#the biter is only a little bit inspired by my sea runners....

[cappurrccino]

day 2: faroe

@malevoversary day 2, let's goooo! i think faroe deserves a monster best friend

[ read it on ao3 ]

~

The eternal night was… pretty, she realized. It wasn’t often that she got a moment to pause—especially not anywhere with open air overhead—but now that she had one? It was pretty in a haunted sort of way.

Everything was cast in the same deep black and cold grey and inky blue, shadows on shadows on eternal void, suggesting and hinting at what the landscape might be if you were lucky enough to be seeing true. Glitter and sparks and ribbons of light of every color shot through the deep murk. Things being chased, things doing the chasing, decoys, distractions, lures. Teeth and claws and knives flashing through the dark reflecting non-existent light.

She sighed heavily and her breath fogged in front of her. A kaleidoscopic cloud of every hue that shifted and twisted and drifted away on invisible currents. Dangerous, perhaps, to indulge, but she felt safe enough now.

That made her laugh.

Safe.

How strange to think she would ever feel that here. The only real memories she had were of running and fear and pain and cold and hide, hide, hide.

And yet…

She remembered safe. She remembered warmth and light. She remembered soft textures on her feet and gentle breezes on her face and laughter and a delicate melody with no end. She remembered the word Faroe.

Maybe they weren’t hers… Maybe she’d stolen them at some point. Maybe the Biter had given them to her.

It did that sometimes.

Most times she liked when it shared things with her. Sometimes she didn’t, but it was still nice to share. (It could see in the dark—she liked to see the shapes and colors the rocks took; she didn’t like to see what twisted around them, waiting in the dark.)

She pressed more snugly into the warm mass at her back and felt its rumbling response in her bones. It tickled and a small giggle escaped her. One eye blinked open near her head, followed by a dozen more in a halo around her. They had no pupils, but she knew they were looking at her (and at the landscape and at the sky and at a tiny skittering creature some distance away). A dozen tentacled limbs wrapped around her—the warmest and strangest blanket anyone could ask for.

Briefly, she marveled at that. It seemed like it hadn’t been that long ago when she’d found it, and it had been so tiny then, barely up to her knees. A wriggly little mass of eyes and teeth and bluster (she’d thought, until it had bitten her and she understood its fear as keenly as her own). And now? Easily three times her size, still wriggly, but less so; still many eyes and teeth, but more so.

A low warbling note rumbled from it, one she had come to associate with curiosity. It was melodic, almost. Reminded her again of the memories she carried.

“Do you want to hear a song?” she whispered.

It hummed again [excitement, hunger] and its many eyes blinked to focus on her (it showed her herself in the dark, and preened when she smiled up at it).

She gave one of its many limbs a soft pat and began to hum the unknown melody that haunted her every moment.