Work Text:
You’ve been here a long time. Four icy winters, soon forgotten—you only remember spring when it comes again, warm soil and growing things, blood on the wind. Here you are, you’ve run so long, you are faithful, you are panting hard. You sleep on your side with your spine against your master’s hand, his knee, his boot.
You’ve seen too much. You wait when he orders you to stay, you play dead when you think it will lift him from grey gloom.
You have smelled blood on his skin.
He is young. He cries. You play dead.
You chase the wide wheels. You chase the wide-open sky. You meet strangers. Men with rank breath and cruel guns. Men dark-skinned swift river scent new leather, men who hold sharp arrows to taut bows, men with eyes like stone.
Are you young? Are you anything but faithful?
Are you faithful?
You gnaw sweet grass sweet rabbit once a bird no more birds Huan—
—no more birds.
You drink and splash and paddle in cold water. You sleep with your master curled around you. He trembles. He dreams, kicking. You lick him awake. He says, Go away, Huan.
(He holds you close.)