Meadowlark Prairie only, lonely, hidden breath beneath the floor

@Qiao :eyes:

He gnawed at the bone between his forepaws, chewing the last stringy bits of meat from the first meal he'd had in who knows how long and thinking: I'm going to die.
And he was terrified, honestly. Alarian had always imagined death as being a sudden and messy affair; a burst of illness, a great bloody clash, a tumble, a hunt gone awry. He'd never thought it would come creeping instead, drawing up behind him in secret until it lingered so near he could feel its breath on his neck. A life alone made it easier to dismiss the gaps in his memory, after all. He'd jerk back to reality with bleary eyes and think oh, I spaced out again, or damn, I forgot what I was doing, and no one was there to point out that all his caches turned to rot and his dens sat stale.
He knew now, of course. Knowing made it worse; knowing was a horror, because it made no difference and gave him no more control over it. Instead he lived in a constant state of near-panic, chest always tight with the anxiety of knowing that at some point, he would blink and lose all sense of self. Reality would shift, and suddenly he'd have new aches and scrapes, dirty paws, matted fur. He would let himself cry for a minute, and then he would find a river and wash himself and set about catching a meal. Sometimes that was all he had time for.
He was going to die, and no one would be around to know it. Not even him.

consciousness was a curse; the certainty of death drummed in qiao’s heart like a percussive beat; one day, one day, one day. 

until those days ran out. 

today she searched. an earlier communion with the spirits told her of some valuable artifact here; something malignant and deeply unhappy mired in the earth. the whisperings in the copse told her she was close — and the thinning sun reminded her time was somehow running out. 

she came upon a creature bent over a bone; a creature hideously scarred and thin. sickly. a scent to him pervasive and unhappy. qiao studied him for a long time, wondering just what it was about this place that seemed to summon unwell spirits. first the grand king with his ugly soul, then the twisted little goblin with his pure heart — and now this scarecrow of a creature, hardly more than the bone he worried between his ravenous teeth.

eventually she moved off. the world was full of troubled souls as these, and there was no use borrowing from them their sorrows.

<3 I wrapped an ending on this since Ali passed and is inactive (RIP ALI sob emoji)