the bard's last note

Teeth against- no, around his neck. The grip on his scruff easily sank into the flesh on either side of his thin neck. Enormous teeth. Canine teeth. The musk that overwhelmed his senses was distinctly lupine, and painfully masculine. He could feel hot breath against his skin, ruffling the fur of nape and flattened ears. The shudder of powerful muscles that held him under a gargantuan paw could have crushed him easily. The gilded runaway didn't move. Limp in the grasping jaws of his pursuer- his captor. Lest those jaws close upon his neck and put an end to all of his hard work. The seconds seemed to stretch unto infinity, until all at once his head was dropped unceremoniously onto the beach. Hoarse vocals growled a question that was really a demand. It took a few precious seconds to realize the language was not his native tongue, seconds that he truly didn't have to spare.

Swallowing around the harsh dryness in his throat, he found his tongue heavy as lead within his maw. Now wasn't the time to be tongue tied. Speak. Speak or die.

"This was as far as the boat would take me." the words were barely a whisper, wheezy as he struggled to refill his lungs. The accent that clung to his words was a fatal mistake, marking him as an outsider. Betraying his origins to a discerning ear. "I left.. medicines. Perfumes. I could smell- sickness here." stilted and awkward words, hardly befitting a man of his breeding. If there wasn't the threat of death, and the lingering effects of starvation, perhaps he might have been a bit more eloquent. His tongue felt somehow too big and too small for his mouth, the rush of blood in his ears louder than the raggedness of his breathing. "Gifts, to apologize. For trespassing. I did not know until- until it was too late." the monumental effort of mustering the explanation of his presence was wearing on him already. Adrenaline fading, energy waning with each beat of his beleaguered heart.

"Please let me go. I mean no harm. You'll never see me again, I was just passing through." there was a proud prince somewhere in the back of his mind cringing at the pathetic begging, reminding a day in the not so distant past where he'd begged for his life far more pathetically. Was this the man he was meant to be?

"speaking" -- "in another language"