Chapter Text
Rakkal’s entire body trembled as he finally sat, body throbbing from his bones of his feet to the tips of his ears. His rested his rattling elbows on his quaking knees and raised his shaking hands up to his face, and watched as his palms slowly knitted together. His stomach lurched and he folded forward, arms wrapping around his head, tusks scraping against the rough leather of his leggings, to breathe through the wave of nausea.
Soft footsteps on sand came close enough for him to hear through the pounding in his head, followed by the faint tangy scent of blood and burn of spices. He gave vague thought to lifting his head to greet his wife properly, but stopped when even considering the motion made his neck cramp so hard his jaw vibrated.
Her long, strong fingers, normally so steady, shook as she slid them over the back of his neck, right where the shaking was worst. Her faint calluses caught gently at his short, thin fur. It made him relax, like it always did, which only had him folding over further, arms lax over his drawn-up knees, hands holding onto his own ears, head hanging in the shadow of his own body.
“We won, my snake,” Za’tuli whispered to him. “You struck fast and sure. Bwonsamdi is pleased with you for the souls you have fed him.”
Her voice was steady where her hands weren’t, and it put enough steel back into Rakkal’s spine to lift his head and look at her. He wife, his priestess, his love. He smiled, lopsided and wan, but honest.
“Yeah. I’m just… tired.” He huffed a weak excuse for a laugh and Za’tuli snorted quietly at him.
“An understatement bordering on ridiculousness.” She applied the faintest of pressure to his neck with her trembling fingertip and Rakkal buckled, folding until his right hand was buried in the sand, his head on his own knee, a breeze away from falling off of the bit of rubble he was sitting on. Za’tuli laughed as he groaned, fiddling with his left ear now that his neck was out of easy reach. “You have overextended yourself. We both have. Come, my love. Rest. We have won the Isles, and the others have made a place for us to rest.”
Rakkal twitched his ear at her, wondering if he could even make it that far. The sand under his hand felt warm, and soft, and it wouldn’t be the first time he had slept on a beach under the setting sun.
His musing was broken by a sharp shot of pain through his ear. He gasped, fighting himself with a lurch, as Za’tuli continued pinching the sensitive cartilage as she took a measured step back. He scrambled to his feet, limbs uncoordinated and flailing, hands on the hot sand as much as his feet, as she chuckled at him and kept walking.
She let his ear go once he was on his feet and walking with her and looped her arm around his waist, encouraging him to lean his weight on her. They made it across the center Isle and to the promised furs - barely - before they collapsed together.