all the fear of the fire at the end of the world
Epitaph A gentle breeze pushed through the Thicket, stirring the charred foliage and teasing a few strands of dark fur along his spine. Rich, rumbling vocals slipped into the forefront of his mind. "Thank you." the lioness uttered, and he could hear the shifting of the foliage around her as she moved. Perhaps she was moving closer to strike, as he anticipated. Verdant eyes squeezed shut in preparation for the first blow to fall. Would it be a blunt impact, a mere backhand by the massive beast? Or would she elect to rake those immense claws across his frail body? He didn't dare look up, not yet. His back hunched up instinctively, trying to seem small and unassuming. Though, he supposed, compared to her he was no more than a flea upon the dirt. Easy to crush. But no blow fell from the feline. Instead, "Why do you cower before me?" she questioned harshly, and the quiet shushhh of the hare carcass sliding through the dirt receded from his attention. The trembling in his thin limbs stilled momentarily as the question was met with no immediate response forming in his mind. How would he explain that he still saw them all as his masters? His tail resumed its hesitant worrying against his belly, a shiver rolling down his spine. "I am a lion, yes, but I don't mean harm to any of you." there was a roughness to her voice within the last few syllables, and were he thinking more clearly, he might have recognized it as strain. Slowly, he dared lift his gaze towards her broad paws. The fur across her toes was short, dense. Soft, even? More so than his own, surely. Like the little tufts behind Poem's ears that she couldn't reach to clean properly, perhaps. "I cower before everyone, Miss Cannival." he said simply. His gaze was a little distant as it traced the fine bones of her forepaws. "It is the way a slave should be." he added, by way of explanation. He still saw himself as that broken, battered little boy being assaulted every night by his masters. It wasn't something he could reconcile with who he was becoming. Not yet. |