Skill:

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Set around 2am.

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It was the time of the beast...

The boy had found in his time alive in The Spine he quiet enjoyed the night... Everyone was asleep for the most part and it was much easier to sneak up on his siblings and those sleeping critters...

Abaddon had found that he quite enjoyed waking up a burrow of rabbits with a few loud barks into their holes and casing them around for a while, finding one to pick on...

One to torture for a while...

A smirk crossed the boys features, for tonight was different... Tonight he didn't feel that hunger... That burning rage within his breast... Tonight he felt still...

The large child laid still, positioned on his stomach, head between his paws as he flickered his empty duo-toned gazed across each silent body in the den, finding they were all still in their own way he decided to pull himself up to his large paws. The monster dragged them slowly, loudly, across the granite floor and bared teeth to the winds that blew in his face... Snapping a few times at the empty air that blew a bite across his muzzle in the darkness...

He snapped once left... Once right... At nothing but the bite of winter on his cheeks...

After a few seconds of trying to punish the invisible wind spirit he came to the edge of the den cliff. Abaddon plopped his ass heavily against the ground as he stared up at the moon... That half hidden thing that lit up parts of the lands and hid the other half. Crimson and gold swept along the lands below, surveying his surroundings like he might have been memorizing it... Even though he already had in his 6 months of life...

He didn't talk, didn't move, didn't make a sound... He was a bi-colored statue in the night...

Sleep never came easy when Abaddon was awake.

She hadn’t stirred when he dragged himself across the floor, not even when his heavy steps scuffed against the stone. Lithe had learned long ago that movement invited notice—and his kind of notice never ended well. So she stayed curled tight against the wall, body folded in on itself like a pressed flower, barely breathing. Her ears twitched at the sound of snapping jaws, but she didn’t flinch. He wasn’t trying to rouse her. At least, not yet.

Through a half-lidded eye, she watched his shape retreat toward the mouth of the den, hulking and strange in the pale half-light. The wind bit at him. He bit back. She wished it would bite harder.

He sat there like a statue now, and for a moment she could almost pretend he wasn’t real. Just a trick of moonlight. A story meant to scare little ones into obedience.

But the sting of old bruises said otherwise.

Lithe didn’t move. She didn’t dare. But her eyes stayed open now, watching the back of his head with a kind of brittle stillness—half dread, half hope that he might just stay out there forever.

Skill:

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Set around 2am.

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He stared for a while. Te winds shifting his fur this way and that in an uncomfortable and yet somehow soothing way. He didn't dare shift, didn't dare twitch, as he felt the chill of the night racing down his spine like a lightening bolt... And yet he quite enjoyed the bite and snap of the mountain air...

He felt eyes... Staring, glaring, watching...

The man quickly, swiftly, whipped his head around like an owl, almost completely all the way around as he zeroed in on the one that watched him... Waited for him like a garter snake coiling, waiting for a safe time to escape. An evil grin split his features as he met her eyes with a quickness that was almost unwolflike, eyes glinting in the moonlight that was exposed from behind those dark clouds that rolled oh so slowly.

Come... He demanded, a many of so many words, patting the ground beside him. He didn't know what his plans were, what he would do with her once she came, but he'd figure it out along the way. Would he bite and snap at her like the winds? Would he be feisty and devilish? Not even the Devil himself knew what laid in store but for know he waited for her to come beside him.

She shouldn’t have looked.

Lithe knew it the moment their eyes met. Something cold dropped in her chest, heavier than the night air, and her limbs stiffened with the weight of it. The way he turned—like his bones weren’t made right, like he could hear the sound of her thoughts as they flinched away from him—it made her stomach twist.

Come…

The word clung to her ribs like ice.

She hesitated, breath caught somewhere between lungs and throat, but not for long. Fear was faster than thought. She unfolded herself carefully, one paw at a time, keeping low as though that might make her smaller somehow. Less interesting. Easier to forget if he changed his mind.

Stone scraped beneath her pads as she crossed the den floor, each step a silent plea to the moon overhead: Don’t let him touch me. Don’t let him change his mind. Don’t let him decide I’m fun tonight.

She didn’t sit beside him right away. She hovered first, unsure how close he wanted her, unsure if hesitation itself might be a punishment. Then, slowly, she lowered herself into the space he’d marked—small, quiet, pretending her heartbeat wasn’t pounding in her ears.

She didn’t speak. Didn’t breathe too loud. Just waited.

For whatever he decided she was for.

Skill:

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Lithe

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She came to him. Slowly, hesitantly, achingly painfully slow... And he almost snapped at her, but his patience had grown since they'd last interacted, so he gave her the time she needed to drag herself over to him. Following her every move with Citrine and Crimson orbs. She didn't sit right away, stood and hovered beside him as if questioning whether or not she should really sit.

But then she lowered herself into that bowed position beside him, he smiled down at his smaller sister with a warmth that flashed over him for just a moment at her submission to him. It was brief, only fleeting, but it was there enough that a small genuine smile formed over those onyx lips, that alabaster jaw, as he stared down at her.

Something in him didn't scream for violence tonight, something about the way the moon hid from him brought him some comfort and soothed that dastardly soul. Good girl... He praised as he took his tail and flopped it behind her and around her haunches, pulling her roughly against him. Since Rose had been gone he'd felt emptier than normal, he missed the warmth of her body during his sleeping times... The way her breathing against him soothed a piece of his soul the moon couldn't... He missed her closeness...

So a surrogate tonight Lithe would be, whether she liked it or not she would be the one to keep him company tonight.

The brush of his tail startled her—though not outwardly. Her body didn’t jolt. Her breath didn’t catch. But something inside of her shrank, folding smaller at the press of him beside her. He shifted. She felt it. The closeness wasn’t a question—it simply was. He didn’t tug, didn’t force, but his nearness swallowed her all the same.

She didn’t pull away. She knew better.

The praise—good girl—drifted over her like the rustle of dead leaves. Familiar. Faint. It was what you said to a thing that listened.

Lithe kept her eyes down. She didn’t move. She didn’t ask why she was here or what he wanted, because she knew there was no real answer. Not one that mattered.

He was warm. She was small. That was enough.

Her thoughts began to drift, the way they always did when she didn’t understand something but couldn’t make it stop. A place inside her turned quiet. Blank. The stone beneath her pressed up through her paws and into her chest, grounding and cold.

And then she saw them.

Out beyond the mouth of the den—where snow gathered in tufts and the moon painted everything in silver—stood trees. Pink ones. Soft, blooming, wrong for this time of year. Too bright, too warm. She stared.

She didn’t think they were real. But that didn’t matter.

The wind carried something sweet. She didn’t know the word for it, not exactly, but it reminded her of something soft. Something her nose liked. Something that wasn’t this.

One of the trees moved gently, almost like it was breathing. For a moment, it reminded her of a stretch—like how her father used to do, before sleep, when Lithe was still small enough to curl beneath his chest. That was a long time ago. Maybe it hadn’t happened at all.

Her stomach hurt.

She thought about the salamander Draugur had brought her once. It had been black with yellow dots. It had been dead, cold when he placed it at her paws. She remembered the way its tiny legs folded stiffly, the way its belly touched the rock without a sound.

It hadn’t needed to stand up.

Lucky thing.

Skill:

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Lithe

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Abaddon felt her settle in beside him and he swore he felt her shrink at the wrap of his curling appendage. He didn't smirk at this this time, didn't falter with a shove of his hips or shoulder, he just simply sat in silence with her for a while. No feelings of lust surfaced within him, no, he didn't even know what lust was, it was something more wholesome tonight under the half-faced woman shining from above.

After a while of staring off into space with his surrogate settled in beside him he began to scan the horizon, growing bored of sitting and staring off into space, and he saw them… something new, something foreign, something Fresh...

The devil turned his head to look down at Lithe beside him and noticed her staring too. Something flashed, something brotherly, and he felt the twitch of a warm smile spreading across his pale maw. He quickly shoved it back down with a shudder of suppression, one he was sure she would feel, and shook his head free of emotion before he spoke, stoic and firm.

You see them too…? They weren't there before… The larger titan questioned and stated, boring duo toned optics into Lithe’s skull as she stared out across the scenery that captivated them so.

The winds blew a gust across the pair, a strong enough shove that he leaned into her a little more, onyx flanks melting into smaller alabaster as his warmth seeped into her body and hers his. Confusion landed on the beast as he furrowed his eyebrows, confusion as to why he suddenly didn't feel the hate he usually felt, the anger that usually consumed him when it came to the shying wraith. He held back a small growl, afraid he'd startle his smaller sibling away from him, and in this moment that closeness was really all he craved.

She felt it—the shift. Not in his tone or his weight, not exactly. But in the space between them. It changed.

The pressure of his body against hers didn’t carry the same threat it usually did. There was no sting, no sharp breath waiting to follow. Just… warmth. The kind that seeps through your fur when someone leans too close for too long. It wasn’t gentle, but it also wasn’t cruel. That was what confused her most.

She didn’t look at him when he spoke.

You see them too ...?

A question. She hadn’t expected one. Her ears flicked toward him but her gaze remained fixed on the trees. They were still there, bright and blooming where the cold should’ve stripped everything bare. The scent clung to the back of her throat now—sweet and dizzying, like something she wanted to remember, or maybe already had.

She nodded. Barely.

The gust of wind made her eyes sting. His flank pressed into hers more fully, and though she didn’t lean back, she didn’t pull away either. Her body had long since stopped deciding where it wanted to be.

She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know if she was supposed to speak, or if silence would be the safer answer. So she settled on the truth, though she wasn’t sure it would be understood.

... I don’t think they’re for us.

Her voice was small. Not defiant. Just distant. Like a thought spoken aloud by mistake.

The blossoms shifted again. She watched them move, soft and slow, and wondered if they would still be there come morning—or if they’d vanish like all the nice things did, leaving only the cold behind.

Skill:

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Lithe

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He felt her nod but nothing else in her moved. The beast figured she was in fear of him and that didn't bother him one bit, it actually excited bits of him that he didn't understand, a growing within his chest and twisted around his insides like a trapped viper. He chuckled a little at himself and these things that disappeared as soon as they surfaced, shrugging and listening to her words when she finally uttered them.

I don't think they're for us...

Abaddon scowled at this and furrowed his dark eyebrows over those dangerously glinting eyes, they shot daggers at her and he whipped his head to her and snapped words sharp and jagged.

How would you know...? His quick quip as he stared down at her, frustrated and upset that she would say such a thing, of course they were meant for them. They were the only ones there.

Let's go... A demand as he rose, standing on all four massive paws the titan jerked his head over his shoulder and if instructing her to move first and waited for her footfalls towards the trees. Abaddon caught a whiff of something sweet... Sickly so as he sniffed a few times in the night air, he wasn't pleased with the scent, whatever it was. The boy lifted a lip of his left canine at the scents of sweetness and the heavy aroma of flowers, unsure of what they would find he waited patiently for Lithe to move.

She knew the tone before the words even came. That lashing, fast-spoken snap. Sharp like teeth. It didn’t make her flinch—not visibly. But her breath tightened in her chest, held just a little longer than it should’ve been.

How would you know ...?

She didn’t answer.

Not because she was defiant. Because she truly didn’t have an answer. She hadn’t meant anything by it; it was just a thought, a string of words that slipped through when her mouth forgot to stay shut.

He stood, all shadow and size and warning. The cold rolled in the space where his warmth had been, but it wasn’t relief. Just a different kind of dread.

Let’s go ...

Her ears pinned.

There was no pause, no weighing of the choice. Lithe rose to her feet the way she always did when ordered—quiet, immediate, head low. She stepped toward the trees without a word, paws pressing shallow prints into the wind-packed snow. The scent thickened as she walked: sweet, strange, like something left out too long in the sun.

It wasn’t a good smell. It was wrong. But she didn’t say that. She didn’t look back, either.

As she neared the path, the grass beneath her paws grew soft, damp with dew that had no business being there. The trees loomed taller now, more vibrant, their petals shifting like breath. They weren’t dead. They weren’t sleeping. And for a brief moment, she thought maybe they weren’t waiting for anyone at all.