Two Eyes Cenote [m] claw & silt

He appears in the frame of her room. She startles, lifting her eyes to fix upon what is brightest, the match of warmth over coolness. No words engage but the room in her ears is loud as her pulse tenses. She fears this fever, does not understand it, and still lifts from the edge of her bed.

She senses something different in him that stays her timorous step. When he breathes it is deep enough for her to feel the old anger of a war he’d been fighting over and over, before he was even born. It is pain. The wounds of servitude intimately known. Breaths catch over the constriction in her chest. Instinct lowers her sight to their feet on the ground.

She had not known.

Slowly, methodically, she nears. Her lips begin to find each shallow cut, brushing against broken skin in a barest kiss. The lightest touch for his paw, his arm, his shoulder. When at last her eyes seek his ice they are brimming.

“Was there no one to protect you?”