Skill : 「 Howlentines 」
Thread Title: Shrek: 「 I’m a Believer 」 
Lithe

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Baldur’s eyes shot open with a sudden intensity, as if jumping awake from one of those dreams where you’re falling. He could feel the steady, quick-paced thrum of his heart beating in his chest. Bleary eyed and confused, he blinked rapidly on an attempt to regain some focus. Something felt off and he couldn’t quite describe what it was.

Hauling himself up, the boy shook out his coat, freeing several trapped flower petals. Baldur’s face scrunched up, uncertainty reflecting in his gaze. Where did the remnants of pink blossoms come from? Eyes of amber and soft blue began to scan, his body spinning in a circle to get a full 360 view of the area.

In the distance was a cluster of pink canopied trees, tightly grouped and forming a type of tunnel he could enter. While hesitation may have been natural to feel, Baldur was driven by inquisition.

Set before SKYBREAKER. | Music

She had not meant to sleep so long. Curled into the dip where stone met soil, her narrow frame fit easily into a hollow carved just beyond the den’s entrance—close enough to feel the air but still swaddled in the earth’s embrace.

The cold hadn’t touched her here. Not entirely. A faint warmth clung to the stone beneath her ribs, trapped from the morning sun, and it had lulled her into stillness for longer than she realized.

When her eyes opened, there was no rush to move. No voice barking her name. No clawed footfalls in the dirt to remind her she had lingered too long. The silence that met her was not weighted. It did not carry the promise of punishment. It simply was.

Her gaze wandered toward the entrance, where the light had grown brighter since she last closed her eyes. It spilled across the ground in a soft band, cutting through the dim and drawing her attention to something she couldn’t quite place at first—some pale shift in the world beyond.

Pink.

It was only a sliver. A thin, quiet brush of color visible just at the edge of the den’s mouth, half-veiled by bramble and dust. But it startled her all the same. Not with fear—but with recognition. Her heart skipped, a strange flutter that caught her ribs on the way up.

She didn’t move at first. Only watched the light shift across the den’s entrance, that sliver of pink holding its place as though it waited for her. Her breath became steady in her chest, slower than usual, and there was no bite in it when she exhaled. No bracing for what might come.

Then—without thought, without command—her limbs unfurled.

She stretched forward from her place against the stone, the motion slow and quiet, a gentle unlocking of joints that too often moved in fear. Her spine curved in one fluid motion as she rose to her paws, shoulders loose, head low. There was no trembling. No stiffness. Only the natural pull of gravity and something softer still, drawing her toward the light.

She moved toward the entrance—slowly, like she didn’t expect to be punished for it.

The earth was still cool beneath her pads, the last of the frost refusing to fully give way. But she didn’t recoil as her steps carried her across the threshold in silence, one after the other, until the hush of the outside opened fully before her.

The world met her gently.

And there—beyond the jagged arch of the den’s entrance—the trees stood.

They had returned, just as she remembered them. Not the skeletal shapes she was used to, not the bare winter branches straining toward a sky that offered nothing. These were full and flushed with bloom, their petals drifting through the noon-lit air in soft spirals. The ground was speckled with color, as though the season had shifted without permission.

She lingered at the mouth of the den for a long moment, her forepaws just brushing the line where shadow met sun. The earth dipped gently from there, sloping down into the lowland where the trees had taken root once more. From this height, she could see the sweep of them—soft and pink and impossibly bright beneath the pale spring sky. They looked almost too delicate to be real. Like they would vanish again the moment she drew near.

But no one was there to stop her.

No voice barked her name. No snapping teeth at her hocks to force her pace. No looming shape to lead the way and steal the wonder from it.

So she descended.

Slowly, carefully, as if the ground itself might collapse beneath her. Her paws found the slope’s uneven edges, pressing into the thawing soil with the same tentative weight she’d always used when crossing a space she wasn’t sure she was allowed to enter. Only this time, there was no permission to seek. No eyes to follow. She was alone. And the trees did not recoil from her.

There was no path she was meant to take—no trail beaten down by the ones who had come before. The petals brushed her legs like welcome, catching between her toes and clinging to the pale of her coat. She walked not because she was told to, not because she was afraid of what would happen if she didn’t—but because something inside her wanted to. Because the ache in her chest quieted with every step.

It was different than before.

Before, she had walked in front of him, but only because he'd told her to. Every step had felt watched—measured. She had not led so much as obeyed, and felt the weight of his impatience each time her pace slowed. The beauty of the trees had been there, yes—but it hadn't belonged to her. It had clung to the edges of his shadow. It had been something she was allowed to see, not something she was allowed to touch.

Now, it was hers.

The bruises along her sides did not ache. Her breath moved cleanly through her chest. The muscles between her shoulders did not hold themselves tight. For once, she wasn’t being watched. She was not performing. She was not surviving. She was simply here.

The girl did not smile—but she did not look away, either. Her gaze wandered skyward, catching on the motion of the petals as they fell like snow through the light.

And above her, the trees whispered.

Skill : 「 - 」

---

Unbeknownst to him, another was encroaching on his newly found forest of pink blooms. Her presence was masked by the falling of petals and various new scent trails Baldur had taken interest in. The wind was not in his favor today, for all he could pick up was the crisp sweetness of the canopies above. The entire scene was ethereal, causing the boy to take his time as he began to roam through the designated pathway.

Baldur’s ears cupped forward, the clamoring songs of birds filled the branches above. Their liveliness was unexpected but not underappreciated. Amber and blue colored eyes flickered upward in search of the small flock, immediately wincing as a result of a soft beam of light that snuck through the dense sea of flowers. A paw lifted, rubbing across his face to ease the stun he’d felt from the ray of sun. With squinted lids, he looked up once more, watching the various birds flutter bough to bough as they merrily chirped. Pockets of blue sky and golden light would break through occasionally, but for the most part this place appeared to be fully covered.

The boy pushed on, following the gradually narrowing path, his head still tipped upwards as his feet moved carefully in an attempt to avoid tripping. Baldur’s intense interest in the mystery of it all drew his eyes to scan everywhere but straight in front of him. A glance tossed over his shoulder, his chin lifting to look up, his neck turning to examine the trunks lined up to the left and right, but never aimed ahead. Perhaps that was how he stumbled into the other, that and the fact he couldn’t detect another at any point. Where did they come from?

A deep belled oof, instinctively left him as he bumped into whatever—well, whoever—it was. Instantaneously, Baldur’s brows furrowed and an agitated frown fell to his lips. He was having a good time and they ruined it. HEY! Watch where you’re— the anger in his voice settled as he looked down to see a girl, younger and smaller than himself. Ah fuck… Look out, next time, he mumbled beneath his breath, avoiding eye contact as he opted to stare at a blade of grass beside her foot instead.

Tension riddled him, and it took some means of control to prevent his fur from bristling like a hissing cat’s. Baldur swallowed his silence, eyes darting from the grass towards the sky, and then finally settling on the girl for a moment. He couldn’t explain what it was, but she appeared… fragile, in a sense; like a pane of ice that would shatter if mishandled even minutely. Breakable, delicate, soft—challenges that were the polar opposite of his own.

Putting on an irritated front, Baldur jerked his head away once again, staring off into the distance of fluttering petals instead of at the other. What’re you doin’ here, anyway? It wasn’t like he was curious or anything, he just felt like asking.

She hadn’t heard him.

The hush beneath the trees had been too complete, too soft, too sweet. The world had dulled to petals and filtered light—those pale blooms wheeling slowly overhead like some great, inverted sea—and she had tilted her head to watch them for longer than she meant to. Her steps had been slow, her body unguarded. The edge of her ear twitched only when a wayward blossom skimmed across it, and even then she hadn’t fully registered the moment.

Somewhere in the canopy above, birdsong threaded through the stillness, delicate and distant, and even that had felt kind. The grove had taken her in, had offered her peace she hadn’t asked for, and she'd begun to believe it might not demand anything in return.

So when the other body met hers, it was like being struck from beneath the surface of a dream.

The impact wasn’t violent—just a shoulder bumping hers, a sudden shape where before there had been none—but it pierced her like a crack through glass nonetheless.

She stumbled a step back, breath snagging against her ribs as her ears flattened and her tail curled hard between her legs. It was as if something cold had gripped her spine and yanked her from the warmth of the trees, dragging her back into a place she thought she had escaped. Her body remembered before her mind could name it, curling in on itself, folding down to wait for what always came next.

And then—the voice.

HEY! Watch where you’re—

The sound came hot and loud, the kind of shout that split the quiet too easily, and for a breathless, panicked moment, she was sure she knew it. Not the voice itself, but the shape of it. The rhythm. The rise. Her eyes dropped to the dirt between her paws like they’d been taught to, a practiced gesture born of habit and memory. Her breath stopped short, held still like prey beneath the weight of an approaching step. Somewhere deep in her chest, something went taut and trembling.

But it didn’t come.

No second shout. No teeth. No blood. The world stayed still.

The voice softened.

She blinked. The breath she had been holding left her slowly, slipping between her teeth in a quiet hiss that wasn’t quite relief. Her chest ached from the force of holding it in. Her head lifted by inches, gaze crawling toward the source of it all—and stopped.

He was not one of them.

He stood taller than her, maybe older, or maybe just heavier in the shoulders. His fur caught the light in a way she didn’t understand—reds and rusts and molten golds rippling through it, warm as firelight and utterly unlike the blunt monochrome of her kin. He looked like something dragged out of a warmer world, a wolf painted in a palette her family had never touched. Not the harsh black-and-whites of Abaddon and Baal . Not the cold-pressed silver of Draugur's coat. There were no bruises clinging to his limbs, no blood dried beneath his jaw. He didn’t smell like cruelty.

He smelled like the trees.

Like the petals still caught in the curve of her tail, like the warmth that had only just begun to settle in her bones. A petal had landed on him during the collision, pale against the richness of his chest, and for a moment, her eyes fixed on it. It felt like the only real thing in the space between them.

He wasn’t looking at her. Not really. His gaze flicked away, jaw tight, as if he didn’t know what he’d just touched. As if he didn’t know what to do with her or how to get away. The tension in his body lingered even after his voice had dropped, and she recognized it—not the same as her brothers, but close enough to make her hesitate.

What’re you doin’ here, anyway?

The question was nothing. Casual. Tossed carelessly in her direction like a twig thrown into a stream. It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t kind. It was just ... there.

Her mouth opened before she could stop it.

... sorry.

The word emerged like a reflex, small and dry and nearly swallowed. For not paying attention. For being in the way and becoming a burden. For believing, for even the slightest of moments, that she'd had any right to be here at all.

It hovered between them for a breath before the petal on his chest fluttered free. She watched it fall. Slow. Weightless. And let her eyes follow it down—grateful for the excuse to look away.

Skill : 「 - 」

---

Baldur… didn’t know. Didn't know what to do, didn’t know what to say, didn’t know where to look, didn’t know where to go—he just didn’t know. He could feel himself being slowly, agonizingly crushed beneath the overbearing weight of anxious expectations. How was he meant to find the answers here? Was it even possible? Was it just a guessing game? Fuck.

As he did his best to avoid her gaze, there was no mistaking the way her body reflexively reacted to him—be it his voice, words, appearance, or presence—and it made his mind stutter. The girl was acting as if Baldur flashed his teeth with a gnarled threat, cowering and falling into a helplessly, semi-defensive posture. If she was attempting to appear able bodied and capable of handling an angry stranger, she was doing a really bad job. She looked like a white rabbit that had been tossed around as a chew toy, timid and trained to curl into herself.

Baldur’s brows furrowed the more he pondered the possible causes. Was it truly him that spurred such a reaction or maybe this is just how she was with everyone? It was impossible to read the true thought behind her actions. Uneasy with the way the scene may appear to an onlooker, Baldur shifted his weight between his front legs, a mindless fidget in an attempt to release some festering anxieties. His psyche was blanketed with a single, deep-rooted thought.

Did she know?

It would be impossible for her to know, wouldn’t it? But… this was how others had treated him for the entirety of his life. Like a monster. A damned creature that was not meant to be treated as an equal, that was meant to be feared and hated and outcasted.

Baldur took a step back subconsciously, his eyes still focusing on anything that was not Lithe’s face. A forced clear of his throat was to break the silence that was beginning to feel suffocating and irritating simultaneously. He wanted to run, truthfully. He wanted to flee the look of terror he managed to inflict upon some stranger, even wherever this strange place was, it haunted him.

It was the soft utterance of an apology that made his eyes seek her. She was sorry. Sorry for what? All he did was ask what she was doing there, did she expect him to chase her off like some scavenger? Baldur bit his tongue, maintaining his silence a moment more before blurting out something that would only deepen her fear of him.

Not like I own the place, a dismissive comment. She didn’t have to be sorry, she had every right to be there just as he did. Baldur’s multi-colored eyes watched her for a moment, the way she still radiated the fragility of ice, so easily shattered if one wished to break her.

Distantly, he wondered, did she feel like ice? Was her fur nothing more than frost and her skin cold to the touch? He’d bumped her shoulder, and she hadn’t cracked like one would expect. But he also didn’t truly feel what she was like. If he touched her, would he be able to feel the frigid sting of frostbite for the first time? What exactly did “cold” feel like?

Baldur finally decided to move, his legs sidestepping where she had planted herself. The tunnel was leading… somewhere? And he had a feeling it would be better than the current situation he found himself in. The boy stopped in his tracks after a few feet, not even caring to look back as he spoke. Don’t expect me to chase you off, he wasn’t sure how much that would truly reassure her, but he wasn’t the monster others saw him to be.

Her breath curled tight inside her chest as her thoughts scrambled to keep pace with her body's fear—tried to assign shape and meaning to the noise, the color, the unexpected hesitation that had followed her voice. Yet when he spoke again, it was not with the tone nor the words she knew it should have been. He hadn't barked, hadn't snarled, hadn't commanded that she get out of the way or get up or stay there.

But that didn't mean he wouldn't. Because sometimes, they waited; sometimes they let her think it was over, that they had grown bored, that they were moving on—only to sink their teeth in as soon as she dared to move.

So when his paws shifted—barely a step, just a change in weight—she tensed all over again.

Her gaze didn't rise, but she saw him nonetheless, through the blur of her lashes, through the low haze of petals still drifting. She watched as his forelimbs angled to the side, slow and unsure, as though he were skirting around a carcass he didn't want to touch. Then her breath hitched as he moved out of view, her stomach tightening as for a moment, she expected to feel him behind her—expected his voice to return at her nape, close and hot and cruel.

But it didn't.

The sound didn't come. The heat of his breath never reached her neck. There was no shove, no snap, no teeth.

Just ... absence.

She held still, her body held tight in the shape her brothers had carved into her, waiting for the moment to lurch back into motion—but it never did. Instead, the weight of his presence began to slide away—slowly, then more surely, as his steps began to carry him somewhere behind her. She didn't know how far he'd gone—only that the space around her kept stretching, quieter with every step. Her ears strained, listening for the inevitable turn, for the rush of movement, for the teeth in her skin that never came.

Don't expect me to chase you off.

She breathed—not with relief, exactly, but with a suddenness that made her ribs ache.

The air tasted wrong on the way in. Too sweet. Too light. Then it shuddered out of her, uncertain, as if unsure whether it had been earned. She remained coiled, but the pressure had ... lessened. No command had come, no voice behind her ordering her to move. The boy had walked away and with him went the certainty that pain would follow.

She stayed. Not because she felt safe—but because, for once, she hadn't been told to run.

Her body, still low to the ground, began to loosen by degrees. Not all at once, and certainly not visibly. But somewhere beneath the skin, something softened, because he hadn't pushed her aside. He hadn't yelled again. He hadn't followed through on the threat her mind had been so sure was coming.

She didn't understand it.

He'd bumped into her, shouted, looked at her like she was something inconvenient. And then—he left.

It didn't make sense.

Her thoughts tangled in the gap between what she knew and what had happened. She’d seen this before—had felt it before, too—that brief, false quiet that sometimes came before the next demand. Draugur had been soft, once. Had looked at her like she mattered. But it had always come with expectation. With the weight of his gaze at the base of her skull. With the knowledge that even kindness was a kind of trap.

But this boy hadn’t looked at her like that. Hadn’t looked at her much at all.

There had been no threat in his retreat. No hook in his voice. He hadn’t tried to call her back or shame her for freezing. He had simply stepped around her. Left her untouched. Let her stay.

No one had ever done that.

Her body remained low to the earth, her legs curled protectively beneath her, but the moment began to shift around her like water in a disturbed pool. She didn’t know what to do with the space she’d been given—didn’t trust it. Didn’t understand it—how to hold it, how to believe it wasn't just bait strung between breaths. The world had never handed her autonomy before and asked nothing in return.

Her gaze dropped to the dirt, to the places where his pawprints had disturbed the petals.

Her weight leaned into her hips as her forelimbs unfolded beneath her, her head tilting as she began to move. Slowly—so slowly—she rose half from her crouch, spine stretching without thought. Her torso twisted, ribs pulling with the movement as she followed the line of his retreat. The strain should’ve hurt, but it felt far away—like the ache belonged to someone else. And so she turned, drawn not by thought but by something deeper, stranger, that lived in her bones and moved without asking.

Her gaze climbed the slope of trees behind her, catching first on the path, then the sway of a low branch, then—

Him.

She had thought the forest had been hers, for a while. But maybe it had only been waiting to show her something else—again and again, until it stuck.

Lithe watched as the light caught the edges of his fur—brushed against the copper and gold of him like he belonged to the grove more than she ever would. His shoulders were square, but not heavy. Not like her brothers’. The tension in his frame was different—coiled, yes, but inward. Like he was holding something back, not preparing to strike.

The petals still fell around him, caught in slow spirals that seemed to follow his path even after he’d passed. A few clung stubbornly to the slope of his back and hindquarters, pale against the depth of his coloring—soft white and near-pink trailing after rust and gold and quiet shadow. They made a picture of him without meaning to. Framed him in a way that felt too careful to be accidental, as if the forest had made him and was not yet ready to let him go.

He stood like he didn’t know—or didn't care—he was being watched. Like he expected her to disappear the moment he turned his back. That she hadn’t was, perhaps, the only power she’d ever been allowed to keep.

She didn’t trust him.

But the ache in her chest had not faded with his distance. It pulsed there, dull and steady, like something inside her had tilted toward him without asking permission. It wasn’t longing—she was too young for that, too wild in the places no one could see. But there was hunger—starvation, perhaps. For something she didn't know how to name, didn't know what to do with beyond holding it in her hands and hoping it wouldn't shatter.

Her eyes remained on him.

She should have stayed quiet.

Should have lowered herself back into the earth and thanked whatever force ruled this place that she had been spared. She should have been grateful for an encounter that ended without split skin and blossoming pain.

But her mouth opened anyway.

Her voice broke the quiet like a twig underfoot—small, sharp, out of place. And yet, it hung there. Like it belonged, despite being louder than she meant it to be.

Why?

Skill : 「none」

---

Baldur was unaware of the turning gears that were operating within the other’s mind. The way her imagination was building up scenarios she subconsciously expected to pan out only to wind up remaining there, dumbfounded, when nothing actually happened. The girl’s internal struggles were too complex for a stranger to dissect with a single glance and minimally exchanged words. Truthfully, he’d mostly shoved thoughts of her aside, not daring to examine anything closer. Every encounter ended the same way, be it quick or drawn out, he’d learned it was best to move on quickly.

He’d focused on the tunnel ahead of him—watching the way the arched canopies of pink blossoms seemed to seal off the cold from the outside world and accentuate the narrowing trail. Through the flurry of fluttering petals, Baldur’s could barely make out the way the tunnel’s depths differed in atmosphere. The boy’s eyes squinted, he swore he could see the grass bleed into a different shade of green versus the rich emerald layered beneath the scatter blossoms he stood atop.

Perhaps he was trying a little too hard to move on from the unsightly interaction, looking for anything to draw his attention to that was not the girl crumpled against the ground like a young fawn hiding from predators.

Only a few strides had been taken before a single word shattered the new found reality of peace he was forming for himself.

“Why?”

…

Why?

Baldur slowed to a stop, a single ear flicking as a pink petal grazed it. He stood there, not yet turning to face her. The single worded question was still echoing in his mind. Why? Why what? Why wouldn’t he chase her off like some stray scavenger trying to steal his meal? Confusion laced into his thoughts, uncertainty paired with it. A deep bellied exhale pressed from his nose as he wondered what the hell he was meant to say in response to “why”.

The boy turned on his heels, eyes narrowed as he watched the pale fur of Lithe get littered with pink petals. A single brow rose, his expression empty as he still struggled to answer her. Why won’t I chase you off? Why the hell would I? the confusion was evident in his tone, internally he was flustered. What the hell was wrong with this girl? Already said, not like I own the place, Dismissively, Baldur shrugged. Got no reason to force you out, unless she wanted to give him a reason to.