Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationship:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Series:
Part 3 of Creatures of a Brief Season
Stats:
Published:
2017-07-17
Completed:
2017-07-19
Words:
5,327
Chapters:
3/3
Comments:
40
Kudos:
143
Bookmarks:
19
Hits:
1,507

Creatures of a Brief Season

Summary:

“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Shirayuki is special, she knows.

She is told so every day when she walks to the schoolyard, books tucked in her tiny arms, and ermine wrapped around her neck. Shou the baker will rush from his shop as she passes by, a bun fresh from the oven just for her. Kino, the weaver’s wife, will stick her head out the window, calling out for a kiss to be blown her way. Eno the potter touches her head as she passes, his smile wide and kind when he says, for luck.

They expect great things from her, but she’s the same as all the other children, at heart. She asks the same silly questions, skins her knees just the same when she jumps off the best climbing tree, gets sick the same way when she makes her daemon test the boundary of their bond – followed by the same speculation about the witches in Sama, and whether they really can be separated from their daemons by miles. She lays back, head pounding, and ponders what that means for their souls.

And just like any other child, she wonders what her daemon will settle as.

The children in her class say all the normal things: a horse, a bear, an eagle, a monkey. In the schoolyard there are the normal jeers, you’ll settle as a snake, or, you’re a cat all right – one of the ugly, hairless ones. The adults all laugh; in her neighborhood they are all cats and dogs and sparrows, dun-colored and common. They are not born well enough to have such proud animals; the most they could hope for is a squirrel or a pig.

All of them save for her.

When she speculates – an owl, or maybe even a cat – the adults all shake their head. No, no, they say with knowing smiles, you’ll be a fox with hair as red as that.

She is tired of such answers, of Oma saying, you’ll be a cardinal, won’t that be fine, or Anda’s, if you don’t start thinking for yourself you’ll end up with some idiot setter.

Just once, she’d like someone to tell her she’d be a shrew.

I hope I’m something beautiful, Perkunas tells her when he curls into her at night, sometimes a lovely brindled tabby, other times quivering chinchilla, but most often a sleek ermine, coat white without a single blemish.

She knows what’s brought this on; he’s seen Shou’s stout boar, thick with muscle and stomach swaying as it trots after the baker. He’s a vain little thing at heart, and she scratches him behind his ears, enjoying the feel of his smooth fur beneath her fingers.

I hope you’re something useful, she says, and he snorts in response, twisting under her palms in displeasure. A snicker laces itself through her breath, only goading his anger, but she means what she says as well. He useful like this, able to shift into a monkey with clever hands when she needs help behind the bar, or an otter that cuts through the river when she swims, or an owl when she needs a lookout. To think he might settle, might become only one of those things – it scares her.

Maybe it won’t happen until she’s older; she’ll be one of those who don’t settle until long after she should, garnering curious looks from the other children her age. Then she might be ready, might want to know who she is.

It could all end up all right.

Of course, it does not happen that way. The world would need to be kind, and she knows as well as any that it only takes and takes.

The sickness starts with the miller’s daughter; it takes months for Anda to trace it back to the source, to find the algae in the river that turns their eyes and skin yellow. It’s too late for Oma.

“Liver failure,” he tells her as they dig the grave, his jackdaw crowing ominously on his shoulder. In all her months with him, she’s never hear her speak. “Must be something in the food…”

She doesn’t care. She knows she should, that she should be churning his diagnosis over in her mind, but this was her grandmother, her Oma, and all she wants it to be left alone.

So she runs.

Herr Anda calls after her, so dire she nearly turns back, but she can’t, she can’t –

Perkunas flutters between forms as she runs; a hare, a jay, a wild cat, all trying to keep pace beside her, trying to fit what she needs, what she feels. She doesn’t know how he decides – if he decides – how to shape himself, but she can’t imagine how he does it now when there is nothing in her, nothing but an aching pit rimmed with anger, threatening to consume her.

Her toes catch under an elm’s thick root, sending her sprawling to the forest floor. She catches herself on hands and knees, the leaves beneath her slipping and sliding under the force of her impact. She rolls over, onto her back, and lays there, letting the wet of the litter seep into her. Her skin crawls at its clamminess, but that’s fine, it’s all fine as long as she’s feeling something besides this. This nothing.

Perkunas trots over to her, his form shivering, shifting, in distinct, and when he lays on her chest, body wide and squat, striped snout tucked up under her child, she feels it – as if a puzzle piece has snapped into place.

She looks down into his gold eyes, their breaths strangely in sync, and says, “Oh.”

They hide when her grandmother is placed in the earth, but when it is time for Opa to be laid to rest, bare weeks later, Perkunas helps to dig the hole.

It’s strange how normally she is treated once Perkunas has settled. His form isn’t one of the usual ones – no cat or dog or mouse, not for him – but there is nothing special about a badger, save that this one won’t savage them if they tread too close. The red hair that had made her seem so magical before now only is an oddity, a quirk of her parentage.

She’s an adult now in their eyes, and when she moves all her things from her empty childhood home above the pub to Herr Anda’s, no one does more than offer her a wave in a smile. They all lost loved ones in the plague; just because she has lost her world does not make her any more deserving of their pity.

“You’re a child still,” Anda grouses as she carries all of her worldly possessions on her back. “This is some folk superstition, thinking this conveys maturity. As silly as thinking your menses make you ready to bear a babe.”

He goes on about the burgeoning acceptance of adolescence as a phase in the higher courts for the rest of the night, dropping it for periods of silence before starting up again apropos to nothing but his own whims. She’s used to this, to his strange tirades and segues, and – and it’s comforting, to have lost everything but to have this: the warmth of Perkunas at her side, and the crotchety rantings of her master and squawks of his jackdaw to keep her company.

Shirayuki forgets that she is special, that she is different.

Until she cannot anymore.

The forest is different at night; it is not the one she knows in the day, the one that she has played in since she was a little girl. It is not shafts of light through the trees and curled ferns, but instead grasping branches and roots, tangling her up and scratching at her face. She wanders off the path in her fear and confusion, trying to head anywhere that is away, anywhere that will not lead back to where that dead-eyed guard told her she would be a concubine, his dog daemon crouched low, growling deep in her throat.

Her fear threatens to choke her; already it leaves her gasping, panting, her legs aching with fatigue. The only respite she gets is what time it takes for Perkunas to trundle after her, his stubby legs too awkward for running long distances. He is slowing her down; too squat to run and too heavy to hold. By morning the prince’s men will know she is gone, and they have dogs, daemons that will scent her and track her and –

“I’m stuck!” Perkunas shrills, and she has to backtrack through the darkness, searching for his stumpy little body in the undergrowth.

The canopy is so thick she can hardly see, stumbling through the underbrush with only thin slivers of moonlight to guide her steps, and then she sees him, back end caught beneath a gnarled root, and it’s just like him to misjudge his girth, to think those apples he snuck before dinner hadn’t made his belly sit heavy on the ground. She rushes toward, reaching out, ready to help him, but her hands only brush his fur and – and –

He flops out with a wheeze, sinuous little body writhing on the ground as she falls beside him, panting, the pain so searing –

“Perkunas,” she gasps, pulling him to her breast. His narrow face burrows into her neck, his ferrety body curling against her palm. “Oh Perkunas, what have we done?”

“I don’t know,” he whines, but he shrinks under her hands, becoming a little mouse, and she has no time to think, no time to mourn. They must get away, as far as they can.

There will be time to question later.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Even when she’s alone, she feels eyes on her.

When she took the pharmacy’s test, it had not occurred to her that she would become such a curiosity to Wistal’s court. Ridiculous, in retrospect; she’s a close companion of the prince, garnering interest and enmity purely by breathing, and to make matters worse…her daemon is not settled.

She tried to hide it her first few days at the palace. Zen knew, and Mitsuhide, and Kiki – but Shirayuki knew how others would take it. She’s already foreign, and red-haired beside; she doesn’t need another thing to mark her as different, as untrustworthy.

But it doesn’t last. Whenever she is near Zen, Perkunas cannot seem to hold shape – at first a fox to curl up on her lap, then a cardinal to perch nearby, then a red monkey to tuck a stray wisp of her hair behind her ear – and it was only a matter of time before the servants began to talk, before they pocketed cold hard dill to tell enterprising courtiers about the common girl that the second prince has taken to.

I can’t help it, he tells her mournfully, not when they’re near.

She presses her lips together, ducking her head against his. She can’t blame him for it, not when her own her own heart refuses to calm as well.

“Unsettled, hm?” Garrack watches Perkunas scuttle up the shelves, now a dunny ferret, sticking his long snout in a drawer of peppermint.

“Well, he was, and then…” She wrings her hands, blood rushing to her cheeks. “He wasn’t.”

The woman sits back in her hips, hands on her pelvis, and hums thoughtfully.

Shirayuki tucks her hands behind her back, if only so that her worry wouldn’t show. “I-I hope it’s not a problem?”

“Problem?” Garrack echoes with a tilt of her head. “No. Here, there’s someone you should meet.”

Her master is…not what she expects.

Ryuu tilts his head up to look at her as Garrack introduces them, only for his eyes to skitter away a moment later, fixing on some point just to the left of them. He tucks his nose under the tall collar of his shirt, nodding along as Garrack informs him of the situation. Shirayuki’s not sure where to look herself; it seems rude to stare at him when he won’t look at her, but it would be unprofessional to look away as well, and –

And because she is looking, she sees the small diamond-head of a snake peek over his collar, sees its small, beady eyes trained on her, and she – she smiles back.

It takes her far too long to realize the reason why Garrack has put them together.

It is almost evening when the small head pokes out from the rumpled ball of his hood, and she blurts out. “Is your –?”

“She’s settled,” he says in that strange, flat voice of his. He sounds tired, like a child in need of a nap.

“Oh, but you’re…” She grimaces. “How old are you?”

“Twelve.” This time, the twinge of tension is stark against his tone, sticking out like bas relief.

She cannot tell why; he’s hardly younger than she was when Perkunas settled. His back is to her, but she smile nonetheless. “It’s strange isn’t it? The way they feel when they settle.”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I don’t remember what it was like before.”

“Before…?” She tilts her head, fingers tapping at her lips. “It’s only been a few months, hasn’t it?”

His head half-turns over his shoulder, his blue eyes flat and dull.

“How…old were you, then?” she asks, ignoring the tremor in her belly. How bad could it possibly be –?

“Eight.”

Oh. Oh.

It only makes sense that a woman with an unsettled daemon with a boy master with a settled one would have a bodyguard without one entirely. It’s best to keep all the difficult things to explain in one place.

Shirayuki didn’t have time to inspect the man the last time she met him – she was too busy trying not to fall asleep on her feet – and the time before that Zen had put his body between them, but as he waves at her now from behind’s Kiki’s back, Veles letting out a warning growl at his impertinence, she knows – there is no daemon hidden on him, no tiny roach or sly snake to peek out of his scarf.

“Zen said he wanted to leave this man with you for a while,” Kiki tells her, mouth canted slyly. “You can decide to send him away whenever you want.”

Shirayuki flounders as she always does, unsure of how to – to ask what Zen’s intention is, sending her this man. By the time she has coalesced her thoughts into a single stream of words, Kiki has already turned away, too far to call back save by shouting, and – and that is not done here. This isn’t the market for her to scream a conversation like a fishmonger’s wife.

The man must be thinking the same thing; his gaze meets hers and he offers her a sympathetic grin. They’re stuck with each other, for now.

“Need an introduction?” he asks as she leads him down the tiered gardens. “I’m Obi. I have aliases,” he confides, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. “And many secrets.”

She’s glad her mask can cover her sigh.

She leaps out a window, Perkunas just behind – until he is not, until his otter body is caught in Brecker’s hands. Her skin crawls, as if it might slough off of her entirely for this vile transgression –

Until that is not her largest problem, until their tether is pulled taut and tested beyond comfort; when she hits the water it is with a scream, her muscles seized in a rictus of pain. She cannot move her arms to swim, cannot kick her legs to surface –

An arm bands like iron around her ribs, hauling her to the surface. “Miss!”

She has never been so relieved to hear Obi’s voice. She tries to speak, but her heart is being carved from her chest. She can barely do anything but cough up water and writhe. His hands are still on him, she can still feel him, oh by all the gods –

“What are you trying to do?” Obi growls, voice frayed by worry.

“He’s touching him,” she gasps, clutching onto Obi’s shoulders. “Oh gods, he’s touching him.”

Revulsion works its way into Obi’s every feature. “That son of a bitch,” he growls, “I’ll –”

A large splash sounds in the water next to him. Perkunas’s twitching face surfacing a moment later.

“Shirayuki!” he cries, whimpering as he swims toward her. “Shirayuki!”

She gathers him to her, careful to avoid where Obi’s arm still holds her. She can breathe now, can think, though it feels like she will never be clean again.

“The bell,” she tells him, finally. “It fell into the lake! If we don’t find it, Popo won’t know where to land!”

Obi casts one last lingering look up at Brecker. “Where did it fall?” he asks finally, dropping his gaze. “I’ll look for it.”

It’s later, when he’s draped his dry coat over her shoulders, making sure it covers where Perkunas shivers in her arms, that she finally asks, “Is it odd?”

“Is what odd, Miss?” he fusses with the lapel, unhappy how he can’t wrap it fully around her and her daemon both. “That you jumped out a window?”

“No.” She looks up, meeting the warm amber of his eyes. “Not having a daemon.”

They widen, shocked, before crinkling up at the edges. “Miss, I wouldn’t know.”

Shirayuki ponders that often; more than she should.

She’s with him all day, and often some of the evening, but in all these months she’s never once seen it. Even if it was something small – a mouse, a newt, a roach – she would have seen some sign.

Her mouth pulls thin. She could, of course, just ask. Obi jokes, but he never lies.

Still…she doesn’t. He’ll show her when he’s ready.

She’s on the deck of Umihebi’s ship, shivering in fear beside Kiki as the Tanbarun fleet closes in around them. The woman orders her crew to cut sail and run for the lee side of the island, and she’s afraid the sloop will outrun them – there’s no way Tanbarun’s man-of-wars can keep up – and they’ll both be lost forever, across the seas –

A shadow falls over her with a deafening screech. The crew all ducks and screams as an enormous bird buzzes low, landing on the ship’s rail not ten steps from her. Its wingspan is the size of a man, and it flaunts it, golden feathers frilled in agitation down its neck and –

And it does not even need to speak for her to know. Everything will be all right.

This is Obi’s daemon.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

It may be the same country, but Lyrias is a world away from Wistal.

Snow lines the streets; the cobbles are clear but large banks squat against the storefronts, glistening in the lamplight. Even during the day it’s dark; not an endless night, but more a gray that never gets lighter than a thunderhead. The people here are bundled up tight, their daemons thickly furred. Tanbarun’s commonfolk might only dream of bears and wolves, but here they are as common as dogs.

“You must be the pharmacists from the capital!” says the girl before them, the monkey daemon perched on her shoulder wearing a small jacket. “I’m Yuzuri, one of the botanists. Is this your first time here?”

She doesn’t wait for their answer, just turns to the university, striding up the steps with the sort of confidence that says she expects them to follow. Shirayuki casts a long glance at Ryuu, and they fall into step behind her.

It’s clear why Yuzuri was picked as their guide; she’s effervescent, happy to hold a one-sided dialogue only occasionally punctuated by a timid answer from either of her charges or censure by her daemon – for dominating the conversation, of course.

“Ah, here’s something to get your blood up,” she says, tapping the side of her nose impishly. Her daemon sighs, long-suffering. “The library!”

The doors swing open and – and not even Wistal has so many book in one place –

“It’s where all the researchers hang out,” Yuzuri adds, and that is when the whispers start.

Shirayuki braces herself. The doors haven’t yet closed, and already there’s a thousand murmurs fluttering over the gallery, like moths clinging to a screen in summer. Ryuu shoulders closer to her, not quite asking for a touch, but wanting to feel her solid at his side. She knows better than anyone how little he’s liked the idea of this trip; Lyrias may be Clarines’ ivory tower, but for the two of them, Wistal is safety. Knowledge tempts her, but –

But she is not a normal girl, not like the one in front of her, leading the way with a swagger as her monkey daemon shakes its fist at the bystanders. She hears them muttering, hears those are Garrack Gazalt’s assistants, that’s the child herbalist –

That’s the girl whose daemon won’t settle.

She thrusts back her shoulders, holding her head high. She’s above this. She’s above rumors. At least here they’re only about her daemon.

“Oh look,” drawls a deeper voice, close. Shirayuki turns to see a fox-faced man sitting on one of the tables, mouth rumpled with ennui. “It seems some completely useless people have come.”

Shirayuki doubts she is going to like it here.

It doesn’t take her long to change her mind.

Suzu ducks under the table, his “I’m a bachelor!” coming up clearly through the wood, and Shirayuki is filled with a strange sort of fondness for this blunt, strange man and the strange dunny bird that sits on the table, watching her with eyes far too big for its head. When her mouth opens, it seems to encompass the whole of her head, and Shirayuki has to stifle a laugh. Everyone here is so – different that she hardly seems to stick out at all. After the initial shock of her shifting daemon, the most common remark directed to her is a disappointed, “You’re not Garrack Gazalt.”

It’s…refreshing.

“He’s really not settled?” Suzu asks when he comes back up, eyeing Perkunas where he is stretched across the table as a brindled tabby.

“No, he’s not.” She shouldn’t like a stranger coming so close, but – but there’s something about him – him and Yuzuri both – that puts her at ease.

Perkunas must feel it too; he shifts a few times in quick succession – a white fox, a sparrow, a lap-sized dog – and Suzu watches him with something verging on respect.

“Amazing,” he hums, eyes as wide as his daemon’s. “Let me take a closer look.”

Shirayuki hesitates. People don’t get this close to her, not after – the tower. After Tanbarun.

“I won’t touch him,” Suzu says, not gentle but – assuring. Earnest. “I promise.”

She nods. “All right.”

Suzu says he has theories, but he never gets to expound on them. Kirito’s friend collapses, and then they are all swept away with the epidemic that leaves humans weak and their daemons untouched.

But she cannot help but wonder what he might have said. If he thought them…fixable.

Shirayuki can’t help but wonder if she’d want to be.

She hates to admit it but – but –

Shirayuki loses heart, after the gate.

Seeing Zen gives her strength, it does – but it also reminds her she is too slow as well, that she is only human, that lives hang on whether she is fast enough, smart enough, resourceful enough –

It’s too much, and seeing him just makes her want to put her head on his chest and give up. It makes her want to let someone else do the saving, because she is tired, she is exhausted, and every step feels like a pitfall.

She leans her head against her hand, swaying on her feet, and –

A shadow falls across the window.

“Od Ana,” she breathes, opening the latch. Her plumage is covered in snow, and when she shoves her body through the opening it sprays all over the floor. “Get in, you’ll freeze.”

“Too late,” the eagle says, rotating her wings awkwardly. “I hope you don’t choose to stay here, darling. My feathers can’t take it.”

She sighs. “I’m so glad to –”

“OD ANA,” Perkunas shrills, turning to a monkey mid-leap. His small hands clasp around her neck, pulling the bird close.

“—See you.”

“I can tell.” She butts her head against Perkunas, both of them murmuring to each other for a moment before Od Ana turns back to her. “Obi sent me. He said you’d be missing him by now.”

She almost starts to say he would, but the words get caught in her throat behind a painful, hot knot. “I do,” she admits. “I’m so tired.”

Od Ana clucks at her. “Get in bed, then. No use falling down on your feet.”

“I can’t,” she sighs, “everyone else – no time –”

“Then one of the couches.” Her tone brooks no argument. “Just for a moment.”

“All right.” She nods her head. It pounds with the motion. “A moment.”

She rouses in the night, the smell of ozone and musk filling her nose. Under her hands she feels the spiny sleekness of feather, and she almost comes to wakefulness, almost protests – Obi wouldn’t –

“It’s fine,” Od Ana says, so close. “He’d want you to.”

She nods, Perkunas’s ermine form laying tightly between them, and she sleeps.

It all happens so fast.

Kirito falls to his knees, but Skojare is quick to shift to a bear, and the boy has just enough strength to hold on when they send him back to Lyrias. Shirayuki considers going with, but Obi is focused on trailing the seeds back to their source, and Kirito could be in no better hands than his own daemon.

He’s still sore about the avalanche when they arrive, which is – fine. She’s still confused about his comment about his heart, and she’d rather him silent than have him say anything more like – like that. And when they stand humbled before the glow of the Olin Maris, they’re both short of words.

Obi sends Od Ana back to the university, asking for her to bring aid, and it’s all going well, mystery solved, until –

Until she fall to her knees. Ah, so it’s gotten her too.

“Miss!” Obi cries out, running to her side. Perkunas is already there, butting his head into her arm, whining worriedly.

“The body gets a lot worse, all at once,” she pants, sweat inching down her face in itchy runnels. Obi breath is coming heavy too. Is he –? “You’re sick too.”

“What?” She hears his panic, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. She knows it too well from Tanbarun. “I’m not –”

She reaches over, pulling up his pant-leg. The breath disappears from her lungs.

She had expected the bruised rosettes blooming across his thighs, but not – not –

“What happened?” she breathes, staring at the thicket of scars carved up his legs.

“It doesn’t matter,” he mutters, stepping out of her grasp. “We need to get you back. Perkunas can turn into a bear and –”

“I can’t get too big,” Perkunas says, and they both stare. She’d never asked him to do something like that, not since they were children, but she’s never though he couldn’t. It never occurred to her to ask. “I can’t get to anything big enough to carry both of you.”

Obi opens his mouth, but Shirayuki already knows what he’ll say. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Miss –”

“Od Ana is already bringing half the guard here,” she reasons. “We should stay together.”

His mouth purses, lips turning white while he thinks.

“All right,” he says finally. “We’ll wait. Together.”

It’s cold in the cave. Even Perkunas draping his wolf form over her like a blanket can’t keep her warm. The addition of Obi does, though he declines to let Perkunas flop over his lap as well.

“I wonder what they’ll all say when they find out bodies like this, a hundred years from now,” Obi wonders idly, and she cannot tell if he’s delirious. “Probably some very unkind things about your virtue, Miss.”

It’s a transparent jab to get her to shrink from him, but he needs her warmth just as much she needs his.

“We’ll be dead, so it won’t matter.” She can’t keep herself from adding, “And we’d be skeletons anyway.”

“’Those skeletons had a lot of sex,’ is what they’ll say,” he continues, and he must be a little delirious, to speak so frankly in front of her. He’s much more fond of subtle innuendo. “‘I bet that man skeleton was very good and very handsome. I bet he’d been with loads of lady skeletons.’“

“Perkunas is right here,” she reminds him. “In my arms.”

“Mm, they’ll wonder about that I bet.”

She gives him as flat a look as she can muster. “I think they’ll wonder more about where your daemon is.”

His playful expression instantly evaporates. Ah, perhaps she is feeling some of the cognitive effects of the poison as well.

“Were you born like that?” she asks quietly, into the stifling silence. “In Sama, they say the witches are –”

“No.” It’s the most direct answer she’s ever gotten about a personal question. “I wasn’t.”

“Did it…” She hesitates. She remembers the fall, remembers the way she burned. “Did it hurt?”

He’s silent for a long moment. “Yes. So much.”

“Why did you…” Perkunas nuzzles closer to her, both of them reliving the agony of having their tether stretched so forcibly. “Why did you do it?”

He shrugs, his heart beating fast beneath her hand. “It was the only way to be free.”

In the end, it’s not her decision to come back, but –

But she thinks she might have anyway, given the choice.

“Maybe the problem is that you don’t know what you should be,” Suzu postulates, addressing Perkunas where he lays on the floor. He’s having a play-dead competition with Obi.

Shirayuki doesn’t have the heart to tell him that Obi’s asleep.

Perkunas perks up. “But I know a lot of animals!”

“There’s so many,” Suzu tells him. “I’d only seen a drawing of a potoo once before Hermia turned into one.”

He pulls down a book, thick as his hand. “Maybe we should take a look.”

Perkunas looks at her.

She shrugs. “It certainly couldn’t hurt.”

It’s just play. Just an accident.

Perkunas sniffs and grunts, in his favorite form this week: something they call a red panda. It’s different from usual; here he rarely turns to anything that is something other than brown or gray or white, but there’s something about this strange creature that makes his personality come to the fore. Shirayuki likes it, likes the doggish way he smiles and the funny way he turtles when he falls on his back.

She’s working at the window, Od Ana perched above her, Ryuu at her back. Perkunas is making a ruckus, Obi pretending to be some sort of bull fighter as he runs through his cape. He’s not being careful, and the panda’s paws are furred between the toes, and he just…slips.

It all happens so fast.

The glassware rack is piled high behind Obi, and on instinct he reaches out, digging his hands into Perkunas’s fur and –

And she feels it. His hands on her back but yet not, touching her so deeply. It should not feel this way, not feel good –

Something shifts.

“Oh no,” Perkunas whimpers, belly pressed to the floor. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t –”

She can hardly breathe.

“M-miss?” Obi stutters, his hands leaving them. “I didn’t – I should have asked – but I – are you hurt –?”

“No,” she breathes, shaking her head. Oh gods. Oh gods. “It’s just…”

He comes to her, hand hovering at her elbow. She’s confused at how he can’t feel it, can’t tell – but then she sees his eyes, wide and scared, and she knows did, that he knows he’s forever marked her – “Miss?”

Their eyes meet, green bleeding into gold. She wonders if she’s marked him as well. “It’s Perkunas. He settled.”

Series this work belongs to: