Rattleskin Redoubt I'll cry at the end of the day. Not with fresh makeup.

Dusk brought the critters scurrying from their burrows, but silence followed Skips. It echoed along the path he took, as deafening as thunder shaking the sky. His nose was low to the ground. Hot breath scattered the sands. In the dimming orange light he cut a stark figure, a shadow passing through a papermade world in endless dreary sepia. Surreal. Maddening.

But he followed, oh, he followed. He found the snake. He curled its limp form around one foreleg, smiling to himself. Oh, @Aquillius. Scipio tucked his nose between the cold coils of its body. It still smelled like him. Blood and venom and him. It suited him. Growing bored quickly, Skips cast the dead snake back into the sands and picked up the trail once more. The spires threw long shadows which he stepped under, wary of the other scents littering this place. He never strayed from the trail. Not once.

Despite his vow to move northward, he remained within the redoubt.

He couldn't explain it. There was a sort of fearful inertia that choked him without his friend by his side—an inertia in which everything from the past came flooding back. A failure of the levees he'd put up around his heart to keep the torrent at bay.

He was scared, full stop. Outside the redoubt was just empty desert, and beyond, he'd heard, empty plains. 

So Caligula lingered, and languished, eating only small meals here and there while he pondered his next move. 

Perhaps, as he caught sight of the shadow ahead—which had just cast something strange and stringy aside—this could prove the necessary kick in the ass.

The boy picked up his gait into a trot, and chuffed loudly to grab the stranger's attention.

His ears perked with the sound of pawsteps and the thrumming feeling of solitude broken. Skips stopped in his tracks, reeling for a few seconds under the immediate weight of realization: not Aquillius. It was a stranger who disturbed his peace. The amiable chuff grated at his nerves. He was not feeling social. He rarely did.

He turned to look the stranger up and down with cold green eyes. Just a boy. Hey, Scipio greeted sullenly. You seen anyone around here? Any scrawny one-eyed fuckers? Aquillius. Where are you? Lost in a wasteland, leaving a breadcrumb trail of death for him to follow. And here was this random boy. At least he wasn't dead, too.

Caligula hadn't expected a friendly greeting, but nor had he anticipated something this chilly. He resisted a shiver as the older boy stared him down, willing himself not to cower and instead asking—

Wait, he was speaking first. Whew.

No, he said simply, shaking his head. He'd certainly remember seeing someone with only one eye. Not that. Others. But not that.

He cut himself off, feeling a word-loop coming on. Sometimes, when he actually found the right things to say, they'd come out in a repetitive torrent, as if his brain had made many copies and his mouth was just then catching up.

Why? Caligula asked instead. Seemed a reasonable question, anyway.