Stone Circle i love you, and if you want, I'll call you king

Set for today, April 16th! So, 5 days after Aquillius arrived in Kvarshiem by backdating from his last thread

He opened his eye.

The colors swam and bled into a sludge like chalk drawings during a rain, collecting on the corners of his vision. His heart thundered against his ribs, which reminded him with every breath that they didn’t wish to move.

He breathed. But it hurt.

Aquillius was used to pain.

He tried to move, drawing one of his legs beneath him, but the shock of pain that followed left him breathless. It radiated from all over, overtired muscles, his raging stomach, his wrapped ankle, his head throbbing gently in comparison. He could smell, he thought, the comings and goings of several wolves.

He was covered in a fur. He blinked, hard, the world swimming back into focus with every blink.

…what…? He rasped out through a throat that felt as thin and narrow as a straw.

@Gunnar had given him leave to stay. germanicus hunted for kvarsheim as much as faun, ensuring that others ate even if he could scarcely choke down a meal a day.

word had gone to @Crowfeather: his son was injured in the stone circle and he had been asked to help with the investigation in swiftcurrent. it would be several days before he returned to riverclan. five already had passed.

when aquilius wakened, the eagle was beside him.

"do not move," he instructed in a voice heavy with relief.

The voice. His body tried to curl, push up, but only succeeded in a few twitches.

He breathed in sharply, his single eye roving the ceiling.

Father..? He croaked to the darkness, his eye searching, nostrils flared. Again he twitched, just trying to turn his head so he could find Germanicus.

"yes." his voice broke but it returned in strength. "i am here, aquilius."

he drew a breath and came closer, to where his son's single eye might see him. "you have been fevered for many days. do you recall any of what happened?"

always the tactician, even when he did not need to be.

Father.. 

His voice quavered, his pupil finding the dark shape of the man. His next words went unanswered as the boy stared at him, before away his eye would twist.

Yes. Hoarse, shaken. He bore the burden of a rabbit and none of the discipline to handle it. 

He felt queasy.

I heard of Mereo. I went to..to check the canyon. I was above it. He shivered, remembering the golden eyes.

It was there. Like you and me. But not. Too narrow. Spoke..something. I have never heard anything like it. He closed his eye.

The other one..she did not hurt me. Chased me. Asked me if I wanted to live. Told me she wished for divinity. He choked on the last words, knowing what came next.

She told me I was nothing, that death came for us all. She was…small. Thin. Like.. Like a spider

Aquillius lurched, remembering the shattering glass of her laugh. He wanted to cover his ears.

He shuddered out a breath that sounded close to tears.

the roman grew still and silent.

briefly he relayed to aquillius the description of the small woman with a thin frame and dark fur, possessed of eyes burning in two different hues.

mereo; broken. he shut his eyes. "i made several rash decisions and cost mereo the canyon as well as its status as a barracks." the blame was his alone to bear. he would make no mistake of it again.

he could not think of what this creature might be. but as aquillius spoke, as the eagle looked upon his face and saw that he lived, the old piety returned.

the gods of editum had spared his son. what would the son of emperors give in return?

now a spectre haunted the young soldier, one that had flesh and blood and had touched the creek as well.

germanicus saw in it a salvation.

"where?" he asked of this dark lady.

His muscles twitched and tugged at the descriptors, knowing in his heart that yes, that was the woman who called herself a god.

He swallowed, shaking in place with the effort to not curl into a ball, to not lurch to his feet and snap wildly at the shadows as if she was there. She wasn’t. Rationality had yet to touch the boy though, and his eye rolled to the surrounding shadows.

Her. He said, lying stiff in his sickbed. She couldn’t touch him here, but he felt the slicing fingers digging into his brain anyway.

Her. His breath hitched, his world dissolving away for a minute. When he registered words again, it was the question of where

Mountains. Just below them. He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached.

F-Flowers.

he had what he needed and at the expense of his son.

"she cannot touch you here, aquillius."

it was a moment to be a man he had never been before: a father.

"the crest worn by the men of our family has always been an eagle's claw. the name of your grandfather's kingdom is editum. and mars, the god of war, shaped us as we are now."

he touched aquillius' shoulder. "i owe him. you owe him. for now, you evoke him against her."

his lips moved in a rote prayer. "mars pater, te precor quaesoque uti sies volens propitius mihi domo familiaeque nostrae."

and on, in adulation of the god's power, in a man's prayer for strength. the offering of the suovetaurilia, a blood sacrifice for purification. it was which aquillius had already given.

"she cannot touch you here. and her witch's flesh will not live long." a soldier straightening, and perhaps the downed young man might sense the proverbial snap of buckle and clank of sword lifted, slid to scabbard.

war was all germanicus knew.

it was his love.

and now, in love, he acted.

"rest. pray. live another day, my son."

His father spoke in quick tones, the words beginning to mash inside his ears. His eye found his father again, watching him, every motion noted in the twitch of the pupil.

Aquillius swallowed the information like a bitter pill, letting it settle against the back of his mind. His father owed something to a god he didn’t know, and now he did too. That didn’t matter to him.

Father. He would call to Germanicus’s exiting back when the man stepped away. In the dark, his eye was piercing.

Happy hunting. Burn the witch. It felt unexpectedly vicious in his mouth, the thought and idea of burning another wolf, but Aquillius, this rawboned and emotional version of him, felt he wanted to taste burning flesh upon the wind.

Then, he slipped slowly back to sleep before his healer could enter the den to check him over.