Shadewood Drunk Nights are more fun than Sober Ones

@Kukutux <456789 because we needed another one

He had made up with Gwen...or rather they had made up with each other. But he had only just began getting over guilt. Acually, it was a lie- He hadn't gotten over it. In fact, he felt worse. He felt as though had he not taken Kukutux in, that this depression would have never taken him so willingly...but he let it. He allowed it for the betterment, for the housing, for the survival of Kukutux. 

Was it warranted? 

His body was reforming after his starvature, the body of a high-metabolismed beast returning after he repaired the wittling away with a few feasts with Gwen. His body was still being breathed back to life while he returned to the tucked den of the cream and butter fae with the familiar sapphires. Idly he wondered what would happen should he try to have a conversation with her. He was unaware of her and Gwen having had a conversation already, and his ignorance was seemingly meant to be rectified today.

"Kukutux?.." his callout was soft, hesitant, almost as though he expected her to be furious at him, too.

<3

strips of dried meat had been collected into a small cache in the corner of the girl's den, just inside the entrance. her efforts at hunting had downed a grouse and a blackbird; carefully kukutux had plucked the feathers and piled them in a soft heap. with a large fur, the down would make a proper bed, but she reminded herself she had no husband to bring her such things.

she must find them herself, then.

when cry's voice sounded, the duck started, lashes fluttering with surprise. of course, she could not be shocked that he had sought her out. smoothing the fur of her chest with a lick, kukutux moved into his presence. the shaman was thinner than she had remembered, a haunted expression burning in his eyes, and worry spoke to her soul. "i greet you, cry," came her gentle murmur as she moved to and fro to prepare him food. 

perhaps this time he would eat, kukutux hoped, nosing a broad strip of bark holding a fresh strip of pheasant meat toward her leader.

Her voice was soft, innocent, untouched by bias, and almost a wiltless lotus in it's own right. It was a greeting he had recieved, and wanted to rub his heart against, almost like a hug that hed never had gotten from his mother, form his father, from sisters and brothers. She had a noise down deep within her that Cry simply couldn't stop wanting to hit the repeat button on. And that very notion was going to get him in trouble. 
But he couldn't stay away from Kukutux, regardless of it.

An imperceptible gulp dragged his thoughts down his gullet as he tried to hush them. But the horror resurfaced when she yet again, tried to feed him, whipping up a meal with the swift movements of a well practiced nurturer. Something internal began to seeth and seize in him, and that same lump he tried to swallow only lodged firmer in his throat. He struggled to speak, to return her greeting as she yet again brought him goodness, seeming to tell him silently that food and kindness was what he needed in these trying trials of time and love. 
Polar crystals slid to the next plate she had given to him- could he eat this? Without the guilt? Without the breaking pang that was still bleeding in his heart? Without the cloudy haze that she was unnaturally bringing herself closer to him by doing nothing but revealing her customs to him? What he had just had with Gwen...What they had just gone through...it was so much more than mere pieces of food. So he should be able to eat them...
why couldn't he touch the damn plate!

"I'm so sorry, Kukutux." He closed his eyes, settling back on his hinds. "I should not have brought you into that mess. I should not have thought things would simply pearl over with little fractures. But all of it is because I've come to realize I did in fact want to give us children." Cry couldn't fathom why getting this off of his chest would make him feel better. He was someone who usually held the most painful things within. The exact opposite was happening. He cared so much for Tux...but he was giving her the truth. 
"I am lost, Kukutux. I am lost, and frankly," he felt exasperated, but couldn't express it through his face, his face that seemed to keep it's eyes closed and maws as closely locked as possible, only loose enough to allow words to pass through them. Cry was conflicted, and as someone who usually knew exactly what to do from orders from other people above him, being a leader was tough when you found yourself wanting to please everyone. But what did he want? "I find myself being strong for Gwen, for Gwen...But I feel myself being weak around you- and I do not know what that is." It couldn't be love, could it? It couldn't be. And he would tell himself this, and believe this. He would make himself believe this. 

kukutux was unused to men who expressed such levels of emotion, especially in their words. but cry was not like her brother had been, nor her father, nor grandfather. nor her mate, and her heart thrummed with hurt still to think of him. yet she put the man from her mind, lest she disturb his spirit, and focused on what it was cry meant to impart to her.

gaze moving to the untouched plate — kukutux was unsure why she bothered with formalities the shaman did not seem to notice — the duck contemplated what it was he meant. an expression of weakness was usually confirmed by guilt, perhaps over attraction. slowly, her lushgreen eyes lifted to the ice of cry's own, and she gazed steadily at him for a long moment.

"i have spoken with gwen. i have told her why i asked you. she gave me her blessing to stay in the keep; she called me her sister." not at all the way things had been done upon the isle, but kukutux was unwilling to turn away gwen's expression of acceptance. "i ... wish to be her sister. even if i am not your wife." 

evasive the things she wished to convey! they slipped from the grasp of her tongue like little pogy fish, and frustration knit her pristine brow for a moment. "i do not think she will wish me to be her sister if i am in your ... mind." again, backwards; sharing a man was the only way the duck knew how to be a sister, but such was the love expressed in these lands that she could not be such.

gently, kukutux pulled her eyes away from cry, settling them again uponthe food he had not eaten. "what ... what is this weakness?" for surely she knew, but maybe she did not. or a third; she only wished to hear him say it, express what it was lurked behind his carefully controlled words.

“If you would have left, guilt would have held me for a very long time.” It was a somber admittance, a pained one that he wouldn’t have been able to hold in whether he wanted to be collected, or not. “But I am happy for you. I truly am. And I can sincerely try to find you a worthy...husband.” But something in him seethed at this notion, as though he were giving up a prize that was meant for him, handing over a piece of himself to someone who wouldn’t treat it the way it deserved. It burned the glacier of his heart, and the meltwater near drowned his sanity right then and there. But he was brave enough to hold his breath until it drained away. 

“You have tendencies that she does not- it is a compliment. You both compliment each other, in such contrasting ways.” He didn’t know if it was a clear explaination or not, but once her verdant jewels slid back to her food she had made for him, he used it as an example. “Your food- Gwen has never done this for me. She hadn’t ever made me a plate, or asked me how I was. We hunt together, and simply assume the other is fine unless it is obvious. It seems as though I gravitate to you when I hunger, and to her when I need exercise.” Was this too much?

not too much, though she blinked at his comparision. "that is why a man might have more than one wife," came her gentle murmur. "my father ... he might have taken a second in the following year. someone to help my mother with her new children, someone to feed he and they while my mother rested." it was a good way, even if it was not cry's way.

but more and more, she sensed he had thawed to the idea, and this caused no small tumult in kukutux' heart. "my days of mourning are soon over. i will be ready then." he did not want to find her a husband, the duck knew; one glance into his eyes told her so. and his selfishness razed her, flattered her. he could not keep her on standby, denying her the ability to move forward, but it was a truly marvelous thing that the man wanted her at all.

"perhaps i should find my own, cry," she whispered, and once more brought her springmint gaze back to the icewater of his own. how striking he was! no small wonder gwen loved him, clung to him, wanted him only for her own. and her sister, too, a pearl in the snow. they were right for one another. so why had he come?

Mourning? Why was she mourning? She had never told him that she was mourning...and at such sharp pick up, he stuck to the topic. “What makes you mourn? I never knew you had been plagued...” He only recalled her being by her lonesome in those woods seemingly forever ago, needing food, shelter, love. 

She was a full grown woman. Of course she could find her own husband. 
But if this was the case, how come he couldn’t voice it? It was almost as if saying something even remotely related to that was treason. Instead, his words came out clipped, and he near obviously tried to hide his hurt behind the apathetic facade he hadn’t touched in months. “Do you need help with that?”

cry asked after her mourning, and a low ripple of sorrow knifed through the girl. "i am all that is left of my family. a moon of mourning i set aside, for them, and for the one who was my mate." hoping he would not ask her more questions, kukutux raised her eyes to his own briefly, seeking the emotion there that the shaman wore so openly.

a shake of her head, but pain touched her verdant eyes. "if it could be another way, i would wish that. but i will not bring hurt to gwen." cry must learn to live with the knowledge they could be nothing to one another, not in this life. she herself would not allow her heart to feel more for him than she already knew was existent within her.

All at once, he felt his heart fall, his surly judgement and bitter selfishness  cascading from him as a shuffled snowmound would. It showed as crystalline as the gaze he condescendingly met her verdant own with. 

“Kukutux...” the murmur was a pained one, one which he swiftly had to learn his limits upon. It somehow hurt him more to be emotional than anything else. As though the Phantom were frightened such emotions would make him corporeal, capable of being ruined by lack of recriprocation.
He missed the days when he could allow himself to care so little of others and their damned pathetic paths of life. When he could simply do his job, collect, and move on. 

Raziel took a second, inhaling quite the breath before making his mind up. 

“I will not force you, nor Gwen, or even myself through such a matter, then. It’s not worth it. All of our burdens are heavy enough, as it is.”

It was true. Near everyone here had some sort of pst, and he was even more sure that none of said stories were pretty, in the slightest. Fairytales did not exist in this awful woodland, no matter how colorful he tried to paint it to be.

it was better this way, the spirit whispered in a small voice. but kukutux felt she ached to have cry touch her, if not in a carnal sense, then one that would ease her starved body. "if you still wish to help me, you must set a bride-price. some number of furs and amount of meat, bones, feathers. whatever you believe i am worth."

her voice shook in the air, heavy with the unspoken weight of words between them, the expression that lurked in the depths of the shaman's gaze. how magnificent he was, even though he could not be hers, nor she his. but it was not worth the sundering that would come. "you will represent me, and he will give you the bride-price. only when he has done that will i be able to be claimed as wife."

finding a husband alone was not something kukutux wished to do, and though the thought of this man giving her to another pained the secret places of her heart, she would have him close, if only for that purpose. openly did her springjade eyes look upon him now, allowing herself to gaze at the details of his face for a sorrowful moment.

Almost as though they had been on the same wavelength, he too wanted to ease her pain. But she would forever be that rose he was not ever allowed to pluck, the wine he was never allowed to savor. 

“I can not do that, Kukutux.” His voice held thenutmost capacity of control he had for reservation for her plight. He tried desperately to keep his wrath in check, as it was foolishly fueled by selfishness and greed. “I can not price you- you are too valuable for mortal things. You are not some trinket to be passed on for another set of trinkets.” 

Not to me, you are not.

Trying to yet again compromise some sort of bridge between his world and hers, he recalled the Sisterhood the woman shared with Gwen. “Perhaps Gwen would be able to come up with some exchange? Some recommended placement or...or...” the Phantom, for once, fumbled for words. There was no way he would be able to get through this so easily.

suddenly, kukutux was angry, angry at the way cry had created this situation, angry at his continued denial of her culture. a spark began deep within the girl, soared from her eyes, and for the first time since arriving in the teekons, the duck allowed her rage to break with infuriated tone.

"the only one who thinks me a trinket here is you, cry," kukutux accused, gathering herself to her small paws and the full breadth of her height to glower at the shaman. "in my land, a man willing to hunt for a bride price means to say the woman he has chosen is worth all his effort, a moon of gathering to please her father. it says 'i will be a good husband. i will be a good father.' it is not your way, but it is not wrong."

the green rage of her stare sought to scour the shaman, to drive him into some emotion that was not a tight indifference or a wounded expression. but more than that, kukutux wished cry to leave her, for now she stood spent and trembling before him. and still she held her ground, knowing he could easily overpower her, cast her out. no matter. the duck had spoken the words of her soul, and the spirit's voice was silent for now.

Her fire. 
It reeled licking flames over the tender ice of his heart, the heat of her passion going on to feed the fear to needlessly hide his own. The iceberg had finally fallen from this high mountain as the spring eyes cursed the height from which it once reigned silently. 
It fell, plummeting into the deep and unforgiving waters of meltwater, and he found his mask, one still bearing the wear marks from where he once put his face in, before. 
It still fit.
And it was perfect for this occasion, as the woman he stood to stare upon pushed the caring Phantom from the new roost he tried to make for his settling birds. 

No...this woman wanted him for who he was, for who he was meant to be. And he would show her the darkness she so craved, he would allow her a peek into the pressure that he had kept from his Family. The ex-assassin would give it to her until she either coveted his will, or fled from his law.

Ebony hide as ethereal as the Void’s most despairing of eclipses began a wave of bristle. His fur did not stand, but the night seemed to come much closer to his body as his mood had clearly shifted. But how?

Baritones turned soft, silken, as his murmur seemed to carry direct to her ear, to her mind, his patience so spent it had become thin fabric. 

“And if you are right? If I should think you dear enough to me that I simply can not, and will not let you go- what could you possibly do to stop me?” He took a step to her, his shadow bleeding across the ground where he closed the gap between them. Almost intimately close.

His voice lowered as he stood barest nare to nare with the bold woman whom was just meek only minutes before. 
Discipline. It was a harsh thing instilled in him, beaten into his mind with that barbaric hand of his uncle. Everyone needed discipline- but who was he but a messenger? 
He was no
messanger. 

He was the Watcher of this Keep. 
The Heir of the Nightmare legacy. 
And be damned those who stood against his will.

”You stand by you beliefs, Yunoks Arilera,” the voice lifted so unbelievably soft from his tarred lips. “But you also stand in my land.” It was clear he wanted Kukutux, that mere desire for her being the only thread holding this weight from collapsing the cage of whatever evil thing lurked within it, within him. It paced just behind his silent and brooding walls, hunger commanding it to smash against its unforgiving cell, howls of damnation and vengeance echoing behind his carefully gilded eyes.

”I can only do so much.”

                                                                        

before this demon inhales me, too.

to say she was not frightened as cry rose and darkly approached was a lie, for kukutux was aware she had misspoken, and to a man, no less. but the baleful glint of his eye, the selfishness of his words — these things angered the girl more deeply. she was young by the laws of nature, and those of this land, a mere child in the eyes of many, and now it seemed cry himself thought to intimidate her.

"if you seek to force me, i will leave you," kukutux whispered in a rasp, her eyes trained upon his own hard gaze. he would not keep her here, to wither away while he went on in his life with gwen. she did not doubt his care, only his ability to show it. she would be his wife, or she would not belong at all.

"agal," the duck spat, her toes curling into the cold loam. her teeth flashed once with the warning of woman's knives, but she sheathed them. and if he moved against her then, she would know he was no man, but a cruel bully. turning the narrow line of her spine then, kukutux sought the darkness of her den, wherein she would crouch until long after cry had gone. 

then, and only then, would her mind work toward the creation of plans that might free her from his grasp upon her that promised to be ironbound.

She was no child to him; even if she was-
Ghosts of faces spun around them, his peripherals catching the unnaturally pale and viciously mournful, hurt, and desolate eyes of children who had been fell at his paws, by his teeth, with his wit. All six of them, he remembered. Innocent up until the day they had perished. Sithis guides them all now, and he was the wicked messiah instructed to deliver them all those fateless moons ago.

So in essence, her age, her beauty, they would not stop him. However, a woman’s teeth were needlesque to a man’s, swift as cat claws, mauling with enough swift ferocity to make timely getaways. He needed to tread carefully- his mind, regardless of how plagued it was, forever sought ways to avoid being caught. As by natural, he was an assassin, whether his title of it had been retired or not.

Her verdant gaze swore well enough that she would use such a betrayal against him.

”You are free to do so,” his words between them, simply too good to be true. “But within every single shade that follows you, I will be. Inch by inch, I will be closer- and you will not know until you realize that shadows do not breath.”

Slade haunted those who were against him, utilizing fear and morbid gore to frighten and despair his enemies. He knew his wile and guile, when to use it, and when to roguishly snatch up a passing lip of one who spoke fiendish to him. 
Her word crossed him, a curse from her lips as she threw it at him with the vehemence of a scorned mistress. Cry felt the acid sizzle against him, his ignorance of  her language preventing him from even knowing what brand of acid she used. But he had just spoken to her in the Nightmare Tongue, so what could he fault her for?

He took her sight in again, how her chest was thrust out, narrow but challenging, the embers of it all lying endlessly in her miraculous eyes. 
It was then, those same eyes distinctly seemed to morph to a simpler time, a place where he recalled faintly, her, a riverbank, the lack of life that had coursed  through them then. A rabbit pelt, a fish...a grateful smile afterwards...words being exchanged. Sun shining overhead as she diced fish up, placing it over the both of them. The walk, and how they had conversed through it all, a laughing pair, a kind and moral day. 

His throat welled up, swelling with a coarse resistance that forbade him from breathing. He could not swallow- he could not speak. 
Those glacials of his, the veil of below zero that had frosted them over, briefly fell as he found himself unsure of this moment. Unsure of what he had just indulged, of what monster he had just fed. 
But the hurt came when he could clearly see that he had lost something unbelievably valuable, a family member who had-

Turning on a dime, he fled, running as he had in youth from the bear who had wracked his back with such terrible scars. Ran like a coward, knowing not whether he should seek Gwen, or fearing that he would hurt her, too. He was unwell, despicable. He needed advice, help, insight. 

Shredding himself through the woods, the timber mix sought out Reiner, hoping the behemoth would know a cure for this sickness.

 

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