[Flashback] Cat and Mouse [Dymphna]

[Tabarnac]

Day, Season, Year TBD The hunt had been successful, and for this the hunters rejoiced with their most primal voices, throats wet, thirst slaked by the blood of the Drykas clans. Their lives taken, their goods pilfered, the Zith began to fight amongst themselves as they were wont to do, filling the coppery night air with snarls and gnashing of teeth as terrifying as any, less intelligent, predator of the Cyphrus plains. As the hunters vanished into the night carrying as much horseflesh and other booty as they could manage, a young male heard something. A soft whimper, quickly muffled into flesh and earth, heard only in a short space where no other sounds took precedence. Ears pricked, attention piqued, he froze, still as a statue. When the others paused to listen, too, the sound of desperately quite breathing reached all their ears, and they began to converse, their rumbles and sonics traveling the gamut of sound from above a human's capability to below. Gradually, the desecrated camp fell into true silence. Eventually, when dawn broke, even the little sounds of birds and small animals returned. All day long, he watched the hiding place of the survivor through eyes slit against the sunlight. One bat-like wing shaded him while he was awake, and while he catnapped, his head was silently tucked under it, his body wrapped up in those wings. Even more vigilant when night fell again, he smirked to himself at the sounds of a human stomach turning on its own body in its emptiness. Warm and rested, still digesting the flesh of the survivor's family, he was content to wait, curious to see how long her fear would drive her to persevere in hiding. By the second day, however, irritability was growing to vie with his innate curiosity and he began to consider in his waking periods whether it might not be more fun to pounce on the survivor all unawares, to hear her scream, to see her face contorted in fear before he... Surely now he was dreaming. The smell of her fear tickling the right nerve even as he slept. The sating of hunger was a nigh constant pleasure, but he was young, and wanted a pet with which to amuse himself. Waking, he sighed, a sound easily attributed to the wind in the grass. He wanted to know what his little prize looked like. After listening to her body and smelling its changes over the course of two days, he felt like he knew her. It was time to take her home. There was a rustle. He froze again, patiently waiting.

[Dymphna]

The day faded into night, and then the night twisted back into day. She witnessed it through the grass surrounding the hole she’d managed to squeeze herself into. Of course, she’d not been watching. Not exactly and not with present eyes. It had been her mother’s body falling to the ground that had caused her to burrow down deeper like some rodent trying to escape the cold, and it had been the blank look in her eyes that burnt into the girl’s vision… It was a sight she’d not managed to get out of her view as if she’d stared at the sun for too long. Now it was all she saw. She knew, owning faith stronger than many her age, that if she waited in the hole long enough someone would come. She would hear their Pavi, and when she heard it she would come out of the hole. They had been two days out. Unfortunately she had lost track of time more and more with each rumbling complaint of her stomach as the hunger sat in, the warmth of wetting herself turning cold in the spring air, and her thirst… She needed water. She felt herself becoming drunk with lack of it, a feat that she’d only slightly felt in the summer heat… The exhaustion started to filter into the edges of everything, and somehow she still managed to not move. Even as the cramping started in her legs, she stayed still, chewing the inside of her mouth for something to focus on. How many days had gone by? Which way was down, and more importantly, which way was up? A person gets to the point of thirst that they stop thinking clearly, and she was well beyond that time. Her body was concerned with survival, and it seemed to overpower her mind. It resulted in her moving, clawing and climbing her way out into the open air. She was no longer able to stand, her body screaming at her for what she’d done, when she got out she curled up in a ball and let out a shallow cry. Her throat burned, cracking and collapsing in on itself. They would have to come. Her father would come. He had to… She opened her eyes a little, trying to see what was left of her camp. Perhaps there was a waterbag… But then her sigh locked on him, and she found herself unable to move.

[Tabarnac]

The young Zith found it curious that a race of beings so similar in many aspects to his own could be such prey animals by their very nature. Oh, to be sure, there were vicious Drykas who could turn aside a murder of Ziths, but even a suckling Zith would show more vigor than this one. She stank of her own filth; whatever adolescent lusts her original scent tinged with fear had excited in him, they had subsided. Still, she was docile, and that would make a good slave. Perhaps when she was cleaned up, she would become enticing again. If not, he supposed he could eat her. "You look like a rabbit," he said in his own language. Then, quick as a lightning strike, he erupted from his crouch, bowling her over and clutching her, strong arms pinioning hers down. Before she could rightly react to that, he was coiling low to the ground and launching the both of them into the air, his overdeveloped chest muscles showing their worth as his powerful wings held them aloft, beating down the air like a tyrant until he caught a thermal. Flying higher than necessary to frighten her, he probably caused her to soil herself again, and eventually pass out. It was not a quick flight. When she came to, she was being scrubbed by relatively gentle hands, but it was all surreal as she neared starvation. The dim light seemed to come from a naturally occurring fungus, and when she moaned something, plaintive and incoherent, to her attendant, the woman, who had once been beautiful, just shook her head and pointed to her mouth, gaping wide so she could see the ruins of her tongue. Dymphna, ever staunch and stalwart, again fainted. Upon waking once more, there was the same eerie glow, but it was augmented by a warmer, more welcoming candlelight from a few stubs burning steadily in indentations in the rock walls. The Zith was there, just finishing a meal that stank of fresh blood and fear, picking his teeth with one of Dymphna's mother's sickles. Ever alert, he peered curiously at her for a moment, then, ever so slowly, he smiled. It was not a nice smile. He pointed at her with the sickle and said one word in a gutturally accented Pavi: "Slave."

[Dymphna]

Zith were a thing the children in her pavilion had been threatened with when misbehaving… Go to sleep, Dymphna, or a Zith may come and get you… In all of this, she found herself wondering time and time again what she’d done wrong. The answer, though, that she’d crawled into a hole and hid. She’d wanted to survive. She couldn’t get her wits about her, and by the time she woke up she was so hungry and overcome by thirst that she realized she wasn’t fully able to grasp how she’d gotten there. She didn’t know where she was, and she didn’t know the way back to where she’d been… At the sight of her captor, she felt her heart start beating manically in her chest. She needed to get out, to leave… To… Her dark eyes were searching for a door. But what was she going to do? Overpower the Zith? She looked to him, not bothering to size him up. He had one of her mother’s sickles. He was picking his teeth with it, but she was seeing it flip back and forth in her mother’s thin hands. The vision of her mother’s limp body falling to the ground flashed before her. Her mother dead, a courtesy perhaps that she didn’t survive… Slave… Frustration washed over her. Fear. She thought to the woman with no tongue who had cleaned the filth from her, and the silent lesson caught her words in her throat to keep her voice safe. There would be no protest to the label. Instead, in reality still very much a child, she curled her awkward body tightly into itself before starting to cry.

[Tabarnac]

He wasn't certain what he had expected from her. Surely not lust, not yet. There had been fear; that much he could smell in the pheromones boiling off of her. He uncoiled like a snake, or a large cat, and moved toward her. Though he was not stalking her, as she was already his, it would certainly look like stalking were anyone watching. "Stop," he said in the same alien Pavi, offering her a cup of water, a plate of mushrooms and meat, seared more then cooked. The Zith, they had a taste for blood. She would recognize a benign and nutritious fungus, and the meat didn't smell of charred humanity. The water, too, was pure. She could be a well-cared for pet if she behaved accordingly. Despite his feral grace, there was a quick intelligence in his ink black eyes. No compassion, but he hadn't hurt her. Yet. There were stories of relatively civilized Zith, but who believed in benevolent bogeymen? "Drink," he prompted. "Eat."

[Dymphna]

She flinched at the command to stop, dark eyes widening considerably as she went shuddering back her breath. The attempt was pathetic, though. Her bottom lip continued to tremble, and she hiccuped and sputtered, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. She was trying so hard that not only did her throat start to burn but her entire chest felt like fire. The food and water was stared at for a moment when her eyes finally opened again. Her gaze went cautiously to his face, clearly questioning what his motives were. But then what had been presented to her was too alluring as her stomach grumbled and groaned. Her shaking hands went out to grab the plate and cup before she began scurrying back away from him, already drinking as she went. When the cup was empty, she fell upon the food like the starved creature she had been turned into. A hand went swooping down at the mushrooms, shoving them into her mouth. All the while as she stood there hunched over and turned the smallest bit away from him, she was watching his every move.

[Tabarnac]

He continued to watch her, rapt by her survival techniques. It wasn't until she had finished the meat on her plate too that he began to smile. There wasn't all that much food; he didn't want her getting sick as it would be no fun at all to prod her when her own body would be a greater source of misery than he could be. All the same, he was smiling at her, all sharp teeth and feral amusement. Her belly was now full of an aphrodisiac mushroom and the flesh of her Strider. This amused him. He didn't have the words to make her understand yet, but perhaps someday he would. "Speak," he commanded.

[Dymphna]

It wasn’t until she was finished that she’d stopped to wonder what she’d just eaten. A nauseated look washed over her face as she looked down at the empty plate, her brain providing a variety of guesses as to what it could have been. Zith ate people… Had she just eaten someone? A family member? It wasn’t something she recognized the taste of. She sank down to the ground, lean arms wrapping about her knees as she stared, brilliantly terrified, at her captor. His smile, his teeth, caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand up. “I want to go home,” she quickly said in Pavi to him, blurting out the words with wide, begging eyes. There was the web, though. She knew as long as they were inside of it, her father would be coming for her. Someone would come and save her. She would make it easier for them, though. She would find a way to get out… Her stomach lurched just a touch. At the very edge of her understanding, she knew something was happening. Something was wrong. Her face was starting to flush. She blinked slowly, gaze widening again on the young Zith. Had he… Had he just poisoned her?

[Tabarnac]

Her words came upon him much as a torrent, too quick for understanding. As such, he frowned. If he had had a tail, it would be lashing. With dark brows beetling over dark eyes, one might easily imagine violence knocking at the door. The flush to her face gradually spread, and she broke out into a mild sweat. The caves were certainly warm, and he was certainly naked. While he had worn a sort of a harness while shattering her world, he needed nothing in his own den among his own kind. "What?" he asked, his intense desire to know quite plain, as was the threat of ire if his curiosity was not appeased.

[Dymphna]

“I want to go home,” she repeated, words softer than a mouse and slower so he could understand them. She inched back against the wall as best she could to keep away from him. Maybe that wasn’t the best thing to tell him. The wall felt amazing. With her skin flushing, the cool rock caused her to pause. Her mouth opened just a little, brows furrowing down as she seemed to consider what that meant. But then she arched her back so her shoulders could go completely flush against the cold. Before she could keep herself from doing it she found herself letting out a small shuddering moan, sliding down to the ground, and writhing against the floor.