#even if he doesn't match any existing breed perfectly

[canisalbus]

I made Vaschete as cats in Clangen (of course credit to @officialclangenclangen)

Also, to say that I love your characters. The first time I found them I saw one picture of their feral art and I saw Machete and instantly thought "like my dogs!" because I am a volunteer at a dog shelter where we have a lot of spanish greyhounds (which aren’t exactly like him but a bit similar).

This is Violeta, one of the dogs (now living with a family that loves her).

.

[lollytea]

Love Lies Bleeding, Lies Love Breeding

(From that poll from yesterday. Something I wrote back in August from last year. Set during the Summer in Gravesfield. Some of Hunter's thoughts on falling in love, looking out for Gus and nursing a doozy's worth of guilt at the same time. Not gonna put this under any tags so it's a blog exclusive I think. If you somehow manage to see this, hello!)

Hunter isn't stupid.

Well, okay, maybe he's a little stupid.

Nobody ever says so. Nobody ever implies it. They wouldn't. They're too nice to him in this house.

But he sometimes wonders if they ever think it.

Sixteen years of being strung along on the trail of a genocide plot and smiling brainlessly the whole time was not very 'Genius Teen Prodigy' of him.

Belos was his blindspot, he can recognize that. He won’t let it obscure his perception of his own intelligence.

Or at least, he’ll try.

He can't afford not to try. His perception means everything right now.

Hunter isn't stupid, he knows this.

He's not unobservant.

He's not even allowing his own insecurities to fog up his lens of what's directly in front of him.

There is a girl in this house. A special kind of girl.

She's disarming. Perilously so.

Too disarming for her own good.

It's a girl who has miraculously mutated sunburns into a contagious disease.

There's this thing she does. A seemingly harmless thing. She asks if Hunter would like to garden with her on sun baked days.

He needs to study this recurring phenomenon. He needs to study her. Because Camila's garden is nothing but a compact patch of land. And yet, here's Hunter, getting hopelessly lost in it.

The hours split between his fingers. He loses time.

It's her. It's always her.

Because there's sunlight catching in the twists of inkblot braids and leaving white-gold nicks in glossy green irises.

Because there's frilly little blouses with not a sleeve in sight to sheathe an emphatic set of biceps.

Because there's shorts with cinched waist bands to better accentuate the bold flare of hips and the prominent bump of a stomach. Shorts with a very high cutoff hem, thus introducing him to the concept of thighs and calves in a way that he wasn't emotionally prepared for, but it really adds to the ensnaring madness of the whole situation.

Because there's her, in all her enthusiastic babbling glory.

Because she elaborates on every plant they tend to, with that soft, slightly raspy edged voice. Occasionally, the voice squeaks on its vowels when her cultivated descriptions grow a little too passionate.

She tells him that she used to get teased for it, and he bites his tongue and doesn't say that those ridiculous little vocal cracks have got the big stupid rock in his chest tightening.

And before he knows it, there's a fried scarlet stain on the back of his neck.

Camila specifically instructs them to re-apply sun lotion every few hours, and Hunter initially had every intention of taking her advice.

He forgets.

He gets lost in the garden, and he gets lost with the girl, and he forgets.

And now the back of his neck matches her seething shoulders.

She forgets, too.

He doesn't overlook that detail.

Hunter isn't stupid.

The reality of this girl's existence has teeth. He knows this because those teeth have been gradually sinking into him since the day he met her, one sweet penstagram message at a time.

There are wild, writhing, squirming jungles erupting in his stomach.

He's pretty sure if you cracked open his skull, it'd be filled to the brim with flower petals.

She's got those prickly vines coiling around the galdorstone inside of him as if she owns the damn thing.

(She very well might own the damn thing. Or, well, she'd be entitled to at least a chunk of it in a custody battle if he's being perfectly honest.)

She has well and truly captured him.

And he's pretty sure she's done it on purpose.

If you're going to melt solid gold down to a puddle, at least consider the consequences. That puddle is going to spend his post-liquidized days mooning over memories of the melting process and wonder how the hell you're still not done with him.

She isn't done with him. She makes that perfectly clear every time she catches him alone and flirts him into a quiet corner.

Yeah. That's a thing that's currently happening in this house. For some reason.

He doesn't know how, he doesn't know why, but Hunter of all people, has managed to pique Captain Willow Park's interest.

In a less than platonic way, he means. He feels the need to clarify because it's that specific aspect that has wrung his nerves tight.

She never says it. Not explicitly. It's not exactly overt.

He notices how she always reels herself back whenever the playful ambiguity begins eroding. It's almost like she's fiddling with him, but unsure of how to get a good grip.

Either that or she's deliberately building anticipation.

Obviously, if she's going to go and make a botanical disaster out of his brain, he's going to end up paying a lot of attention to her and how she carries herself when he's around.

However...it could all be a joke.

It could be some confusing teenager thing that he's not yet educated on.

It could be that she's just overwhelmingly nice, and this is all in his head.

But Hunter does not think that's the case.

Hunter isn't stupid.

So, the tentative assumption that there's something about his colorless disposition that she finds attractive is the reason gross, sticky sweat soaks his underarms whenever he interacts with her.

He's learning a lot about emotions that he previously believed himself to be well acquainted with, only to discover that they operate far differently under foreign circumstances.

For example, nobody knows fear like Hunter. The feeling is second nature to him.

And he can confidently proclaim that whatever is swelling between him and Willow has him scared witless.

But if that's the case, why do his facial muscles ache from grinning?

When Hunter gets excited, the words tend to bubble out of him at a breakneck pace.

But, as Willow casually traces the tip of her index finger down his inner forearm while crooning so maddeningly close to his ear, why can he not manage to choke out a single word?

That's what Willow does. That's what she does to him.

She rearranges things that should be straightforward. She shoots all those thoughts and feelings ten feet under, and before he can figure out what’s become of him, they're erupting from the ground, fluorescent and wholly unfamiliar.

The sturdy floors beneath him become tiles made of leaves fluttering over a depth of nothingness. It's unknown terrain. He doesn't know where to step, and it leaves him terrorstruck.

What now?

He thought he had adjusted to how it felt to free fall, plunging through the sky, slicing through the icy air.

Falling, falling...

His internal organs are in a jumble from the sudden rush of turbulence.

Falling, falling...

The sensation is unpleasant but temporary. Within seconds, Flapjack has steered his staff-form to swoop directly under Hunter's plummeting body and the two latch on to each other.

He supposes this feeling is a little like that. Or at least how it was in the early days of his and Flapjack's delicate partnership, before the contents of his stomach learned to strap themselves down.

But the biggest difference is that there's no near immediate release from how it feels to fall.

Falling, falling…

When does the falling stop?

Obviously he's heard the phrase. It's common. Almost overrated. Most recently, it was heard rolling off Amity's tongue as she churned out a thorough and sentimental report on why she fell victim to the falling and to the thing she fell into.

Falling, falling…

It makes him feel off balance.

He’s defenseless.

And, for reasons unbeknownst to himself, he likes it.

He likes this. Whatever it is.

She makes him like it. Which is so typical of her.

He likes being scared out of his skull. He likes her attention, no matter how startling the blaze of heat is.

It's exhilarating in a way. Like back in his castle days when he felt the jittery elation of reading books he wasn't allowed to

But it never lasts. Sooner or later, the guilt begins oozing until all of his childish joy is polluted.

Deception is deception, no matter how innocent the intentions are. Ultimately, Hunter is always left with a horrible sinking feeling for lying to his uncle.

Well...

Deception continues.

Even in this new life.

Even for this new Hunter.

Even if he tries to ignore it.

He likes seeing traces of his reflection in Willow's gold framed eyes, knowing the boy she's looking at has a red, bloody, gooey heart between his ribs.

That boy's expression is stitched together from a totally random assortment of genetic features.

That boy looks like that by pure coincidence.

That boy's body is his own.

He likes pretending to be the boy in Willow’s eyes.

'We'll tell them,' Luz had said on the night they were forced through the portal. 'When we're ready.'

When will he be ready?

The truth is molding away inside of him.

He hasn't drummed up the courage to tell Luz yet because he's not prepared for her potential disapproval, but...

It's been an ongoing litigation in his brain court.

What if he never tells them? Would that be so bad?

Who does it hurt?

If anything, telling them would gut them clean through.

Telling them would lead to pain that's irreversible for everyone involved.

Do they really need that?

Sometimes Gus jolts awake at night, suffocating on his own serrated screams, but Hunter has figured out the trick of calming him down.

It involves being Hunter.

He's not good with finding the words and clicking them together in a way that subsides a riotous mind. The kind of magic Gus effortlessly works on Hunter every now and again.

But he knows two words, and they're just as effective.

'I'm here,'

The basement couch should be too narrow for both Gus and Hunter to comfortably sleep on.

And yet Hunter always ends up laying there after one of these episodes. And something about his awkwardly elongated body with all its jagged corners is as good as any comfort blanket for Gus.

It's only after Hunter hears the slow even breathing against his chest that he closes his eyes, wondering how he got here. Why is he one of the first people Gus seeks out in the dark?

Maybe because of that thing he said a while back.

I promise. I wouldn't mess with you.

Gus has spent a lifetime being deceived by liars, and this simple fact is restless in Hunter's stone heart.

If Hunter tells them, he's exposed as one of those liars.

And he doesn't know how much more shattered trust Gus can take.

It's one of those nights as he's being beckoned to sleep by the steady rhythm of Gus’ quiet snores when Hunter’s mind, left unattended, goes wandering into the bleakest depths.

What would happen if he told Gus?

This friendship would be done. He knows that much.

But severed ties wouldn't be where the hurt ends, would it?

What if it takes months, no years, before Gus’ night terrors ease up?

What if time passes, tides change, moons molt into new moons, and in that hazy future, Gus is sleeping somewhere far away from here?

What if, when he wakes up screaming, it’s because of those nights spent in Camila Noceda’s basement, and that thing he had allowed himself to sleep next to?

What if Gus spends the rest of his life rattled by how close the two of them had once been? Just how easily he could have had the breath wrung out of his throat by Hunter’s witch slaughtering hands.

In this future that Hunter imagines, there is no solution for Gus’ hurt. And he’s unable to wrap him up tight in his arms and tell him he’s here because he's not here anymore.

He’s somewhere far away from Gus.

Or he’s dead. Which is basically the same thing.

Not like it would matter anyway. Even if he was close enough to hold him, it would just make everything worse. Hunter having been in close proximity a time ago would be the whole reason for the hurt. The most considerate thing he could do is stay far away or be dead and rotting or whatever it is that keeps him out of sight and out of mind.

He notices that whenever Gus calls out to him in the dark, he barely sounds like himself. It’s like this iron spined thirteen year old has regressed eight years and he's nothing but a frightened preschooler begging to be held by someone safe.

Hunter is not someone safe.

But maybe, for Gus' sake, he can pretend to be.

If the truth never leaves Hunter's tongue, then he will never be the monster in Gus' bad dreams.

So, he's protecting him, right? If Hunter just keeps his huge mouth shut for once in his life, Gus won't have to carve another painful tally mark into his already worn down heart.

There doesn't have to be another liar in Gus' life.

Not if he never finds out.

Hunter can pretend.

He can bury himself into this game of make-believe until the lie and the truth become in the same.

Wouldn't that be better for everyone?

He knows it's dishonest, but he can make up for it with his life. He'll make them happy, he promises.