's issues are-" The elder shaman barked a laugh. "-Then you may consider it an optional addition to your task to coax him to explain."

It was not a process of hours, but weeks their allotted task required to complete. Not simply for the nature of a large gate needing manpower and time. Morning after morning the Pandaren and her rival would trudge across the valley to the cave quarry and begin hefting slabs of rock and chiseled blocks onto an awaiting cart. Then as a pair they pushed it across the valley, unloading by the pass where peons would take them up and slot them unto the growing wall. Then the process would repeat, one load after the next, one rock after another. Moxra continued his attempts to one up the healthier woman, throwing around chunks nearly his own size, huffing and snarling through his bleeding gut as he refused to slow or pause. Suyo did not need to exert to outdo him, his body always flagged and fell long before the day's end even if he himself refused to quit. She took up the slack, with great chagrin and gritting of teeth under the stress, but she held.

One day, under the scorching sun, they struggled with a slab beyond their combined strength even to throw, barking and shouting back and forth before the Pandaren had to roll aside to avoid the crushing weight. Moxra dropped his end with a gasp and near collapsed, red earth drinking deep his trickling blood. Be it the heat or the Orc's arrogance, Suyo's patience snapped and she stomped forward with fangs bared.

"What kind of pitiful warrior are you? What childish death wish do you have that you are going to kill us both? Your pride?"

The Orc did not suffer the scathing well, already beyond irritated and infuriated. He tried to rise but failed, stumbling to a knee and coughing up a splatter of blood as he barked through the gurgling. "What do you know of pride, bear? What do you know of honor and humiliation? I will regain my standing, if it kills me, you, or anyone in my way!"

"Tch. Honor? Dying under a heavy rock? Do you listen to yourself or am I expected to use your skull next to break these stones down? There's no honor in falling to a boulder!"

"I know!"

The pair of them gradually fell to the ground, rumbling in the dust as they caught their breath and fumed. "There's no honor in this... Or killing bugs... Or fetching water. They're peon tasks." Moxra snorted sharply, slamming a fist into the cracked earth. The Pandaren pushed herself up enough to prop onto her shoulders, spitting dust from her maw as she grunted.

"... What is the matter? It is work that must be done. Hard work at that. These peons need direction and handling, you do not. Should this not prove-"

"No." The Orc's retort was snappy and snarled. "Peon work is for peons. Or the infirm. The weak. The weak work, or they die, the Horde has no place for cowards and failures... I failed. So this is my punishment. My humiliation. In the eyes of my Horde I am worthless."

The Pandaren considered this in silence as the Orc slumped. For a moment. Moxra was not to wallow in his angst, pushing his battered body from the dust and turning back to the stone and heaving will all his withered strength to little avail. Suyo wasn't fully sure how to continue for a time, so she waited and stormed her brain. No matter how she approached it, there was at least a few constants. The work had to get done, it was her task as well and she would also not be some drain on these new benefactors. The Orc was to be her partner until they were healed regardless, Vrash had been clear on these instructions and for all his ignorance Moxra at least was pushing her to her own limitations and growth. There was only one practical solution it seemed.

Rising out of the dust with a degree of renewed determination she focused intently on carefully placed motions. She squared up with the Orc at her side to continue the task at hand, and with a great heave the massive slab ripped from the earth and rose over her head. Moxra balked, he could feel the great lack of pressure on his palms, the sudden surge of power confused him, and the sense of inferiority left him oddly humbled rather than enraged. He simply couldn't comprehend what the Pandaren had that he lacked.

"We have a great deal of stone to carry. Come. I will need your help." That was all she spoke, motioning for him to follow.

Most days followed a similar sort of archetype, for many weeks. They would labour under the sun and stone. Some days were smooth, others they would get heated and bark back and forth. Never again did they drop a single stone though. Suyo refused to. Though she made sure that every massive rock and slab she carried, the Orc was hanging on, step for step.

It was a strange thing to be a part of another people, as temporary as it was to be. Some evenings around the fires, she would listen to the tales of great hunts and strange beasts from a far off world. Some days it was games of strength, wrestling arms or bodies, challenges of throwing axes or lifting stones. Mornings, the few that were not explicitly regimented for work or meditation and exercise, were much different. She'd watch tanners and their hides, the smiths with their grindstones. Children were an incredible rarity, but a handful still roamed the valley though they were a treat when she saw them. She had assumed it was the nature of their raising, one day she found one of the older girls wrestling boar sows to the encouraging cheers of her mother. She had asked why the child would be allowed such risk, rather than training with a blade or hefting boards. The response had something to do with their nature as a culture of warbands and hunters, the very notion was as foreign as it was dangerous to the Pandaren but when she expressed concern the huntress of an Orc merely laughed and waved it off as their ways. The lack of children though was not the danger in their upbringing, as oft as she saw the young toying with rock spiders and chasing lizards. It was something with their past an their exodus, though it seemed prudent not to inquire too deeply from the looks on faces whenever she danced around the subject.

She meditated with the Shaman, Vrash as well as others. She carried tools and stones, cleared pests and hunted meat. It was a serene sort of daily chaos, something different every few days at the least. As her body strengthened, her tasks grew more intensive. From stones she moved up into hunting, from hunting, she was directed to the raiders for patrols. Every opportunity she shifted up, Moxra was not far behind. He swelled and postured under all the dubious gazes and glares, though his recovery had been slower his strength returned in pieces all the same even if it was taxing to keep pace with the Pandaren. Their status became known, and though there were but a few skirmishes with Quillboar, Centaur and the like, their combat prowess vastly outshone both their enemies and the grunts that directed them. It was a crawling, clawing process to regain respect, but it was a humbling journey. Mostly. Moxra never lost his fire and demand for ever bigger threats, stronger opponents, and heavier tasks, but the Pandaren's composure gradually rubbed off in some ways and even he learned how to keep his tongue checked just so.

But two wanderers were not meant to confine to a valley. Noble though the hard work may have been, it was a waste to keep them where they could not do the most. Vrash gathered them to discuss their options and the three meditated on the ridge to the valley for a full evening considering the best use of their skills. Early in the following morning though a terrible screech echoed across the valley from the pass. From their ridge they rose and looked to the east, a lone rider with a plumed wooden mask tore into the valley on the back of a tall creature with sharp teeth and wicked claws. The Shaman chuckled, waving a hand across. "Ask, and the earth will provide."

"Ya ain' seen da kid?" The runner gave a long, rasping sort of sigh, feathered mask rustling as the Troll's head shook.

"Just the other day? You are certain? I can gather the watch but I felt nothing in the earth and we heard no call of riders or otherwise." Vrash rumbled, serious and perplexed as he rubbed a thumb over his chin. The Pandaren and Burning Blade stood a few feet back, joined by the Grunts of the pass, all mostly quiet if hovering inquisitively.

"I believe ya. He not our best runna, figured he could at least stick to da road. Supposed to tell ya, be needin' hands if ya have spare... Might be havin' to ask ya help find him too." The paired warriors glanced to each other with the same thought, frowning quietly in the background as the Shaman continued his humming and consideration.

"How many? What ails our brothers?"

"Barring poor runnas, got sometin' waylaying caravans up da road. Raiders be coming to fix dat, but we need some big kills if we gonna make up da losses. 'Less ya got the spare resources, gotta ask if you got some bodies ta spare."

Vrash's usual grin slowly returned around his stubby tusks as he turned. "I think we just might."

By the evening the runner was gone, raptor dashing through the gate with a parting cry and troll whooping from it's back. Suyo and Moxra set out the following morning with packs bursting of hide and smoked meats. Their objective was simple. They were to venture off the road and sweep the red dunes in passage to Sen'jin, hopefully finding the missing runner and at worst arriving to deliver the goods before cutting back across south by the ocean to complete the search grid. Were it so easy, of course, but it was a start.

A slow start though. Near fit as they were, neither had committed to long marches yet and it was indeed a march. Their feet padded over rock and soil one step by the next. Climbing dunes, cresting hills, circling the outcroppings of jagged rock. They sat time and time again in the shade of the mountains or beneath the boughs of gnarled trees and their spiny branches. Familiar scavengers soared about between the occasional cloud, lizards and beetles skittered from behind rocks and out of crevices as they passed. Moxra retained his ever permanent scowl, the expression twitching every time a wrong step pulled his weak muscles or sore gut, eyes forward only and never scanning beyond the immediate sight. Suyo was somewhat more attentive, albeit in a relaxed fashion. It was good to move again, not just walk but wander and explore. Hers was the gaze that picked up the shift in every breeze and the texture of each rock. While Moxra set his pace and took point, the Blademistress remained a step behind to observe what she had traded her life at home for.

For the moment, it was mostly dust and rocks. But it held it's own sort of charm. A challenge of survival, and she loved a good challenge.

Unsurprisingly they did not find any large tracks or clues as to where the missing messenger may have been pulled from. In the distance the road looked largely unperturbed and tranquil, as much as it could through the warping heat and dust clouds. The sun rose and fell through the sky, from orange to bright and back as it crept toward the horizon and threatened it's departure. It was staring into the sky Suyo caught the same harbingers of her own death, circling some ridged trench. She'd seen them time and time again over the course of the day and hadn't realized their disappearances weren't past clouds or into the plains, it was dives into and from the trench. With a grunt she pointed them out to the Orc, the pair of them watching with narrow gazes. The Burning Blade immediately waved it off as average carrion, unworthy of the attention. Their primary objective, as he saw, was to deliver meat to the weak not carry the corpse of a failure home. The Blademistress disagreed. They argued on it for a time, marching all the while. It was a subtle victory it took the Orc some time to notice, but when he did he bristled and grumbled the rest of their trip.

She'd quietly stepped to nudge him closer to the vultures, keeping wide to his side and inching in and ahead to distract his steps on his need to be at point.

When they reached a point, a soft warbling echoed into their ears. At times it was low and abrupt, others it was like a long croaking. The pair were perplexed by the unknown sound, one that even the Orc had to admit he had not come across in Durotar yet. Occasionally, suddenly, it was broken by a sharp cry, hoarse and shrill accompanied by the scavengers ascending back to circle denied or spooked from their claim. Strange as it was, fear was not the sort of emotion that a warrior of cold steel emulated, so they marched around the rock and found a cut into the ridge to stumble through in casual approach. The worst, they expected, was some wild or dying beast drowning in it's own blood. When they stomped into the wide basin of the ridge, they found that they were half right, and half wrong. Immediately a pair of bloodshot eyes snapped to them, the spindly thing scrambling over a mound in the shadow of the ridge, scraping it closer to the dark with a streak of crimson stretching under the motion. Moxra must have known what he was looking at, Suyo was still trying to piece it together.

She did not get any help from the Orc as he growled some particularly harsh phrases in the Orcish tongue. The context she did not know, but what she had learned to differentiate, narrowly, was tone. Even if the majority of Orcish tone was bellowing or grunting. Fringes of brick red hair and rounded tusks poked out of the dark, there was a brief sniffling before a raspy retort in the guttural tongue. Suyo saw a pair of fingers gripping tightly at scaled flesh, they shuddered and twitched as the Orc barked back. She stood frowning, something wasn't adding up in her head, or perhaps it was just the context that was lacking. With a soft grunt, she nudged the Orc, disregarding the continued babble from the shadows.

"What does he say?" The Pandaren inquired.

"Coward claims he was ambushed. Raptor fought off whatever tried, died fighting. Doesn't have a scratch on him, he must have hid or run." The Orc spit on the ground as he explained in the Common tongue. The male in the dark flinched, visibly receding and continuing his warbling in half-choked tones. Suyo frowned even deeper. Something was missing.

"Do you speak Common?" The Blademistress stepped forward as she spoke. There was a long pause.

"... Yah."

"What is your name?" She continued with a cordial tone. Not soft, but without aggression. There was another long pause.

"Jimbda of tha Darkspear."

"Hail, Jimbda of the Darkspear. I am Suyo of the Blade. This, Moxra of the Burning Blade. You are the messenger lost?"

"That me, yah." The Troll sniffled again, trying and failing to catch his breath and steady his frayed nerves. "I tell ya friend, they come out o' da dust. Surrounded Shar'ran. She cut dem good but she was one, dey was many..."

"And why is your spear not stained in blood, Coward?" Moxra snapped up, arms crossed and muscles tensed. Playing to his strengths, and terrifying the poor troll.

"I ain' got a spear! I run, das my job, I good at it. Shar'ran she run good too, she be my spear when we hunt, but this..." The Troll tried to muster some sort of courage or composure, but it fell flat and he collapsed atop the dead beast, shuddering and weeping as before. "... It all my fault mon. I try to cut across the dunes... I was sure we be too fast but... Cut us off... Had blades and we had nothing... She tossed me and she gave 'em hell. Bloody before I even got out tha dust. All I saw was she take a sword right through the heart. Had to go right back down or..." Jimbda continued in his mourning, sputtering between breaths as he caressed and clung to his passed companion. The Orc fumed and stepped forward, directly into the Blademistress's hand as she turned and shoved him back a step.

"He is not a warrior. His cowardice is not damning. Leave him be." She set her foot down with a tone of cold steel, Moxra only trembled with seething fury.

"His honor is stained, he fled from combat, abandoned his blade-sister to her death! We should be bringing back his -head-! The Horde has no place for cowards and parasites, the children learn early or they get left behind." The Orc snarled particularly sharp with that. Suyo glanced back to the Troll a moment as it finally dawned to her. With renewed viciousness she suddenly slammed her gut into the Orc's, forcing him to stumble back as she stretched her spine full.

"A -child-!? This is how you treat the young!? He is not a spear dancer, he is a gods damned messenger. Outnumbered and out armed, his beast chose his life over her own. As a good -warrior- sacrifices. You would dishonor the warrior's rite? I'll cut you apart where you stand if I hear you yell at this child one, more, time." The ursine roots of her genes showed as her teeth gnashed between words, tone heaving with breaths as she growled and roared each word. Silence fell over the trench for a moment, even the mighty Moxra was taken aback and unsure how to react, his stance softened and he just barely shrunk under the woman's aura despite their equal stature. With a huff she turned from him in disregard, approaching the Troll and kneeling down aside the fallen beast. "Jimbda of the Darkspear... We were sent to find you, and bolster the stock of your people. Vengeance will come to the monsters who took your beast's life from you, but you must-"

"I can not do dat." Jimbda raised his gaze to match the Pandaren's, Suyo blinked at the shocking resolve with which he spoke.

"... Can not?"

"Nah. Big one dere is right... My honor be stained... Shar'ron grant me her power if I give her the justice she deserve... I failed her, Suyo of da Blade. She haunt me if I don't make it right, and she be right to do so. I ain't da best at no thing, they make me run because running the only thing that don't require thinking. I failed dat too. I gotta make up for it, or I go back and they just turn me away like ya big one there... It da price... Of failure."

The Pandaren took each word in and carefully considered. Even in the back, Moxra held a contemplative frown, but after a moment he was the first to huff and point out a simple flaw. "What tracks? What scent? We have nothing to follow."

The Troll shook his head. "That where ya wrong." He strained and huffed, hunching and pushing with all his might to roll the raptor over out of the dark. Deep gouges were carved in her flank and a wicked rend displayed the shattered bone of her ribs and ruptured heart. That though was not the unexpected. The unexpected was the figure impaled on her claws, equally lifeless and bloodied around the holes in it's own chest. Wrapped in dark leathers, a black bandanna concealing the jaw and leaving only grey, lifeless eyes and short chopped muddy brown hair exposed. Suyo was again not well versed, but Moxra whipped forward to inspect the corpse before howling in rage.

"HUMANS? In -our- home? They dare to brazenly abandon peace, I'll collect their lying tongues and drown them in their own blood!"

Suyo rolled her eyes at his incredibly sudden enthusiasm to help poor Jimbda claim his vengeance. "They're likely opportunists. Look. It lacks a crest, no colours or standard... Where are the nearest humans on Kalimdor? Or they could be pirates."

"What they will be is -dead-." The Orc snorted.

"So ya be helping me? We kill 'em good, den head home as... Well you two be heroes maybe.. I just be a disappointment." The outcome of his fate did not seem to faze the Troll much. There was a weary resignation somewhere in those eyes, but his voice held the first glimmer of hope he'd had in a day. Suyo of the Blade gave him a nod.

"On our honor... We will restore yours."

They made camp in the sheltered den, striking a small fire near the center and sticking Jimbda on first watch at the only sizeable entrance. The Pandaren and the Orc set to stretching a hide over some sticks. Not the best tent, but serviceable enough for one evening. They took the time to dip into the mest from their packs and even stomped a few skittering lizards to rotate over the soft flame. Moxra took the second shift as the Troll surprised the pair of them, butchering the remains of his companion and cleaning the bones. Suyo was the only one who declined to feast of the raptor flesh, despite reassurances from the Troll that it was quite common practice among his people. Eventually they shifted to the cramped tent, Pandaren setting her blade against a rock on the exterior while Jimbda collected up the raptor skull and tucked it tight to his chest while he slept. The crackling of fire and soft whisper of dust on the eind took over. It was an oddly peaceful thing.

Then like shadows under the moon, three figures crawled over the rocky ridge and carefully crept down to settle on the basin floor. Daggers in hand they split and stalked on painstakingly silent steps to ambush the sleeping party and their vigilant watcher. Who would have expected such dexterity and cunning?

The answer was, evidently, exactly these three misfits.

The assumption was that the Troll was not a fighter and that with stealth they would have the advantage, three against two. The assumption was not incorrect, of course, but the advantage they did not have.

Moxra was well aware of the two shadows across his back, their bodies blocked the flame and set a chill across his spine. Both hands gripped the hilt of his massive sword as he knelt in barely patient anticipation. He waited until the shadows crossed the threshold of no escape. Then with a roar, he wheeled about and bounded across to strike.

When the cry went up, Suyo snapped into action herself. The brief distraction stayed the blade inching toward her neck, gave her just the opportunity to twist and grab the extended arm. She pulled the would be assassin down and slammed an open palm into his face, a sickening crunch confirming the blow. With the man disoriented she threw him overhead, propelling him into the rock with a kick before rolling herself up with his weapon now in her hand.

And just like that it was over.

Towering over the lithe body, Suyo could only heave in constrained, adrenaline fueled breaths. The human was writhing in pain, clutching his masked face with soft moans and wriggling up against the ridged wall with pathetic whimpers. She couldn't take such a weak life. There was no honor in it. To her side Jimbda had awoken slowly, equally terrified and clutching the raptor skull as if some divine protection would leak from it. The Pandaren pursed her lips in a frown, rumbling as she considered.

Moxra stomped to them some time later, carrying the pair of heads by their hair with his bloodied blade over his shoulder. Immediately he spat to the earth, barking at the Pandaren in disgust.

"Why do you delay? Kill this wretch. Be done with it."

Suyo glanced over the trembling human before shaking her head. "There is no honor in it."

The Orc snorted hefting the blade up and stomping forward to do the deed himself. The Pandaren stepped aside for him, tongue clicking under her breath. "Stain your own then." The weapon hovered just off his shoulder for a few moments, eventually Moxra snarled and brought it slamming down. The tip bit deeply into the earth and sunk further when he leaned over it's hilt to sneer.

"Run little coward. Come back to me with a blade in your hand... Otherwise for every pink skin I see in our lands again, I will collect their skulls, and bury you in your failure. Now leave. GO!"

The harsh shout caused the defeated man to stumble as he rolled and scrambled around the tent, huffing and whimpering under his breath as he scattered into the dark. That was that.

They returned to their rest, Suyo took up the next watch, the moon passed through the stars until daylight seeped over the horizon and shadowed the ridge once more. Together they collected what little needed to be and set to finding the road. In this Jimbda at least had helpful directions, recognizing seemingly indistinguishably normal trees from others, or the vague curve of one ridge from the next. Before midday they had arrived on the edge of Sen'jin and a rider had hustled out to meet them around the border. He seemed visibly relieved at first, whether for the meats that would feed the village or for their safety was undetermined.

They recounted their tale to the forerunner, whom grew quite agitated not only with Jimbda's failure and the loss of a strong raptor but also the news humans had dared to cross Durotar. In the end the two Blademasters were welcomed into the village and greeted warmly. They were offered fresh water and strange brews to refresh themselves, Moxra was more than content to accept such offerings. Suyo however went seeking the fate of their young charge, wandering the collection of fairly open huts and navigating the many hanging chimes and charms with a degree of trepidation. Eventually she found a small collective of brightly garbed Trolls surrounding the lone child. Their tongue was far beyond her comprehension but she watched as the young one flinched and twitched at the odd bark and harsh, guttural tone. One of the older looking stepped forward, tusks chipped and mask bleached in age. He dipped a thumb into gourd hanging around his neck, swiping across the young ones head and leaving a bright red streak. The collective grunted and spat to the earth before turning and loping back to the village.

Jimbda merely scuttled off and pulled himself up atop a rock, cradling the raptor skull he'd refused to set down and hunching over with gentle sighing. He didn't hear the Pandaren approach before she set down aside him and grunted in greeting.

"O-oh! Suyo o' da Blade. I ah... Just resting mah feet before I face da elders..."

"You lie. I saw them surround you. What is that mark?" Her retort was swift, if not quite gentle. The Troll merely sighed.

"... Spirit brand. Da ancestors be seeing I a failure. Now mah flesh brothers do too. Won't wash off, da skin stain and scar over time. It a permanent sign of shame... Not gonna be welcome among many of my blood for a long time." His expression slumped right back into that huddled, defensive tone.

"So what is your plan?" She didn't seem particularly empathetic, her tone wasn't seeping with any particular warmth or sympathy. Her gaze did shift just enough to give the Troll her full attention. Evidently Jimda did not have one. He hummed and mumbled under his breath for a time, seeming to wait out until the Pandaren inquired again before grudgingly replying.

"... Don' have one. I walk off into da dust. Hope I learn enough to catch meat, live like da lizards do."

"Unacceptable." Suyo's tone was much more firm this time, the Troll flinched at first assuming it was reprimand. "... Where from I come, abundance is shared regardless of worth and standing. The noble and the wise ate aside the fools and the maids. It was an understanding that each body, no matter how infirm or weak, had their place and responsibilities." Jimbda shifted just slightly as he listened, softly brushing a thumb along the snout of his raptor's skull. "On the Isle whence I learned the way of the warrior, I too learned about the delicate balance... A warrior's duty is to live, and die, in blood and honor. Are you an honorable sort, Jimbda of..." The Pandaren frowned at her immediate misstep, but the Troll merely gave a wry chuckle and waved one hand off before returning to his token.

"I just be Jimbda now... Jimbda da Exile... Exile or no, I be wearing what little honor I have left. I ain' about to give up on being a better Troll just 'cause mah people don' think I have what it takes."

Suyo gave a slow nod. "That is what I expected... The way of a warrior is to die bloody and screaming into the night. Moxra is a warrior, the Orcs are warriors, your people seem to think themselves warriors... But there is a fatal flaw in your cultures."

The Troll barked a sort of laugh at that, his eyes spoke volumes of his doubt even in his detached state. "What flaw dat be?"

"You can not all be warriors." The Pandaren spoke flatly. Assured, as if common sense. "They told me, in the Valley, that an Orc was a warrior and a hunter before all other things. Do you know what I noticed about the wall the peons built while I healed?" As expected, the Troll merely shook his head. "It is a mess." She said, again flat as if obviously apparent. "It will last exactly as long as it needs to until anything heavy comes to push it over. Because the peons were directed, treated like slaves, beaten to keep working and most importantly... Not an Overseer there would match to an engineer from the Isle. They make walls second... Their axes come 'first'. So instead of being masters in their field, they are mediocre at both."

"You speak bold words Suyo o' da Blade. What your point be though? I ain' a warrior, I ain' a runner, I ain' good at no thing."

"No. You merely have not found what you are prepared to master. You do not make a master out of the student who gives up, and you do not make a master out of the student you refuse to teach. I will not teach you to be a blade. You may, however, come with me on my travel. Perhaps you will find something that you can master, or a teacher who will take you. I can not, on my honor, leave a child and an exile to his own. Not when I accepted his charge, even if his people have revoked that task. The honor of it is not chosen by leathery hides and long beards, the honor is in the act. Would you act in honor to earn your place in this world?"

Jimda shifted to slide from his rock but hesitated as he ambled to his feet. Though it could well be the last opportunity, doubt plagued his thoughts. What if he failed this strange, ursine guardian? Could he really regain his honor or would the stain remain? Shuffling aside he brought himself to his knees before the Pandaren, taking a pair of steadying breaths before lifting the raptor bone above his head cupped in both hands.

"Shar'ron as mah last witness and loa, I do what you need to da best o' mah skill, until mah honor be redeemed or ya decide it be my time to go."

"Your little oaths are cute. You understand that such things are not to be trifled hmm? I'll not have my honor blighted because you two soft skins can't heft the weight of your words."

The pair turned at the Blademaster approached, cleft lip curled into the faintest semblance of a smirk rather than it's perpetual scowl. Something about his tone seemed an attempt to mask what one assumed was his humour, though the Pandaren merely scoffed.

"I assumed your honor would have you return to the Valley. This task is done, should you not seek another?" Suyo crossed arms, the Troll scrambled up to his feet and tried to maintain some sort of dignified posture. It wasn't exceptionally effective, half hunched and standing in tattered shreds of old cloth. He was largely disregarded as the Orc focused on the Pandaren.

"I owe you an honor debt."

"You killed two humans, and we carried each other bloody to heal. That seems even to me."

"Even, yes. But even is not enough. I must surpass you, it is my rite of Blademastery to shadow you as the inferior warrior." Jimbda quietly glanced back and forth between the pair as the squared off, tense but a moment before the pair chuckled.

"I see... The Troll comes along all the same. I call the direction, until I ask for expertise. Are we all clear?" She found no challenge to the claim, Moxra scoffing and shrugging as Jimbda bobbed his head in excited, eager anticipation to be of any use. "Good. Then we go north."

"Why north?" The Troll inquired, immediately flinching as the Panaren turned to respond.

"We go to the larger hold they build. Orgrimmar. They will have challenges for even mighty Blademasters. That is our purpose, and for now, it is your purpose to make sure we get to and from these challenges. Clear?"

"Ya." An eloquent response, but at least it seemed fitting from the simple boy of a Troll.

So they went north. They crossed the red dunes and cracked plains and braved the endlessly buzzing hive of Orcish homeland. They spoke with many, bartered little, argued some. Those tales though were minor in the Pandaren's story. A long story though it is, but like the road of a thousand tiles, the lesson of failure was merely one of more to come. Another time.