Serpent Lake Cinnamon girl

Her eyes were blue like dried chicory flowers, and flat and powdery in the same way. Haw saw his own face, muzzy and sinister, reflected back at him across the wide, black chasms of her pupils. It filled him with a strange, lonely feeling — like those dreams he had when he was younger, and still again on especially dark nights. The ones where he had to run but his paws couldn't find purchase, and the world was heavy, and he found himself slipping closer and closer to the edge of something terrible and unknowable. Her eyes swallowed him in the same way, like being closed into an empty room, his senses deprived of all but dreary, storm-sky walls —

Legend.

He was not alone in the room. Her eyes had a name, and she stretched, languorous, paws reaching in slow motion, just like those dreams. The need to be touched by her burned in his gut, deeper than lust, deeper than love. Satya had made a religion out of touch, and out of the god he felt when he held someone too close to feel his own jagged edges, and only the warm, heavy comfort of someone else, someone who was not him.

He crawled forward to meet her silent summons, and an all-over shudder wracked his body and stole the breath from his lungs.

"He's lost," he said, with the weight of her seeming to hang from his vocal chords. He moved as if she'd dragged him, standing so that his head hung directly over hers. He pressed his nose to her throat. Whispered, "He's looking for someone," into her fur; "A rumor. A treasure."

He didn't know what he was saying. He didn't know who Ringo was exactly that it wasn't him — so he filled his lungs with the heady scent of her and said more senseless words:

"He's got nothing left to lose. So he's hungry for something precious."