Two Eyes Cenote A Winged Insect to Your Funeral Pyre

Her breath catches. She wants to yank herself away, to put a hundred yards between them, to draw back into the comfort of her shadows where the dark insulation keeps everyone at a distance. Instead, she is still. Her eyes close.

Gently, Machiavelli lifts her paw to his hackles. She feels the roughened skin; poreless; thatched; the kind that will never again grow fur. She is standing beside him in the Shuyet slums.

The tips of her fingers are traced down over old pits to the heat of his torn throat. She feels the humiliation he’s suffered at the hand of the Master; the terror of his existence locked inside the walls of the menagerie.

Rising bile twists her stomach. Machiavelli's voice is little more than a hoarse vibration under her touch. She cannot speak in turn. Her mouth is too numb for it.

How much of their culture was built on those like her- like him?

The girl's hand beneath his trembles. When she opens her eyes a lamina of tears cascade into the fur of her cheeks.

“I wish you could be safe here. I- I cannot make that guarantee. For any of us.” Eset’s voice is small and shameful. Her head falls dizzyingly towards the floor. She feels sick as her hand lingers over his scars, the visible manifestation of powerlessness.

“But- I do promise to try.”