a little piping quail, scarcely a mouthful. spat out in front of
@Karst.
he had broken its wing and tracked the neophyte. now he stood with single eye appraising tuur.
"show me what you know of healing so far."
the smell of fresh meat drew karst from his hiding place; he had not yet refilled the reliquaries that once housed evien's collection, and as he emerged he felt the fur along his nape prickle, eyes trained upon merrick.
his tattered ears flicked towards the sound of his voice and then flattened. he had not expected this — and sank back in to the dark of the hovel, deflated.
i can't,
admits the boy against his better judgement.
but, i cleaned out the old and the rotten. i have tried to match what is stored to fresh things beneath the snow.
karst moved aside to let the bruin-witch inspect what remained; he squished himself against the farthest wall to compensate, making himself as small as he could (which wasn't very).
merrick watched. the quail mewled pitifully against the ground. so the boy had not yet become the new evien. very well. there was only one, and it was not tuur's skull kept upon the altar. "it is a good start." the fear that clung to the boy assured merrick he would not lie, and so he did not press himself inside to inspect.
he nudged the bird roughly toward the boy. "a meal." another weakened piping, but it was the way of things. and in ursus, such killings could bring pleasure. had tuur killed for himself yet? merrick waited.
a gift from merrick. he had done nothing yet to warrant kindness, if that was what this was, and karst doubted the offering of a meal was just that; everyone needed to eat and karst had not left the hollow to feed himself since being assigned to it. a utilitarian move, then. checking in on the boy while making sure he did not drop dead — karst could appreciate that at least.
he stared down at the bird and then gradually coaxed it closer with a hook of his paw, drawing it in to the dark of the storehouse and against the wall where it would sit in the dust. karst did not want to eat in front of merrick; he had an aversion to it without knowing why.
the bird set aside. merrick glanced at it then back toward tuur, settling himself roughly to groom along one haunch. "do you remember your mother? your father?" perhaps a calloused question, but perhaps if he could impress upon the boy the heavy power of his parentage, something might be unlocked inside him.
watching for a moment with a muted flush of warmth, the bear-king rose, clearing his throat in a vaguer command for tuur to accompany him along a trip to the border.
The question perplexed him.
All that Karst had was himself now. Astyanax too, before his brother vanished. Together they had all they could need. What more was there?
Karst did not wonder where he came from; he did not think it important to consider. He was nobody.
The answer was slow to emerge from him but he rolled his shoulders, shook his head. Maybe this was a test? If that was the case, he voiced one possibility, uncertain: The bear, the spirits?
Averna would like that answer. Maybe it would be enough for Merrick too.
if he had meant to be satisfactory, tuur had done well. merrick smirked, a snort of breath accompanying a laugh. "well done." perhaps there was hope for this son of revui all the same. "i mean to take you and ashlar out one day," the bearking commented, referring to the softest within ursus. they might be broken and honed, and he remembered where he might do this thing.
"what do you think of the red girl?" merrick inquired in the next, tone causual and unmatching the hard thrust of his single lantern-eye. anyone could be taught. how would tuur take his lessons?
There was a small boost to his confidence when Merrick complimented him, more-so out of surprise than anything else. Karst still wasn't sure it was the right answer or even one that made sense, but it satisfied the man, so he relaxed a touch.
He was offering to take him out of the territory; a trip, which made Karst wonder many things. The last time the boy had been out there he'd been hunting for Astyanax. His brother was gone now. Whether he had died or merely abandoned Karst, the boy saw it as the same thing in the end: a loss not worth thinking about.
Yet he thought of him now. Had Merrick found him? Oh, but he mentioned Ashlar — and immediately Karst bristled.
What do you think of the red girl?
he went on to ask. Karst's bristling did not abate.
The princess was not a kind creature. Too often the boy was subjected to her antagonistic behavior, broken down by her efforts. He was slower to answer this question due to an innate fear of Merrick; the man was king here, the red girl his protégé.
Mean.
He finally answers; his tone lacking depth, his eyes down-cast and distracted.
little escaped the man who ruled ursus. not how tuur's young hackles had climbed, had remained. this was curious to merrick, for he had thought them both cut of the same cloth: innocent of the ways of blood. then again, the boy before him had been plunged into it, and ashlar did not seem to have been granted the same exposure.
mean.
he grinned, laughing softly. avicus was a firm sort, cold as the raven who had borne her. and tuur had no violence to him. "she is stronger than you," the bearking said. "the only way to impress her out of her meanness is to be as strong."
to kill.
now, tuur had a familiarity with this, did he not?
He was not wrong. The girl had shown him as much, demanding a fight where there was no desire in him; throwing her weight around to try and force him in to something dire. Karst recalled the tumult of that spar with a grimace.
Why.
He asks, though his query lacks the proper inflection — Why impress? She... she's princess, I...
he couldn't finish his statement, having no title for himself, nothing to name of his place among the bear-wolves. Karst felt like nothing - less than that, a pawn, a punching bag.
Why bother impressing someone who was, by default, greater than him?
"because you were fed on the same milk that reared our princess," merrick said lightly, though his single eye leaped now with flame. not rage nor sorrow; only cunning awareness of the earlier plots he had meant for tuur. and now, perhaps, it would come to pass. "you see how her brother rules alongside his mother and myself." the coywolf gazed into the distance, thinking, unexplicably, of evien.
"i mean the same for her. and in turn, she will choose those loyal to herself. you must be among them, tuur."
the cyclops-gaze fell back upon the boy. "the bears chose you to serve. but you will not always be a servant. you must be ready to be more."
What more could there be for him in this place? Karst had witnessed enough from both the older children to have built a solid foundation (in regards to how the world works) and he could not fathom any change to that fabric of his reality. If it was safety Merrick worried over, the safety of the boy, or the solidity of either of his children's future, perhaps there could be a place for Karst; but he did not see the man as the kind to worry or to care in that regard.
No, instead he saw some idling threat. A serpent in the grass, coiling slowly.
Karst had been born to nothingness, he was nothing. What could he change about the circumstances of his life, how could Merrick's vision become the truth, when Karst couldn't see the way himself? He was in the bottom of a deep black well; claw as he might against the stones of his prison, he could not tell up from down enough to free himself.
I will try.
The boy went on to say, dripping with doubt. He did not know what answer would satisfy the man. He did not think himself capable of much, even as he grew in to his furs and soon would rival the adults in size.
[large]it was this largess that merrick saw burgeoning before him. if tuur was not compelled to his proper place, perhaps the heavy strength that revui had given to the boy might be used against them. but the bear had spoken; it had taken evien and in his place ursus had been granted this unsure boy.
a snaking plan, gathering thought in his mind.
"here you have the makings to be what you want, tuur. whatever your birth. the bear chooses." the remaining eye glittered now, with a fervency that had not abated since merrick had first come to the true ways. "they see all."