Stavanger Bay pain is a ritual we are required to conduct in

Brazenly, Kerberos cannot help but admire, the woman draws nearer. Oh, there are undertones of caution in her movements: that stiffness of two strangers about to grasp the other’s forearm to see if they’ve got a hidden blade up their sleeve. The sea spawn does not think she is overly perturbed and if there is something that warns her away from him — that little nagging feeling that slithers down one’s spine like the caress of icy fingers, that causes the hairs at the back of the nape to rise on end — she does a good job of not letting it show. She draws close enough that her nose barely brushes his fur. He represses the shudder that threatens to wrack through him as he cannot help the thought: she’s close enough to taste. Ah, but he knows a taste will never be enough: it will break the dam he has carefully constructed and been struggling to patch up as it cracks and tremors. He doesn’t want to eat her — not really. He doesn’t want to eat anyone but Kerberos knows that he’s long since surpassed what he wants and does not want. Still, he knows his boundaries fairly well and thinks that she’s safe. For this meeting, at least and if at any point he thinks he might break then he will be quick to make an unexplained exit. Kerberos is not unprepared though he knows that if he does break he will be forced to hunt. He tries not to think about it, going off the belief that thinking about it simply invites the devil inside.

Sunspot, she offers her own name in return. It fits her, the Aok thinks eager for the distraction as his sea-green gaze assesses her in unabashed earnest. She’s about his age, give or take a year or two, if he had to guess though age is never something he really thinks about at his own age. She teases him and his salmon pink tongue draws across his lips as he notices that while she has given him some more space there is still a fairly big lack of it between them and he cannot help but wonder what she wants of him. “Perhaps that is not a bad thing,” Kerberos muses aloud with a twitch of his lips. It is, of course, but also not. While Kerberos is used to being a hermit it doesn’t mean he doesn’t yearn for company ( and yes, he’s filled with a bunch of these sorts of contradictions ). “What do you wish to know?”

431 words