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Chapter Text

The water feels good. This is a good stream. After much time of walking under the sun, Ruh feels overheated and stretched. He submerges and listens to the current, fish wiggling where they go, the splash of the young ones playing. Dar would protest he isn’t a child, but he is not listening to Ruh right now, and he would be in error to say so.

Ruh flicks his ears and lifts his head back into where breeze can travel. Night comes. He is not hungry yet. He may hunt with new light.

Dar’s clumsy human is laughing too loudly—man noise, the kind that brings other men and trouble besides. But Dar doesn’t seem to mind. Dar, Ruh considers with a lazy snort, is deserving of Ruh’s name sometimes. He leads the fawn into danger. Tao is too caught up with looking at the world, wide-eyed and stumbling, smelling like grass and joy and increasingly of Dar’s world—a tottering fawn, not strong, not headstrong, not like them. This is the one called Tao, which Dar says means “the way,” and which Ruh finds meaningless. There are many ways, after all. But then, Tao is only one.

And Ruh knows fawns grow into their legs, as well. Soon, he will be fierce and long and too quick to catch.

Tao often speaks to Ruh as if he can understand. Sometimes he touches Ruh’s head with a friendly pat. Sometimes they communicate through Dar—teasing, mostly. Ruh finds dark pleasure in nipping at the human. Not for hurting, but for teaching. Little ones need teaching.

Tao is speaking to him now. Crudely human words, but Ruh can understand. There is affection, a trace of ruefulness; he’s being complimented again. Ruh lets his eyes fall halfway as if to sleep, to show his pleasure. He likes being complimented. He knows if he rumbles, the human might even scratch his ears, but for now the water is cool and the space around him is too pleasing to relinquish to another.

Dar tells Ruh, in the secret way only Dar can, “Careful, he might start thinking you like him.”

Ruh repeats it back word for word and Dar half-scowls, flustered. There are some human things that Ruh understands. He pads up onto the bank, shaking the droplets from his coat. It is time for a nap, and time enough to leave Dar to stare at their shared burden with the distant, hungry eyes of a predator.

Chapter Text

The Terron camp smells like rotting meat, old blood and straw, and the wretched stink of men. He cannot help bristling as he paces the tent in narrow circles; these ugly villages irritate Ruh for leaving their mark on the jungle. The only comfort is in Tao, who still vaguely smells of the Sanctuary and fresh herbs, but even this is nearly overpowered by the scent of sick and sweat and fear.

The human burns. Inside, outside, in the cracked skin at his mouth. Ruh growls low in his chest and calls out to Dar in the darkness. Dar’s skittish fawn is suffering. This is Dar’s business, not Ruh’s.

Ruh is not a babysitter. No longer will he be content to stay behind at Dar’s order, to protect the one called Tao, to huddle and hide when he should be at Dar’s side. This is foolish. The crows cackle at him outside and Ruh’s skin is a shifting, uncomfortable thing over his muscles.

Tao stirs in the straw, his glassy eyes only visible in Ruh’s nocturnal sight. He does not bleed, but there is illness in him, a living snake. Ruh huffs at him and continues to pace. Tao watches.

It is taking far too long. Ruh will go, he will—

“I’m sorry,” whispers Tao. Ruh knows these words—Dar has said them often enough, in this very tone, that Ruh recognizes each through sound alone. There is gratitude, and shame, and the boy is afraid. Ruh knows a few of these emotions, although the last he has little but scorn for, finding it useless. And yet.

The men outside are shouting.

Ruh flicks his tail impatiently. Then he goes to Tao and heaves a loud breath. The message is clear: there is no happiness, but he will stay. Tao’s fingers touch his flank, so gently that Ruh finds himself irrationally cautious of them, and then slip away. Soft murmurs, indecipherable to Ruh but familiar from so long journeying together, fill the small tent and their time. Man noises annoy Ruh, but he does not have to listen and they seem to calm Tao.

When Dar finally comes, breath rattling in his chest and worry hard in his jaw, Ruh stands once more and slinks across toward the exit. I will not hide again, he says, yellow eyes boring into Dar’s.

Sometimes Dar talks with his face, not his words. He does this now.

Protect what is yours. Ruh can taste the death in the air; he knows his dinner is waiting beyond and is impatient to get there. He snarls in his throat. You do not mark him well enough.

“And how would I do that?” Dar asks softly, crouching next to Tao. Tao smiles hazily at him. Ruh cocks his head, eyes half-mast.

With your eyes. With your claws and teeth. Roll him in your scent and when they take him, take back their masks, their leg, their eyes, four fold.

He says this because he knows. And Dar, who nods without ever taking his gaze off of the human in his arms, knows, too. Ruh waits until Tao is speaking in slurs again before he vanishes into the dark, mind already at his next meal.