Totoka River 내가 바보같아서 바라볼 수 밖에만 없는 건 아마도

The inky ingénue drew a careful breath, filling her lungs with a soft flutter of her concave flanks, and pursed her trembling lips to prevent its escape. Taking up what scraps of dignity she could, she folded briefly in on herself as though physically clutching them to her breast — had she a human form, she would have twined her slim hands nervously beneath her chin, fingertips curling in an anxious tangle against her lips, seablue eyes cast bashfully aside, the narrow angles of her elbows shielding her wounds from view. As it was, she turned her slim, supple body with a pained shuffle of her forelegs, leaving her hindquarters where they stood but arching one shoulder forward with agonizing stiffness to conceal the ugly, raw sets of punctures that mapped her the wings of her collarbone. Her streamlined muzzle dipped in shame at the welter of displeased emotion and fury that swirled like hellfire within Kierkegaard’s brilliant citrine eyes; she was self conscious in a way she had never experienced before. He did not see her — he saw the reprimand she had earned — and she was both slighted by this realization and frightened by the augur of violence she sensed.

As the serpentine wolf lingered, the tension of his rangy, long-legged body promising movement but not giving any indication whether it would be toward or away from her, his Nathimmel suffered — it was a test of endurance to which Kierkegaard had the best and only seat in the house. She breathed — long, sustained exhales and quavering inhales — and until he made his choice, that was all she did. Her oceanic gaze had long fallen away from his, for she knew what expression his sharply-etched features wore and did not want the visual confirmation of it to haunt her fragile attempts at slumber. He was angry — and whether or not he meant to direct it at her, the lash of it stung her empath’s soul.

The phantasm moved, shifting one paw stiffly toward Coelacanth, and she kept her eyes fixed demurely upon the notched foreleg that held it fast — it was entirely possible that he would take one step, then another, then another, until he had walked past her completely with the intention of leaving her behind. Nathimmel closed her eyes and waited — and was rewarded by the sudden, solid nearness of him. Her flesh jumped and quivered in a series of uneven tremors; she felt, as she had felt the day they’d met, the power that lived deep within the marrow of his bones — buried under a growing weight of weariness and memory and age — age that Kierkegaard was still too young to feel so wretchedly. The atramentous halfbreed found herself intimidated by the wolf she did not yet completely know — he was not the siren of Tara she loved so dearly, and she dared not burrow into him, taking liberties that she had not been expressly granted — but she recalled his kindness and the way his eyes had softened with the ghost of a smile.

“How could this happen?” he questioned, and she tilted her finely-sculpted head back to look up at him, bright eyes made brighter by the unlikely bedfellows of Sorrow and Hope. Nathimmel fanned her tufted ears forward, then skimmed them back against her skull in feeble indecision. She could not make him understand — she had not the words or the will to try. Dipping her muzzle, she shuffled hesitantly forward, tucking her tiny body against his chest in a perpendicular embrace that caused their vividly disproportionate silhouettes to form a “T” shape. He could not stare at her injures this way, and she could not be tormented by the fury she had wrought within his fiery eyes. “This is better,” bespoke with tentative flutter of her feathered tail as it stirred weakly betwixt her hocks. “Do you see? I will make it better.” She worried for him, this ghost of the wood, and at this close range it was easy to recognize that the scent of his forest home had faded from his fur. Was everything all right? She turned too quickly, attempting to nuzzle at the fur of his shoulder — a harmless place, she hoped — and was drawn up short as the stretching of abused flesh caused her breath to catch in her throat. Perhaps it was for the best — perhaps he didn’t want his shoulder fur nuzzled, anyway.

·

Kierkegaard’s Nathimmel did not know how long she stayed with the fiery eyed wolf before the pull of obligation drew them in opposite directions. Perhaps if she knew this was the last time she would see the serpentine wraith for an indeterminate amount of time, she might have sought to keep him with her longer — but she turned from him believing that their next meeting was just a short span of sunsets away.