Work Text:
The sun is brighter here. Yes, the days are still short, yes, the air is still winter air—winter everywhere you’ve ever known—but the sun drips round like a fruit. You do not need it, yet. Not in winter. Your coat has grown thick and warm, even when wet.
There is a river outside your master’s walls. You lap from the river, the thirsty miles gone, and your paws sink into the mud at its edge. You swim, your head lifted. You remember other rivers only when you come to this one.
As for the walls—
Maybe the walls are not your master’s walls, because he hates them. He tightens his shoulders in the air-space around him, and you are left sitting at his feet, your coat thick and warm against cold stone. The stone is colder than the water.
You are left, and you will not leave.
None of them sleep easily now. Not since she went away, the One. The One with the hard hands and the soft voice. Mother, Mother, Mother, they used to say. They do not sleep without the Mother; they are like pups.
You have always known that the small ones are pups, of course. But bare inches of ankle and wrist poke out from sleeves and ragged trousers, so they are less small, now. They are growing, just as you grew, just as your master grew.
Growing is a leap and a leap is a part of the hunt and there is always a kill at the end of a hunt, if you are to be sated.
You lie still. If you were not bred for it, you might grow tired of hunting.
Sometimes your coat is wet by their tears. They all cry against you, the oldest boy with the blood-scent on him forever, your master with his grubby fist ground against his eye, the angry one who breathes like his throat is made of twisted metal, the little ones.
They all cry. You shut your eyes and lay your head down and thump-thump, it might be your heart or your tail but you will let them listen to both, heart and tail, if that is what they need.
Mother, whispers the sad-eyed one, the one who loves you least (though you love him). Mother, say the small ones. Mother, Mother.
Your master only breathes the word when he sleeps.