still a credit to your ruse, what a beautiful excuse
to never open up your eyes and see the things you lose

Fire burned in his limbs, in his throat, wound its shadows around his heart expertly: as breath after breath plunged in and out of his lungs the frenzied terror settled into something subtler, like a cloud's shadow cast over the ground. She jerked in the water at the sound of his voice, head spinning to pinpoint his location. For a moment, surprise blotted out the growing anxiety. She hadn't known he was on her tail? Hadn't realized that when she ran, he ran? That every step along the way, she had had a white shadow, just as terrified as she? He stared at her mutely for a moment, as she got it out of her mouth that she didn't know, and rolled onto her belly. The water glistened all over her where she lifted out of the gentle water. Its soothing rhythm was so at odds with his heartbeat, and the terror which sunk its teeth into their pitiful world.

Huge. Black. Annoying as hell. He snorted, face settling into a grim smile. Don't forget fucking terrifying. What was it about the blackness, about the way it obliterated the stars, the waves, smothered the land itself..? What was it? Moving oblivion? Disease? How could it strike such fear into their hearts..? Again, his gaze turned to the way they had come, to the pastel orange of the dawn sky, and the trees, the horizon. No sign of that living cloud of blackness coming closer, but still.. he couldn't shake it from his mind, shake the fear from his veins.

And as if to make matters worse, much worse, Loudmouth said it was on the move.

"What," he hissed, head flicking around like a snake's. It was spreading? Just as he was about to open his mouth, spit venom at the world for its fucking nuisance ways and at Asni for not keeping things in order, he saw her face—saw her eyes. Something.. she was staring wide-eyed, frozen with horror, in his direction. And all his anger was consumed by itself, mounted into something stronger, something more directed; he looked behind him again, but there was nothing there and with grim determination smouldering in his eyes he turned back to her. On the beach, she'd seemed young, but so strong, despite, or maybe because of, their antics. Here, with each passing second, she seemed more and more a child. Too many times, over and over again, he'd let his own children, and their mothers, down. If there was anything he could do, to save this one—the child of someone else, no less precious.. no less loved by her parents, than his were, despite his own incredibly fucked-up tendency to just ditch them... He knew that the day someone saved his kid, he'd be grateful.

But it wasn't because of that backwards appeal to karma; it was because he simply couldn't abandon a child to the darkness of this world.

"Hush," he found himself whispering, taking a few steps closer on limbs that still shook faintly with the aftermath. Gently, he reached out, made to touch her wet cheek lightly with his soft muzzle. There was not much he could say—not much he could do. Promise it would be alright? He was too much of a realist. Promise to keep her safe? He always broke that one, no matter how much he tried. No matter how fierce his faith, or how determined his heart, he worked no miracles: for all his deeds and for all his reputation, he was but one man. In the face of that, the terror of the darkness didn't seem so strange. Strip everything from the bones and despair is the one thing you have left.

"We'll figure something out," he said after a moment, staring out of the grove from the corner of his eye. "Somehow, we'll get through this, and come out on top." Sometimes you just need to have a little faith. Wasn't that what he had, in d'Artagnan? In Kahlua, and all her whimsical loyalty? In Hellena's serene justness?

Now, he just needed to have some faith in himself, too.