Your Pain is My Pleasure (Malady)

[Colt]

27th of winter Hoot. No. Hoot. Stop it. Hoot. Shut up. Hoot. Khasr cracked an eye open. The last pink of day was fading behind the horizon, and crickets were already sawing their raspy song as the night awoke. Scrunching his knees to his chest, he tried to burrow into his legs to preserve the last of his warmth. After four days, the stone ledge didn’t seem quite as bad. He had been doing little recently, moving from his little fortress only to snatch what morsels the she-Zith threw him and to relieve himself over the drop of the cave, and even then he kept a tight grip on the hefty leg bone he had managed to acquire. It had managed to keep her at bay so far, at least. He rolled to his knees and sat on his heels stretching his back as best he could without tearing his scabs. When the thought entered his mind, he automatically rolled up a sleeve grimy with lack of washing and examined his forearm. The four deep claw marks had almost halved in size, though he was sure there would be scarring. He had been licking them every night, and the practice seemed to have staved off the majority of infections, and his skin was also decently clean, though he couldn’t say the same for his clothing. Still, he couldn’t find himself optimistic. How could he? He was living like an animal, no, worse than an animal. He was surrounded by offal from both the living and dead, and the smell of Zith was sickening. No matter what he did, his mind was filled with bitterness. He longed to feel the wind in his hair as he moved through the grass, to live on the plains again, to hunt. He hated everything about this place; he hated the stench, the stone walls closing in around him, he hated the way the wind whistled through the entrance, and he absolutely loathed the Zith. Everywhere he turned he saw signs of only her, of her prey, her prizes, her playthings. It was her that had reduced him to this. This was her domain. He couldn’t even leave the cave. It was her that fed him, her that watched knowing that he was devouring the fruits of her labor, that he depended on her. Every time she looked at him her gaze was filled with hunger, and he knew that it was not for food. Shaking his head to dispel the dark thoughts that now clouded it, Khasr rolled his head and cracked his neck, then raised his arms above his head, testing his shoulders. They worked, at least better than they had four days ago. Perhaps the monotony of the past few days had lulled him into a false sense of security, perhaps he was simply reveling in the healing of his limbs, or perhaps it was something else, but for whatever reason, he failed to notice what might possibly be a dire mistake: he was no longer clutching to the leg bone, his beloved weapon.