Cricket Creek Bog if lies were cats you'd be a litter

@Indra

like a stick insect grubbing its antennae together, the rake-thin lecher huddled over the bog, immersed neck-down in the murky waters and feeling around for his lost marbles on its floor — stirring up silt and peat and decayed plant matter. his body was wet through with stinking segue, reflecting that he’d been there for some time, chumming the waters with the seeping ichor from his neck.
"drink up, drink up, gorgeous." he murmured.

she traveled along the intinerant treeline between boughs of douglas fir and ice-capped nettle. she moved quickly and unsurely and at intervals would stop and fan her ears back and her head would cast every which way as if looking for something. she was alone but she moved as if she expected company.

the snowbattered expanse of pine filtered into a deep delve and at the bottom of that slope a frozen bog rested, its surface black and ice thick as fingernails against the bank. she slid down the slope in careful limping jumps and frozen shards of snow and ice skittered past her. several hundred feet away a wolf's bent form caught her attention and she stood upright immediately with he hackles raised in quill-like gestures.

she could not make his words out but could hear his mutterings - she squinted as she thought she saw something trailing around his neck. carefully she lowered her muzzle to the bank and licked along the exposed cracks in the ice, never once moving her gaze from his huddled form.

he heard her come upon him but neither startled nor stirred. watchful, absalom scrutinized the girl openly as she neared with mincing steps. visually, he could not complain--she was possessed of such ingenue, her ruddy pigment aestheticly pleasing. he felt her eyes, and delighted in the attention, even if such attention was leery in nature.
"are you curious?" his black gums were drawn in a defiled smile--he rose from the glacial waters, bidding she cast her timid stare to his haggard, putrefied neck and the dozen black leeches partaking of its gore. "they feed, i heal." the lech rasped, shifting his thin shoulders to skulk from the murk.

it was not long before the contorted figure reacted to her arrival - indra remained hunkered down but he drew closer and there flickered in her gaze a wilderness - there one minute and gone the next. she did not know his intentions and his newfound proximity to her caused her rubinous winter fur to stand on end.

trailing around his neck was something she had no word for - a vine? a shriveled root? it was too flexible to be root, and too uniform for a vine. it bit into his neck like a fissure cleaved through dry earth. it bound around him like a braided river, dun and bloodied and soggy with matter and decay. the stench he carried with him was overwhelming and convulsion rifled across her muzzle as she saw the oily backs of fat and wriggling leeches feasting on his exposed wound.

she remained rooted but every instinct told her to leave. she was afraid if she ran he would give chase -- he seemed too feral to deny his predatory instinct. instead she stood her ground and quietly answered: "yes. what is that?" she had no name for the rope, but it was clear that was the object of her curiosity at present.

the contortion of her mien upon seeing the leeches issued from the man a cackle. "they don't sup for greed. they take only what is dead--tissue, clot. and will fall off when they are glutted." 
regardless of his aspect, she remained still, questioning the rusted hardware enfettered to his ruff. "oh, this old thing?" he peered down, nudging it with his gaunt wrist. a cheerless expression washed o'er his features. "i can't get it off. would you help me?" he beseeched, placing a foot forward as if he sought to draw closer to her apprehensive frame.

the girl shrunk back as he cackled, her soft amber eyes fearful as she held him in her gaze. she knew there was something wrong with him beyond the corpulescent rope that hung in tatters around his neck. she did not understand his affinity for the leeches, nor how calm he was despite their presence on his festering nape -- it made her skin crawl and her stomach shrivel in revulsion as she thought of the leeches slithering across her own red fur.

the corners of her eyes hardened as she registered his plea; she was mistrustful of him and for good reason, and with a slow deliberation to her movements she pushed away from him as if pushing back from a table. "you'll hurt me if i help you." she accused him, believing the man's vulnerability was a trap.

like a cat watching a housefly, absalom's eyes affixed to every nuance, even in breath, present the girl's body language. she was ill at ease, and he was a boundary buster. he stepped closer to her despite the privation of warmth in recieving his approach. one of the corpulent bloodsuckers dislodged itself from the lesions and writhed on the sphagnum.
"where'd you get a crazy idea like that?" he questioned, eyes unflinching at her accusation of scheming against her. "we're friends, don't you remember me? friends help eachother out." he exaggerated a pained wince, a whine eking from his throat.

one of the fat bloodsuckers fell to the frozen ground with a splat: indra watched its wriggling form, a defiling oil-black against the pristine snow. her muzzle reflected well the disgust she felt.

she looked back up to the male warily. his aspect was frenetic in a way that was unfamiliar. she could not genuinely ascertain his motives, and as such, any wolf -- or male, really -- with unclear purpose was a danger she could not afford.

she wanted dearly to flee, but his feral gaze forbade it. her core felt violated by the intensity of his eyes, as if he were peering straight through her. she felt trapped like a bug under glass in his fervid and inescapable stare. "okay." she glanced around them for some sort of leverage - anything to ensure her survival.

loathe to draw close and even more chilled with the prospect of turning her back to him, indra stumbled backwards before slowly making for the gnarled face of a winter-worn and half-rotted blue spruce that had collapsed to the ground in rot years ago.

okay, the trepidatious sylph breathed. the heebie-jeebies was all he had to give--the unfortunate end product of a life up until this point, lived in violate and isolated milieu. "you are so kind to me." he encouraged, eyes tracking her as she doddered backwards and appeared to strew the rimy underfooting for something to pry the burden from his neck.
he kept advancing on her stumbling, flustered figure. she suddenly turned from him, dispossessing herself of his gaze, and scurried towards the moldered pillar of a spruce tree. "i'm sorry, this memory of mine--what was your name again? i'm sal." he spoke placidly, trying to coax her back into his proximity by disclosing something distinguishable--something they had in common. surely, she had a name. he'd just forgotten it.

as she hastily looked around her for some way to rid of the wolf she was reminded of redshank and what he had said to her -- about other wolves, and how sometimes they were not worth trusting. certainly this wolf was hardly reassuring when it came to his stability, but indra couldn't find a way to escape him that did not require outright running. she was still too sore for a headlong run, and if it devolved into a chase she knew he would easily overcome her.

she sighed as she walked around the pillar of the tree, nosing the ground as she looked for something. he asked her what her name was -- indra was certain she had never met him before and that it was all a trick, but she played along to appease to his better nature. she assumed whatever his grumpier nature was, was not a nature she wanted to witness.

"indra." she said with a swallow, regretting her honesty within seconds. she should have said anything, anyone else. she stopped as her paw struck a lengthy stick, and looked at him carefully. "a-are you going to kill me?" she asked resignedly, fear tipping her voice with a short note of sorrow as she recognized he may be the last thing she saw on this miserable earth.

"innnndra! that's right. i remember now." his voice was light, whimsical; it completely belied his insiduous aspect.
absalom stopped approaching the girl in sackcloth and ashes as she conjectured about the demise of herself, his face emoting surprise. "kill you? now," he tutted, slinking around the rot-ridden tree she had backed up to moments before. "why would i do such a rancid thing? you have an over-active imagination, indra."
he forged an expression of disappointment, metal faintly click-clacking as he milled about her like a hyena. "maybe you'll kill me. i'll let you close, and you'll garrote me." he inferred, bringing his gaunt wrist to his chest. "but you wouldn't do that, indra. i trust you." the man quickly added after, emphasizing the word trust in a way he hoped would inspire some measure of guilt for her surmising such heinous misconduct.

she knew better than to believe the hurt that simmered in his gaze, or the way he accented trust as if it were some sacred, inviolable convention. indra knew then she hated that word and a look of resentment brewed across her copper features. if she was going to die at his hand, she was going to fight it. and then, she would accept it, because she was tired of fighting and she was tired of this cold, miserable life.

she did not like how he walked around her like she was a drumstick on the table - she felt at her hackles raise even further and a prickle crawled down her neck as she tried to boldly stare him down. she did not feel brave at all, and as he pulled closer she tried to think of what laurel would do.

she briefly closed her eyes as if praying, before she tentatively leaned into his proximity. she could feel the stench hit her like a physical barrier and nearly retched. gingerly she sought to place her teeth on the rope, her heart pounding heavily in her skull with blind terror as she did so.

the tension as she drew close to him was palpable. he sensed it, his eye could glint on the polished blade of dread that shred her nerves; he had the hilt between his teeth. if he wanted to strike her dead, he had a slew of opportunities to pick from. alas, that was not the end he wanted for her. 
despite her misgivings about the man she tentatively straightened out her neck and stiffly--like a mannequin--clasped the plated metal between her teeth. a wheedling smile unfurled on his lips but he did not move except to lift his head, exposing her completely to the weeping contusions on his neck (the leeches had all fallen off, to her luck).
feeling her hot, shaky breath against his neck made his flesh tingle and he leaned into her solicitious orbit, thirsting for more of her warmth. but she was still fearful, and he felt the intimacy was grievously one-sided, yet. "someone has hurt you before." he remarked, as though he was just noticing the brokenness of her little body. "do i remind you of them?" he murmured tenderly to her ear. "it must have been so violating, indra, for you to be this way."
he needed to peel her open, to see the vulnerability, to taste the intimacy he craved. the fright, he knew, she handed out liberally; someone else had instilled it in her mind long before he.

despite all that had happened to her, there was still a goodness in her -- she no longer believed of the benevolence of the world, but still wanted to believe in her benevolence within. she was repulsed as she drew closer and felt his breath against her fur, his words form syllables of small stirrings of air that rifled through her at-end fur and settled around her skin like a noose.

what he spoke of broke the last tentative bit of goodwill indra had in her; with a hurt snarl she suddenly pushed against him as hard as her little body could and immediately pulled away with sobbing gasps. she would find no solace in his presence, no joy in his words -- they cut her deeper than ithrik's teeth ever had and part of her wilted beneath their cruel intonation.

she was running before she knew it, choking back the tears that stung her face in the cold air. the wind was raw as it raked across her face. whether or not he followed she did not know - she only knew of the hate that burned smokily in her heart, and the sudden sense of irremediable instinct that stirred her blood and called action to run - run harder than she ever had before.

absalom: was it something i said

his intrusion, in its own way an reenactment of the violation she had suffered at the hands of ithrik, caused a paroxym of distress. indra's throat wrung a snarl and her body staved him off with a shove. he was featureless as a sob wracked her entire being, eyes inscrutably blank and poised for the resistence of her sudden emotional nudity. 
he watched the rose before him wilt and then die. she lost color, and then a breeze picked her up and carried his flower away with it, her moaning with sorrow poignant across the bog. so withholding, she was--not the benevolent woman she thought herself, but a cruel one, for rejecting him.
absalom began to follow the smell of her.