Ouroboros Spine pharmaka

His face half buried in the dirt, it sprang up when her voice issued forth an unexpected greeting. Up, with eyes bright and ears at a swivel, then down to a hunch of the shoulders as the slate-dark furs of his spine began to spike. A glower on his face; he stole glances at the pale shape of the woman and otherwise stood petrified, like a gargoyle.

The last time he had seen her, she had given him food. It had not occurred like that in his mind; that she had discarded a skin and inside of it, he had found the fish, then pilfered it for himself. The successful scavenge had left him feeling a sense of elation for his rare success. The vague superiority of any child who gets away with stealing a fresh cookie from the jar.

This time he is wary too — a hard habit to break, all things considered. He does wonder if she has somehow cast a spell on him. That or communed with spirits he does not know, in the way Averna would. His nostrils flared as he tried to gather her scent; he probed the air while brown grit fell from atop his snout, but he could not find anything beyond the aroma of wet soil due to his truffling.

At any rate, he had not run yet.