Firefly Glen but when i go to sleep at night, don't you call my name

@Tiercel

Had he missed his home, his mother? Would Laurel be happy to see him, would she finally love him? His fear of his reception kept him from returning to Easthollow, and like a revenant displaced, Riley roamed the wilderness.

He had spent months alone. Months chasing the vivid image of Merrick's cyclopsian stare from the back of his mind. Months learning how to fend for himself, months struggling to simply exist, to survive. He was lean and hard from his weeks sojourning, and never had Easthollow looked so inviting as in this dark and lonely hour.

sry dont remember how to write adults ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

cupped like still water in the palm of the shadows, she remained self-possessed as her scanning gaze intercepted the man. never-mind the sweet, metallic smell of blood describing her frame; her fidelity to the trees on the peripheries, smearing shadows like ink, ensconced the extent of her bodily detritus. she might be safe if he did not see her. 

unlike him, she was so mired in rage, her mind brooked no quarter for the considerations of love, much less her family’s regard of her. such polarized mental trajectories they were on. 

the fireflies provided an alibi for the lanternglim of her eyes in the gathering darkness. this area was hedged with myriad scents so she crouched slowly when he strode near, eliding into darker shadow lest the man defended this gloom-ridden strath.

too nose blind to the gore gowning her, she was not concerned about the possibility of having already heralded him to her presence amid a ruddy-laden breeze.

On whim, Riley lifted his muzzle and closed his eyes -- entirely unaware of the pair of furious orange eyes upon him. He was thinking of Easthollow -- could he smell the plains from here?

He could not -- but he did smell something else that made his skin crawl.

Blood.

Riley's fur rippled; he could decipher what kind of blood it was, but it was an omen all the same. Either there was a predator here (which instilled in him visible fear) or there was someone hurt -- neither were encounters Riley anticipated enjoying.

His posture lowered; he speared his head down through the tall grass, moving slowly as his crocodilian gaze pried through the firefly ridden gloom in search of whatever it was that profusely reeked so.

fear arrowed through him; her eyes cast shortly 'round the breadth of the glen, but still the she-wolf did not stir. only they, the fireflies, and the wind breathed life into this glen, and yet his fur razored like succubi visible to no woman encircled him. 

he hunched low and on the wind's own silent feet she crept into another mere shadow, parrying his movements—but it was difficult to see where the crocodile moved once he crouched in the tall grass, and she was forced to dislimn from the darker shadows where the breeze blew more in her favor into the lighter, where it blew opposite.

the moonless sky passed him the advantage, now, for her eyes could not discern any shape in the grass. she sank to her still milk-engorged stomach and flattened her ears flush against her skull, hoping the kindler of his scrutiny would be quick to draw him away from her.

First the scent of blood, and now something softer -- sweeter.

Riley spun uncharacteristically quick in the tall grass, ears pinned and eyes scouring. Around him, nothing but the shiver of weeds rifled by the wind, of tall early summer grasses -- and still, that cloying scent of blood and milk.

He felt a shiver run down his spine anew, accompanied by the razoring pin-prick of his skin crawling away from him. Something was here -- he could tell.

But what?

"Show yourself!" The yearling growled, his bluff cast into the unfaithful wind as it whipped this way and that, carrying first his scent away, and then, ferrying back the scent of that other. He hoped whatever -- whoever -- it was would not catch that small nibbling of doubt, that tiny little boy's voice that still lingered in the back of his throat, very much alive. "I know you're there."  This time his tail lashed in irritation as his golden eyes dredged up all the glade's minutia -- still missing the shadowed form of the lurking Tiercel. "You don't scare me." His tone now was quieter - softer - rimmed by the needling worry of someone who was caught vulnerable in the bush.

she scoffed. men—always so demanding. for that matter, always demanding you show them something. "you'd like that wouldn't you," she muttered under her breath, sidling the cool earth at a whispered pace.

she timed her movements with the susurrant sounds of the tallgrasses when it blew her scent away from him. her intentions were to let him talk himself in circles like a scaregrow godsent the gift of gab—she hadn't paid enough mind to his command to notice the youth limning his chords—and exit downwind in the meantime, through the highlands, hopefully to find lesser ranged paths.

however, midstep she stopped and thought for a moment. i know you're there, he'd said, which confused her, because he'd made such knowledge clear from his first outburst. she had to bend an ear to catch his soft you don't scare me, before the realization struck that this was no man, but a boy playing warden.

the ensanguined woman bore up her frame and sat several yards away, expression inscrutable but her voice flatly ridiculing. "well. seems to me you're doing a fine job of scaring yourself. why interfere?"

Riley's back was turned while Tiercel edged through the tussock, army-crawling out of his periphery by the grass' generous cover. A rustle of reeds shivered by the wind elicited one of Riley's ears to turn back; when he slowly rotated in spot, he saw nothing but reeds upset by the early summer breeze.

He was sure something was lurking -- so sure of it -- but at last doubt beset his confidence, and he set to moving away when a voice, more chilling than unexpected water down one's back, rung out from behind him.

Riley turned slowly, his tail puffed like a pinecone and a scizzoring of razorbacked tufts lifting along his spine. Fear bolted through him, yet for all of the speed in which it seized his heart, his body was painfully slow. Finally, his gaze beheld the sprite in the brush -- but this was no hobgoblin resident of a child's nighterrors. This was a wolf, slicked down in the blue moonlight by an eerie liquid Riley knew all too well.

One could almost hear the whirs and clanks of his mind processing it all; the way she lurked out of reach like a phantom, the presence of blood heady and thick on her pelt, the coldfire glint of challenge in her gaze. "You aren't scared?" He breathed at last, relieved that she was not the cyclopsian terror that often lingered in his more nervous thoughts. "Are you bleeding?"

the yearling turned slowly around as if he was expecting baba yaga to manifest before his eyes, hackles lifted and trembling in the breeze like javelins in the white-knuckled hands of vanguard enfants perdus​ on an open field. her lip twitched upwards into a modest smirk; if she could she would have checked her wrist-watch for the time. at the rate he was moving, she just might have time to grab some light refreshments. 

when his anzac gaze, still seemingly expecting her to transmogrify into some manner of grotesquerie, finally regarded her, tiercel remained sessile, though her eyes tracked his perusal of her grisly aspect. "not what you were expecting? not enough eyeballs, too few legs? i do hate to disappoint." she sulked, shifting airily on her feet.

her simple survey of him was that he was a scared boy with an imagination much too ferine for his own welfare and she was concerned he was in actual fact at the risk of cardiac arrest if a firefly illumed too close to his face. 

his question and observation both fished a smile out of her features. she inspected her legs for a moment, considering the violence writ upon her. "i was, once," she confirmed absentmindedly, then let her leg down and met his gaze coolly. "and then someone else was."  

the woman was too intrigued by his first question to elaborate, however, and looked positively charmed by it. "scared of ... what, you?" and made a point to cast her eyes about their environs, "of the trees, the wind? our palpable chemistry, i take it?" jesting. she lifted a foot off the ground and looked upon it with disgust. "scared of whoever left the embarassment of piss surrounding this little clearing to declare regnancy of the sun bugs?" tiercel wicked away any moisture from her paw, pulling a wry face. 

"no, no, no, no, and ... no. did i miss one?" she remarked blandly.

thinking for a moment, she lifted her muzzle to the sky, then leveled it back to the boy. "i'm not terribly fond of moose. to be completely fair, they don't seem too partial to my company either, so no love lost." a wan smile. 

she was curious about one thing, and stood to walk a few metres closer to the yearling. "why was that your first question i wonder, hmm?"

She was a hell-raiser, a heartrender, a succubus given mortal form. Riley regarded her in the clinical manner of a bar-scanner inspecting code. She was too quick for him -- not in speed, but in mental dexterity -- and he knew when to fold his cards and when to fan them.

He would never have any hope of matching the sulky ease of her wit, nor the sardonic way her mind seemed to easily wrap around him -- as if he were a doe-eyed newborn hare, easy game, easy time. She would play with him like a cat, and once she was tired of her batting and grew bored of the gradually listless form between her paws, she would skulk off to her next victim.

Riley did not quite understand what she meant. His gaze flickered over her flatly; not in creepy observance, but in measurement: was she safe? (No) Was she hurt? (Yes) Was she dangerous? (YES__)

He was quickly going underwater. Now she was joking -- was he the brunt of the joke?

He gulped, looking uphill at the mountain in the distance she was referring to. They would be no help here.

Now they were on the subject of moose. His ears pulled back in marked confusion, his tail sagged. Moose, when he hadn't detected a hint of their trace here? It seemed improbable, but he had better manners than to call her a liar. At least her final question was direct enough Riley could grapple it, though his means of processing was by no means swift. She'd have time to grab a Happymeal, send a fax, and fire off a few flippant work emails ('Per my last email Don, the spreadsheet already addresses your concerns in your prior correspondence...') before she had her answer.

"Because I don't understand your intentions." Riley was ever direct, even if his thoughts resembled scrambled eggs on a 500F pan. "You were lurking. Are you dangerous?"

he was assigning her manifold forms—oh, she would be delighted to hear tell of them—thinking of all the things she would do with him once she grew bored of him, or after she'd wrung him of useful information. she wasn't thinking of him at all. not in any meaningful way, not in the way through which he had invited fear through the door like a vampire and given it a pleasant guest suite in his stomach before the bloodletting occurred. 

she watched his face plainly, growing impatient with his leisure, but he answered before she felt like sloughing out of her skin from the insipidity of the clock's hand. she set her jaw at his response, tail lashing once through the grass. "mmm, now instead of answering my question truly, you're questioning my intentions, of which i have none, by the way. if i did, your understanding of them would matter little, wouldn't it? of course not. i think we're sidestepping the issue. you were questioning my fear—" she left him some breadth, lest he drop like a fly were she to step up on him, as she rounded on him, but she gave him no brook to interject; the woman did dislike being interrupted. "that only tells me that you're scared of something—and, it's not me who has given you this pheasant complex." 

after completing her languid circuit, she sat in front of him, still entitling riley to his impregnable distance. she wore an expectant expression, one that beggared tolerance for questions of foolishness such as are you dangerous? 

his mental autopsy of what he called her "lurking" went unremarked upon for the time being.

"picture, in your mind, a monster." she instructed baldly, giving him adequate time to do so, like watching a first grader use crayons to draw what he called a dragon but presenting something bearing more of a resemblance to an e. coli sample under a microscope. "now, tell me: what makes it a monster? describe it to me," something with rotting skin with hooks for teeth and a scorpion tail? her, in this evening gown of damask?

Riley tried, truly, to stick with the bucks and punchesTiercel's conversation dictated. It was like sitting out a rowdy bronc -- eventually his faculties tired, and he was presented with the sobering reality of any wannabe-cowboy -- that this ride was coming to a swift conclusion (and interjection, most likely by merit of momentum + gravity + immovable object -- in this case, earth), and he had lost the last vestiges of control long ago.

He didn't think questioning the intention of a stranger was without merit, but Tiercel chugged on, leaving him no room in which to interject. By the time he had processed his rebuttal she was several zipcodes over in terms of subject geography, leaving him to furrow his brow and try to think anew.

She moved and his dull gaze followed her suspiciously. At last came a pause in her speech, the lift of her tone suggesting a question that was not rhetorical.

Click, shift, whirrrrr -- he didn't understand the reason for this exercise. A monster was something indescribable. Something that was not right - with eight legs, or spider jaws -- a monster was something to fear. A monster was something he did not understand. His brain wracked up possible answers to this confusing scenario. "Anything which hurts me." He responded, his tone thick and speech slower than iced-over molasses. There had been many monsters in his life: his mother, his aunt, his father. He had known many more, not all related to him by blood -- that haunting image of Merrick and his kiln-fire eye had yet to fully fade from Riley's subconscious. There was a monster, too -- and Riley felt an age old fear seize him that he was every bit the monster in which his ancestry dictated.

well that's a nonanswer if i've ever heard one, she thought, keeping her forked tongue behind her teeth. "mmm, must be a lot of monsters in your world, then." she muttered as her gaze canvassed the forgettable features of the little dell. she thought it rather asinine to piss all over the place if you meant to make use of it—deer kept well away from the scent of wolf urine, which made this glen purposeless and its graffitists look fatuous.  

unless, naturally, they were of the whimsical stock who enjoyed watching beetles dazzle their tellurian starlight. she had no such inclinations; not since she was a babe and chased the insects thinking she was catching shooting stars in her mouth and by swallowing them it would shoot her to the moon. turns out, once you catch one, they taste utterly unforgivable, don't do a whole lot of good at moon-slinging, and that put an end to those pursuits. 

her mind and eyes snapped back to the boy. he'd rejoined earlier, and not without a strange, detached hebetude. her brain had sussed out that he was speaking of emotional hurts, concievably, but he'd not given her much of an answer to work with and before long his brevity would start taking potshots at her braincells, so she made up for his lack of discourse with plenty of her own.

"'anything which hurts me'" tiercel repeated in manly voice while candling her eyes through the glen before focusing back towards riley, snuffing out its vigilant taper. she squinted at him and hemmed her lips before speaking. "if you're hunting elk, and that elk kicks you in the groin because your packmate is hanging off its nose, does that make the elk a monster?" she wondered, more of a philosophical question she was pondering on herself versus asking him, though she was interested in his answer all the same.

she wasn't a man, to be fair, though neither was he, yet. perhaps his perspective was different. it depended on if his balls had dropped yet.

"or a poisonous snake. you step on one—accidentally, of course—and it bites you in self defense. monster?" she canted her brow towards him, then continued. "let's saaaay, a mosquito—mm, no, bad example, those are monsters." an attempt at humor, though the remark was delivered so flatly the electrocardiogram would alert to an asystole and the doctor would solemnly say, "i'm sorry, she's dead serious".

she shot him a ruminative look, then tried leading his vermeil gaze to the susurrant grasses underfoot.

"the shrews and voles burrowed beneath our feet are simply terrified of us right now. why shouldn't they be? we hurt them, we're monsters. worse than monsters, really, by body count alone," she said. "but i bet you don't think you're a monster, do you? you certainly think i am one. don't lie, now. but that's quite silly, too, because i haven't hurt you." she eyed him and strode a few feet away, proffering even more distance between them if it meant he'd lighten up. "i'm no danger to you, you haven't given me any reason to be." her eyes followed a firefly for some of its journey, and she idly called out to the very joyous boy, "did you know there is a carnivorous species of sun bug? they eat their own kind. that's their natural order, and they accept it i imagine. isn't that a marvel? of course, monstrous fiends by your count." 

straying, straying. she clucked her tongue at riley, pitying him with just a look. she couldn't be any-more privy to his troublesome litany of life's misfortunes than he could glean her own experiences with what he called monsters. she couldn't empathize, but she could relate, though neither of them spoke tell of it ... she was astute, and surmised there was more underlying riley than just a river of molasses.  

"i don't believe in them—monsters. not really." she sat, eying that cold looking spire looming above them. "i did used to believe any child starved of their parent's love was evil at its most pure." she intoned vaguely, her expression inscrutable. a small smile twitched her lip. "now i mostly just think hurt begets hurt and the cycle goes on ad infinitum. and if i let fear rule me because something, or someone, may hurt me, i'm doing a great indignity to my own strength of mind." the black wolf looked up, to make sure forrest gump riley was still there enduring her flowing tongue and she wasn't just monologuing in a field by herself. that'd be shitty. 

"anyway," she quickly moved on, huffing. "i wasn't lurking, i was waiting for you to leave so i could as well, then you started swimming through the grass like some serpent, which doesn't bode well for your accusation, now does it? hm." 

Riley stiffened under Tiercel's gaze, his ears pinning to his ears when she parroted back his statement in a grotesque baritone. Was she mocking him?

His fur had a mind of its own as it rippled out like the spilling of a water resevoir; up went the ruffles around his neck and throat, up went the bristles along his spine. Her aspect was confusing, unnerving -- settling only as she put more distance between them. Was he a monster? His heritage certainly suggested so; his lip trembled. Was she a monster? She was certainly behaving oddly, and Riley did not understand much of the point of her monologue besides that she was perhaps demonstrating easily the intelligence gap between them. He believed her questions were mostly rhetorical, and so did not labor to stir his tongue. Despite his silence, he was not ignoring her -- his mind churned in response to her comments on parents, abuse, and monsters.

Was she someone who had been starved for love once? He did not speak, though she reminded him painfully of Laurel then.

Riley supposed he had advanced rather strangely. An owlish blink accompanied Tiercel's accusation. At last, Riley supplied another unsatisfying non-answer: "I smelled blood, it didn't seem good." Was he Lenny-level simple, or was he just a wolf in which easy conversation did not come freely?

He was quiet for a span of time that might have been a minute. His gaze had been studying the grass at her feet, but now, his uneven eyes slowly raked up her frame and met the burn of her sharp gaze. "What is your name?"

tiercel crossed her forelegs primly and canted her head. "did it not? why shouldn't it?" she crooned, hearing her own intrigue in her question and deeply curious as to why the smell of blood would trouble him. "vultures follow me in the daylight. delightful, to have a devoted following." she sounded somewhere between vexed and charmed. mostly vexed. a receptionist's smile curved her lips.

if anything, he should have taken a great predacious interest, and she was unconvinced this wasn't his reason for stealing through the grass all anguine and sneaky. besides, the blood swathing her smelled no different than a maimed, rouged rabbit or deer's blood spoor as it staggered through the pines—they all bled the same. suspicion peopled her mind, and again she swiftly read their surroundings for auxiliaries.

clever strategy: shove the pithless cadet out as bait, then narrow in. 

no wolves silhouetted against the treeline waiting to descend on her. contemplating this, she briefly lapsed into silence until her focus snapped back to riley as he spoke, and not just that, but in speaking sought an answer to a question that she had no real answer for. his argus-eyed stare devouring the features of her frame suddenly felt as debauching as—

a muscle in her cheek jumped but she otherwise maintained her nonchalance. in the shadows, her black tail switched with edginess. "esmé." she firmly refused to exist as a paean to her father's brutalism against her mother, and the name bequeathed to her from a prêtresse noire in the south flowed from her tongue like wine; as though she had perhaps been used to going by it for quite a long time. 

either way, tiercel and all the girlish innocence she possessed had died manifold times under the heft of that man, and she would not resurrect the dead on her tongue tonight.

"i would ask yours, but, y'know, reasonable doubt, et cetera." she strode closer to him with a casual air of abstruseness. esmé leaned near him and squinted openly towards riley's face, then cringed backwards with mild horror at what was screwn across the bridge of his snout.

"do you want me to tell you, or would you rather not know?"

Riley was over his head and he knew it. He struggled to keep up with the robust pace of conversation Tiercel supplied; mercifully (or perhaps, devilishly) Tiercel seemed to possess every ounce of superfluous tête-à-tête in which he lacked, filling in what would have been long and awkward pauses otherwise with her rambunctious wit.

He wanted to point out blood was always cause for scrutinity, for it was only shed in one of two ways: assault, or accident -- but his tongue was prised heavily to the roof of his mouth, and his jaws tight as a barrel pillory.

At the mention of vultures Riley craned his head skyward, not even registering a. that it might have been hyperbole and b. that it was night -- nothing but a thin veil of clouds sheathed the starry sky; no dark wings, no distant omens. His gaze returned earthwards, confused.

Esmé. Riley turned the name over in his mind, his tongue at last becoming unstuck from its toothy prison. "Pretty." He said it in the manner a wonderstruck child might comment on the iridescence of a beetle's wings. It was then she came close, retracting in horror seconds later. The reaction spurred Riley backwards himself, his hackles rifling. "What?" He forgot in that moment the polite thing to do was say his name back -- he was too engrossed by Esmé's strong reaction to him to realize his name had entirely slipped by the conversation.

pretty.

he said strangely, voice silhouetting something she regarded with a measure of incredulity.

the compliment went through her brain like a sieve. so thoroughly persuaded she'd been, once; how the man loved to descant upon her bodily description. she was only just a child, then.

she pressed in closer when he withdrew in alarm, eyes squinched to glean a nearer assessment of his condition. esmé smoothed the lines of appalment from her face and cleared her throat politely. "forgive me—" she whispered with discretion, "i was deeply concerned you might have inherited freckles. i was mistaken." 

esmé leveled her gaze to his own and murmured with a sigh. "fortunately, it's just ticks." the woman peered at the quaint nymphs holding congress on his muzzle, intrigued. "can you not feel them, truly? the crawling?" bemusement welled into her voice.

If his compliment had any impact, Riley hadn't noticed it - not that he would pay to mind. Too many other distractions present for his brain to function at full mast.

Too many Tiercels.

But there was only one, so he was confused. How was she so fast, so quick and witty? And -- how could he keep up with her?

His eyes nearly crossed as he tried to look down his muzzle. It took a generous gentleman's thirty seconds for the fact to register: parasites. Ticks.

He recoiled in the most untimely manner. "What?" He was incredulous, disbelieving, and a little panicked. "Get them off!" Riley dropped to the ground and began to claw at his snipey snout.

a discreet smirk flit across her features when realization bloomed on his and he suddenly resiled with violent panic. "dear me, i regret you're infested with the teensy monsters. i strongly doubt they're the type that carry that deadly disease. no need for such a fuss." she said, tutting about as he writhed in the grass.

esmé plucked around him in a circle, watching, making no attempt to lend a good turn while riley scrabbled at his slimline face. "well," she huffed "that's one way to ask for help," seating herself and looking away with a petulant expression.

Deadly diseases? Riley paused from scratching furiously at his snout with a forelimb, gaze ascending slowly towards 'Esme'. Mcexcuse me, deadly diseases?

"GET THEM OFF!!" He yelped, surging now into a desperate run. He held his head low, bashing it against sapling and grass as he went, rubbing violently against the bark of a tree and then throwing himself on the ground to scrabble roughly at his now tender nose. A panic welled in him as he thought of them getting under his skin, his eyeballs -- his heart.

He felt none of the offensive intruders, but why would a stranger lie? He remained prone, panting in the grass as Esme lingered petulantly on standby.

her words clearly put the fear of god in his rectum (damn near killed him!) because riley turned over and skyed over the grasses, panic trebled to an extent where he was behaving like a brainsick steer, bashing his face against any and all foliage it could come in contact with as he beelined for the trees with thicker boles. 

calmly she watched it all unfold, clapping funeral-pyre eyes on the nails on her toes to while the time away as he spindled himself to the end of his mental filament. she inspected each claw with pursed lips, still waiting for him to remember his instilled social praxes, though she'd long doubted his parents were the cerebral sort at all if this is what their coupling quickened. "who are you to be making demands of me, sir?" she asked in a clipped tone, bearing her brows aloft in a manner of the very idea ... ! without speaking it.

it took all kinds to make a world she supposed.

she was bored of her own games, now, anyhow, and riley had ditched into the grass with fatigue. gathering up her skirts, esmé sauntered to his heaving side and loomed over him, meticulously looking over his reddened, scratched-up face.

of course, there had never been any ticks, but why ruin her credibility? for his slithering around in the grass like the lochness monster of peepee glade, she had to seek some redress. no harm had come to the boy; perhaps some psychological scrape, but nothing a paw patrol bandaid couldn't fix. 

"mmm. never doubt your aptitude, boy. you've got them all. i don't see a ... single ... tick." she pulled back and sat on her haunches, sighing and throwing her gaze skyward. "no more monsters, thank the stars." she glanced back down. "secretly, i feared for you. truly, i did. i was on my way to help, but you bravely took it upon yourself." 

"regrettably, however, now i must be on my way." she said, frowning, despite well knowing he probably did not regret her impending departure even a little bit. alas, she could not use the moon to shroud her shoulders for much longer. it would be daybreak in the twinkling of an eye and she did not want to be exposed when that moment came, dahlia in her evening raiment.

While Riley panicked, Esme remained nonplussed, studying her claws as if she had not been the source of his torment. Of course, Riley was unaware of such a fact -- and even now as he laid across the grass in breathless heaps, found himself scraping his nose repeatedly with a dewclaw.

He missed her clipped tone, too busy lamenting over the throbbing of his nose and the paralyzing fear that he might become invalid in short order; not even when Esme stood over him did his gaze lift (and what a shame! he might have had a chance to peek upskirt, if he was so inclined).

She was leaving. Riley missed pretty much everything that she had said, except for that bit. "Do you have to go?" He suddenly asked, feeling very alone and not at all relishing the idea that the meadow would be evacuated of all blood-clad tormentors in short order.

she had already rounded on his prone form, intent on pressing more fathomless into the inkspillage shadows, when her ears lit touch of his inquiry. she paused midstep— 

he'd been hapless quarry in her presence, and still he did not extol her intent to retreat? on the contrary, he sought more time amid her company. it all seemed malapropos to her, further disheveling logical thought. 

perhaps he was pack ravening. she'd heard of the phenomenon, but had never encountered a wolf so wanting of companionship that he would bid for her. she did not turn her head, because she knew if she saw the frets upon his muzzle, within the mustard seed of goodness in her soul, guilt would be garrisoned. "yes." her voice dripped. she walked a step more. stopped.

the woman canted her head edgeways, but still did not turn to him. "do you have to stay?" she asked in return.

Riley found himself loathing every foot of distance between Esme and himself; could she not stay a while? It didn't matter she had metaphorically hazed him (ok, a little physical too -- but he dumb, and he don't know that); she was one of the only living things out here besides the fireflies, and for once, was not a stranger intent on physically harming him. (Mental was a whole 'nother ballgame, and Riley was no Simone Billes when it came to mental gymnastics, and failed to make the leap that he was someone's actual target.)

Well.. Riley was just too dumb to know Esme had been playing him for the fool all along.

His brow furrowed at the question: was she inviting him with her? Where was she to go -- and why? So many questions, so little brain cells; trying to herd them all in the same direction was like poking jellyfish down a riptide. They would go wherever they intended, and no flotsam or guiding hand would stop them. "I don't know." His tone was bald, and he rubbed his nose briefly as he remembered just seconds ago he had won the crusade against holographic ticks: "I've been staying here, kind of. I don't have nowhere to go. Where are you going?"

"you do know. you do have somewhere to go. anywhere. you are not stuck here." she responded sharply, insisting upon him some semblance of mental acuity. he had brought himself to this glade, and he could take himself out of it just as well. she glanced at the sickle of the white gouache moon, then looked towards the east.

where are you going? in the crepuscle her eyes glinted as they grasped for the shadows, gleaned yearning, ellipsed between inchoate panic and tightly wound self-control. "elsewhere." esme said, pithy and vague. "away." she added, just as before.

slip of marigold glimpsed him. "leave this place. it is corroding your brain." she husked, turning away again to insinuate her intention to move along.

what did he want from her? he was a catspaw raking hot chestnuts out of a bed of coals, then imploring ubiety from the monkey who bade him do so? a moral quagmire sucked her into tiresome thoughts.

i don't have nowhere to go, words rebounded in her mind, once delivered from her own tongue to a stranger who saw only a vassal in her.

riley was mere a scruffy colt, and esmé was satisfied that's all she saw in him. 

a final time, she pitched her gaze to meet his own: twain lakes of magma coalescing, smoldering, and then, without another word, the woman deftly loped into the upsloping, northeast forest.

Esme's tone was sharp, cutting harder than before. Riley's insectile gaze jerked up, his mouth formed in a silent o of surprise as he registered both her frigid timbre and the meaning behind her words.

Sure, he could up and leave -- but did she not know he was a vagrant? The glade was unoccupied, and mostly shaded - the perfect haunting ground for a hungry spectre to stake his claim. And if he went with her, where would they go? For why?

His jaws closed with a strange popping sound as he digested the vagueness of her words. He was not offended by the suggestion his brain was corroded, but he wondered -- how had this place changed it? It was just a glade, full of fireflies.

She was already moving away. Riley did not immediately rise; his lantern gaze watched as fireflies glimpsed in and out of visibility, wondering if those short flashes were not unlike the spark and death of life, or the winds of change -- there one moment, gone the next..

Just like Esme.

Eventually Riley rose and picked after her trail, his pace sluggish but determined.