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quirkle2 · 2 years

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yeah no i asked what i asked and i still . hated myself for imagining it bc i really hate that the idea that the loving and caring family the links have built isnt meant to stay AJSJSAJAHJ i say i love angst but really. i love hurt/comfort and yeah no theres barely any of the comfort . ask ouchy questions get ouchy answers on my part </3 but still ty for indulging me (i say with equal amount of tears) !!

so now i am sitting patiently like a kindergarden kid about to hear storytime . that storytime is your ranch au :>> please ramble as long as you like <33

NO NO UR SO VALID I TOTALLY GET IT imso sorry if i made u sad . i made ME sad. we're both sad :(

kicks my feet up into the air i will cheer us up mark my words

ranch au ...................my beloved and most cherished ranch au. a lotta people prolly have this idea but here is my interpretation of it i suppose

to sum it up rly quickly it's the boys not getting a permanent goodbye and Instead sticking together and going to live on time and malon's ranch happily ever after <333 that's it that's the plot GVEAIYGV

sometime after wars is exiled from castle town and he's had a bit to reflect, he realizes that he's not gonna have Any place to stay when they separate. he hates thinking about their inevitable goodbye in any capacity, but he knows that at some point he's gonna have to come to terms w the fact that he won't have them forever (he will.) and they'll have to say goodbye for good (no.)

he's . obviously very troubled by this in general but That on top of the exile has him stressed and upset and worrying about the future and how he'll even continue without them. the chain can See he's upset—of course he is, he was just betrayed by his "friends" and banned from his home, stripped of his title—and luckily, time comes to da rescue :)

time knows wars is worrying abt living situations n such on top of the Betrayal(tm), and he,,, offers him a place, at the ranch :) they both know very well that that might not be possible—fate drags them around as it is, and they doubt it'll be kind enough to allow wars such a luxury—but the offer is there, if they find that it's possible. and wars isso fucking touched by that that he nearly cries GVIAEYGV

fast forward to . The Inevitable. in this au they Do say their goodbyes, and they Do separate and branch off into their different eras. everything goes as it should, according to fate. everything goes well Except the fact that there's only 8 portals. wars' isn't there. and that just,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

that kinda cements it in wars' head that he's truly been thrown away by his Entire Era. why else would fate not let him go back home? that means he's Truly not needed anymore, and just like artemis and impa, his world abandoned him when he stopped being useful. even fate says there's no point in going back. wars might as well not even exist there anymore

so he goes through time's portal instead. and for the next few days they live on the ranch and ,,try not to fall apart. time basically just lost seven of his fuckin boys, the one remaining one an absolute wreck and definitely working himself to the ground to keep his mind busy and Also to sate that fear that he'll be thrown out by time too if he's not useful enough (malon is more than welcoming to wars and so very happy to have him there and she'sso fuckin gentle w him u don't even know)

and for those few days, they both live w Giant holes in their chests. it feels utterly and dreadfully empty, to just continue life after a loss that great. they're both constantly reminded of the other boys and neither of them are sleeping much at all; wars and ledge were So incredibly close and wars constantly misses him every fuckin moment and all the work he's doing around the ranch is not doin a goddamn thing to distract him from it. time has to stop him from overworking himself too hard multiple times

but one night time's lyin in bed, unable to sleep and Feeling Empty, and then wars is suddenly banging on his and malon's bedroom door. he drags them outside—wars has his sword on him, that's not a good sign—and lo behold, when they step onto the porch, there is a portal in front of their house. just,,,,,,, sitting there. waiting

call it magic or a sixth sense of sorts, but for some reason, Both of them know this isn't a simple calling for another adventure. they just,,, know it in their bones. this isn't that. somehow, somewhere in their minds, time and wars both understand what fate is offering them

they quickly pack, fully arming themselves just in case they're wrong, and they say goodbye to malon in hopes that they'll only be gone a few days or so (they,,, hope to god)

they r dropped in skyloft. so far, promising

they track down sky. he bursts into tears at the sight of them GVUYEAGV at first he thinks it's another adventure, and they say while they can't Promise it's not, they r pretty sure—"like . 80% sure"— that it's smth else entirely. the Opposite, rly

sky goes w them. next up is four, a tearful reunion ensues, same explanation is given. it repeats and repeats and repeats until they,, eventually have everybody :) Everybody is back together—and yes, wars and ledge did run to each other and absolutely Tackle the other

one last portal stands before them. they don't know for sure it's the last one, but they Hope. they hope to god. they all,, hold their breaths and walk through it .

and they r deposited right back where they'd left at the ranch

there is . a sort of strange, underlying apprehension that resides w the sheer Holy Shit We're Together and Home. it's the fear—mostly and justifiably felt by legend, since he's experienced,, what, 7 journeys now ? give or take—that fate is simply gathering them together at a safe spot just to get ready to throw them into smth else

in reality they Can't know what the Entities behind these portals r doing, what their intentions are. they can only assume. but ultimately, even though legend honestly doesn't think his body can Make it through another adventure, if he's dragged into another one and it's w These idiots ? he'd go, and risk destroying his body and mind a lot more in the process, just to spend more time w them. it's not the ,, best circumstances to spend time w ur family, but hey . when else is fate gonna let him do it

malon sees them all back in one piece and races for them, and that's sorta the thing they need to snap out of their little shell-shocked trances and Celebrate. it's . a very big emotional rollercoaster GVYEAGV they cry and laugh and holler and while they're all distantly aware there is a chance this isn't the end of their journeys and there's more to go, they still celebrate. they're back together. gang's all here

and this lets the boys be boys. they all get to live in a normal household (as,, normal as a house full of traumatized heroes can get) w PARENTAL FIGURES . HALLELUJAH. and the younger boys get to be kids and the older boys gets to catch up on a childhood that was taken from them. they get to be normal people

eventually time expands the ranch house to accommodate them. it is a very big change—malon: "there are 8 extra people in my house and i love them all dearly but also there are 8 extra people in my house."—and yeah they definitely struggle to adjust a bit, but eventually everything calms and settles and it's Peaceful. they live peaceful lives, for once

AND YES I . I KNOW THIS HAS MANY MANY HOLES IN IT. but frankly my dear i do not give a damn HVGIEAGVA don't think about how all of them effectively left their families to join a different one. don't think abt that. they visit . it is canon in my eyes that the portals occasionally appear and let them visit their families. it's absurd but have u been paying attention ? so is everything else GVIEAYGV

ofc it's not all flowers n rainbows. they all just went through the fucking ringer w this last journey, and for people like legend who barely had any time in between each adventure to process the trauma, he's got,,,, a lot of catching up to do. they all struggle w a lot of different things, and even several months in they r still learning each others' boundaries when it comes to living in the same household

legend doesn't unpack his bag until 2 months in because he's fully convinced it's not over and he wants to be ready and packed when another portal comes to yank him from reality. hyrule's never,, lived in a home like this and he feels a bit out of place and unsure of what the etiquette is. twi in particular is absolutely terrified of the possibility that they could be dragged into smth else or separated again. both bc he's dealt w this before—being separated from midna between realms—and bc time, well.... the hero's shade thing is another can of worms entirely.

wars is still terrified he'll be thrown out despite the numerous reassurances from time, malon, And the others that they'd never. even though he had several years between the end of the war and the beginning of lu, a Few Years is not enough time to process and even Begin to heal from all the trauma that came from that war. he's still paranoid. he can't go outside at night, even within the safety of the ranch fences—yes, he'll admit he's developed a fear of the dark over the years, terrified of traitors lunging at him from alleyways or from around corners

they all still take time to spar outside, working hard to hone skills, and when time gently reminds them that they don't Need to do that anymore, they all ,, look so shocked and dumbfounded. a lot of them still keep emergency potions in their bags that they take to town. several of them r armed at all times w Some sort of weapon on them, even in the house

legend is still in Adventure Mode and keeps buying useful tools for journeys he might need, even though he's never going on one again. wild realizes that he doesn't have to mold his recipes around what will give them all the biggest buff in strength or defense; they don't need that anymore. he can just make whatever tastes the best w Whatever he wants

u get it. they all slowly learn to Live, instead of survive. they help each other heal in a safe environment, in a world they no longer have to babysit. time has his boys again. gang's all here

#qktalks #soul-of-rei #suncaster au #tw trauma #trauma tw #for da angst at the end there. if i need to add any more tags please do tell me !#I GOT SEVERAL ASKS... urging me to yell abt the ranch au #pspspsppspspsp y'all over here pspsppsspsppssp #IM SORRY IF I MADE PEOPLE SAD W THE LAST ASK . IMSO SORRY #i made myself sad too . deadass teared up when typing it out i cannot Handle wars being that sad #dw tho ranch au gotchu covered #wars is 100% the Happiest he's ever been in his life when the ranch au comes around #the most content he's ever felt. even when starting to process all that trauma #overall he's just . so much better #many of my drawings and fics r made w the ranch au in mind btw. im obsessed w it #i simply have never mentioned it before out of nervousness <3 #maybe not so much the fics in like a tangible visible sense but i do think abt it when im writing #and i think abt what impact Insert Fic Here would have on the ranch au and it's just a fun time yaknow #! TRADE OFFER ! u receive: qpps wars and ledge ranch au. i receive: nothing this isn't a trade this is a Gift #the uhhhhhh sleepy morning w da qpp drawing takes place in the ranch au . i love them #i've THOUGHT abt writing a fic for this au but it'd be one of those rly long ongoing ones #or maybe like . a series of shorter snippets rather than a continuous narrative #idk <3 #i Adore writing dialog and like general vibes tho . and that's what that fic would be made of so GVIEAYGV

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taz-writes · 1 year

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object memories

A fic I wrote as part of my D&D druid’s backstory that I’m in the mood to share. Do you ever write something for the sole purpose of splashing around in your own prose like a dog in a kiddie pool?

TLDR: POV character Hush and her father were held prisoner by a cult for 10 years in solitary confinement, before being ritually sacrificed. Unbeknownst to the cult, Hush wasn’t quite dead and woke up later in the mass grave mortally wounded but alive. As a druid, Hush can shapeshift into animals if she’s seen and studied them before. This fic is about how she 'discovered’ her first four wildshapes in the aftermath of her ordeal, while learning to survive alone in the wilderness and fend off the hunger that threatened to consume her.

~4,600 words; CWs: gore, animal death, take ‘em seriously I’m not kidding around. I feel like there’s also something going on here with the hunger stuff, but I truly don’t know what the fuck to even call that CW. If somebody knows, let me know lol.

The rat was the first.

She doesn’t know exactly when she reached the tipping point, but she grew intimately acquainted with the ways of the rats over the years. She spent an eternity in that dungeon, curled in the corner among her clinking chains, feeling them scurry over her in her sleep. Grew acquainted with how they move, how they think, grew used to fighting them away from what little she had to eat, bartering with them for the space, for help to stay clean, teaching them to bring her things. She watched them for generations, while they nested in the dirty little pallet that she slept on, until they were closer friends than she’d ever had among humans.

She knew them, inside and out, long before she knew how to change into anything. When she awoke in the aftermath and the wildshapes came, the rat was like a second skin. She slipped into the shape like a shield, slick with blood, and slithered out with the last of her breath.

The world outside was big.

She couldn’t heal. The first word she spoke when she took her given shape again was a rattling, empty gasp that sent sticky gore oozing through the feeble scabs over the gash in her neck. It didn’t matter how desperately she grasped for the language, how well she knew the incantation, how crisp and adamant the gestures were that should have saved her. There was no magic without sound. And her angelic heritage did little to help when whatever the source of her limited innate healing, it simply didn’t respond.

She spent the first week or so in the glade on the edge of the forest where she collapsed after running out of time as the rat. The summer heat broiled her skin, even through the shield of the canopy, leaving her parched and aching and crisp like a dead leaf. In the haze of exhaustion, she began to treat her wounds.

The sacrificial shift they’d dressed her in shredded easily. She wound long strips of it carefully around her waist and chest, stomach churning at the horrid sight of the injuries, and tied the rest as tightly as she could across her ragged neck before the pressure made her choke. Every motion left her dizzy and sick. She might have laid there on and off for hours or days or a month, languishing in the softest patch of moss she managed to find and dragging herself back and forth from the clear little stream that burbled a few yards away. As many moments as she could, she hid behind the rat again. The rat wasn’t bleeding. The rat was safe. The rat could forage, devouring whatever it could find, just enough to sustain her.

She learned the rabbits next.

Timid creatures, cautious and quick, they watched her with their wide beaded-bright eyes and darted to safety at the sound of her rattling breaths. While she waited to recover her strength between wildshapes, she watched them back, tracking the little families back and forth among the wild grasses. They were solitary, but not alone—never truly alone.

There was a nest not far from her resting place. She stumbled across the babies on her way to the stream. Their tiny forms huddled together in a depression in the grass and she looked one in the eyes and its little ears trembled, it tucked itself deeper in the shadows, bracing, and a sudden knife twisted in the center left of her stomach.

It took too long to realize it wasn’t the wound this time.

Her sunburnt skin ached desperately, throbbing to the rhythm of a heart that wasn’t hers. She fumbled past to the edge of the water and dipped her face below the surface, where the chill could bring her to her senses, but the soft curves of the current brushed their way along her cheeks like the perfect ghosts of her father’s hands.

Her lungs burned before she came back up for air.

The next time she changed, the new shape was a rescue. She was a stranger but she smelled like the glade, and the other rabbits allowed her there. In the shadowed night they huddled together, warmed by each other’s skin, and her tiny rabbit’s heart began to calm as it hadn’t before in a very long time.

She couldn’t remain forever. She was keenly aware, the longer she lingered, that she was far too close to the cult. Any member could stumble across her here, out on a forage or traveling to the compound, and she wouldn’t get another chance at freedom. She couldn’t risk it. When her stomach sealed enough that the insides of her abdomen didn’t spill to the outside after any major movement, she staggered to her feet like a newborn fawn and began the journey.

She stuck to the woods. Waterdeep was a death trap, anyone could be cult-aligned, anyone could see her and they thought she was dead but she couldn’t know who might know her face. The roads were too much of a risk, populated as they were. Stealth was her only option. The angels guided her when she slept, teaching her how to find north and south in the stars, how to know clean water from stagnant, how to name the leaves and berries around her and tell which ones were safe. She treated her aches with willow bark and bandaged herself with buffers of soft clean leaves. She passed the days in the shelter of her animal forms or huddled in the shade, thinking of anything but the black spots that swarmed intermittent in her vision and the weakness in her limbs. She stayed alive. It was a near thing.

When the berry season faded, and the leaves began to turn, the hunger snarled in her like a wild beast.

She stumbled to the nearest town under cover of night, shielding her body with her arms, following the smell of something delicious she couldn’t name that made her gut twist with starving, nauseous desperation. It was too open, the streets too broad, but every building’s door loomed and narrowed and filled her mouth with the suffocating taste of molding earth until her heart pattered the way it did in the rabbit’s body and the outlines of the structures blurred and blackened before her eyes. A too-cold breeze swirled through the streets and she shuddered from head to toe.

There was a man ahead in dark robes that swirled and her heart moved like rabbit’s feet fleeing in her ribcage. She forced herself to the alley, forced herself back, and bolted into the safety of the sacred darkness.

It was like that at the next few towns, too. There were kind people, here and there. One gave her a soft dark shirt and soft dark pants when she met him in the night, thrust them at her and skittered off when she tried through rattling gasps to ask if he wanted payment; a few innkeepers let her stay the night and gave her meals in the morning that softened the hunger’s brutal edge. But it couldn’t last, because the figures in the alleyways always came back, and names that she remembered from another life haunted her until she fled back to the safety of the trees.

The days grew colder.

The woods were safer further south, deep and dark, filled with birdsong and the golden colors of the waning year, the colors bright as life. She’d taken a sharp rock and cut a stick to hold her weight, easing the pressure on the days when walking was too much. Her breathing was growing easier, and her neck didn’t bleed anymore. But the words that would call magic to her side still couldn’t find their way from her mind out through her lips.

She was losing strength. The angels taught her traps and snares, but her feeble hands couldn’t tie the knots tight enough, and the few beasts she trapped slipped free when she tried to claim them. The herd of deer that once bolted at the sight of her now didn’t even flinch, the great many-pointed stag that led their numbers watching her passively while his mate and children drank at the riverside and foraged from the dying grasses. There was little to forage and less to live by, and some days the wavering mists of exhaustion hardly left her vision.

Sometimes, on the nights the angels didn’t come, she dreamed of the stag instead. Of his glinting eyes in the brush, watching her, unafraid. She murmured prayers in the morning to whatever forces listened.

She met the wolves in the pits of a moonless night, by way of gleaming golden eyes and an uncanny silence sweeping over her resting place, and she knew they’d come for her. She resolved herself to at least go down on her feet.

When the first wolf lunged, she lashed out with her staff, squeezing her eyes shut against the wave of fatigue that swept through her body from head to toe and sent the blood rushing out of her head, and felt herself make contact. The beast yelped, and she blinked spots from her vision just in time to fend off a second, sending it sprawling across the scrubby ground. Her hands shook.

“Please,” she tried to rasp, though nothing but a helpless wheeze came out. The wolves paced. She shifted back, making space, feeling acid adrenaline spread slow like venom down her arms and into her fingertips, biting back the way every motion tore at the scabby flesh of her still-healing abdomen.

The wolves kept pacing. In the dark, they moved like dancers, every footstep intentionally measured. Silent, despite their size, dwarfing her with heavy bodies—direwolves, not just wolves, but their largest and most vicious cousins.

Her stomach growled with a ferocity that nearly sent her to her knees.

The third wolf lunged. She grasped for the little magic she knew, one of the rare spells that remained without her voice, and scared it back with a shard of ice that burst into bitter steam across the pack. Its yelp was piercing and sharp and left her dizzy. Through the haze as she recovered, she watched the wolf pack flee.

She dreamed of the stag that night. She dreamed of blood and the careful steps of hunting beasts, tender in the foliage. She dreamed that she staggered to uncertain feet and the stag was there, his muzzle nudging against her arm, strong and stable, as she found her way upright. She wrapped her arms around him. He was warm and smelled of musk and the gentle decay of the forest floor in fall. He didn’t flee. His fur was soft like the velveteen skin of something whose name she’d forgotten, a precious something she’d loved in another life, beyond her memory, behind the veil of the endless dark. She awoke grasping for it, the name on her lips but not close enough to catch it, even if she’d had the voice to speak.

She dreamed fitfully, in bursts, interrupted by the empty claws of a hollow stomach scratching at the inside of her vessel like nails on slate.

The next day, something whimpered in the bushes when she went to change her bandages at the stream. She braced herself against her staff, and nudged aside the leafy branches, and found the wolf. It was panting, golden eyes glazed grey with pain, curled up defensively with hackles raised. It growled at her approach, but the sound was weak, and tapered to a whimper.

Near its feet, the ground was muddied with black-red blood. She traced the line from its paws to the place in its side where the fur was shaved down to muscle and a thin line of bone. The ghost of a spell and an icy projectile flashed across her memory.

Her hands were shaking again.

She went to the water. This stream ran clear and cold, down from somewhere in the mountains, carrying the mineral taste of glaciers high above. Flakes of mud and blood trailed free from her hands when she dipped them in the current, and she watched them swirl away through the eddies and whorls.

It was all mechanical, in the end. She pried a piece of moss from the bank, hefted it, ran it through the water and watched the dirt run off the roots towards the valley. Washed it clean, squeezed it under the surface and watched it fill with water. Stood and turned back to the forest.

The beast didn’t calm, but it didn’t bite when she pressed the pad of moss as gently as she could against the gash. It snapped, and she looked it in the eye, waiting. Its jaws were wide, teeth yellowed and worn from use. It could tear her to ribbons even now, if it had the nerve. She wouldn’t last long.

She washed the wound, and padded it with clean dry lichen, and flinched when she touched the beast’s side and a warmth filled her fingers that hadn’t answered her since she first returned to consciousness in the grave. She caught it like a soap bubble, soft as a memory. It settled in her chest and the breath that filled her lungs was deeper than she’d had in years.

She’d forgotten how it felt, when the warding darkness at her center answered. When the healing power in her blood responded to her call.

She forgot it again when the hunger returned in a wave of dizzying force, chasing all other thoughts from her mind. The wolf, rising from its rest in the hollow, tilted its head with a calculating glint and watched her. Gold eyes met gold.

It turned to follow the water, limping ever so slightly, and padded off.

She followed.

The pack was waiting in a stony cavern where the stream met a sparkling river. She felt their wary gazes long before she saw them, hidden as they were among the warm grey stone. But they recognized their lost member and pounced on him, tumbling together in a massive joyful bundle over the sandy patch of riverside, and before long it was like they hadn’t even seen her. She found a bright place on a rock by the shore, and waited for the sun to warm her bones more than the hunger chilled them.

Across the river, the bushes rustled. She knew what she’d see there.

The stag disappeared into the brush, and her vision blackened.

She awoke to the hot wet stickiness of a tongue on her face, and flinched, recoiling from the threat. In front of her sat the injured direwolf.

“Hi,” she whispered, bracing herself. “Hi there.” The words stuck in her wound and scraped.

The wolf cocked its head, stood, and licked her face again. It… did not try to bite her head off. This was not a situation she had anticipated. She particularly did not expect to be licked a third time. The wolf’s breath almost made her faint again.

Behind the wounded animal, the packmates slunk forward, watching her. Waiting.

The hunger in their eyes was a mirror of her own, and the shapechange came in its aching wake.

She followed them, that night, in a wolfish skin that matched their own. It wasn’t long before she had to pause, the time limits of her wildshapes forcing her back to rest while the pack moved on, but the howl carried on. They didn’t like to leave their own behind. She learned their faces—the mother the first to lunge, the father the second, the grown pups that followed them with their own faces and minds and hearts. They walked the trails of the forest, and she learned their gait, their stalking dance, their silent patience.

She slept between great warm bodies, and dreamed of blood and meat and the beasts that once wore the bite-marked bones on the floor of the den.

In the days, she jostled with the pups as one of them while she could. When she couldn’t, she rested on the rock by the river, while the echoes gnawing in her stomach dueled the white-hot claws of her bone-deep scars. She scrounged late-season eggs from a duck’s nest and swallowed them raw, on her hands and knees in the riverbank mud, eggshells scraping her gums and spilled yolk staining the ground, and coughed up half what she found when her scarred neck screamed with pain from bending low. It staved off the ache for an hour. She scraped up the spilled remains in her hands and wept.

On the fifth night, she followed the pack to a valley full of marsh-weed, where they found a limping boar. The pack struck in a whirl of fur and fangs, iron-stink staining the water. They fought her back from the bounty until the leaders took their share, but the scraps she claimed sated something, hot and vicious in the pit of her gut.

It was enough for a day.

She dreamed of it after, the blood that dripped from her fangs, the viscera on her tongue, the hot iron taste of it, the texture of muscle rending against her jaw. The heat on her lips and gums, bone crushing and crunching and cracking in her grasp, the relief like a soft warm pelt at the end of a long day’s journey as the soft squishing prey slid down her gullet like a prayer…

She dreamed of it night after night after night, waking with saliva in her mouth, thinking of it between the angels’ words, the ghost of that sensation dancing through her mouth in all her forms. She sat by the river and echoed it, conjuring up the giving resistance of flesh under her teeth, biting her tongue till it bled to remember the taste. She dreamed of nothing but. She dreamed even in her waking hours, as the first autumn frost laced over the land and the pack sat full and happy from the hunt.

She dreamed of it until the dream consumed her, empty of everything but teeth.

She left the den on an ice-bitter evening under ponderous slate skies when the dull weight of the thought hung heavy like an overripe fruit, when she wondered what the wolves would feel like beneath her fangs, if their heavy furs would rip and tear the way that scrap of boar did or if they’d linger in the teeth and scratch and bristle. She slunk up the hill to the north on the pack’s favored trail, filling her muzzle with the scent of heavy musk and petrichor.

The stag was waiting.

His antlers glinted in the cold dead moonlight, graceful as a halo, round as the crescent moon. He turned his head. She met his eyes and lunged.

She tore out the flesh of his neck like pages from a holy book, paper beneath her fangs as his blood ran like wine at a ritual. His stomach opened just as easily, staining the fallen leaves in garish scarlet, and his legs kicked feebly as she tore through the viscera that spilled free, relishing in the iron stench. Mouthful after mouthful, she ate her fill. She tore through muscle and tendon until she finally sank her teeth into his bright-hot heart and swallowed it in shreds. It might have still been beating, or the pulse between her jaws might have been her own, racing and vicious. She felt every piece reach her stomach, filling the void, hot in her chest like a hearthfire, bright as a star, sweet and tangy in the wolf’s senses and prickling in her own.

She hunted the liver down among the mess and swallowed it next, and the kidneys, and parts she knew no name for that glistened red and pink and sickish yellow in the light. She savored the feeling, the soft wet warm of it, the taste of the life that would fuel her own. She pried out the lowest of his ribs and it crackled in her jaws and she chewed out the marrow until there was nothing left of worth.

She didn’t know when he stopped moving, only that eventually, he did. It took too long.

When the wolf’s stomach filled, she lost the shape and scrabbled at the stag with her own weak human-shaped hands, her fingers shaking, nails digging into the slickened meat for purchase and prying up scraps to devour. She shook and shuddered and buried her own face into the stag’s shattered chest, drinking the lifeblood until it dried sticky on the edges of her skin, until she was full, until her aching stomach silenced and stopped and grew bloated with bleeding flesh.

She raised her head and her gaze caught upon his eyes. They were wide, and glassy, and milky with the haze of death.

She turned away from the kill and threw up nothing but bile, choking on the taste of steel.

“Thank you,” she murmured, too hoarse for anyone to hear, shuffling to the side and cradling his head in her lap, the warm blood filling her soft dark pants and seeping through to her skin. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Thank you.”

She leaned over him, wrapped her arms around his neck, curling her fingers into his short soft fur. Velveteen. Buried her face in his, her eyes hot and stinging, she swore she felt the ghosts of hands in her hair as the blood dried sticky on her face and melted down her cheeks. She clutched him tight enough to strain the scabs down her chest and belly, threatening to once again reopen the wounds. And she stayed there, waiting, until nothing came. Her stomach was quiet.

As she rose to her feet, she carefully bent and lifted as much of the stag as her body could manage. He was lighter than seemed fair, even to her haggard limbs.

Her hands didn’t shake.

There were hunters in these woods. The angels had told her, murmurs in the night, between the endless thoughts of hunger. They could help her. She stumbled through the brush, dragging the stag behind her, listening for someone larger than herself.

In the hours before the dawn, she found a young man in the valley, carrying a crossbow and a knife. He stiffened at her approach, and stood there wide-eyed, watching.

The words she spoke to explain herself died in rasping whistles in her throat, but still he watched, rapt, his eyes darting between the stag and her own face.

“You… you killed that?” the man asked, gesturing.

She nodded. Her neck twinged. She felt the man’s gaze skirt over her scarred neck, her hands slick with blood, the wrinkled scabby mess of her stomach where it was visible between the hem of her shirt and her makeshift belt.

“Do you… need to… take it somewhere?” She shook her head. The man swallowed. “That’s a lot of meat for one person. Erm…” He looked around, and she tilted her head. “…Do you know how to treat it? If you’re planning to eat that yourself, you probably want to salt-preserve it, it’ll spoil quickly otherwise. I could… help?”

She shook her head quickly, forcefully, then nodded, please, and the man flinched. But he was true to his word.

He led her to a clearing, his hands fluttering and his soft eyes nervous as she followed like a wraith, and showed her how to lay the stag down and open the rest of its body with a clean sharp knife. How to strip the meat from the bones, careful and keen, and process it into chunks and then lay it in pieces in salt to let it dry. She watched the process with singleminded focus, noting down every last motion, memorizing each flick of the knife.

He let her borrow his blade, so she could clean the carcass and keep that velveteen skin. With a few weeks’ drying and treatment, it would make a good blanket to last the winter through. She stripped the stag to the bones, and kept those as trophies. That night, the angels taught her to sharpen them into knives.

When the man had left, knife and bow in hand, retreating into the shadows, she realized that he never once quite looked her in the eyes.

She kept the skull. Late at night she stared into its face, searching for the glint of the stag’s all-knowing gaze in the depths of his bones, knowing there was nothing on the other side. She stared at him until somewhere deep inside, a part of her became him. Until his eyes became her own.

She took the form of a deer in the morning, wearing the weight of his antlers like a crown. The herd moved by her in the bushes and watched her like a ghost.

She went south. The winter was upon her, and it was time again to travel. The herd had enough to haunt them.

#dnd fic #this is... more gruesome than i usually go in for but it was fun to write #the way this feels like cannibalism when it definitely isn't #but at the same time in some metaphorical sense it kind of is #it's more... killing somebody and then stealing their skin #hush is a creepy forest witch who talks to angels and makes people nervous #and i love that for her #the hunter she met in the woods is just some sad little himbo trying to feed his family and thanking the gods he wasn't murdered by the fey #100% that man thought hush was either a faerie or a demon and feared for his LIFE #i told the DM that someday i would love her to just randomly bump into that guy again #because now that she's healed enough to /talk/ again she wants to thank him and will be all excited to see him #'omg it's my best friend!!!' meanwhile this poor guy is shitting himself 'oh fuck oh no i DID accidentally sell my soul to the fey'#hush is one of those characters i categorize as 'obliviously terrifying'#she is just a gal trying to survive and trying to regain her sense of self after being violently dehumanized for over a decade #she encounters other people and is overwhelmed but tries to be 'normal'#she just... fails to realize that between the aasimar angel traits and the inability to talk and the telepathy she uses to compensate...#she is very scary to other people #but then you talk to her and she is in tears of joy bc she had a fresh baguette this morning and it was really good #and it's like... ah. she's just poorly socialized

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