It was dusk, the air thick with the lingering summer warmth that had sent Leila into the forest for shelter. She was supposed to be hunting, that was what she had intended to do, padding out into the early evening. Yet no scents had crossed her path, and the only things she could so-far scavenge had been a little rodent creature. Not even worth a mouthful, and so she had left it for the little beasts of the glades.

Moonlight soon trickled throught the canopy and Leila's disappointment grew. She was not tired enough to turn back to the mountain slopes of the bluffs. The tigress had already spent much of the day in a restless, disturbed doze and wasn't eager to return to it. Even if that mental weariness now weighed on her shoulders.

She brushed up against a tree trunk, sinking the fur of her cheek against the bark to scratch an itch below her ear. Leila sighed; unhappy. Up above, fireflies glittered like close, golden stars. The real ones were beginning to twinkle overhead - as out of orbit as she felt.

- for @Dragos

art © rabbit

He has never been truly alone before. Not like this. A few weeks travelling from home to here don’t count; he’d never been far from his family, and always intended to reunite with them. This is different. This is permanent. A few days from them and Andal, and he knows he is lost. Not physically - although he’d never been this deep in the grove before - but in every other way. If he ever thought he could feel the Mother’s presence, he cannot now. Maybe she abandoned him when he left his family; maybe she was never with him in the first place.

He walks on, no path to guide him, no destination. He just walks, needing to keep moving, like a shark. Don’t they die when they stop swimming? If he stops swimming, he’ll drown in guilt. A scent crosses his path, too close for him to ignore, and Dragos pauses mid-step. Gods, no. Not her. Not now. The beast turns abruptly to his left, ducking under a low hanging branch in a mad ill-thought-out scramble to flee the grove before @Leila notices him nearby, just as he had noticed her -

And his paw - the bad one - catches under a tree root and he trips, something in his paw snaps, and Dragos screams as he hits the dirt.

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The crunch of leaf-litter and shift of a branch, leaves rustling, disturbed her. Brown eyes flash hopeful to the forest floor, a hunter's focus. Perhaps it is her luck changing finally - something to focus her efforts on and bring back for her hours wandering.

Leila opened her jaws to catch the scent and shied back - a physical reaction to who she immediately knew was there. She is struck dumb for a moment, deer in the headlights. She remembers that feral, lost and furious look in his eyes, the frantic rush, his teeth and claws sharp-

Then there is a horrid breaking sound and a deep, gut-wrenching cry of pain. The surface tension of a forest settling down for bed is torn asunder and things go suddenly quiet.

Not Leila. Shaken from her stupor she drew a thin breath. Her paws were moving before she even realised. The tigress abandoned the tree she had instinctively ducked behind and crept, holding her breath, toward him. I can't just leave him there.

"Don't- don't move." she struggled, her chest tight. Did she say it because she was scared? Or because she didn't want him to hurt himself further?

@Dragos

art © rabbit

There’s a few seconds of silence which find Dragos grunting and cursing under his breath, pulling at his paw now trapped firmly under the tree root, as if the blasted thing had grown and then shrunk to hold him in place at the wrist. It doesn’t help that every tug sends spikes of hot, lancing pain up his leg - whatever healing the bones had completed now is clearly ruined - fucked. For one insanity-induced second he considers that chewing off his paw might be faster than trying for the root -

"Don't- don't move."

Dragos freezes, eyes glued to his paw, not even willing to move his gaze up. From the corner of his eye he can see her shadow, the dark stripes that blend her so perfectly into the forest. His breath catches in his throat.

His memory of that day is vague, at best, and twisted at worst. He cannot trust his own mind, or what he sees - even now, he is convinced it could be @Leila now, but when he looks up will he see the enemy?

Will he hurt her?

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She watched him struggle, her ears twisting further back. She so hated to see anyone in pain - but especially him. Even though the little creature inside her, the old Leila, the fearful thing, told her to run whilst he lay trapped, in agony.

But the way he heeded her words, ceased his efforts to wrench his paw free. He was a lion, not some mindless forest creature. He was @Dragos.

Right?

For what felt like the longest moment in her life, Leila stood there, feeling like the world was spinning and that everything was in slow motion. She takes a breath in, a gasp for air and smells blood. How long had she been holding her breath?

"Stay still." she whispered, crouching her way closer to the end of the root that had locked about his paw; was keeping him trapped. Her pelt was spiked in silent terror, and she didn't dare meet his eyes. Leila began to gnaw at the snaring thing. The sooner he was free, the sooner she could disappear, a moon-flecked shadow, into the forest.

Curse her soft heart.

art © rabbit

A smart creature would leave him there - an intelligent one would slay him while he is trapped. There would never be a better, safer situation to do it. He is not a beast to be taken down easily. It had taken near his entire kin to pin him safely, and even then -

He shies away from those thoughts, and winces as @Leila creeps closer, another order on her lips. She creeps into his line of sight, fluffed up in fear, moving on coiled springs. Ready to launch herself away if he so much as breathes wrong. He cannot blame her.

You shouldn’t do this. Dragos cannot make himself speak; his throat is dry, his breath still held in his chest. Leila works on the root, breaking it from around his wrist, and every brush of her teeth and fur against the wounded limb makes him shiver.

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It is difficult, it is scary. The root does not give way to her teeth without a fight and she is so frightened - of hurting @Dragos, of Dragos. She stares at the soil, at the leaves. At the now-distant fireflies. There are splinters in her gums when she finally bites through it, immediately scrabbling back to the closest tree where she could reproach him with long, searching eye.

"You don't smell like the Oasis anymore." she finally muttered, when what she thinks she should be saying is Get out of here. Lingering so close, she had noticed the fading scent on his pelt. What had they done to him? Could she leave him helpless if he had nowhere to go? Her whiskers splay anxiously, her pelt ruffled.

art © rabbit

The snap of the last root, determined to hold him, is loud in the silence. So much silence. It lingers as @Leila scrambles back as if she expects him to lunge for her throat. He watches her, still unable to move - not from pain, although there is plenty of that throbbing in his paw - but from being locked in place by her eyes. Once warm, once wide and open and full of affection, now narrowed down to cold pin-pricks of distrust and anger.

He has no right to miss the warmth.

Dragos’s ear flicks at her comment, surprised that she speaks to him at all, that she cares enough to comment. But of course she does - she can’t help it. Leila is too good, too pure, to be unable to care even for him. After what he did.

"I left." His voice is rough, raw. He can’t look at her face when he speaks.

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Leila did expect him to strike. She had not yet gotten those awful dreams of his teeth, his wrathful gaze captured in a furious frenzy, out of her waking or subconscious mind. She had been deeply troubled when they parted last time; he had hurt her. But nothing of that exchange had brought Leila any closer to understanding why he had decided to rush at her, at that challenge. To her, @Dragos is unpredictable and there was nothing unsettling to the tigress.

So her words, her every miniscule movements, are like walking on eggshells.

"Why." she asked, because her voice was too soft to be a demand. The furrow of her brow brought no clarification as to whether she meant, literally, his reason for leaving his pride... or the bigger Why did you do that.

She huffed a short breath that wanted to be a sigh but was too high-strung to be one. "Do you have somewhere to go?"

art © rabbit

Why?

If he knew, he’d tell her. If he knew, he’d fix himself. If he knew, it never would have happened. If, if, if.

Dragos pretends to hear a different question. "It wasn’t safe to stay." He does not explain for who - that much should be obvious. He is not safe to be around. He had thought after the war, it would stop. The nightmares, the… the rage. He thought it would stop, and he would be fine. And for a little while, the change was good.

And then the attack at the Hollows happened, and it all came flooding back. The rage, the memories he fought so hard to forget. The nightmares never left, but he could deal with them. He thought he had a handle on it, until he didn’t.

Until he nearly ripped his sister’s throat out.

"I’m fine on my own." He says, testing his paw by splaying his toes and wriggling them - and cursing when the throbbing turns sharp and pointed, stabbing up his leg. He grunts, visibly shivering as he withholds a louder noise, and tucks his paw under his mane. "... thank you." He risks a glance upwards, just a second meeting @Leila's gaze. Maybe she needs a thanks to feel ready to leave. She should leave.

But he can’t chase her away again.

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