Chapter Text
Roberu opens his eyes to a very blurry but also very bright moon in the sky. His head is throbbing with pain, and his body feels like one of those annoyingly heavy potato sacks from the village market. Around him, the leaves rustle with the light push of a breeze.
How did he get here anyway?
He vaguely remembers going to a small tavern with some other adventurers in the same guild as him. They said it was to celebrate Roberu’s last successful quest, but for some reason they were very adamant about laying all the drinks on him. He had listened to them talk about how he was outshining all the rest of the members or something, and how they jokingly asked if he “thought he was too good for the guild, maybe he should come back to their level” or “why don’t you share some of your fame with us, we’re your guildmates you know.” From there his memory is kind of hazy, but he recalls someone hoisting him up and moving him somewhere before it all went dark. Next thing he knew, he woke up here.
Man, screw those guys. He had begun to suspect that they didn’t like him in that guild anyway. Roberu shakily stands himself up and dusts himself off. He is completely unarmed, equipped with only the clothes on his back, a dark cloak, and his muddled and aching head. (In his defense, he didn’t know his ex-guild members would act so soon to get rid of him).
He begins to wander aimlessly through the woods. Something in the back of his head tells him that this is a bad idea, especially when he is this drunk and vulnerable, but he can’t bring himself to care at the moment. It’s not like he can return to the guild, and…
Actually, he can’t return to anywhere at all, because he was in this forest in the middle of gods-know-where and he was probably going to be reclaimed by nature before the sun rose up, so he might as well enjoy what is likely his last few hours on foot before that happens. He picks up his pace, the ground crunching under his footsteps.
Shien is a creature said to bring ruin to the places he encroached his presence onto. Over hundreds of years, he has bared witness to the rise and fall of kingdoms, and watched as plague and unrest assaulted formerly prosperous lands and brought royalty down to their knees — all tracing back to his very involvement in their short-lived history.
Despite being a beast of legend, he himself was not completely clean of blood, either. As a last resort, warring kingdoms have come to him begging for help when their thrones looked like they were on the brink of collapse. They asked him for his strength, for Shien could slaughter more enemy lives by himself than a thousand of their men could. He has participated on the battlefield and experienced the merciless tearing apart of flesh under his claws; the taste of death, so red and warm, splashing his tongue with every casualty. Yet after all the painful battles had been fought and helped brought victory to, the new royalty were quick to exile him and chase him out of their domain. Because why keep the beast around any longer when it was known that it was cursed to bring torment to every place he had set foot onto?
(And true to the legends, those kingdoms no longer exist. Shien was keen on punishing those who merely saw him as a weapon of war.)
The people living in the towns around this forest knew very well how dangerous he was and, save for a few conceited adventurers, would not dare to step into his territory. It’s because of this that he has been at peace in the quiet solitude of the forest for many years, unbothered.
So when a random man literally stumbles into his spacious hillside den, walking just as well as a newborn fawn can during the spring season, he considers that peace finally broken.
He watches as the man tries to hold himself up with a hand on the earthy wall of the den, somehow misses the wall completely, and falls face-first ungraciously onto the ground in consequence. All the intruder has to say about it is “Ow.”
He lays there, defeated. A hiccup echoes in the walls of the den, mocking him. Shien lets a low growl escape his snout to announce his presence, and the man pushes himself up on his elbows to look for the source of the sound.
They stare at each other for a minute.
Maybe he hurt his head really badly in that fall or something and this is just his drunken mind playing tricks on him, but sitting in front of Roberu is some kind of stupidly large canine that was way bigger than any dog he’d ever seen. The thing had to be taller than he was (and it wasn’t even standing), and it was watching him with golden eyes that he swore looked like they were glowing in the darkness of whatever hole he had walked into.
The few scraps of logic left in his head were screaming at him that he should probably step back because the beast obviously looked really, really important… but it also looked very fluffy, if the plush white tufts of fur framing its face were of any indication. He kind of wanted to touch them.
Actually, if this is a hallucination, he might as well do that. What is the beast going to do? Stop him?
Shien indeed does not stop the man when he gets up and walks up to him, determined. If he tried anything strange despite being very obviously unarmed, Shien could just use his brute strength to end his life… but first, he wanted to see just what the guy was trying to do.
Roberu stops in front of the beast and shamelessly places his hands on the sides of its face. As he moves them around, he discovers that fur is very soft and warm. Shien is bewildered, but makes no move to respond.
The surprises don’t stop there. Roberu becomes curious as to what this animal’s teeth would look like. Shien yelps in shock when his mouth is suddenly pried open.
“Holy shit, your teeth are huge.” Roberu hiccups and tries to wrap a hand around a pearly canine. “You could tear me apart with these bad boys.”
The beast speaks for the first time. “Do you want me to?”
“Not really.”
Shien raises an eyebrow, amused.
Roberu starts exploring the fur on the beast’s face, delighted by how the tufts seep between the gaps of his fingers. He giggles. “You’re so — hic — cute. I want to keep you as a pet.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I'm much larger than you are. I could tear you apart with my teeth and claws if I wanted to.”
“But you also look like a really nice doggy.”
“I’m not a dog!” Shien barked back. “I’m a jackal.”
“Still cute. Hey, maybe I should take you to my guild… oh.” His smile falls. “Nevermind.”
“What’s wrong?”
Roberu sighs. “I would take you to my guild, but my ‘friends’ threw me out of it just today. That was the only place I could call ‘home,’ y’now? And they don’t even want me there anymore. I don’t have any other place to go. So now I'm here. Without a home. Homeless. Hic.”
“Don’t worry about your ‘friends’, because they don’t seem to be worried about you. I mean, they quite literally dropped you off in my forest to die.”
“Your forest? You mean — hic — you’ve been living here all this time?”
“Well, yeah. This den is the only place a large beast like me will fit comfortably, away from civilization and people. I don’t really have any other place to call ‘home’ either.”
Shien hears a sniffle and looks down to see Roberu tearing up.
“That’s so sad.” Roberu hiccups. “You should… You should be in a nice cozy house laying on a soft bed—”
“Um, it’s okay actually, I—“
“— and sitting in front of a warm fireplace and eating delicious meals—“
“I live here by choice, you know, so don’t—”
“— and enjoying a roof over your head and a safe private space of your own—”
The beast stands up, slightly distraught. “Okay! I get it, I get it! Give me a moment.”
Roberu has the gall to look like a kicked puppy sitting miserably on the den’s earthy floor, and Shien feels a pang of genuine pity for the man. Well, if Roberu (and apparently, Shien) has no home… Why can’t he just make another one? Shien ponders for a moment before he remembers a certain location. “I think I know of a place you can stay at for now.”
Roberu’s face instantly lights up at the statement. Shien almost thinks it’s adorable. Almost. “Really!? You mean it?”
“Yes, really. It’s a bit of a walk from here, though.”
“Well,what are we waiting for?” The man stands up, slightly wobbly. “Let’s go right now. Come on.”
“I don’t think we’ll get very far with the way you look like you could keel over at any moment.”
“That’s kind of rude, hic.” Roberu trips over a nonexistent pebble. “And also very true. I don’t know what to do now, then.”
“I can think of one way of getting you there, but I don’t think you’ll like it.”
“You can’t say that and not tell me what it is.”
“I’ll show it to you.”
Shien strolls over to the other man and situates himself behind him. He opens his mouth and carefully picks Roberu up by the fabric of his shirt with his teeth, similar to the way a mother wolf would carry her pups. Once he’s sure he has a good grip on the man, Shien leaves the den and starts walking through the dark forest.
Unsurprisingly, Roberu starts complaining within the first minute of walking. “What’s the nicest way to tell you that this is uncomfortable?”
Shien huffs, the warm breath hitting Roberu’s nape and making him squirm. “Just tell it to me straight. You don’t need to sugarcoat it.”
“Okay.” he affirms. “This is uncomfortable.”
“I don’t know how to make it any more comfortable for you.”
“You’re tall, and big, and fuzzy — hic — and really strong,” he thinks and gasps when he gets an idea. “What if I ride on your back?”
“That’s…” Shien stops in his tracks. He starts weighing his options. On one hand, he’s not a domesticated animal whatsoever, so he has absolutely no reason to allow this drunk stranger to sit on his back. On the other hand, the man probably wasn’t going to shut up if he kept dangling from Shien’s mouth, and he supposed he could make an exception for this trip. “That’s not actually a bad idea. I’ll only do it just this once, though.”
“Hic. You’re stingy.”
Shien places Roberu onto the ground and sits down on the ground to make the next task easier for the other man. Roberu shakes his head, clearly upset with how damp the back of his shirt is.
“Well? Are you climbing on or not?”
“I can try. Give me a moment.”
Roberu holds on to the beast’s fur and, with a little help from Shien, manages to clamber onto his back. He lays on the soft pelt and smiles proudly at himself. “I’m good to go now! Onward, my trusty steed!”
Shien rolls his eyes and gets up to continue walking.
As they move, Roberu notices just how untouched the forest is. There’s almost no sign, if any, of a human having passed there recently… and the deeper into the forest they went, the more wild the growth of the vegetation was. In a sense, there was something about the life residing here that seemed livelier than what he was used to seeing in town. Fireflies floated about, briefly illuminating the shadows with their display. Crickets were singing in their nightly concert, and he felt like he could hear a stream of water running some distance away.
Simply put, it felt really nice to be freed from the guild that no longer welcomed him (and probably never had). In this moment, he was happy here, listening to the serene sounds of the forest and laying on the warm blanket of the beast’s fur. For all he cared, he could die at peace right then and there… if only he didn’t feel somewhat empty.
He missed having a place to belong. A place he could come back to and be greeted by someone he deeply cared about. A place he could make memories in and reminisce about later. A place where he could feel at ease just remembering that it existed.
He’d like to have something like that again. That was nice. Maybe he could find it in this forest, where the crickets sang, and the fireflies glowed... and the flowers bloomed… and the beast lived… that’d be nice…
Shien stops walking in front of a small wooded cottage. It shows clear signs of age: vines have covered its walls, and the space around it was thriving with a plethora of flowers and tall grasses. “We’re here.”
He gets no response. Shien’s ears pick up the faint, calm breathing of the man on his back. It seems he fell asleep sometime during the trip.
Shien sighs, but he feels no annoyance at the inconvenience. He actually smiles at the pleasant surprise. “You sure couldn’t wait until we arrived, huh? You’re quite the weird guy.”
He sets Roberu down on the cool grass. The door leading into the cottage is nowhere near big enough to fit his beast form.
He’s grateful Roberu isn’t awake to see how he quickly reduces in size, the fur on his body vanishing and most of his beast characteristics disappearing, save for his ears and tail. He admires the sharp fingernails of his hand for a moment.
It’s been a long time since he’s assumed this almost-human form, but he supposes he’ll have to get used to it while Roberu is around. After all, the beastman kind of wants to keep him nearby for a little while longer.
Shien gently lifts the sleeping Roberu off the ground and carries him into the cottage.