Bramblepoint the devil's right there in the details

 

For @Mou, other tags for reference.

She's tired.  Her intention is to find @Behemoth or @Llewellyn, though it isn't their promised meeting place.  Maybe that's not really why she's out; maybe she's just feeling fucking restless.  It's cold, her neck feels like shit, and she's in pain.  

The brambles aren't helping.  They catch on the loose tufts of her fur that are beginning to shed, and then on her real skin.  She doesn't realize how much noise she's making, she just knows that fuck this is annoying, and this was a mistake, and she should just go back home before Siarut's sister finds her and ends her for good.

Mou knows he shouldn't be wandering around outside of the woods, not with the threat of that Cadwalader fellow filling his mind. Mou thinks that he's thought things through; he doubled back after his meeting on the plateau and headed north to the woods just in case he was followed, and then made his way back towards home after a day or so had passed. He wonders if the pale wolf is still lingering on the plateau or somewhere nearby, and that suspicion draws him in to the nearby line of trees.

He should be heading east, seeking out Maegi or Relmyna to let them know of his worries, but he doesn't. There is a chill to the air that penetrates the forest like a fog, but it does not dissuade him from investigating. What forces him to pause is the sound of something hefty and agitated roaming in the underbrush; he hears it before he sees it, and realizes a moment too late that it is a wolf. A friend of Cadwalader? Its possible. Mou's fur stands on-end but he doesn't move, and begins to scrutinize the stranger with his one good eye.

He's so quiet she hardly registers his eye on her.  She's in the middle of trying to dislodge a thorn from her back leg, ungracefully trying to balance on three legs and pretzel herself into a position she could grab the thorn with the tip of her teeth when the wind shifts and carries his scent towards her.

She thinks at first, Siarut, and it is confirmed in her mind when her eye grazes over his bleached form.  The longer it lingers there, she slowly returns to all fours.

Screech, she thinks.  It has to be.  No other wolf has that streak of fire beneath his arms, no other wolf carries an empty socket (though she thinks from where she stands she can see something foriegn lodged in there).

For now she cannot place the Blackfeather on him.  She just knows that for him to be standing before her, it meant that Towhee and Niamh had failed.

Screech?

While she is distracted he slips closer, finding it easy to move through the trees without disturbing any of the low-laying bramble bushes. Nothing about this place, or about her, is familiar. Not even when she turns to look at him. Not when she speaks — he can't tell if she's surprised or afraid, as if those are mutually exclusive, but it does bother him that she's looking at him. Like she knows him.

His brow creases and he frowns, displaying concern and apprehension of is own. He takes a step closer and is so concentrated upon her that he misplaces his steps and hears the crunch of some leaves. Mou stops advancing and watches her the way a crow might watch someone sitting on a park bench, as if he's waiting for something, or he can't make up his mind about what to do. Stay or go.

Finally he huffs a soft, Who..?

There are those who do monstrous things, and then there are the monsters.

The weight on her shoulders crushes her to the bone.  Her legs feel like they'll give out beneath her if she makes to move.  She knows what would be expected of her, she knows what would happen if it had been Towhee or Niamh to run across him instead.

Who is she to condemn a boy — just a boy! — for losing himself in a fit of delirium, caused by his would-be murderer?  Her teeth grind together as her eyes, bright and soft as ever, fix on the bleached boy-turned-man that stands before her.

He's pitiful.  There's a cautious indifference to him, a wavering countenance that stokes the tension she feels.  You, she says, voice rife with accusation as she takes a confident step closer.  It's then that the smell of Blackfeather hits her, and she recoils.

She'd kill him.  God, fuck, she'd kill him if it was the last thing she did.  Duty and honor, duty and honor, through her mind, held close like a sacred hymn.  Without another word she launches herself at him, still weak from her fight with Siarut's sister but so full of determination.

For this, Raven might love her.

There are those who do monstrous things, and then there are the monsters.

Time stands still. The shadows tremble as if filled with imperceptible knowledge of what is to come. There isn't a sound between them; neither move. Then, it all changes. An accusatory glare and a sharply issued — you.

She steps closer. He steps back one step, two, but it doesn't matter. Something changes and before Mou can even think to flinch, the stranger is barreling straight for him.

The first thing that passes through his mind is, Maegi, and he feels the sickening twist of fear in his gut when he realizes he needs to move or he'll die and then she'll be alone again, and he can't let that happen. The next thought doesn't have a chance to fully form. He's reacting like a cornered animal despite the space between them.

Mou realizes that she means to kill him, but she's too weak. He manages to slip away from her grasp in time and slip back through the shadows and the trees, his heart pounding and legs quaking. He doesn't know this forest but he knows the way the shadows move and how to use that to his advantage, and soon he has been sucked in to the void of darkness and lurks there, just out of reach.

You should leave, his mind hisses at him, but he can't. As afraid as he is, Mou needs to know more. He lingers so that he can watch her from an unseen vantage point, wondering if he can get more information out of her. Who is Screech? Why did she want him dead? What was going on?

There is a moment in which victory courses through her, in which he does not move and she feels like she has won.  She's never desired anything more than to bring his body back to the Plateau and to be greeted by Niamh, who will be shamed, by Towhee, who will revere her, and by Raven — oh, Raven! — who might look at her with gratitude and love.

But then she misses and as her front limbs impact the ground the triumph is wicked from her body like a blown bulb, burning bright one second and gone the next.  Snarling, she wheels her head around to look at him — but then the ground is rising up to meet her despite the fact that she hasn't moved an inch.  She clamps her eyes shut, bracing herself for an impact that doesn't come.

When she opens them again, he has disappeared.  "That was his ghost," she thinks defeatedly, a ball of shame rising in her throat to snuff out anything she might've had to say to the empty void that surrounds her now.

"You're fucking horrible," she accuses herself, legs quivering as her chest tightens.  She would've killed him without a second thought.  She would've killed him for the love of a woman who had better people to care about, and duties more important than indulging the likes of someone like Ceara Fucking Blackthorn.  And he never even raised a tooth to her.

Raven could never love someone like her.  Siarut was better off with his fairy-tale wife.  Colt had Niamh, now — nobody needed her.

Kill yourself.
(Where did that come from?)

Maybe there's been a mistake. Mou has encountered so many wolves that look like him — maybe this person had him confused. They didn't appear to be in their right mind. He watched her, not moving from his hiding place, until he was sure she wasn't getting up again. Adrenaline warmed his flesh and caused his heart to thunder like a war drum, but he refused to budge. Mou watched her as if his life depended on it, just in case she was faking or — well, he couldn't really think.

Gradually he grew too curious and slipped out of the shadows, drifting with his ghostly steps, and he called out to her in his ruined voice, Who'es Screeh? If she managed to wake he wouldn't be near; he made sure to keep moving with his quick, quiet crawling. If she had the energy to rise against him again, he would run. Deep down he knew he should do more but Mou needed to hear it from her - he needed whatever knowledge she possessed - because he needed to know himself.

The shadows flickered expectantly, and he felt a calm descend upon himself and the forest. The after-effect of the adrenaline. A presence. Sithis. Mou blinked, feeling his eyelid slide across the stone set in his face, and hoped that the god was with him.

She catches the sight of an ankle as he disappears back into the shadows, and she is not sure whether she is grateful that he is real or sorry that he isn't some apparition.  It would've been more merciful to kill him at the borders than to leave him like this.  

She just didn't have the heart to do it, then.  Without the pounding of 
(victory and triumph)
blood in her ears, she didn't have the heart to do it now, either.

"Who'es Screeh?" comes his broken voice, and her ears flatten atop her head.  You, she says again, this time without the pointed accusations.  Screech, that's you.

She appears to be defeated, but he cannot trust her. Some part of him refuses to allow him to face what she's saying. It isn't much but it is enough to make him wonder, to question, and to feel a deep-rooted denial. He slinks towards her face and, still at quite a distance, lowers himself down so that he can look at her eye-to-eye.

Nnnoh, he drawls.

I am Mou. This comes out clearer than anything he's said before, confident, self-assured. But more than that, he doesn't struggle against the stale feeling of his throat. He licks his lips and repeats, I ahm Mou Meh-loh-nee. He thinks this is enough to prove her wrong. But there are questions nagging at him. If she's so certain of who he is, she'll have to prove it. T.. tawk, tehll me, who, he demands that she explain, but he cannot clearly ask as much. Its too many words. Too many sounds he isn't confident in making. So he tries to ask the same question again but with emphasis — he didn't care about the name. He wanted details.

Who'es Screeh — to you?

Mou, he says.  She was already so sure, but it was a shame she'd never learned his birthname.  His deadname.  Titmouse was dead, and Screech too.  

Who is Screech to you?  He is the root of her failures, the tipping-point of her rivalry with Niamh.  Raven's emotional crux.  He is a boy who had been living his life and flirting with girls (flirting with her) and getting drunk beneath apple trees.  And maybe that boy was still inside him somewhere.

But she doubted it.  That boy was also a baby-killer, and maybe it is that part of him that Blackfeather had spoken to.

He was my friend.  But that wasn't quite true, was it?  They hadn't known each other that long.  Do you not remember?  I saved you, I saved your life.  Twice.  Don't cry don't cry don't cry don't cry

The most fun I ever had was with you.

She talks about being saved. About apples, and friendship, and none of it sounds familiar but he wants it to, desperately. He wants something good to come out of this. Something true. But a nagging voice in the back of his mind says, "She's lying, you can't believe her. She's making it up just like that guy from the plateau."

And then, another voice — one he feels more than hears, hisses to him:
She isss a threat, you cannot let her leave.
This doesn't surprise him. The voice is familiar, it tugs at some fundamental part of him and as he hears it, he looks away from the girl with the pelt of fire and stares at the dark, overcome.

He sees the shadows tremble, feels the cold touch of the distant winter as a breath sighs through the trees. Mou realizes he's closed his eyes and when he opens them he's staring between some nearby trees, to where some of the bramble shrubs are struggling to take root in the soil. Instead there is a small burst of color. Some strange looking flowers are struggling to grow there.

The voice comes again.

She cannot leave.

He wants more answers. Were they really friends? Mou looks from the shadows to the girl, studying her face but with not a shred of recognition. He's thinking — considering what she's said, maybe, or deliberating what to do next. In the end he opens his mouth and slurs, We... fren? He knows what he must do.

She fools herself into believing she sees recognition in him, and a shiver takes over her.  She almost makes to stand, but realizes at the last second she doesn't want him to run away.  She slinks back down (as she'd never risen above a crouch,) and when he speaks again the tears spill over.

Screech, she says, overcome with some indeciperhable feeling.  I could've loved you, once.

Friends.  Yes, friends.  Later, she might explain to him that he can't ever come back to the Plateau, that he has to live out his poor sorry pitiful life in the dark woods and never come out.  Never come this far close to Moonspear again, because Llewellyn would kill him, and she could not stop him.

Not now.  Not now.

She does know him. Or a piece of him that he's lost — either way, he needed to know more. But to do that he needed to be somewhere safe and this place, this forest so far removed from his forest, is not safe.

He looks right at her when he says, You hurt, I h, h... hell... I ged for you, but that isn't clear. He'll get her something, sure, but how does he know if she'll trust him? They are strangers to one another. He will try to appeal to whatever lingering goodness she feels for him (not aware that it has almost entirely evaporated).

Before she could give him any response, he was off - slinking in the dark, zeroed-in on the slightly wilted pink plant. When he returns, he's cautious in his approach but draws up to her all the same, offering the flowers which he has clutched between his teeth, stems protruding between his teeth like hay stalks. Around this bundle he murmurs, If fren... If real fren, trus' me. Feel bedda. He does want her to feel good, to not hurt. Mou is like that. Maybe this Screech person was a hateful creature, he doesn't know - but not him. Not Mou. Mou 'es goot pershen.

Please, believe me, his face said.

Take her, the voice demands deep inside.

She should've recognized the plant — and maybe she does anyway.  Raven has taught her a lot.  She isn't a fool, and she knows it is not smart to trust him.  But she wants to.  She wants him to redeem himself, because if he does this it means she was vindicated in her decision to keep him alive.  

She looks at the flowers, then at Mou, and she gingerly reaches for them.  She chews and swallows obediently.  She becomes dizzy, and then not long after that, tired.

So long, and goodnight.

There is a tentative moment where they lock eyes, and he tries not to let it fill him with dread. He tries to remain relaxed and confident, because he does want her to feel better and he trusts that the voice inside of him - that voice he thinks is Sithis - only wants to help, too. He trusts himself more than he ought to, maybe. But he is desperate for answers and if she can give him what he needs, then he'll help her.

Except... When she does finally take the flowers, chews, swallows, he isn't so sure.

A fog drifts through her expression, settles in her eyes. He watches as she sways a little then slumps in to the dirt, the flowers taking their effect — and he smiles. Mou doesn't think she's hurting now. He thinks he's done a good thing. He advances on her position and sniffs at her snout, the fur around her cheeks, looking for clues while it is safe to do so, but none of the scents she carries are familiar to him yet.

He probes at her for a response but when none comes, he pauses and watches to make sure she's at the very least, still breathing. Then, knowing he doesn't have time to waste, he turns and flees through the dark again — heading east, moving as quickly as he can so that he can fetch Maegi. She knows more about herbs and can help this girl. Most importantly, he is hunting for a strong body that can help him get the girl home with him — to Blackfeather.

Mou will get his answers, one way or another.