#technically they aren't tee eff two-ified here yet so imma just tag them as dnd ocs okay o7

[dreary-robot]

no one gets me bruh. writing under cut

And when the shepherd carves his home with worn hands that were taught to butcher and slaughter instead of carve, it should come as no surprise that he is not the finest woodworker.

But he teaches the wild dog to herd, and brings home a lamb not to the slaughter, not for his meat, but for his worn hands to brush the lamb’s dirty wool into fine fleece.

The lamb and the sheep dog play like brothers, two animals living under a human’s roof. The sheep dog’s teeth never bare, never at the lamb, no, but instead for the lamb. When he falls, the dog growls as the dirt, and when he bleeds the dog licks the lamb’s wounds clean.

And when the wolf looks upon this home, noticing the holes in the woodwork, should it come as any surprise that he stands on two legs and dons a bonnet and knocks at the shepherd’s wooden door?

And when the shepherd falls in love with his enemy, enthralled by the sliver of his past he sees in the wolf, his sharp teeth meant for slaughter that the shepherd had left behind, it’s only the sheep dog who sees the wolf under his coat of red wool. Because even if his own teeth had been filed down long ago, he still remembers the flash of white.

Yet the shepherd, blinded by his love, ignores his own sheep dog’s warnings. Because what does an animal know of true love?

And when the wolf finally does strike, with the shepherd’s back turned, his claws gracing the very lips he’d kissed, when the wolf reaches the lamb’s wool and grabs him with teeth the lamb had only seen bared at dirt, when the wolf leaves the wooden house half empty with no fleece to sell,

the butcher blames the wild dog.