Duck Lake Insight II

Date fuzzy

The visit had been brief. Taikon had done what he set out to do, and now it was time to return to Takiyok and Taktuq. No doubt she would be anxious to see him safe again. His thoughts frequently shifted to her, wondering how she was faring, trusting that she was safe within the walls of the forest of black birds. He knew that, had she gone instead of him, he would have been finding things to fill up his time just so he didn't have to think about the worst case scenarios.
He found longing in his heart, knowing it as a familiar, distanced pull. Absence.
Taikon had taken a slight detour to get a drink at the lake, knowing that it was a spot frequented by prey animals. Indeed on arrival there were several does grazing on nearby saplings. He moved past them, making no attempt to hide himself. They stared at him as they chewed, alert but knowing by instinct that he was not a wolf on the hunt. Not only that, but his poor physical condition left him as little of a threat. The prey he'd been hoping for were much smaller.
He bent over to drink, inhaling sharply through his nose as the icy water hit the pit of his stomach like a violent kick.

left some space for assumptions and pp for attacks! <,3

The past fortnight he’d been an eldritch on a Damascus-type of journey. Crackling on trees, powder-snow quilted between his toes — palish martial union; the world had been wed in alabastrine veil and gown. Newly-formed in what was to his irreligious eyes, a new world. One bereft of a higher power; sensing that god is dead. The murder of carrion crows his erstwhile companions, the dun evening sky was the calmness in the torments of the hymenal night:
wastrel failing to rebuke the demons tangled in his bedsheets only fell deeper in them; as it was impractical to fight with a proverbial sword shelved between his ribs.

Therein, the cold morning was spent with lethargic wanderings and wonderings, his footfalls never once carried with the purpose of direction. Those he knew were paper faces on parade and all that was known: curdling blood, bellyful of anger, the lila milkvetch of his father’s eyes,

and the gilt pelage of Sagtannet’s perpetrator.

The impassive quietude is ruptured by the cleave of Eris’ madness. The cowbird finally makes peppered steps in one direction, the bowed figure of the man over the lake. The scene was the irony of fate, Taikon being in the same position he was months ago.

Now he was the unprecedented calamity.

It happened fast. For a moment, his mind felt clear and he was calm, though the prince dreaded the journey back to Takiyok and Taktuq.
Then, the sound of the driven and enraged wolf found him, but he was only able to turn and look before the scent of Astraeus was all about him. He was pushed into the lake as the dark, scarred boy latched his teeth onto his hind leg and pulled. Instinct took over, and Taikon snapped his teeth defensively at the boy, hoping to nail his face. The angle was poor, as he'd been flanked. He needed to get away. He yipped and snarled with pain, violently defending with out-of-practice teeth as he rolled to wet feet in the water.

closing this up on my end! <3

Frostbrand berühren—
but his eyes remained a disarming pair of guavan pearls, trained to the man's throat. The goldenrod's teeth found purchase in his cheek and a bit of cranny betwixt his shoulderblade, but he made purchases of his own, the flurry of stinging water and directionless canines caused the boy to draw back to the lakeshore.

Breathing gruff, he shook his soaked pelage onto the pebble-bedded loam. Taikon would not die in his arms but he should die all the same, the clay reasoned, taking a limpish retreat in the direction on the taiga.

<3

For all of many seconds, chaos had ensued. Everything was water, blood, tangy taste in his mouth. He felt his gumline tear as teeth raked against his face. Then, terrible pain as the boy with the scarred face nailed teeth into his neck and shook him awfully. The strength and rage within such a young warrior left Taikon shaken in both spirit and body, for he had never had anyone feel such hatred toward him, not since his mother had gazed disgustingly upon his weeping form when he had lost Cella.
Failing to defend himself, Taikon could do nothing until he was released. He didn't hesitate in running as fast as his legs could carry him. The wounds themselves appeared little more than small holes pressed into his skin. It was for this reason that he assumed they would heal quickly upon inspecting them and cleaning them vaguely later.
His assumption was wrong.