Barrow Fields sky underground

The panther paused when the little wraith lifted her head. He saw that she was young and lean, uniformly dark. Her eyes arrested him — he found himself startled by the desaturated look of her irises, though gray was not an uncommon color for eyes.

"Eat it," he told her, regaining control of his body. He came no closer. Not yet.

But he watched her, something fierce and aching in his chest, and lower in the pit of his stomach as well. His thoughts churned. For months, he'd lived on principle, searching endlessly for answers he could no longer muster the energy to care about. He'd kept going because it was the right thing to do, because it was what the man he'd been would have done. The man that he wanted to be.

Now a step removed. The man he wanted to want to be.

Looking at her, he found the situation far simpler. The man he remembered as a man that he wasn't, and the things that had mattered to him mattered to the panther no more.

Now he wanted this.

The girl.