Chapter Text
Shifting his balance from paw to paw, he scooted forward until he could peek out from under the safety of the leaves. There was someone here! In his place! No one but he had been here for a very…very very very long time. It was hard to remember exactly how long, as after a while the years and the centuries just started adding up and time had no real meaning. But he was used to that.
It’s not like it made much difference to him, anyway. The water still flowed, even if it smelled stinky sometimes, now. The fish were still tasty, the sun was still warm. He was happy. Even if there was an itchy in the back of his mind that kept telling him he was supposed to want more he found it easy enough to ignore it. He’d already forgotten what the something more was a long time ago.
Leaves were safe. Dark was safe. He wanted to see this new someone, smell them and see why they were here. He was good at sneaking – he had a lot of practice. Nose twitching, he poked one of the safe leaves to the side and stared.
And stared. And stared.
His whole body began to vibrate, starting with the tip of his tail all the way up to his pointy teeth.
This someone. They smelled of the best sunlit patch of grass he’d ever encountered (he may not remember exactly when this had happened, but he still vividly recalled the feel of that grass between his toes and on his pelt). And they smelled of the warmest pile of bodies wrapped around him, a dim memory he still carried from the time before…before he was as he is now.
His nervous paws betrayed him, taking him forward several skittering steps before he even realized what had happened. Into the dappled sunlight. Into the open.
There was a frozen moment where danger flowed through every bit of him. The someone saw him before he even had a chance to think about darting back to safety. But his eyes had never left the face of that someone, and a smile – so bright, like the stars but right here – and he instantly forgot that there had ever been anything to be afraid of.
So...so…tall.
He hadn’t noticed until the someone was crouched down (when had that happened??), then holding so very still like the trees in the winter.
“Oh! Hello!” Words, that’s what those were. He remembered them from some other place in the long stretch of not now but as he is now. These words weren’t quite like the ones he’d known then. They weren’t as musical, somehow (though sometimes those words had also been harsh, and he’d been curious but not entirely trusting of the someone who had said them then), and he couldn’t understand. “I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone here. Aren’t you a handsome fellow? Or you could be a girl. I suppose I can’t quite tell.”
He wanted to know. Deep down in his bones that were vibrating with need, just like the rest of him. But…but he couldn’t like this. There’d been a trick to it, somehow. If he could just remember…how.
The someone was shifting, and he flattened his ears against his head as his chin lowered to touch the grass beneath them. Instincts, somehow, still worked even through this thrumming in his veins. A hand crept forward, centimeter by centimeter and somehow this spoke to him of patience and that thrumming turned into a screaming of yes that somehow was building to a crescendo. He knew, but he didn’t remember how he knew. But he must.
Once that hand was as far out as it could go, the someone stopped. There was a crinkly sort of feeling about their face, something that made that buzzing go faster as they froze once again. Waiting.
Just like he was waiting for…something.
One skittering step forward. Another, and if he stretched his neck out as far as it could go, he could just about –
Touch. The barest of nose taps against the tips of those fingers, a delicate squeeze with sensitive teeth sharp enough to slice meat off bone. The tip of a tongue, tasting, exploring. Learning.
Yes.
That screaming in his blood was trying to burst through his skin, and he knew but he still didn’t remember and if he just –
A sigh, a soft exhale of breath that still reached him where he stood trembling on the meadow floor. And that crinkly feeling about their face softened…until it was the best thing he had ever, ever seen. And he needed more. He needed that, forever and –
“Hi.” The softest of whispers, the word still not understood but he remembered at least how to get there and all it took was a twist of his skin like so and –
The strangest feeling, like little cricket toes along his skin and then the world tilted – and he wasn’t quite looking up at the someone anymore.
Reaching forward, this time not with his nose but with a paw that was almost like the hand before him. Still staring into those eyes that had widened, and they were so bright but there seemed to be something wrong with the someone’s mouth because it was hanging open and where had that smile gone?
He would ask, he would ask a million things but first –
So strange, but it was important, and they’d always been sensitive, but this wasn’t finding the little clams hidden in the riverbank this was the most important thing he’d ever done in his long, so very long, life. Careful of his claws – he didn’t want to hurt, he wanted to know – and he was cupping a cheek in his paw, fingers wrapping up against a temple with the lightest of touches and –
Blinded, for a moment, as that crescendo finally burst and he was taken under a flood of knowing that washed through him in less time than the span between heartbeats. And he was still him, he felt that, but he was more, and he was less, and everything all at once.
His lips, more mobile than they had been before the tilting and the twisting from the little cricket toes, stretched into a smile that felt good on his skin. Right. Like touching this someone was right, though this someone was the rightest right he’d ever known.
Looking into those eyes that were full of…oh yes, wonder now, he saw it and his smile got brighter in response. Those newly mobile lips of his twisted around the syllable, he knew now he just had to make it come out and it really wasn’t hard if it was for this someone. It, actually, kind of tickled as the breath slipped past his lips.
“Hello.”