Out into the cool of the night — away from the warmth of his den and his siblings — Ludivine brings her second-born son, @Ravache. He's already starting to grow into his lanky body, albeit still small and helpless. A child needing the protection of his parents and pride still. But soon she knows her children will begin to wander away from home, seeking out adventures away from everything that they know to be comfortable. Once they do — they'll need skills to prepare them for the dangers that lurk just outside the borders.

And, in some cases — within.

The monarch finds herself a suitable clearing before she settles herself in the middle of it, just enough of a break in the treeline above to let moonlight dapple her silhouette. She waits for the youngster to catch up, so that he may begin honing is his skills — skills that one will day lend to that of a true killer.

the killing moon

Ravache yawned, plodding off after the shadow of his mother as she passed effortlessly through the lush of the verdant forest; and he, broad-pawed and jagged-edged, dodged the low-hanging vines and traipsed the wild roots of ancient trees. For a moment he was lost in the journey, consumed by his scattering observations: the unfurling, wilting petals of the tropical flora, the breeze-swept moss dripping from green-eaten tree limbs, the vast radiance of constellations that winked from an eternal ether. In the frame of the canopy, these things all looming and potent to the adolescent imagination – these lingering effects of chimera, the charm and allure of their intangible possibilities. And the nightmares wrapped in their bounds all the same.

It hadn’t occurred to him yet that they may have been the nightmares themselves, too young, too unshapened yet by shelter and comfort. Too engrained that a particular brand of violence was a way of life, blood its unholy canticle of rapture. The world beyond was undisclosed and ripe for the reaping, and he did not see beyond the rambler-lined fringes of the dark grove.

The hot glow of his gaze settled on the shadow of a twisted dead tree far in the tangled distance, its limbs reaching to the heavens like a crown of spiraling horns. He paused, mesmerized by its likeness of those dark things he’d dreamt of, those terrible things that thrust their roots into the lap of solace and upturned the gratifying constant of repose with the threat of decay. His chest puffed at once, a little paw stomping its claw-sharp tattoo of defiance into the earth.

And something in it moved, two radiant orbs of gold that honed intensely on him.

Maman! A cry so unwillingly reflexive gargled up, up his throat as the cold chills shot down, down his spine; those eyes leapt from their place and swooped toward him, and he floundered to the dirt before he could find his feet. Ravache thudded chin-first into the ground and shirked his weight forward, throwing himself into the onward trail, curling back just before the break into the clearing to behold what had assaulted him.

An owl.

The ridge of his hackles swayed in the lift of the cooling breeze and he huffed indignantly, the rivulets of flesh pulling into a snarl along the bridge of his nose. Its wide span of wings carried its glide back into the faraway dark of night, hooting its echoing laughter. How foolish – he looked quickly to @Ludivine and felt the embarrassment wash over him in slivers of heat. To be frightened by a bird. He curtly shook himself off and sat across from her, unable yet to meet her gaze while his flesh burned with humiliation. In that moment the world stretched broadly around him like a gaping maw: the stars peering with their white-hot judgment, bearing the suffocating weight of their black canvas. The ground, ready to bury him in its closing cold.

If he didn't apologize for his idiocy, maybe it would all undo itself on its own. Like it never happened.

_{BG — ART — CODE}