Trouble is where I am going to be.

June 7th, 2011 · No Comments · The Primal


I don’t know what started it all. It has been months since father’s passing, and weeks since Zul’ai’kah began her training as a druid.

I suppose I must have been lonely. I’d found myself caring for two people, one of them dead and in need of a place to lay forever, and one not yet birthed into her true self and still looking for the world to which she belonged. The transition has left me acutely aware of the void. Now that everything has settled: all the dust, all the tears, all the ‘goodbyes’ are expended, I am left to myself once more. Alone.

I suppose that’s what started it all, then. Wandering aimlessly, riding up and down the stone concourses, marveling at our handiwork and at our dedication. Feeling smug and self-satisfied. It leads one to stumble upon trouble, though. That’s when I turned the corner and saw him standing there, effortlessly pelting arrows into a target board from a great distance.

Primal‘. I pause even to write the word, linger over the sound of it in my head, and then test it out on my tongue. ‘Primal‘. FrostmaneSavage. Savage looks and a savage heart. If they even possess such things! No doubt it is a fiction that the Ice trolls have souls.

I turned the corner and demanded passage regardless. For myself, and the bear. Now, the girth of the bear is not the issue, as much as Zul’ai’kah has chided me relentlessly on the issue. “You overfeed it” she hisses. “It shall become spoiled.” Hah! Spoiled? For the rest of its natural life, it carries a burden on it’s back. A magus and her ever-changing whims. No, sister. Stripped of freedom and forced from the nobility of empty, open woodland, the beast of burden is never spoiled. And so if it cannot retain its dignity, then allow it to eat whatever it damn well pleases.

But I digress. The bear’s girth is not the issue. The man standing there as I sought to continue my thoroughfare through the concourse was no small creature. I’d never seen anything like him before. When he stood upright, I lost sight of his face. I craned my neck to inspect every inch of him. Oh, what a great pleasure it was, to study this mass of sweat and sinew as it towered above me like a venerable tree!

I suppose that’s where it should have ended, then. But I couldn’t merely pass the man. Not because of his immovable force, but the force of something unexpected and dwelling within me.

I suppose I must be lonely.

His eyes on my body were like welts. I could almost feel my soul being sucked into his hungry, venomous, soulless body every time his eyes narrowed and his pupils dilated. Savage.Frostmane. Icicle tusks and cold breath. Frozen lips and frostbitten ears. Yet I could have watched him empty an entire quiver, maybe more.

I suddenly remembered my usual disdain for introductions of any sort. Curt words were exchanged, and I thought I’d lost him and his unnatural grip on me. Until yesterday. When I felt his breath on my neck, I was lost to the most pleasant and unexpected of surprises. His breath was warm.

Primal. Frostmane. Savage. 

I suppose I am now the prey.

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