Wapun Meadow 고기를 먹고 싶어 샤샤샤

The serpent wolf regarded his territory borders not with pride and ownership, but with the weariness of a struggle long endured — a weariness that ought to have been too heavy to sustain the thread of disgust that led his ghostly footfalls far and away. He angled his muzzle and Coelacanth followed willingly, her lithe paws taking two dancing steps for every one of his longer strides; she found in his answering quiet a deep-seated comfort, for in his silence and the fire of his eyes, she saw Amoxtli. She worried for this wolf — he appeared haggard, touched like the other wolves of the wilds by the famine that had claimed so many lives; but beyond that, there was a weight upon his soul that was palpable to the cerulean-eyed empath.

Relaxing fully in his company, guileless and content, the inky ingénue found herself surprised when the pallid wraith turned to her quite simply and offered his name — “Kierkegaard,” she quietly thought, mulling over the foreign syllables and the ease with which he’d given them to her with a shy and tremulous smile shaping her tender mouth. The look she turned upon him was as sunny as Amoxtli’s in that moment; hers was a dog’s happiness, pure and unfettered and honestly a little foolish, and she reached shyly forth to brush her cheek along the lean and rangy muscle of his shoulder as they walked together. Given her time with Marbas, one would have thought that Seelie would learn something about interacting with wolves who were not members of her immediate family — but this was not the case.

“You are like a night sky,” the ghostly wolf murmured, his tired voice pulling at her heartstrings and enchanting her all at once, and without preamble he captured her with a name. “Nathimmel.” A night sky. Nathimmel, she thought, tasting the name as she had tasted his. It bore a dark, rich sound unlike any word she had heard before, and the pace of her dainty, catlike paws quickened as she bounded a few yards forward, then circled back to him, seablue eyes glowing brightly with feelings she would never fully convey. She tilted her finely-sculpted head back and howled, a soft, elongated whisper, and sidestepped neatly as her arched back and inkbrush tail shaped the height of her elation. To Marbas, she was a creature of the sea — to Doe, a faithful and shifting pocket of ink — and to Kierkegaard, the night sky.

But you are a halfbreed — only a halfbreed, and a mute — the dark and lonely voice wanted to whisper, and she closed her ears to it with considerable effort that revealed itself in a flicker of her tufted ears as they cupped forward upon her narrow skull to catch Kierkegaard’s every breath.