Sky Mesa Ladrón

Assumptions made based on previous posts! Please let me know if I'm incorrect <3

There came a call, its cadence lilting, pretty even— a siren’s song spun in a foreign tongue, and laced with the promise of something worse than death. And with it, the hound was loosed, his paws a thunderous rumble, his teeth cracking as fiercely as lightning.

Time itself seemed to warp beneath the weight of each monstrous step, the space between heartbeats growing impossibly wide. Every thud of the hound's paw was a drumbeat, dragging the moments into a crawl. The rhythm of Machiavelli’s pulse marked the widening space between them, each thump a solitary beat against the fear building within his chest.

Thump.

He had always thought of relationships as transactions, little exchanges of convenience. Every compliment, each fleeting touch, the delicate bat of his lashes or the heated entanglement of bodies—each one an offering, made not for affection, but for protection. Each one had been a calculated move to ensure his survival, a barter for another breath in a world that had only ever been cruel. That was how it had started with Legend, and later with Senmut—a slow, methodical exchange that stretched on until he found himself holding something he never meant to touch.

Caring. A dangerous thing to possess.

He had cared for the Jackdaw. He had cared for the Red Prince. And in doing so, he had lost them both.

Thump.

Friendship, real friendship, had been as foreign to him as the concept of real love was before he had met Juno. But in the strange liminality of Muat-Riya, between Machiavelli the survivor and Machi the fellahin, something had shifted. He had stumbled upon it, unwittingly, in the form of a small girl—a child whom he had promised to deliver to Akashingo. An unusual bond had grown between them, one spun not from the threads of necessity, but from the simple magic of shared company. It was a curious thing to offer without expectation, to give without strings attached.

Thump.

Yet now, as the storm bore down upon them, resentment flared briefly, like the spark of a flame catching on dry kindling. It would be so easy, wouldn’t it? To flee. To outrun the hound, slip into the shadows and leave her to her fate. He could vanish, untouched, unscathed— safe. The shattered-glass eyes flickered to Safiya, and he felt the weight of the decision settle heavily upon him, pressing like iron against his chest.

But there it was—the feeling he had long ignored, now rising to the surface, undeniable.

He could not. He cared. He cared for Safiya, and if he didn’t act now, he would lose her too.

The storm’s teeth snapped at his heels, and Machi spun with the precision of a blade. He gripped the bag tight in his jaws and swung it with all the force his body could muster, aiming to slam it into the hound’s skull, knowing this very well might be the last thing he ever did.

Thump.

They say before lightning strikes, your hair stands on end.

Was his fur rising now?