Totoka River 내가 바보같아서 바라볼 수 밖에만 없는 건 아마도

“We need you, Raseri. We cannot hope to survive this without your help.”
 
The moniker was one that the pallid brute frequently used. He had traveled for a lifetime and very few actually knew his true calling. This was the preferred way of a nomad of his kind. It was the only way to prevent the attachment. Those who knew him had a pull over him, and Kierkegaard did not wish to be pulled any way that he did not intend for himself.
 
“I doubt you can survive it even with my aid,” he drawled back to the slender beauty before him. His smoldering vision bore into her white-masked face and he frowned, though there was a hint of empathy in the thundering rumble of his voice. Tears sparked in her eyes and she cast her gaze toward the earth out of frustration – the fur along her neck and spine bristled. Suddenly, there was a great growl from within her and she lunged forward, snapping her fangs around the top of his muzzle and biting down viciously. A hiss escaped his mouth and Kierkegaard pulled his head back, feeling her canines dig into his face. But perhaps he had deserved it, and so he stopped struggling against her, and heaved a great breath through his nares. The girl – Moth – had every reason to react so harshly toward his curt response. He was condemning her and her people.
 
Peeling herself from his muzzle, she burned him with a pointed stare and her ears flattened to her skull. “You are an awful man, Raseri. You come here and teach us to fight and show us that we do not have to be oppressed by these… these monsters! And now you’re leaving us to die. You’re leaving us when we need you the most,” she growled to him, though her voice cracked with emotion and she was forced to pull her eyes away from his own. Kierkegaard blinked at her with a sullen expression on his face and he sighed. It was not the first time he had been condemned by another. It would not be the last, he was certain.
 
“It’s my time to leave, Moth. I have been here long enough.”
 
“No,” she said firmly and when her eyes flickered toward him this time, they were filled with a plea that he had never witnessed before. “You could stay. My father adores you. The sunstone wolves admire everything about you and all that you have done for us. I’m certain that you could lead us…” she trailed almost uncertainly and Kierkegaard canted his head with a curious expression on his features. “You could have me. Take me as your mate. I would be yours… forever,” she then whispered beneath her breath.
 
“Moth! There are rangers in the outskirts of the pack! They’re starting the attack,” a young man’s voice sounded through the cave and echoed around them. The white-masked girl snapped her head toward the entrance and then back to Kierkegaard with a questioning glance. His face was expressionless; his muzzle dripped blood into splotches on the cavern floor. The ghost’s lengthy limbs were stiff as he held her gaze with his own for a fleeting moment. “I have to help my pack fight this war. I am not a coward,” she growled to him with narrowed brows. “I am not you.” There was a flicker along the ridge of his head and he blinked at the words she had cast at him. She brushed her muzzle against his neck once before she turned her figure to the entrance of the cave and darted out into the heated sands of their desert pack. Kierkegaard’s fiery gaze followed her until he could no longer see her brown colors. Once she had disappeared from his sight, he found his exit from the desert lands and never looked back on the wolves of the sunstone. He knew that it was not likely any of them had survived the attack that had been waged on their borders. If he had fought, it would not have made a difference.
 
“I am not a coward.”
 
“I am not you.”
 
The ghostly figure’s frame jolted him awake with a sharp inhale of breath and he pushed himself up from his side, eyes darting to his surroundings. The thrumming of his heart was wicked and he fought to regain his composure after the dream. The darkness that wrapped around his pallid form was like a blanket, suffocating him in its darkness – enveloping his figure in her cold arms. Kierkegaard blinked his eyes, hoping to rid them of the sleep that still lingered there, willing him back into the dream. He would not allow himself to fall back into his slumber; he could not face the past that flickered through his mind like a crisp recollection. It had been so clear. It had been almost as though he could feel her teeth as they ripped through his muzzle. He could taste his own metallic blood as it drizzled onto the floor of the cave. But this was not the reason for his rapidly beating heart; Kierkegaard could still scent the sweet woman in the air. The brush of her muzzle against his neck had been torturous to endure, for he felt as though he could still feel the warmth of her breath against his body. But he could not… and she was gone.
 
The ghost’s breathing had evened itself out, and his frame was relaxing against the earth. Stars littered the skies overhead and he drew his head upward to peer at them. The summer nights were always the most difficult for the pallid brute; they were the warmest, and had prompted dreams of the sunstone wolves on more occasions than he cared to count. Kierkegaard had hoped that the sea would cool the air, but it had not offered him any sort of reprieve. The ragged man did not know why he even hoped for such a thing at his age.
 
The only reprieve that would come to him would be when death finally took him away from those lands.
 
A familiar scent jarred him for a heartbeat, and the ghostly figure turned his skull around in hopes of seeing the inky creature, but she was not within his sight. Pushing himself upward with a grunt and a huff, the large brute cast his muzzle to the breeze and drew in her scent. He had feared that his slumber had caused him to imagine her there – that she was only a figment of his imagination. No, the aroma of the halfling was a certainty, and he found himself debating whether or not to follow it into the more forested area of the river or if he was better off where he rested. The ghost knew that there was little good in forming bonds with others, but the rapid beating of his heart was something that he could not ignore. Ignoring the better sense inside of his head, he trailed after her scent with cracking limbs. The inky sea dog had smelled of the ocean when he’d happened upon her beside Rosings, so it did not surprise him that he would scent her once more on the shores of the great lapping waves.
 
Lengthy strides carried him along the trickling river and he bent his neck to taste the water, wishing for a relief for his parched mouth and throat. The cool liquid struck him like an electric shock, and his flesh pricked until goosebumps had formed there and lifted the fur along his notched limbs. It was static to him, and he shook his pelt with a gruff snort before fixing his fiery optics on the path ahead of him. Her scent was growing stronger and he was getting closer.
 
Picking up his pace, the lumbering beast found the location of the small waterfall. The quiet dropping of the water was not at all what had pulled his attention. There, nestled in the crooked darkness, was the inky shape of the young girl. Her oceanic eyes were trained on something that he could not see; her body appeared to be resting, but there was something wrong. Trailing her form with his burning eyes, the ghost took a tentative step forward and scoured her every curve for a sign to show him what had happened. The tip of her tail all the way to the wet dark of her nose, but his eyes were searching her far too quickly for him to notice the wounds that had tarnished her beautiful neck. It was not until he had forced his heart to calm the rapid beating that he saw them. And when he did, the brute came unmade.
 
“N-Nathimmel?” his voice cracked as it exited his lips, and his ears flattened to his skull. “What has happened to you? Who has dared to lay their fangs on your body?”
 
Immediately, he was overcome by rage.