Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time Keith laid eyes on him, his first thought was:

What a fool.

This boy, this wayward traveler, no older than Keith himself, knelt at the side of a stream, the knees of his trousers snagging on damp rocks and soaking till they turned heavy and dark.  He had his palms outstretched over the burbling rapids, like he was trying to catch a fish, but doing a terrible job of it.  He waved his arms about, round and round, occasionally touching the surface of the stream, which giggled around his hands as it splashed through the gaps of his fingers.

Any fish in the area would sense him from meters away—and he wasn’t even deep enough in the water to begin with, Keith knew.  It puzzled him to no end, watching this boy and his downright embarrassing fishing tactics.  Clearly, whoever he was, he had never fished before in his life.

In fact, the closer Keith looked, the more obvious that became.  Only half of his face was visible from Keith’s position, crouched in the bushes upstream, but he looked—clean.  Maintained.  The gentle brown of his skin seemed to shine under the midday sun, and his umber hair, while tousled, was done so in an artful, intentional way—nothing like the messy crown of black around Keith’s own head.  Even those flailing hands were well-kept—smooth and slender, with trimmed nails and no calluses.

Just how new to surviving off the land was this boy?  Was he simply lost?  Had he recently been turned out of his house?  Keith’s curiosity was almost enough to compel him to sneak closer, but a hefty sigh from the mystery boy froze him in place at the last second.

He looked frustrated, this boy.  His strikingly blue eyes were narrowed sharply, and his perfectly manicured brow was pulled tight together, forming a small divot at the center of his forehead.  It distracted Keith for a moment, long enough for the boy to groan and push himself to his feet.  He gave the water one last bitter glare, then turned and stomped off downstream.

Keith did not follow.  He watched, perplexed, then returned to the woods, homeward bound.

Strange.

☙♥❧

Oddly enough, that was not the last time Keith stumbled upon this boy.  He came back, again and again, week after week, kneeling by the stream, trying to catch his fish, failing to catch his fish, grumbling underneath his breath, and inevitably leaving empty-handed.  Surely, Keith thought, he should have starved by now, if he was this incapable of hunting for food.  And yet he somehow continued to return.

Keith was not keen on anyone frequenting the vicinity of his home in the woods.  He had specifically chosen it for the sake of isolation; it had been two years, and no one had ever ventured this far into the forest unless it was to cut through to the other side.  He occasionally spotted a traveler passing by, but he never strayed close enough to get a proper look at them.

This was the closest in those entire two years that he had come to human contact.

It was concerning, to say the least.  He had left civilization behind for a reason.  A good one.  One that ensured the safety of the person he loved most.  If someone settled here, found out he lived here—they might spread word of him to the nearest town, and that word could spread across the kingdom of Terra, and the next thing Keith would know, Shiro would be cutting through every branch and bramble to bring his adopted brother home.

He couldn’t risk that.  He couldn’t risk putting Shiro in danger again.  Keith knew his brother would insist that all was forgiven—it’s all healed now, and I barely even remember it, I promise, he would say.  But Keith was wise enough now to never trust himself around anyone, nevermind the one person who meant the world to him.  Not after the damage he had done—the pain he had caused.

See, Keith was blessed, some might say.  Blessed with a power that no one else in the kingdom, to his knowledge, possessed.

The power of fire.

It had appeared on the day of his eighteenth birthday.  Had manifested itself when Keith’s anger and grief swelled over the absence of his parents on a day which he should have been able to share with them.  He had felt it in the pit of his stomach first, then in the beat of his heart, and then in the tingle of his veins—until it had reached the tips of his fingers and burst forth in a great spout of lashing flames.

His shack did not survive.  His brother, who had just arrived with dinner and a gift in his hand, barely did.

Hence: the danger of the situation at hand.  This boy, innocent as he may seem, had the potential to expose his carefully chosen hiding place.  He had survived here for two years, careful to never encounter other humans, slowly attempting to control his power in the safety of total solitude.  It was going alright so far, and hopefully would continue to do so.

Unless this amateur fisherman discovered him and ruined everything.

Said boy was once again perched at the side of the stream, performing his atrocious mockery of survival skills, and Keith was once again watching him from the shadows.  This time, Keith was closer than before—he had managed to acquire a hidden spot in the undergrowth on a small outcropping that overlooked the water and, more importantly, the mystery intruder.

Keith stared in curious silence at the young man, observing his now-predictable routine.  His perch allowed him a closer view this time, and he could see the gentle waves of the boy’s hair curling around the lightly freckled nape of his neck.  Keith had not noticed the freckles before.  They were faint, but there was a good deal of them dappling his skin, now that Keith was near enough to make them out.  He leaned forward an inch, peering in wonder, and—

—promptly toppled forward as the overhang gave out underneath him.

Keith hissed a curse as he tumbled out of hiding and fell the few feet down to the stony bank below.  He barely had time to process the pain of hitting the rough surface before a new pain sang to life along his cheek, like a harsh slap across the face, only it was—wet?

“Oh shit—I mean shoot—I’m so sorry!  Are you alright?”

The frantic voice overhead startled Keith into leaping up and backward, automatically assuming a defensive stance.  His vision narrowed in on the boy in front of him—brown skin, brown hair, blue eyes, light freckles.  And floating around him, extending from his palms: a stream of water, restrained in thin air as if by an invisible tube.

Alright, so, Keith had definitely blown his cover, but there were arguably more important matters at hand right now.

“What the hell is that?” he managed to spit out, pointing at the serpentine swell of water and rubbing at his reddened cheek.  “Is that what—did you attack me with that thing?”  It was unlike anything he had ever seen before, like—

Like magic.

The thought floored Keith—stunned him like the fall had.  Because the only other thing Keith had seen that was remotely similar to this boy’s magical water was Keith’s own magical fire.  A power which had been so foreign and frightening to him and to everyone around him that he had fled his home to confront it in private.  A power which, until now, he had thought was his and his alone in all of Terra.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” the boy burst out, snapping Keith’s gaze away from the water and back to his panic-stricken face.  “I know it’s a lot, I know, I’m sorry, I swear I didn’t mean to hit you, it just happened so fast and you can’t tell anyone because if you do, oh fuck, I mean frick, I mean oh my Spir—”

Keith winced and held his hands up placatingly.  “It’s alright,” he said, and the other boy fell silent, though his eyes were still blown wide with fear.  “I won’t tell anyone.  Promise.”  He watched as the boy’s shoulders deflated, and the water swirling around his shoulders fell abruptly to his feet.  “Under one condition.”

The boy frowned then, some of his earlier trepidation returning.  “… What?”

Keith quirked an unimpressed eyebrow and gestured to the air around the boy’s head, where water had flowed just moments prior.  “You just slapped me with a magic water whip.  What do you think?”

The boy just wrung his hands in silence, his shoulders hiking up to his ears.

Keith rolled his eyes and leveled the boy with a flat stare.  “Explain.”

“Oh.”  The boy startled, then rubbed a sheepish hand along the back of his neck.  “Um.”  He cleared his throat, but it did nothing to quell the flush of his cheeks.  “Oookay, so, it’s kind of a long story, and by that I mean there’s kind of, like, no story—”

“Why don’t you start with your name,” Keith interrupted, only to be met with a genuinely confused blue gaze.

“… You mean you don’t—”  He paused and swiftly changed course.  “—ah, uhh, yes.  Right.  Introductions.”  He ran his impossibly smooth fingers through that silky brown hair of his, ruffling it just so, and took a deep breath.  “The name’s Lance,” he said, his voice far more steady and confident than it had been just moments prior.  His freckled face lit up in a charming smile, and he extended a hand, palm facing downward, in Keith’s direction.  “And you are?”

Keith eyed the downturned hand with no small amount of skepticism.  “… Keith,” he said slowly, then furrowed his brows and reached out his own hand, palm upturned, so as to complete what he suspected was some odd form of handshake.  It didn’t really work, though; he ended up just kind of—holding Lance’s fingers in his palm.  They really were just as soft as they looked.

“Oh—uh—shi—shoot—”  Lance, for his part, must have had the wherewithal to register the awkwardness, because within seconds he was hastily rearranging their hands into a proper handshake.  “Well, ahem.”  He shook Keith’s hand firmly and perhaps with a hint of flustered exaggeration.  “Nice to meet you, Keith.  I’m Lance.”

“I know.”

“Oh, right.”

They both stared a moment longer before Keith blinked once and dropped Lance’s hand.

“Um.”  Lance returned his hand to his side, then took a deep breath.  “So, yeah, my … story.”  He bared his teeth in a grimace.  “It’s really kind of, um, unbelievable.  Promise you won’t judge me?”

“No,” Keith replied honestly.

“Rude.”  Lance sighed.  “Alright, well.  The truth is I have no idea what I’m doing or how I got here,” he admitted in a rush.  “I—I mean, I know how I got here, I rode a horse and I walked down the stream—”  He caught sight of Keith’s impatient stare and reoriented himself.  “The point is, I’m … new to this.  A few weeks ago, I turned eighteen, and I—”  He broke off, uncertainty dragging his gaze elsewhere.

The mention of Lance’s eighteenth birthday immediately put Keith on alert.  “You?” he prompted.

“… I was, um, upset.  With my parents about—something they’d said.  And I went to my room and I just felt myself getting angrier and angrier and—”  He inhaled, long and slow, steadying himself.  “I just … did that.”  He gestured vaguely to the air around him.  “With the water all around me, and it was all over the place, and I—I couldn’t get it to stop!”  His hands were laced together now, tangled up in one another as he wrung them and frowned.  “I thought maybe it was a one-time thing, but it wasn’t.  It kept happening and I—I’m just lucky I haven’t let my feelings get the better of me in front of anyone.”

Keith watched and listened, an emotion he had not felt in years—sympathy—coiling deep in his gut.

“… I’m terrified I’m going to hurt someone.”  Lance’s voice was small.  He glanced up and nodded at Keith’s face, where the sting was starting to fade.  “I already have.”  He paused for a moment, and Keith was just about to open his mouth to respond when Lance added, “And I’m terrified they’ll find out and think I’m—like her .”  He looked desperate all of a sudden, eyes fixed on Keith’s, searching.  “I’m not.  I promise I’m not.”

Keith did not need to ask for clarification.  It had kept him up at night more than once, the knowledge that there was one other person on the entire continent of Galactia—someone beyond the borders of this kingdom—who could use magic the way he could.

Queen Honerva.

“You’re not,” Keith agreed easily.

Lance relaxed marginally, but his gaze was wary, curious.  He was clearly waiting for Keith to say something else.

Keith knew the smart thing to say would be something like: “You seem like a nice guy, so I trust you’re different.”  Something like: “You want to protect people from yourself, not hurt them.”  Something like: “You’re definitely too handsome to be that old hag.”

Maybe not the last one.

Point being, Keith had spent so long trying to hide who he was.  Literally hide it—in the middle of a forest.  He had dreaded human contact, had sworn to himself he would do everything he could to avoid it.  And so, the logical part of him, the scared part of him, wanted to brush this whole encounter off and send Lance on his way with a promise that he would never speak a word of what he had witnessed.

But seeing that same fear reflected back at him—a fear so intimate to Keith it was jarring to witness in another—gave him pause.  The logical words, the scared words, burned on the tip of his tongue, then melted back into his throat.  There was knowledge this boy needed to learn, knowledge that would save him, save his family, save his conscience from the burden that Keith had carried every waking moment since that fateful day.

There was knowledge that Keith, too, needed to learn.  So when he opened his mouth, his something came out more like this:

“I know you’re not,” he said, softly, tentatively, with a care that his voice had not known for many moons, “because I’m not, either.”  He lifted a hand and watched as Lance’s confusion gave way to shock.  The flames dancing around Keith’s fingers were tame, but unmistakably magic in nature.  “It st—”

“AHH!”

Keith’s hand was suddenly cold and wet and very devoid of fire.  He furrowed his brows at it, then turned his glare away from his steaming fingers and back toward Lance, who was standing with his arms outstretched and his fingers dripping.  “What the hell.”

“What do you mean, ‘what the hell’?!”  Lance shook his fingers out, droplets spraying everywhere.  Some of them landed on Keith’s face, and he winced, sharpening his glare, but it did nothing to quell the other boy’s antics.  “What the hell, yourself!  That’s fire! ”

Keith raised an eyebrow.  “I’m aware.”

“Well you weren’t acting very aware!”

“That’s because I knew what I was doing.”  Keith was never known for his patience, and this boy was starting to test it.

“Oh, so you were intentionally setting fire to your own hand?” Lance shot back with a mocking air of understanding.  “Well that makes it all better, then!  Creepy spying woodsman has a self immolation fetish!”

“It’s my fire, dumbass!  It can’t hurt me!”  Keith could feel the tips of his ears burning at the (embarrassingly justified) accusation of spying.  He ignored it and stepped forward, lifting his hand again and summoning a small orb of fire in his palm.  “Here, look—”

Lance let out another shriek and summoned up a watery whip.

“Lance ,” Keith said, stern enough to make Lance pause and look at him.  “Calm down.  It’s magic, like yours.  I’ve learned to control it.”  He took another step, slowly, like he was approaching a startled deer.  “See?”

“Holy shit,” Lance breathed, not bothering to correct his language.  He moved closer now, his panic fading into astonishment and fascination.  “You’re—with the—like me?”  He reached out a hand toward the flame.

Keith felt a throb in his veins and grabbed Lance’s wrist, gently but swiftly.  “It won’t hurt me,” he said.  “I never said it wouldn’t hurt you.”  Lance’s lips formed into a small “o” of comprehension.  Keith released the other boy, then dismissed his fire and folded his arms across his chest.  “I was going to offer to teach you how to control your powers.”  He watched Lance’s eyes light up.  “But then you called me a creepy spying woodsman, so.”

“Wha—hey! ” Lance protested, his voice pitched in a whine.  “I’m not even wrong!  You were totally spying on me!”

“You were being a weirdo and feeling up my stream.”

“Feeling up?! ”

“At least keep your sordid affairs contained to your own water source.  I have to drink out of that stream, you know.”

Lance opened his mouth to retort, but stopped, his brows knitting together.  “You live here?” he said, glancing around.  “Like, full-time?  I thought no one lived here.  That’s why I chose this place for practice.”

“And that’s why I chose this place to live.  Which means,” Keith added, his lips twisting in a frown, “you have to keep your mouth shut about this.”  Given Lance’s own fears about his powers being exposed, Keith supposed his secret was probably safe.  Still, he had not survived by himself for this long by being careless.  “Word can’t get out that I’m living here.”

Lance regarded him for a moment with a look of exaggerated consideration.  Finally, he said, “Dunno how I feel about keeping you alive, now that I know about your voyeuristic intrusion on my intimate and consensual adult relationship with your stream.”  Keith felt amusement itching at the edge of his lips, but he managed to keep his expression stony.  Lance clasped his hands behind his back and tilted his head so that he could look down his nose at Keith.  “I suppose I will allow it.  But in exchange, creepy spying woodsman,” he declared, “I have decided you will train me.”

Keith could feel his mouth beginning to quirk upwards.  “Yeah?”  He stepped forward.  They were only about a foot apart from one another now.  “You’ve decided, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“Well then,” Keith said, tone spiked with sarcasm, “as you wish, Your Highness.”

Lance’s face went through a series of contortions in such rapid succession it was almost dizzying to watch.  He quickly settled on a too-wide grin, then immediately let out a high-pitched laugh and stumbled a couple of steps backward.

“Very neat and cool!”  He spun around so fast that his scent drifted in Keith’s direction.  Keith knew next to nothing about colognes and perfumes, so he could not identify it, but it was—light, natural.  Sweet but earthy at the same time.  “So, how do we start?”

Keith scrunched his nose up for a second before shaking his head and moving past Lance, toward the stream.  “Well, first, I hope you don’t like those shoes too much.  You’re about to get very wet.”

☙♥❧

Keith heard the rustling before he saw the culprit, that evening when he returned home.

His first day with Lance had been more exhausting than productive, given the boy’s inexperience and his tendency to complain when he didn’t succeed, but that was no different from Keith when he had started out.  He knew going into this that it would take a while.  Still, he was more than ready to collapse into bed, and it was a relief when he spotted home through the trees in the distance.

His log cabin was plain and unassuming, with a lopsided chimney and a flimsy door.  It sat nestled in a small clearing deep within the forest, and Keith had not bothered to add so much as a doorstep to spruce it up.  It was tiny, and quiet, and most importantly, hidden.  No feet, aside from his own, had walked this land.

Paws, however, proved to be a different story.

Keith had his knife—a family heirloom that had proven itself endlessly useful these past two years, and was continuing to do so now—already drawn by the time he slowly opened the door, which had been slightly ajar to begin with.  He entered the cabin slowly, posture defensive, and paused when his eyes met with a pair of yellow ones.

The wolf across from him was young—not a puppy, but not fully grown either.  An adolescent of some kind.  Its fur was dark grey in most places and light grey in others, and its paws looked a little too big for its body.  Its snout was long, and in the clutch of its sharp maw was a bundle of Keith’s venison jerky.

Under any other circumstances, Keith might have been alarmed.  Instead, he was only mildly wary and mostly annoyed.

“Seriously?”  He straightened up and walked into the cabin.  His movements were still slow, and the wolf’s eyes were watchful, mistrusting.  “Stealing my food off the drying line outside got too boring for you, huh?”  He stopped when he reached his wooden chair (barely a chair, really, but Keith had never claimed to be a skilled carpenter).  “Go on, shoo.”  He frowned and waved a hand.  “Get out of my house.”

The wolf stared back.

Keith narrowed his eyes and sat down.

The wolf started chewing.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, watching each other.  Keith rolling up his sleeves and crossing his arms as he leaned back in his chair.  The wolf gnawing at its stolen jerky.

When it was finished, it stood up and scampered out of the cabin without a second glance in Keith’s direction.  He supposed it had run off to scent the trees or something.  He’d caught it in the act of urinating around the border of his clearing several times over the past few weeks.  At first, he’d tried telling it off.  Nowadays he just resigned himself to smelling wolf piss when he left the house in the morning.

Keith glanced at the door and heaved a sigh, getting up to push it shut.

Weird dog.

☙♥❧

Lance’s visits were more frequent ever since Keith had offered to help him control his powers.  He almost always found time every week, a couple of hours before sunset.  It had become something of a routine.

Keith would find him sitting on his favorite rock, shoes off—he had learned his lesson with his nice suede slippers the first day—feet dangling in the stream.  Lance would turn his head up and give Keith one of his enormous grins, and Keith would throw a berry at him.  They would sit together on Lance’s Rock (“the capital R is very important, Keith”) and eat Keith’s berries (“you’d better not be poisoning me, Keith”), and when they were done eating, they would practice.  Keith with his fire (at a safe distance), offering suggestions and critiques.  Lance with his water, grumbling all the while.

Most days were difficult.  Lance would arrive cheerful and leave disheartened.  Still, he kept coming back.  And so did Keith.

☙♥❧

“This sucks.”

“It’s necessary.”

“Yeah, but like, suckily necessary.”

“You’ve mistaken me for someone who cares.”

“Rude.”

☙♥❧

“This is a mindfulness lesson, Lance.  Not a portrait painting.  You can stop fixing your hair every five seconds.”

“Stop watching me and maybe I won’t have to!”

“Is that an offer?  Am I free to go, Your Highness?”

“Rude!”

☙♥❧

“Keith, this isn’t working.  Every time I feel like I’m about to touch it, it just slips away.”

“You’re chasing it away.  You can’t go to it; it has to come to you.”

“Well I don’t see why it’s taking so long!  I’m a delight to be around.”

“Is that a recent development?”

“RUDE!”

☙♥❧

“It’s responding to your emotions.  You need to separate emotion from element.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?!”

“Stop focusing on how you feel, and focus on how the water feels.”

“It feels cold.”

“And?”

“And wet.”

“And?”

“And … light, I guess.”

Keith watched, toying with the fire in his own hands, as Lance’s frown softened into something more pensive, less annoyed.  The setting sun peeked through the trees, casting long shadows along the lines of his face: his angular cheekbones, his narrowed eyes, the divot of concentration between his brows.  He stood, mouth parted slightly, in the shallows of the stream, his bare toes curling around the smooth stones.

“Excited,” he said, slow and careful, “but not forceful.  Empathetic but honest.”  He knelt in the stream, disregarding the way it soaked his finely tailored trousers and lapped at the embroidered hem of his olive vest.  His hands were outstretched over the surface.  “Many different voices.  All saying the same thing with different words.”  His eyes were closed now.

Keith waited on the bank in complete silence, his fingers paused mid-air, his flame barely fluttering.  A small movement caught the corner of his eye, and he simply observed as the water began to reach upward toward Lance’s palms, like tiny arms waving at him.

A smile broke out over Lance’s face, eyes still closed.  “Hello,” he said, and Keith knew the greeting wasn’t for him.

☙♥❧

Just as Lance’s visits became more frequent, so too did those of Keith’s furry intruder.

Usually, the wolf hovered at the edge of the treeline while Keith went about his business, hanging meat and herbs up to dry or chopping wood.  Sometimes, it crept close enough snatch a strip of meat and run back to the trees again.  It had yet to notice that Keith was intentionally leaving those pieces within easy reach.

☙♥❧

“You should put your hair up,” Lance said one day, while they basked together in the late afternoon glow.  In their hands were two simple metal cups Lance had started bringing with him so that they could rehydrate after being out in the late summer sun.

Hydration is very important for the skin, Keith, Lance had insisted.  It was among the many fervent demands he had been making lately, the more time they spent together.  Those demands ranged from silly—(“We need superpower names, Keith!  How are we supposed to complete our very obvious fairytale hero storylines without superpower names?”)—to spoiled—(“We need to pack proper picnics, Keith!  Not all of us can subsist on your survival-tactics-woodsman-scavenger berries!”)—to curious—(“Aw, c’mon, Keith!  Just one little peak?  We’re official certified political acquaintances now; inviting me over for like, tea time or something is totally the most reasonable next step!  Unless you don’t have tea, in which case.  Well.  As a general rule of thumb, you should always have tea on hand.”).

As the weeks went by, Keith found himself making more and more concessions.  Water breaks were just one.

Their lessons had been smoother lately; Lance still had not managed to fully wield his powers while in a relaxed state, but he was less impatient now, and he had said on multiple occasions that he was starting to feel the water moving around him, responding to him.  Keith could see it, now and then—a swirl here, a ripple there.  Curiosity, Lance had called it.  The water was curious about him.

“What?” Keith replied finally, blaming the warm sunset for his delay.  He took a sip of his water.  “Why?”

Lance scooted closer to him on the Rock.  “Because,” he said, reaching up to tug at one of Keith’s black locks.  Keith scowled and batted his hand away.  “It gets in your mouth.  Sticks to it.”

Keith frowned.  “It doesn’t stick.”  He raised a self conscious hand to his mouth just to check that there were no flyaways stuck there.

“It does when your mouth is wet.”

“Why would my mouth be—”

Before Keith could finish the sentence, Lance splashed the remainder of his water in Keith’s face.

Keith blinked, mouth agape in shock, as water dripped from his face and soaked into his shirt.

“See?” Lance said, then reached up and began ruffling Keith’s hair into his drenched face.  Keith scrabbled to push him off, leaning away and kicking his legs in Lance’s direction, but the boy was undeterred.  When he pulled back and Keith was able to huff and sit up properly again, he grinned wide.  “Sticky.”  He tapped at his own lips for emphasis while lowering his gaze to Keith’s mouth.

Keith immediately turned and lifted a hand to wipe away the hair that was, indeed, stuck to his lips.

Lance erupted into giggles.  “The water told me to do it,” he said, lying down on the flat, warm surface of the Rock.  Keith, against his better judgment, looked down over his shoulder to see Lance laughing up at him, his features glowing bronze under the setting sun.  “It’s part of our bonding process.  You wouldn’t understand, hothead.”  His eyes twinkled with twilight and mirth.

Keith felt a scalding grip close over his insides.  Without bothering to process the sensation, he upended the rest of his cup onto a spluttering Lance’s face.

☙♥❧

Keith fell asleep that night to the sound of snuffling and rummaging outside.  A few months ago, it would have caused him concern.  Nowadays, the wolf had made itself so at home on Keith’s property that Keith hardly batted an eye when he heard it foraging at night.  It never stole too much, so he stopped bothering to reprimand it.

His slumber was fitful.  He was always a light sleeper—he had to be, living on his own like this—but some nights were worse than others.  On those nights, like tonight, he found himself plagued by a repetitive, unnerving dream.

The same feeling overcame him every time, and tonight was no different: sweltering, cloying, like a burning blanket being wrapped around him.  It was worst in the late summertime like this, when the heat was already unbearable.  He would sweat through his sheets, feverish and thrashing, but nothing could rouse him until the dream was complete.

Blistering heat, choking him, overwhelming him.  And then, a rumble.  Deep and vibrating, like the very walls of his mind were caving in around him.  The rumble shook his bones, rattled him in his restless sleep, and then crescendoed into an echoing, booming voice:

“What has been taken, give freely.  What is given, will be taken away.”

Keith’s eyes shot open in the dark of his cabin.  The only light source was a single shoddy window, oddly shaped and scavenged from an abandoned building beyond the forest’s edge.  It was incurably filthy, and the moonlight struggled to filter in through the dirt and onto Keith’s creaky floorboards.

He squinted in the dim lighting, propping himself up on his elbows and grunting as his damp sheets adhered themselves to his skin.  The room was stifling; he needed to get out.  His legs were on the floor before he had registered the decision to move.  Four long strides and he was at his door, swinging it open and immediately sitting down in the dirt just beyond.

The night air was humid and it was hard to see past his clearing, but he felt more comfortable out here than he had in that cabin.  His head sank into his hands.

Two years.  Since he’d seen his brother, since he’d started a new life, since he’d gained his abilities.  Since he’d begun having that dream.

Every time, it was like being thrust back into that terrible moment.  That sickening heat, all around him, not consuming him but overpowering him.  The knowledge that there was a devouring presence, a destructive force, a monster, sleeping inside of him.

He had managed to keep it dormant for so long, but the dream always made him question how much longer that would be.  Made him wonder who he would hurt next.

A small whine sounded to his left, pulling him out of the depths of his own mind.  Beside him, a few feet away, stood the wolf.  It had grown quite a bit over the past couple of months, and under the touch of the moon, it looked, for the first time, like a true wild animal.

Keith froze when the wolf stepped closer, head bowed and eyes watchful.  His nerves were alight in an instant, perfectly still but ready to move at a moment’s notice.  With each step the creature took in his direction, he felt his adrenaline thrum louder in his veins.  The moment it showed the faintest hint of a growl, he would move.  He sat there, poised, prepared to grab his knife—and then remembered with a lurch that in his desperation for fresh air, he had left it underneath his pillow.  The wolf cared little for his inner panic; it made the final step and stretched out its long snout and—

Sniffed Keith’s arm.  Its little black nose leaving a cold wet trail.

Keith watched, the buzz of his nerves settling into a tentative hum, as the wolf snuffled along the length of his forearm, then whined again and sat back on its haunches.  It met his stare and blinked those big yellow eyes expectantly.

It took Keith a moment to remember how to function.  “… What is it?” he whispered, afraid to raise his voice above the crickets’, afraid of how his words may fall without the cushion of their song.  “What do you want from me?”  He searched the animal’s gaze.

The wolf nosed at his hand, then looked up at him again.

Keith swallowed.  He reached a hand, slow and gentle as could be, out toward the wolf.  It met him halfway and pressed into the warmth of his palm, rubbing the soft fur of its forehead along his skin until Keith figured out the movements himself and began petting it properly.

“Wow,” he breathed, scratching behind one ear.  The wolf panted appreciatively.  “You’re just a big puppy, aren’t you?”  He eyed its fluffy torso.  “Kinda chubby, too,” he added, switching to the other ear and earning himself a nuzzle.  “Just how much of my jerky have you been eating?”

The wolf stood up, interrupting Keith’s ministrations.  He returned his hand to his knee, and the animal leaned down, lapped at his knuckles, then turned and trotted off into the shadows of the treeline.  Keith watched its pelt, silvery in the midnight lighting, blend into darkness.  It was no longer visible, but he felt, somehow, that it would not stray far for the rest of the night.

Keith stood up, placed his hand on the doorway.  “Thanks,” he said into the yawning forest, then slipped back inside.

☙♥❧

Keith’s appreciation for the wolf ran thin a week later, when Lance, after having pestered Keith into finally agreeing to show him his house, wrinkled his nose as soon as they approached the clearing.

“Good Spirits, what’s that smell?” he croaked, covering his mouth.  “It reeks.”

Keith considered telling the full truth, but knew that Lance would likely not respond well to hearing that there was a territorial wolf stalking the area.  “It’s an animal thing,” he opted for instead, adding a noncommittal shrug.  “You get used to it.”

“Well, I’d prefer not to,” Lance said with an animated shudder, “so let’s hurry up and get indoors.”

Keith heard a sharp inhale beside him as they entered into the clearing, revealing the little cabin.  It occurred to him in that moment that Lance very obviously came from money, and that this was probably the tiniest, shoddiest excuse for a home he had ever seen.  All of a sudden, Keith was embarrassed for his house—a foreign feeling, because he’d had no reason to worry about what anyone else thought of it until now.  He felt the urge to defend himself, but could not find any reasonable defense, so he just shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers and hunched his shoulders as they neared the cabin.

The door squeaked in protest as he swung it open and stepped inside, followed immediately by Lance, who wasted no time in his critique.

“You know, you usually let a guest enter in front of you,” he said, tugging at the hair at Keith’s nape.  Keith whirled around with a glare and grabbed his wrist—perhaps he was making a habit of that, he noted absently—but Lance only smirked wider.  “Cutting ahead of your guest and not offering any tea.  Maybe it’s your turn for lessons, hothead.  I could teach you a thing or two about etiquette.”

Keith narrowed his eyes and dropped the boy’s wrist.  “And I could kick you out of my house,” he replied, voice gruff to hide his lingering embarrassment.  “So I recommend taking a good look now before I do exactly that.”

That seemed to remind Lance of why exactly he was here in the first place: presumably, to judge Keith’s one-room home.  His gaze wandered as he strolled around the room, hands gliding over furniture and tapping against the walls.  He let his long, thin fingers caress the knots in the wood, tracing each mark like he was circling the rim of a glass before drinking it all in.

It was mesmerizing to watch the pad of his index smooth away at every surface, the brown of his hands gentle and natural against the brown of the worn oak.  Looking at him now, so confident and at ease, Keith could forget, for a moment, who this boy was and the life of metal and stone from which he came.  Like this, he looked for all the world as though he belonged here—a creature of the forest, with flesh of wood and eyes of sky.

Those eyes were on Keith far too soon for his comfort and yet he felt that he had been waiting for them all the same.  His blood sang past his ears as the telltale spike of anxiety rocked through his veins.  He puzzled, momentarily, over how easily this boy had managed to set his nerves rigid.

The threat of judgment hung heavy in the air.  It had been so long since Keith had felt the need to impress anyone, and perhaps it was for that reason that he desired so earnestly and so alarmingly to garner Lance’s approval.  It felt silly of him, really.  It was silly.  And yet.

This was his whole life, now.  And Lance was not only the first person to bear witness to it, but also a noble with undoubtedly high standards.  It only made sense, of course, to be nervous.  Logically.

When Lance finally opened his mouth, it was to let out a puff of airy laughter.  “You live like this?” he asked, gesturing around with his lips stretched wide in a grin.

Not an encouraging reaction.

Keith scowled and instinctively migrated to his bed to begin fixing the sheets and reorganizing the nightstand.  “Oh, shut up,” he groused.  He grabbed his pillow and gave it a few hard whacks to beat it back into shape.  “Not all of us have maids or interior designers or whatever you have, Your Highness.”

“Keith.”

Lance’s hands appeared in front of Keith, taking the pillow from his grasp.  Keith was gripped by the childish temptation to ignore him, to keep glaring holes into the frayed hems of his bedsheets, but he found his gaze inexplicably drawn to the boy at his side.

He still had that cheesy grin on his face, but it was softer.  “Don’t be like that,” he said, then turned his attention to the pillow in his hands and started gently fluffing it.  “I don’t mean it in a bad way.”  He walked around Keith, nudging into the space between him and the nightstand, and added, “I love it.”

Keith’s nostrils flared as he inhaled, watching Lance carefully.  “… Yeah?” he rasped, then cleared his throat.  “It’s, you know, it’s not much.  I’m not the best with carpentry.”  He folded his arms across his chest, then unfolded them again and wiped his palms on his trousers in a way that he hoped was inconspicuous.

Lance widened his eyes and tore his gaze from Keith’s to look around the room once more.  “You mean you actually made all of this?  Like, by hand?  Yourself?”  His fingers curled into the worn fabric of Keith’s freshly fluffed pillow.

“Uh,” Keith replied intelligently.  He followed Lance’s gaze around the room, taking in the wobbly chair and the flimsy door and the creaky floorboards and the mismatched walls.  “That’s what, uh, carpentry is, yeah.”

That earned him an elbow in the gut.  His protest went unacknowledged.  “I know what carpentry is, wise guy,” Lance said, summoning Keith’s attention back to himself.  “I just didn’t know you were a carpenter.”  He furrowed his brows and jutted his lower lip out in thought.  “Though I suppose it makes sense, now that I think about it.”

Keith hummed, rubbing his new elbow-sized wound.  “Can’t really survive out here otherwise.”

“That too.”  Lance removed one hand from the pillow and, without any warning, grasped Keith’s right hand and lifted it up for inspection.  “I was more so referring to this.”  He held the hand up to Keith’s own face, oblivious to (or at least unconcerned with) Keith’s internal crisis—which was quickly becoming an external crisis on the apples of his cheeks.  “See?” Lance prompted, waiting for a response.

Keith frowned, going cross eyed as he stared at his own hand shoved so close to his nose.

Lance sighed and rolled his eyes, flipping Keith’s hand upside-down and running a thumb over the pads of his upturned fingers.  “Tough hands,” he said, tapping at a callus.  Keith swallowed.  “Hands of a man who knows how to use them.”

There was something teasing under that voice, something backlighting it with amusement, but when Keith turned to look, Lance was already dropping his hand and placing the pillow on the bed.  It sat there, looking softer than it had in months, while Lance proclaimed a desire to continue exploring the cabin and squeezed his way back around Keith.

Keith remained perfectly still until he felt he had the space to breathe.

☙♥❧

He convinced himself it was pure coincidence that he devoted most evenings to carpentry after that.

☙♥❧

As much as he complained about Lance’s antics, Keith did enjoy watching Lance train.  He would never admit it, of course, but there was something calming about the way Lance communicated with his element—gentle and playful and serious all at once.  Keith was used to the aggressive beast that was his own magic—forceful, dominant, scathing.  It had been difficult trying to calm it down long enough for him to understand it, let alone connect with it.

Lance’s conversations were—beautiful, really.  They weren’t audible, or even visible aside from the way the water seemed to curl around him where he knelt in the stream, as if it were attempting to wrap him an embrace.  But they were tranquil and happy, and they brought a contented smile to Lance’s lips.

It was, Keith hated to admit, a bit enchanting.

But that was on a normal day.  A warm day.  Not this chilly, miserable, cloudy day, when harsh winds bit into the space between his collar and his neck, and rusted leaves tangled themselves in his hair, and the flame in his hands blew this way and that despite his best attempts to steady it.  Autumn was in full swing now, and the cold, blustery weather had arrived to accompany it.

Truthfully, Keith was unsure how Lance could stand to be soaked up to his waist when the temperatures were this low.  He suspected it was a feature of his strengthened elemental magic bond, because Keith was sure he would have heard approximately one billion complaints by now if the stream felt any colder than bathwater.

But no, Lance was perfectly happy, back straight and eyes closed, hands outstretched over the rippling surface, all while Keith suffered.  Keith was unconvinced that he even needed to be here anymore—most days he just sat on the bank, practicing his own magic, while Lance worked on his bond—but Lance insisted for some reason, and Keith had been finding it increasingly and irritably difficult to tell him no.

So here he had been for the past hour, shivering and picking leaves out of his hair.  In silence.  Playing with the small, flickering fire in his palm that did little to chase away the chill.  Just watching the same thing that he had been watching since the start of the session—

Movement caught the corner of Keith’s eye.  His gaze snapped down to Lance’s waist, where the water was beginning to creep higher, up and up around his body.  Keith dared not breathe as it passed Lance’s head and began forming into a wide globe above him.  His hands rose with it, palms flipping upward, fingers splayed outward.  The water swayed gently in the breeze, rocking back and forth, hovering precariously—

Lance’s eyes shot open.  He blinked once at the swirling mass perched over his head, yelped, then whipped around to face Keith.

“I did it!” he shouted, a disbelieving smile overtaking his features.  “Keith, I—”

The water suspended above him instantly lost its shape and crashed down, soaking Lance completely and eliciting a startled gasp.  His hands dropped into the stream, and he gaped for a moment before bursting into delighted laughter and shaking his wet hair till drops rained down all around him like a silvery glitter.

“I did it,” he repeated through his giggles.  He turned his boyish grin toward Keith, hair plastered to his forehead and eyelashes dripping, and lifted his hands up to the sky before falling backwards into the shallows with a grand splash.  He lay there for a moment, nearly submerged, then propped himself up on his elbows and snickered as the stream burbled around his body.

Keith’s tongue, by contrast, was incredibly dry.  It sat heavy and cumbersome in his mouth.  The flame flared hot in his hand, then winked out of existence as his final thread of concentration broke.  He managed to return a feeble smile, but it could not compare to the one shining on Lance’s face.

He was stunning in his element.  Sparkling eyes, rosy cheeks, hair curling around his temples.  The grey skies could do nothing to dull Lance’s radiance.  It was as if it were his sworn duty to provide light during the sun’s absence.  Even the waterside flora seemed to lean into his warmth, wreathing him in calico aster and witch hazel and woodland phlox, each marveling at the chimes of his laughter ferried on the autumn wind.

Lance seemed entirely unaware of the captivating spell he had evidently cast on the flowers around him—just the flowers, of course, not Keith—as he lounged there in the rippling water, his bright grin slowly fading into a contented smile.  He closed his eyes a moment and hummed.  When he opened them again, they were fixated on Keith, locking him into their crystalline possession.

“I guess you’re not too bad a teacher after all,” Lance said.  It sounded like it was meant to be an insult, but the way Lance’s gaze twinkled had Keith second-guessing and stumbling to formulate the correct response.

“Um,” Keith offered, eloquent as ever.  His palms were wet.  Again.  Why were his palms so wet lately?  “It was, well.”  He wiped his hands on the cuffs of his sleeves.  “It—you know.  It wasn’t much.  I just kind of watched most of the time.”  It occurred to him that maybe he was supposed to reply with something snarky or cool.  Shit.

Lance’s lip began to curl upward, but he bit down on it to hold it steady.  His perfectly straight teeth poked out, snaring the plush bottom lip and causing it to puff slightly like a button pressing into the center of a tufted cushion.  When he released his lip in order to open his mouth, it was slightly redder than it had been before—a little swollen, just from the brief contact.

Perhaps he had sensitive lips.  It was probably a nobility thing, Keith supposed.  Maybe it was considered proper to keep one’s lips soft and pliant, just like it was considered proper to keep one’s clothes ironed or one’s hair brushed.  Keith knew very little about such things, but given Lance’s sopping wet clothes and hair, he figured the lips were the only area in which Lance was presently succeeding at looking his part.

“Hello?  Keith?”

Keith let out a startled “mmmuh?” and fixed his attention back on Lance.  Or, on the part of Lance that was currently speaking—no, wait, that was just his mouth again.  Eyes.  Eyes, Keith.

“I said—” Lance hoisted himself up onto his feet.  The water clung to him for a moment before letting go and returning to the stream.  “—you have been pretty useful, and maybe I’ll keep you around a little longer.”  He put his hands on his hips—a pose no doubt meant to make him look cocky and devilishly handsome, though the effect was significantly dampened, so to speak, by his current appearance.  Instead, he just looked charmingly ridiculous.

Keith felt his lips twitch into a smirk as he watched the other boy stomp onto the bank and shake his leg hard enough to almost throw himself off balance.  “Well then,” he said, folding his arms across his chest as Lance windmilled frantically to keep from falling, “for someone who apparently wants to keep me around, you sure don’t sound very grateful.”  He tilted his head.  “Maybe I’ll go find another boy to pester me on a weekly basis and make my life a living hell.”

Lance righted himself and turned towards Keith.  An outraged squawk escaped his parted lips.  “I’ll have you know, I—”  He stopped.  Straightened his back.  Smiled—too wide.  It set Keith’s nerves on edge.  “—am very grateful for your training.”  He took a step closer.  Keith eyed him warily.  “In fact,” he said, his feet causing the smooth stones of the bank to clack against each other, “I’m so grateful that I’d like to show you my gratitude.”

Keith narrowed his eyes when Lance came to a halt in front of him.  He said nothing, just pursed his lips and quirked a dubious brow.

Lance’s smile—that same one that Keith had known was trouble, had felt it in the pit of his gut—warped into an impish grin.  Before Keith had so much as a moment to act, Lance sprang forward, his arms spread, a cackle in his throat and mischief in his gaze.

Keith jolted backward, but could do nothing but groan with disgust when Lance’s drenched body enclosed him in an inescapably tight embrace.  The water seeped into his clothes immediately, ice cold in the chilly autumn wind.  It was enough to distract him temporarily from the embarrassment of Lance’s figure pressed against his own, from the discomfort of having another person so close to him.

“Lance!” he gasped, trying and failing to extricate himself from Lance’s starfish limbs.  “You asshole, it’s cold!  Let me go!”  He beat against the saggy wet rag that was Lance’s ruined jacket.  It only made Lance laugh harder.

“Thank you so much,” he said, giggling into the junction of Keith’s ear and neck.  It sent a shiver down his spine and made him pause in his struggle for a moment, hands curling instinctively around Lance’s dripping clothes.  “What ever would I do without you?  My sweet patient mentor,” he crooned, “my ingenious teacher.”  He pressed his wet hair into Keith’s temple, the sensation somehow both freezing and scorching.  “My frowny-faced savior.”

It took Keith a moment to catch up with the words.  “I’m not frowny,” he protested, frowning.

Lance leaned back just enough to look at his face, then grinned again.  “Where’d you learn to lie like that, hothead?”  He pulled back a bit more, but his arms lingered on Keith’s shoulders, draping over them with a catlike confidence.

Keith swallowed around the thud of his heartbeat, then forced himself to scoff, even as his fingers tightened in the hem of Lance’s jacket.  “You,” he said.  Curiosity struck him as he watched Lance’s amused expression waver, bordering on concern—or maybe even fear?—but it was gone in a flash, so swiftly that Keith could almost convince himself it was imaginary.  “Every time you tell me you have ‘hot babes lined up practically begging’ to court you.”  His tone was dry, but he had to fight to keep his lips in a straight line.

“What?!”  Any lingering remnant of that fear on Lance’s face vanished entirely, replaced by absolute indignation.  “That’s not a lie!” he exclaimed, gaping as Keith merely cracked a smile and carefully removed Lance’s arms from his shoulders.  “It’s not!”  His cheeks began to glow red.

Keith strolled over to his leather bag and started collecting his belongings.

“Listen, I can’t tell you their names, but it’s the truth!  They are tripping over each other to throw themselves at my feet!”

There wasn’t much to collect; Keith liked to travel light.  Just some jerky, his waterskin, and a few basic survival tools.

“My feet, Keith!”

Keith rose and slung his bag over his shoulder, the sturdy hide resting against his hip.  He turned around and beheld Lance, pouting and red-faced, then let his gaze travel pointedly down to Lance’s feet, which were bare and caked with sand and mud and grass.  He lifted a singular eyebrow and returned his unimpressed gaze to Lance’s face.

Lance wailed and performed a strange balancing act in his (failed) attempt to hide his feet from view.  “That’s not fair!  They usually look much better!  Pristine!  Illustrious!”

Keith turned and made his way toward the treeline, ignoring the cries of “Keith! ” from behind him.  “I’ll see you and your gross feet next week, Lance,” he said, then pushed his way beyond the brush.

☙♥❧

Gross feet aside, Lance was still running an uncomfortably consistent track around Keith’s mind well after he had left their session.  Keith could not get the images out of his head—Lance, drenched and grinning up at him; Lance, lying in the shallows with flowers framing his head; Lance, pressing close and leaning into him.  An endless loop of Lance, Lance, Lance.

It was annoying.  Lance was annoying.

Why should Keith even care?   Lance was here to accomplish a task, and once that task was accomplished—which honestly, it probably would be soon—he wouldn’t need Keith anymore.  He would return to his fancy noble life and leave this chapter of his “fairytale hero storyline” behind.  Open up the next chapter and keep on going.

It wasn’t like Lance came to these lessons for fun—he wouldn’t want to be friends beyond this arrangement.  Would he?

… Would Keith?

Keith could feel the heat in his cheeks—a result of his frustration, no doubt—as he pushed through the forest, grey sky darkening through the canopy above.  There was a chill in the wind, just now starting to pick up, as if the skies had been holding their breath for Lance earlier.  Keith wondered, once again, if nature itself was somehow caught in Lance’s web.  And if nature could not escape, what hope did Keith have?

The breeze groaned around him—perhaps expressing its commiseration at their shared captivity—and kept him company as he neared his shack.  His nose twitched as the telltale scent of wolf piss assaulted his senses.

Welcome home, he thought bitterly to himself.

As soon as he pushed past the final cluster of bushes and into his clearing, the hair on the back of his neck stood up.  The ground outside his shack was stained red—splotchy and light, but nonetheless recognizable as blood.  He stilled and knelt carefully, extracting his knife from his boot and maintaining a hunched posture as he crept closer.

His door was open.  Again.  Not all the way, but enough that he could hear the faint sound of scratching against the wooden floorboards.  Spirits alive, he really needed to get a lock if home intrusions were going to become a regular thing.  The storm clouds above blocked much of the remaining evening light, so there was little he could make out through the crack.  All he could do was grip his dagger tightly and inhale, then gently push his door open.  It whined, slow and grating, with a pitch that crept upward like a question.

The answer to which sat curled up in the middle of his one-room home, panting and scrabbling against the floor.  A weak whinge and a low groan escaping from its throat.  Blood glistening in the minimal lighting that managed to make it through the dirt and grime of Keith’s sole window.  Something slender was embedded in its shiny pelt—a small branch, maybe?

Keith blinked owlishly at the sight of the wolf before him as it raised its head to fix him with a gaze that could be interpreted as nothing less than pleading.  He hesitated at his doorstep, silent and shocked, before the wolf’s whimper jolted him into action.

With a quick glance around the room, he flexed his fingers and considered his options, then made for his medical kit at the foot of his bed.  It wasn’t much, he noted with a grimace as he opened it up and scrounged for a bit of old bandaging and bottled yarrow.  Damn, even his herb stores were starting to wither.  He would have to address that as soon as possible.

But for now, the frayed, yellowing cloth and drying yarrow in his hands would have to do.  He shut the lid of his kit and turned around to find the wolf staring at him with its dark, intense eyes.  Keith would have expected to find fear in there, or at least wariness, as injured animals are wont to display.  Instead, he was met with something that he could only conclude was—trust.  Or, if not quite that, then at least hope or belief.

Still, he approached with caution, both hands raised in clear view.  The wolf watched him but did not move as he set his shoddy first aid supplies down at its paws and knelt close to get a better look at the cause of the injury.

Not a branch, Keith realized with a start.  An arrow.

“What the shit,” he whispered.  The wolf let out a keening noise in response.

The shaft stuck out of the wolf’s upper hindleg, and from what Keith could tell, it was of expert craftsmanship.  It was hard to make out in the shadows, though, so Keith swiftly rose and lit a lantern, then returned and set to work.

Keith could feel bright yellow eyes tracking his every move as he fluttered his fingers around the arrow, unsure entirely of how to best proceed.  After a moment, he puffed a sigh and looked over at the wolf, meeting its gaze.

“This is going to hurt,” he said.

The wolf blinked at him.

Keith thinned his lips and exhaled through his nose, then nodded resolutely.  “Alright.  Okay.”  He reached for the arrow, wrapped a hand around the shaft, breathed bracingly.  “But for the record, you asked me to do this.”  He laid his free hand on the wolf’s pelt, feeling the instinctual flinch and the shift of fur beneath his fingers.  “Don’t kill me.”

He pulled.

The wolf gave an agonized, broken yelp and scrambled against the wood as the arrowhead tore free of its limb.  Fresh blood flowed out from the wound, soaking the animal’s grey coat and dripping onto Keith’s floorboards.  It limped backward into a corner, shifting protectively over itself and baring its teeth in a snarl.  That tentative trust that Keith had seen in its eyes earlier was replaced with something far more befitting of an injured wolf: fear, pain, anger, defensiveness.

Keith froze, the arrow still clutched in his hand.  One wrong move, he knew, and this creature might tear his throat out.  He slowly, carefully, cautiously extended the arrow, still dripping red, toward the wolf.

“It’s gone now,” he said, keeping his voice low and soothing.  “See?  I got it out.”

The wolf’s snarl softened a bit as it leaned forward to sniff at the bloody arrowhead.  It wrinkled its nose and leaned back again, but the gaze it now fixed on Keith was markedly less dangerous.  Uncertain, but not hostile.  Keith took this as a sign that the worst had passed, so he gently set the arrow aside.  When he turned back to the animal, he held his hands up in a placating gesture.

“I need you to come back here so I can dress that wound,” he said, beckoning the wolf to bare its leg to him.

It once again blinked at him.

Keith closed his eyes and hung his head for a moment, then shuffled on his knees to his food storage chest and flipped open the lid.  From within, he retrieved a few slices of venison jerky, then shut the lid and scooted back over to the wolf, who had lifted its head and was poking its snout into the air at the scent of meat.

“C’mere, you.”  Keith held the jerky out invitingly, just close enough that the animal could bend forward and sniff at it, then pulled it back and set it on the ground in front of him.  “I know you’re a sucker for these things, you tubby bastard.  Get over here.”  He squinted at the red stains all over his room.  “You’re getting blood all over my floorboards.  They’re shitty enough as is without you making them look like a crime scene.”

The wolf stared at him a moment longer, then finally began to limp over to the jerky, each step forcing a small whine from its throat.  When it reached the dried meat, it plopped down on the wood with a tired wheeze and rested its head there while it chewed.

Keith took this for the opportunity it was and reached into his travel bag, grabbing his waterskin and uncorking it.  He spent a few seconds washing out some of the blood that had caked and smeared around the wolf’s wound, then placed the remaining water back in his bag and picked up his yarrow from earlier.  He spared a glance down to the wolf’s face, where it lay flat on the floor, slowly munching with what energy it had left.

He’d never seen a wild animal look so … sad.  Vulnerable.  Drained.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Keith found himself saying as he opened his jar of yarrow and pulled out a few slightly wilted sprigs.  “I’ve got you.”  He popped the yarrow into his mouth and spent a minute chewing it up, then spat the poultice back out into his hand again.  “I’ve got you.”

He repeated the mantra, calm and quiet, as he leaned over and padded the poultice against the wolf’s wound.  It grumbled in protest, but did not lash out or run away this time.  When Keith felt he had covered the wound enough—it was hard to tell when there was so much fur—he reached for his bandages and wrapped them round and round the animal’s leg, then tied them off and shuffled backward to admire his work.

“That ought to do it, bud,” he said, collecting his leftover supplies and moving to return them to their proper storage locations.  “You’ll need to take it easy for a while, though.  So don’t go—”

As soon as he turned back around, he found before him the image of a very tired, very miserable wolf slumped against his floor, licking halfheartedly at the jerky crumbs that had fallen into the cracks between the wood.  It paused when it realized it was being observed, then looked up at Keith and fixed him with the absolute worst case of puppy dog eyes he had ever had to endure.

Keith pinched the bridge of his nose, then realized his hands were dirty and moved to wash them off in his wooden basin.  “Listen, you can stay tonight, just don’t make—like—a huge fuckin’ mess or whatever.”  He dried off his hands and pointed a now-clean finger at the wolf as he crossed the room to shut the door properly.  “That especially means no scenting my furniture.  You little piss-obsessed weirdo.  I mean it.”

The wolf blinked back.

Keith rolled his eyes and started removing his boots and preparing for bed.  “I’m talking to a wolf like it’s gonna listen to a word I say,” he muttered, going through his nightly rituals with a scowl on his face.  “And I’m letting it sleep in my house.  It took me two years out here, but I’ve finally lost my mind.”

It was only just as he was about to crawl into bed that he realized he had forgotten to take a closer look at the arrow.  He maneuvered his way around the big furry lump in the middle of his tiny room and grabbed the offending object by the shaft, grimacing at the half-dried blood caked all over the tip.  After taking a moment to wipe it down, he returned to his bed, tucked his knife under his pillow, and slipped under the sheets, holding the arrow up to the lantern light for inspection.

Just as Keith had suspected earlier, this arrow was definitely made by a professional.  It was sleek and smooth, with finely trimmed dark fletching and a sharply cut head that gleamed in the dim lighting.  Whoever shot this arrow was no simple traveler with a few pennies to their name, passing through the forest casually.

That was enough to cause Keith alarm.  Because if someone was here with such well crafted arrows, they likely had a purpose in these woods.  And anyone with a purpose in these woods was trouble for Keith.

His concerned musings were interrupted by a snuffling noise from the end of his bed.  A snout poked up onto his blanket, followed by a head, and then two front paws.  The rest of the wolf was having a bit of trouble following, though—Keith could tell it was trying to jump, but it was still getting used to having to overcompensate with its uninjured leg.  He watched for a moment, unsure if he should get up and help it or censure it for invading his personal space.

His dilemma was not drawn out.  It took the wolf only a few seconds and a couple of aborted hops to adjust its weight accordingly and conduct a successful, if entirely graceless, leap onto the bed.  It huffed and puffed as it tumbled into the sheets, whining with exertion, then straightened itself out again and sat there, staring at Keith with those big yellow eyes.

“What.”

The wolf cocked its head.

“What. ”

The wolf cocked its head the other way.

Keith groaned.  “Do you need to pee?  Do you want more food?  What? ”

With a sudden, enormous yawn, the wolf limped over to Keith’s shins, curled up, and closed its eyes.

Its weight was heavy and warm against his legs, but he did not dare shift away.  In fact, he hardly breathed for the first couple of minutes—just stared and stared and stared at the slow rise and fall of the wolf’s dirty grey hide.  After a point, it started to let out a wheezing, groaning noise—a snore, Keith realized.  It was snoring.

In his bed.

On his legs.

Keith swallowed around the parched knot in his throat and dragged his gaze away from the sleeping animal, back to the arrow in his grasp.  His hands were shaking, just a little.  But it was fine.  He was fine.  This was—

The fire of his lantern flickered, catching on the metallic surface of the arrowhead.  A strange inconsistency in the surface texture snagged his attention, and he brought it closer to his face and shifted it against the light.  It flashed dully, and there, in the center of the head, an odd symbol peered back at him, etched in like a signature of some kind.

Keith lifted a thumb and traced his pad along the otherwise pristine material.  He could feel the groove of each angle, small but precise against his calluses.

It was like an M, he noted as he pulled his thumb back and continued to study the engraving.  Not quite the same, just similar.  Like someone had carved the letter, but made it—spikier?  Sharper?  With a pair of … horns, maybe, on the top.

Honestly, Keith had no fucking clue.  But he didn’t like the look of it.  Something about it made the skin at the nape of his neck prickle.

“What the hell did you get yourself into?” he asked aloud.  Perhaps to the wolf.  Perhaps to himself.

Neither one seemed to have an answer.  Outside, the clouds hovered, heavy and sharp with the promise of winter.