#uhh have fun with that data harvesting lmao

[iamidentical]

autostraddle... yikes

[damienthepious]

did you know that it's a full moon tonight? because that fact has shaped ALL my writing progress today.

i fucking hate this new editor by the way. i can BARELY fucking post fic at all anymore and it's fucking banishing me to the phantom zone. go read my fic on ao3 instead im begging you.

raised by wolves

[ao3]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationships: Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla

Characters: Rilla, Sir Damien, Lord Arum, The Keep

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Lizard Kissin' Tuesday, Established Relationship, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Werewolf!Rilla specifically, Secrets, (look i think rilla deserves to have some angsst explored for once), (uhhhh god there have GOT to be more tags uhh. i don't know i'll add more later), (In later chapters there will be), Implied/Referenced Harm to Children, Implied/Referenced Violence, Mild Injury

Summary: Rilla is keeping secrets.

Notes: This didn't exist this morning and now i've got a new fucking multichapter to worry about jesus fuck. hopefully (LMAO) this one won't actually be that long? if it goes according to.. plan???? yeah. right. fine. okayfine.

~

Rilla has always liked straight lines. Consistent rules. Categories, into which data points will neatly fall.

This might, possibly, have something to do with all the categories she falls between the cracks of, herself. Or maybe she was always going to be like this. Who knows? She doesn't exactly have a control group to check with. Life doesn't work like that; neat and tidy like her experiments. Life is messy. Her life, in particular, is messy. But, hey, at least it's messy mostly on a predictable cycle. Mostly.

Rilla packs her usual bag, false bottom carefully in place with her new tinctures alongside the old standbys. She pulls her hair out of her face and into a braid, and picks her way down to the greenhouse to say her goodbyes.

A newer wrinkle in the routine: saying her see-you-in-a-couple-days, I-promise-I'll-be-safe, try-to-remember-that-I-love-yous in the Keep, now, and not in her own hut. Saying them to Arum, too.

Arum hasn't questioned her absences, yet, because she goes off on her own all the time anyway, and because he never really seems to question her about leaving the Keep. She can tell that he doesn't want to remind her of being kept here, and... that isn't necessary, really, but it's sweet, in a way.

He and Damien can keep each other company while she's gone, too. Which is nice. Damien doesn't have to be quite so lonely when she's gone, anymore (and Arum doesn't have to be lonely at all, if she can help it).

She kisses Damien deep, distracted by the way his skin smells, this close to the moon, and when she pulls back Arum nuzzles his snout into her neck in a way that makes her want to growl, though she manages to suppress the urge into just a shudder as she wraps an arm around him and squeezes. No time for fun, just now, unfortunately. She kisses Arum's cheek, light and sweet to make him scowl, and then she peels herself away with a casual wave.

The Keep's portal drops her in the front room of her hut, receding back into the wide planter to the left of the hearth with a gentle farewell warble from the Keep (or at least... what she assumes is a gentle farewell warble), and Rilla grabs another one or two things to stuff into her pack before she steps out of the hut, locks up, and marches into the jungle.

Damien thinks that her monthly disappearances have to do with harvesting rare medicinal plants with very particular blooming cycles, which is... partly true. There are flowers and herbs to be harvested during the day, when she can. She doesn't like being less than honest with Damien, but she's been less than honest with every single person she's ever known since her parents were Exiled. And- it's a medical condition. Sort of. She's allowed to keep a medical condition private if she wants to.

Arum...

Arum complicates things. He's good at that.

Arum complicates her excuses for not telling Damien, specifically. Because if Damien can, in fact, put aside his animosities and find room in his heart for a monster...

(Maybe she could have told him ages ago.)

(Or maybe not. Maybe it would have been too much, before. Maybe he would have been terrified. Maybe he would have felt betrayed. Maybe he would have told the Crown. Maybe he would have-)

No one knows about the second hut, the same way no one knows about her condition. Though... "hut" is generous. Her home is a hut, cozy and carefully cluttered and warm and welcoming. This building is more of a shack, really. It's a fair hike from the hut, but she can get there before dusk with time to spare, which is pretty much the point. Technically speaking, she could just overnight here and then come back home during the day, if she really pushed it, but that would be a lot harder to explain than just saying that she needs to travel to a distant grove for botanical purposes.

It looks abandoned and ramshackle, but the door and the lock are sturdy, and Rilla has the key.

Sturdy, reinforced walls, a wooden locking bar to make certain that nothing gets in and out, no windows. Bare floors, excepting a chair and a desk in one corner for a little bit of reading or writing during the day, and a chest to keep her things in. Mostly open space, where Rilla spreads out the blankets she brought, right in front of the metal hoops for the chains.

She cut her timing a little close today, mostly because she wanted to actually enjoy her morning with Damien and Arum. She sighs, stretches, and unpacks her extra clothes into the chest so she can get to the false bottom of her pack and pull out her medicine.

First night. She'll go with her standby tincture, this time. She has a new experimental blend she wants to try, but she'd rather save it for tomorrow, the full moon, and see how it affects her on the day that hits her with the most severe symptoms. This one, she at least knows that it'll keep her mostly placid.

She sighs, uncorks the vial and slams it back like a shot, wrinkling her nose at the taste.

The medicine makes her memory a bit... muddy? But even before she developed this particular treatment regimen, she couldn't remember much about what happened, what she would do on the nights immediately surrounding the full moon.

She does know that she hates it here. Hates the chains, hates the wood against her claws, hates the drowsiness from the medicine. Hates being alone.

She packs her kit back up. She undresses to her underclothes, then stows her dress and shoes and the tinctures into the chest before she closes it with a click.

She goes to sit on the blankets on the floor, then, fixing the harness around her neck and chest and adjusting it to the marked positions. Rilla has been alone in one way or another since her parents left, she reminds herself as she settles in to wait, her skin already prickling and her eyes adjusting far too quickly to the dark.

The wolf will just have to cope.