Mudminnow River fiend

of all the things that should have solicited a response from the autumn sylph, stigmata was beyond floored by the topic she thought most needed to be breached.

he was incredulous. stunned to silence, and now painfully aware of how emotionally spent he felt, as he numbly listened to her tack on some meaningless proclamation about the happiness of her children. if he hadn't worn himself thin already - quickly climbing towards maximum speech capacity - he would have laughed. as things stood, he couldn't bother to generate much more for her than a sneering deadpan.

at some point he had realized too, that trying to reach her was like trying to cross an unbridgeable canyon, and the longer he spent in her barb-riddled trenches, the more sure he was bound for crippling damage.

he was reminded of piper in that moment, and an unwanted chill sank deep beneath his fur: this entire redleaf line was afflicted. full of the damaged and wandering. poisoned early on by some blight before his time; hidden well enough that he had not noticed until it was too late. except, if he thought about it, he had seen the signs and ignored them all...

for indra.

"what a grave folly - believing you can forge or find anyone else's happiness but your own," he snaked in a cold voice, reviling the notion that she even try. his brumal eyes shrieked their contempt, and yet, he couldn't help the reservation with which he stood - the way his pelt could only bristle, and his teeth could only gleam, when the thought of bringing her physical harm came to question. mostly he just looked like an alarmed cat, too wary even to lash out.

he didn't realize that he was traumatized from the last time - from retaliating against her before without thinking.

the hound started to feel trapped inside his own body as it refused to respond to his rising emotion. he could feel himself shattering - spiderweb cracks creeping across his glass restraint - but he remained pinched to the spot; sedate for all intents and purposes. surely he looked irate, disheveled, and all other synonyms describing a tense, fractured man, but on superseding it all was his inability to move his feet. in any direction.

he wanted more than anything to get away from her.

and still...

"unlike you, i would never have forced you into anything," he hissed, anger and hurt milling about in equal parts across his expression. she had never known him at all - she had never actually cared. "it just never occurred to me that i would fail to impress you. that i would fail to earn the right to claim you as mine. i had no reason to think my abilities - my hunting, my scouting, my patrolling - used for your livelihood, would not be enough for you to favor me." emotion didn't seem to be anywhere in the equation, but by the way the devil-leaf could so blatantly rile him, anyone else could see that it was. "i did not even consider you might ever look elsewhere, away from me, for your home..."

he felt the sting of betrayal most, when he imagined her coming to the scarred alpha male(s) of lost creek, and relaying to them the need for more capable bodies. it hadn't been about that at all, one would logically presume, but logic had long since fled stigmata - perhaps months ago, when he first met her.