Wild Berry Meadow the world, the war, will wait, but morpheus knows no mercy

The little sea urchin’s plaintive whimpers kindled a roiling unease in Szymon’s breast — something next door to misophonia bade him to clamp his tattered ears slickly against his narrow skull as his tongue nervously flicked the tip of his nose, darted to dampen his cracked, kohl-lined lips. He wanted — needed — the crying to stop, and fortunately the cub’s wheedling cries were few and frail. The irritation her innocent voice had aroused climbed sickly into his gut where it wrought havoc, causing the boy’s hackles to quiver along his spine. Doe, he thought weakly, don’t let her — don’t let her cry like that. A psychiatrist might have bade the golden-eyed boy to recline on a couch and talk about his past, finding the catalyst for his acute and violent discomfort at the child’s vulnerability buried deep within Szymon’s traumatic memories of his own weakness — but there were no psychiatrists in these wilds, and the youngest Cairn knew only that the child shouldn’t cry. Couldn’t.

The soft sound of Doe’s tongue preening the child’s velveteen crown soon replaced the silence in which Szymon’s ears had begun a terrified roaring, deep as the Sea in a hurricane; he rose when she did, following the odd-eared silhouette of his Doe to a bend in the river, ever watchful should they be followed by the dark wolf of the flatlands. “Drink now,” Doe said, and Szymon fanned an ear toward her, attentive as always to his Chosen One — in a continuation of that motion he turned his head to look upon her fully, his twitching tail waving reassurance at the worried expression in her eyes. A slow blink of his sulphureous eyes and a slow shake of his salt-crusted pelt attempted to convey that he was watchful but relaxed — Skellige had defended Doe in her time of need. Though the child would likely have to undergo The Drop just as Sharkbait had, the Leviathan had sanctioned Doe’s right to her. Szymon, as always, would abide by his brother’s rules and his Chosen One’s whims. If Doe wanted the cub to remain in the den, Szymon would likely spend a few nights on its outskirts just in case the nightmares threatened her safety — but he would not abandon either of them.

The tangle in his gut did not ease at the sight of the small, fragile creature, tucked against Doe’s chest and balanced securely on the Atoll’s long forelegs. Perhaps Szymon, of all his siblings, should boast the closest thing to a paternal instinct — but the feeling that churned bitterly through his veins was uncomfortable. It was like a prickling of the mind or soul — the pins and needles sensation of a limb gone cold from lack of circulation — that spread through every nerve of his body and even unto his loins. He couldn’t make it go away. To ease his nerves and comfort Doe — and perhaps, in small measure, to soothe the babe she so ardently coveted — he began to hum a song to which his faulty tongue could place no words.