Dragoncrest Cliffs live and die by the gun and the knife

@Sobeille

By morning, the adrenaline of his nighttime escapades had worn off and Sam was bone  tired. He had passed the night in the woods, sleeping fitfully and moving often, and by the very first blush of dawn he was up and on the move. Cliffs. He was to meet her by the cliffs.

Said cliffs were very clearly claimed, and not just by Sobeille. Sam wrinkled his nose at the strong scent of urine that marked the meandering border, which he followed at a slow and lumbering pace. Pre-dawn had progressed to sunrise, and the star of the show had painted everything orange.

dawn broke over the cliffs in broad strokes of molten orange. for the first time in a few days, sobeille felt up to the task of patrolling.

her wounds had scabbed over and the fever claiming her had abated; out of caution she’d slept in dogfish’s den while @Yura stood watch, fretfully sleeping as the last vestiges of fever fled her body.

she drank from the glimmerglass surface of glintwater, and then as the sun broke over the shale, moved out along the borders at a conservative pace.

already she felt her energy waning, but her attention was pulled towards a familiar scent. it took her several seconds to place it; the boy — sam — from the sound.

memory of her task flooded back to her; with cheeks flush in exhaustion, sobeille picked her way after his meandering tracks.

He hadn't seen her pain and exhaustion last time, even though her wounds had still been seeping and raw at that point. Sam wasn't particularly observant once he had seen what he wanted to see, and Sobeille had fit the part of masked villain so well.

His heart soared when he heard sounds behind him and whirled around to find her there. "You!" he declared breathlessly. If she was tired, Sam did not see it - to him, she was a larger-than-life character that had given him a quest, and 'tired' or 'weary' was not things such characters felt. "I did it," he whispered, casting suspicious looks left and right. "I put it in on the beach."

in better health, sobeille might have made a game of stalking after him, to see how long before he became aware of her shadow. her tread was too tired to mask, and in short order he heard her and whirled around.

amused by his low voice, and the careful way he glanced around them as if discussing something scandalous, sobeille flicked the tip of her auburn tail. she hadn’t thought to make it clear she expected delivery, and cursed her ineptitude in making this clear.

de beach? irritation flit across her face, soon after smoothed over like tablecloth hastily spread over an uneven surface. but the gulls and the tide and the beach! this was not the exhumation sobeille envisioned. fuck. recovering her exasperation, sobeille leaned in. i need de skull. de rest, you will return to ‘er grave. when done, you must mark ‘er grave with a sprig of blue fir and a broken conch she wondered if he noticed the missing rib - furthermore, had the crone that stolen it ever used it?

a slow realization came to her then, chilling her down to the bone.

"i need de skull."

Shit. Sobeille had not specified and Sam had not asked - not her fault, though, it wasn't the villain's job to be specific. He might have snapped at anyone else that they should have said so, then, but Sam was already so infatuated with his new boss that the thought didn't even cross his mind.

"I... we can go get it, together?" he suggested, wetting his lips and making huge, pleading eyes at her. It was a stupid idea. Top management did not need to see how the sausage was made – it was their job to receive said sausage on a silver plate, frown at it, and demand to know why it was being served even though it was exactly what they had asked for. But Sam wasn't quite ready to rush off on another errand.

together? sobeille’s yellow gaze flashed, lingering on his briefly exposed teeth as his tongue darted across dark gums.

you need to rest, sobeille came yura’s admonishment from days before. sobeille weighed this against the pleading look leveled her way. it wasn’t in her nature to question why a random man would practically grovel at her feet - in her mind, such things came natural and sam was simply a more useful val, obeying the natural order of things.

again came that nagging thought - of the witch, and the rib, and the fang she’d loosened from sobeille’s jaws. something was wrong.

fine. but it wasn’t fine, and the scrunched up look across her face certainly conveyed that.

"fine."

It was all he needed to hear. The look on her face very clearly communicated what she thought about chaperoning an underling on what should have been an easy mission, but Sam did not care. If anything, he was delighted – his own mother could not have created a better character.

Her worries about witchwomen and bones did not telegraph to her face, but she would have found a staunch supporter in Sam. He was not much for witchy-woo-woo types. Certainly not ones that had wronged his mistress. 

It felt so right. Sam, servant of.. well, she would tell him eventually.

He was about to turn back in the direction he had come when a thought occurred (halt the presses). "Oh, wait – do you have.. maybe a secret way?" A dark tunnel, perhaps? Sam shivered from the tip of his tail to the tops of his copper-dusted ears.