Twisted Slough i wish you'd die in the mire

It was digusting - the faint echo of paws, a well-honed instict screaming in his ears that they weren't his own. It made him stupid, it made him clumsy and weak-legged, like he were going to fall from his already pathetic perch any second. Adrenaline was already racing through his veins, and it only made it worse as his paw slipped, almost toppling him backwards.

Cormorant hated that terrible face, as pale as the moon and as cruel as frostbite. He hated the confidence that made the other so sure and so comfortable to taunt and jeer and creep closer. He hated the awful fear that curdled in his stomach and made him falter and stumble and want nothing more than to run through the thickest part of the slough to try losing him. The way the first demand came, and nailed his deepest desire in the moment, sickened him.

Cormorant wanted to curse the ground he walked on, but his tongue was still, jaw almost slack in a frozen horror. He wanted nothing more than to be wrong, to be imagining it at all - but why would he? His words were little more than a flash of teeth and a trembled breath, Never. Never.

His snarl defensive, hackles raised but body drawn small. Leave me alone.