Private Your fangs, and mine

[Rois Sinclair]

A voice rose, a cooing, a whimper, an echoing cry beneath the sunlight.

Nothing and no-one came to its rescue. The doe with the broken neck ensnared by rope, it careened through the stretches of old-wood trees and tripped about roots like writhing snakes at its hooves, pressed forth and screeched in agony with fresh blood dripping from its parted mouth. Bleary eyes captured nought but the scuffed floor and its cloak of moss and decaying leaves, a limp, a whine, it could not go on. Not like that.

It did not have to go on. Not when boots punted its back legs and tripped it cruelly, its crumpled form landing in a twisted heap that saw splayed hooves running against the air.

Rois was not a good hunter (of animals). It was the damndest thing, any time the butcher had to kill something that was not human the event was marred by the automatic fleeing of beasts from an invisible radius around him, they danced away from afar with squeals of both panic and awe-- here it came, some looming thing, some terrible, malicious devil of many teeth. Where, where? From shadow to shadow, haze, a blackening mist, it rose to the half height of the trees, it moved serpentine, multiple eyes split by slits: the intruder died beneath the light and was reborn in the spaces between the forest’s growth. A shade like the rising of a great beast to swallow the sun itself with jaws that were ever-open… a vision. A flickering picture. A trail. It was never there really, just like the long path of rolling smoke that followed the red-head like a coming storm, glimpsed one moment by sickened creatures alone and gone in the next breath… an invisible something that could not be held. Something that could not be struck. Something that caused mourning in the hearts of animals before it had even taken from them.

The does voice became garbled as blood ran hot into billowing lungs.

Well, Rois knew it was because he was half Shroud-fiend now, but that fact was nothing but an annoyance to him. How was one supposed to live off of the land (instead of the chopped up pieces of people back at camp) when the ‘land’ kept running away from some intangible presence haunting the meat market owner's form like a spectre from above? Frustration, if it were not for the fact that kicking would cause the doe’s meat to split and bruise violent colours, perhaps the evil thoughts conjured up in that bandaged head of his would have spurred him to kick it more. It had taken so much effort, the unethical trap a noose from a slow slung branch awaiting a delicate neck to take the bait from a shallow bucket… once the wooden object shifted the snare’s end, adorned with heavy rocks and bells, had whip-cracked so violently the animal had first hung, bucked erratically against the pressure, and the stones loosened and fell and it’s wobbly legs had carried the injured beast off. The bells chiming signaled dinner. Had signalled it. The fact the stupid deer had to be semi-chased for another quarter mile, oh, oh…

Rois ground his fangs together violently, lip quivering.

In watery eyes framed by curled lashes, the doe stared upwards at the unknown. Noisy choking, weakening legs… and he watched.

He watched.

Because to stab it to death would be to mar precise meat-cuts. Because bashing its skull concave would be ruining hide. The tongue tasted nice, the ears and nose for dogs, the skull sold on. That speckled boot came down and toe pressed-- first gently, then harshly-- upon the struggling things crunched wind-pipe as life ebbed away second by second… and the noises stopped. Rois wiped the sweat from the curling of bandages upon his skin and gave a heavy sigh, crimson eyes turned upwards to the breaking of the trees crowns with a squint. The sunlight was harsh… and no birds sang, and no critters crawled, and all the inhabitants of the green green space had sought shelter from the unknowable. Silence.

Finally, the damn thing shut the fuck up.

 

[Momoshiro]

Momo had felt it before he ever reached the trees.

A wrongness had brushed against the edge of his awareness while he was passing through the outskirts of the forest, faint enough that he might have mistaken it for the lingering residue of some old curse. But there had been something familiar in it, something cold and hungry beneath the surface, like the distant presence of a spirit that had learned how to hide itself.

He stopped and turned toward the woods.

There it was again.

The Shroud stirred faintly against his senses, carrying with it the unmistakable impression of something unnatural. A cursed spirit, perhaps, or something close enough to one that the distinction hardly mattered. Whatever it was, it had left a trail, and Momo had learned long ago that spirits were rarely as good at hiding themselves as they believed.

So he followed.

He moved beneath the trees at an unhurried pace, his hand resting lightly against the weapon at his side. The sensation remained faint, appearing and disappearing between the trunks as though whatever he sought was deliberately keeping its distance. Momo did not chase it. There was little reason to. So long as he could feel the trail, he could follow it.

The deeper he went, however, the stranger the forest became.

The ordinary sounds of the woods began to disappear one by one. First the birdsong faded. Then the rustling of small creatures beneath the undergrowth. Even the insects seemed to have withdrawn from this particular stretch of woodland.

Momo slowed.

His ears lifted beneath the fall of white hair, and his ruby eyes wandered between the trees.

Something had frightened them.

He could feel it.

The Shroud carried traces of life in ways most people would never notice. A thousand little impressions woven together through the forest: quiet spirits nestled beneath roots, tiny presences following animals along their paths and through their burrows, old spirits clinging to ancient trees. They were normally so easy to overlook that Momo sometimes forgot how much life existed in places like this.

Now they were hiding.

Whatever darkness he had been following was here.

Then he heard it.

A faint, broken sound somewhere ahead.

Pain.

Momo moved toward it.

The sight that greeted him brought him to an abrupt stop. A doe lay crumpled among the moss and fallen leaves, its body caught in the final moments of life. A rope remained around its neck, and blood stained its muzzle. One leg twitched weakly against the earth before falling still.

Momo stared.

For several heartbeats, he said nothing.

Then his eyes moved.

The boot.

The red hair.

The bandages.

The man standing over the animal.

Something in Momo's expression changed. There was no dramatic flare of anger, no sudden movement toward his weapon. If anything, he became quieter. The warmth that normally lingered in his features simply disappeared.

He stepped forward until the doe was no longer hidden behind the man.

“You hurt her.”

His voice was soft, but it carried none of its usual warmth.

Momo crouched beside the animal, careful not to touch it at first. His fingers hovered just above its body as he reached through the Shroud, searching for what remained.

There.

Faint.

Frightened.

The little spirit that had lingered around the doe had not yet departed.

Momo's expression softened immediately. His fingers settled gently against the animal's fur, and his attention turned entirely toward that fading presence.

“You're safe now,” he murmured.

The spirit stirred. It was confused and afraid, carrying with it the impressions of pain, terror, and helplessness. Momo closed his eyes and allowed his presence to settle around it, gentle and familiar.

“You can go.”

A quiet pulse passed through the Shroud.

The presence faded.

Momo remained there for another moment, his hand resting against the now-still animal. Only when he was certain the little spirit had passed on did he finally rise.

His gaze returned to Rois.

There was something unsettling in the way he looked at him now. It wasn't hatred. It wasn't even anger in the way most people understood it.

It was disappointment.

Deep, quiet disappointment.

Momo looked past him, toward the empty spaces between the trees where the forest's inhabitants had hidden themselves. The silence seemed even heavier now that he understood its cause.

“They're afraid of you,” he said quietly.

His eyes returned to Rois. “Not because you're hunting them. They're afraid because they know what you are.”

The words were simple, but there was weight behind them. Momo had spent much of his life around spirits, and he understood that particular kind of fear. He knew what it meant when creatures that belonged to a place withdrew from a person before that person had even touched them.

Then his attention shifted.

The sensation he'd followed was still there.

Now that he was standing this close, he could feel it more clearly. That darkness. That unnatural wrongness woven through Rois's presence.

Momo's eyes narrowed slightly as the realization settled into place.

“So it was you.”

He looked toward the dead doe again.

“You could have killed her quickly,” he continued, his voice remaining strangely calm. “But you didn't.”

There was no question in the words. He had seen enough.

His hand moved slowly away from the weapon at his side. He wasn't reaching for it. Not yet. There was no need.

Instead, he simply stood beneath the trees, white hair stirring gently in the breeze, watching Rois with those quiet ruby eyes.

“I don't understand people who hurt things that cannot fight back.”

For the first time, something closer to sadness entered his voice.

“I don't think I want to.”

The forest remained silent around them. Somewhere deeper between the trees, something small shifted cautiously through the undergrowth, but it did not come any closer.

Momo glanced once more toward the doe before looking back to Rois.

“You should leave.”

There was no threat attached to the words.

That somehow made them worse.

 

[Rois Sinclair]

Rois watched Momo move with sheer disbelief.

Not because someone else would be wandering forest trails on a sun-shiny day, no, but because of the sheer audacity to wander up to a stranger and start chittering on as if conversation was the fox-kin’s God given right-- it is enough of a shock that for the moments Momo is crouched, no words fall from his fanged mouth. Thoughts firstly spin towards the unlikely, was this a robbery?, before careening into something quite malicious the more and more Momo uttered barbed words aloud to disturb the sanctity of the silence that had nestled so sweetly there… there were things the butcher wanted to do. Fingers twitched with the excitement of violence, they wanted to grab the long locks of white hair before them so harshly that they’d begin to snap and break, wanted to lend a boot to the wanderers spine so he’d tumble face first against the earth, beneath the heavy shadows of red bangs Rois’s eyes are dangerous. Like eclipsed suns branding rings against the back of the others skull, pupils wide. Tongue to tooth, swiped there with anticipation, the slow raising of a curled fist and the upwards turning of his lips--

For a few sacred heart-beats the atmosphere turns oppressive-- the air heavy, looming, danger, danger--

And then the fox-man turns to the butcher. The expression and threatening aura disappears in a flash, as easy as a blink, the fist has opened as a hand came to rest against his throat in a manner indicating exasperation.

Careful, this stranger has a sword, this stranger has an unexplainable presence about him that cannot be captured with words. The red-head can feel it... but does not understand it. Something different. Something new. Rois knows not what he was doing with the now dead animal to their side, but carelessness would not be rewarded in the scenario; after all, leather straps encircling thick thighs are leant only the gleam of hunting knives and not any kind of real weapon.

“Firstly, I don’t know who you think you are, but get away from my kill.” A barbed tongue, the deep words are hissed with a furrowing brow-- a good measure of the fox’s statements are completely ignored. This is by design. “Secondly, you seem to be under the impression that I care about what you think… I really, really don’t.”

As easy as the breeze is the dismissal of Momoshiro’s thoughts and feelings, this was no facade, the flat way Rois regards the other is testimony to the fact that he really does not care. Not about the sadness haunting the fox-kins words, not about his little evaluation of the scene, not about the morality of the does suffering… red to red gaze, one flickers with quiet emotion, the other is like the edge of a blade itself. It yearns for blood and violence. Restraint. Trying to keep cool. The butcher diffuses his own internalized tension like a child soothing itself, beginning to chuckle tonelessly at Momo’s notion of leaving--

“I don’t understand people who think it’s acceptable to stroll into another’s business so leisurely, but then again…” A purposeful, lingering glance to the others lithe ears, to the fluff of a pearly tail, “... I suppose your kind doesn’t get taught manners. Animals do not have a need for them, after all, they aren’t civilized beings.”

The beginnings of joy now spark against crimson eyes--

“I think you should leave, but before you do, I actually have an honest question for you.” A gleeful grin whose normalcy is broken by thick fangs pointed up and down, clicking with every spoken word…

“When you slid out of your bitch mothers cunt, did she have two tits or six? I wouldn’t stoop as low as bestiality, I'm not like your kin, but the concept IS kind of hot.”

 

[Momoshiro]

Momo did not answer immediately.

The insult itself seemed to pass over him at first, not because he had failed to understand it, but because he was still looking at Rois with the same quiet attention he had given the doe. His head tilted slightly, white ears angling forward as he considered the man before him. There was no outrage in his expression. No visible offense. Only a strange sort of stillness, as though Momo were trying to decide what, exactly, he was looking at.

Then his gaze drifted briefly toward the corpse lying in the leaves.

“You're angry.”

It was an observation rather than an accusation.

Momo's eyes returned to Rois, studying the tension in his shoulders and the way his fingers had moved before settling against his throat. The Shroud around the man still felt wrong. It clung to him in a way Momo did not recognize, something dark and unnatural that seemed less like a spirit accompanying him and more like something that had begun to become part of him.

“I think you are angry about more than who is in front of you.”

There was no challenge in his voice. If anything, there was a faint note of curiosity.

Rois's insults earned little more than a slow blink.

Momo had been called many things over the years. Some had been cruel, some imaginative, and a surprising number had been both. The comparison to an animal barely registered. He glanced down at his own tail, then back toward Rois.

“I'm foxkin,” he said simply. “You noticed.”

He let the silence linger after that, apparently content to leave Rois with the awkwardness of his own words. The forest remained unnaturally quiet around them, as though even the trees had decided that whatever conversation was taking place was better observed from a safe distance.

Momo eventually looked back toward the doe and then up to the man again. A sigh escaped him.

“Your attitude is... unfortunate.”

There was still no anger in his voice.

That was perhaps the most unsettling part.

He brushed a few leaves from his sleeve before regarding Rois from beneath his pale bangs.

“As for your question...” Momo's expression remained pleasantly neutral, as though he were genuinely considering it. Then, after a moment, his ears gave a small twitch. “I don't think my mother would appreciate that inquiry.”

He glanced briefly away again, apparently deciding there was very little else worth saying on the subject. “She'd probably hit you.”

A beat passed.

“Hard.”

Momo's lip curled into a grin. His mother was kind but did not tolerate that sort of thing. That, he and his siblings could attest to.

Again, there was no malice behind his words. If anything, the answer carried the same quiet simplicity as any other observation Momo might make about the weather. Whatever reaction Rois had been hoping to provoke simply wasn't there. Momo had already decided that whatever conversation this was supposed to become, it wasn't going anywhere useful.

His attention drifted back toward the doe instead, his expression settling into that same quiet concern he'd shown before. “Anyway...” he murmured, almost to himself. “I think I'm finished here.”

Momo stepped slightly to the side, giving the dead doe the space it deserved rather than the butcher who had claimed it. He regarded the doe one more time and then turned to depart. Momo took a step, paused, and looked back over his shoulder.

“You should be careful with your words.”

Like everything else, he said it calmly and with no hint of malicious intent. It was a warning, not a threat. Whatever the man might think, Momo was actually trying to help him.

“Not because I am offended.”

A single ruby eye stared back at the man, a strange intensity to it. It almost glowed behind his white bangs.

“But because you seem to be trying very hard to make me angry.”

The Shroud stirred faintly around him.

“That is not in your best interest."

That said, he turned his head back forward and started to walk away.

 

[Rois Sinclair]

‘She'd probably hit you. Hard.’​

“And I’d probably enjoy that.”

This… bastard.

Rois is (usually) very good at appearing to encapsulate ‘non-chalantness’. Appearing being the key word there. The more Momoshiro talks the more anger roils within him like a terrible flame come to burn away the thin, wobbling edges of patience, it flickers and frays, it lends heat to breaths that are trying to desperately to be controlled. In. Out. Calm. It is hard to keep calm however when the sound of blood rushing is filling ones ears, and even harder still when this smug, critical stranger afar continues to state the obvious and then insults and grins, he’s grinning, thinks this is a game, composure is rapidly being lost. No-one looked down on him. No-one toyed with him as if he were a mouse caught amidst the claws of a cat, Momo does not need to speak with any malicious intent whatsoever for it to be imagined there by someone who dearly believed that everyone in this twisted, cruel world existed specifically to get him in some way--

And suddenly, the butcher cannot hide the way his slitted eyes catch the low glow of the sun in its glory, hot, it’s getting hotter, a hand comes to grasp the edges of his sleeves and yank them upwards as a single bead of sweat slips from bandages to kiss the edge of his strong jaw. If Momo is stoicism, a lone tree unbent by the many wild storms worlds past, Rois is the crumpled one against the ground, bent-branched, roots uplifted, even the smallest of breezes threatens to loose pitiful leaves clinging weakly there-- it’s getting worse. The tension is rising in a manner so swift it is nonsensical.

“You don’t know anything.”

So trying to anger the foxkin was not working. The butcher could just let him waltz away scott-free, but what of pride? How could the man allow this stupid fucking animal to wander up upon him, spout both nonsense and insult in lengthy breaths, and then leave without so much as a scratch…? But what else could be done?! During the hunt the trees had broken to bare the visage of a lonely house ringed by rickety wooden fences, its barn bore holes and its lands were currently harvested, yes, but no doubt within the safety of its walls there lived some family who found pleasantness of the summers work done and dusted for the year. Was it remote enough… was it far enough… Rois’s gaze briefly flickers to the trail behind him and back.

If… if it came forth… would it go there?

No-- it could not be considered. That was wrong. Nobody needed to die over this.

All the while, ‘it’ watches. Continues to flicker in and out save for the smallest red glow of an unseen eye, a terrible thing of smoke captured in Momo’s learned gaze that seems to grow more and more solid as time passes to reveal the threat of shadowed teeth the span of a mans torso each-- the thing which creatures flee’d, the thing that took flames of anger and doused them in gasoline-- yes… lets make the wrong choice. No words, just feelings, like seeds to bloom within the red-heads skull… lets damn every living thing for the next few miles to burn in wrath betwixt jaws that could never be sated, it’s grin was growing wider with every single moment Rois got more and more pressed, make the wrong choice. Do it.

“You do not get to threaten me, acting like you’re better than me,” Audible huffing, trembling fingers, pressure, it’s building, Momo, the house, the deer, keep it together, he doesn't want to get hurt, he does not want innocent people to get hurt, “If you want to fight, fight me. I’ll rip that damned tail from your spine, you pretentious…”

D̶o̶ ̷i̷t̷.̵

M̷a̷k̷e̴ ̸t̸h̷e̶ ̸w̶r̶o̸n̸g̷ ̸c̶h̸o̵i̶c̴e̶.̶

 

[Momoshiro]

Momo stopped, turned back and listened.

He did not interrupt when Rois's voice rose, nor did he react when the threats became more explicit. The foxkin simply stood there, watching the man in front of him with the same quiet attentiveness he had shown from the beginning. If anything, Rois's growing agitation seemed to confirm something Momo had already suspected.

Then the Shroud shifted.

Momo's ears flicked.

His attention moved past Rois.

There was something there.

Not merely the strange darkness clinging to the butcher's presence. This was something else entirely. Something larger, hungrier, and far less interested in remaining hidden now that the tension between them had begun to rise. Momo's ruby eyes narrowed as he followed the sensation into the trees, and for the first time since their encounter, his expression lost its gentle neutrality.

The forest had gone still again.

He could feel the spirits retreating deeper into the woods.

Momo looked back toward Rois, and then toward the thing lurking behind him, his expression thoughtful rather than afraid. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't behaving like any ordinary spirit he'd encountered. He couldn't even be certain it was a spirit.

“You're not alone.”

The words were quiet enough that they might have been mistaken for an observation rather than a warning.

His gaze lingered on the smoke-like presence. The thing was becoming clearer now, its form sharpening around the edges as though the anger filling the air were giving it substance. Momo could see the suggestion of enormous teeth within that shifting darkness, each one far too large to belong to anything that should have been walking these woods.

His eyes returned to Rois and narrowed.

“Does that thing feed on your anger?”

There was no accusation in his voice. No satisfaction at having discovered some weakness. If anything, there was concern.

Momo glanced toward the trail leading away through the trees, following it until the distant outline of the little house came into view between the branches.

His ears lowered.

Then he understood.

Not everything, perhaps, but enough.

Momo's hand slowly settled against the hilt of his sword.

“I wasn't threatening you.”

He looked back at Rois, his voice still remarkably calm despite the presence gathering around them.

“If you want me gone, I'll leave you be.”

There was no fear in the decision. No surrender, either. Just the simple conclusion of someone recognizing that the conversation had ceased to have any useful purpose.

Momo shifted his weight and began to turn toward the trail, but his eyes settled once more on the dead doe.

"I'll go. No need to do anything you might regret."

The words were gentle. Not judgmental. Not accusatory.

Almost an afterthought.

Then his attention flicked once more toward the strange shadow clinging to the edges of Rois's presence.

Momo's ears twitched.

He still didn't know what it was.

But he suspected this would not be the last time he saw it.

Without another word, he started to back away slowly, one hand held up in caution, the other still resting on his hilt.

 

[Rois Sinclair]

The foxkin isn’t looking at him.

Maybe he did know something.

Rois was awaiting some angry retort, expected the other to pull his blade and ready himself to take on he who had but a hunting knife to his name… but Momoshiro does not rise to the threat. That same rock-steady neutralness with eyes shifting about the trees, the butcher falters for a few beats, what the hell is he looking at? A hidden accomplice? Some fool waiting in the branches to drop down when the red-head least expected it to take steel to heated flesh? No part of him wants to look away from the long-eared being afar-- so much could happen in a blink, an attack could happen in but a single breath-- but whatever lurked beyond needed to be addressed. Paranoia is what drives eyes of crimson flame to quickly and critically stare to the side, up, to where trees no longer dance in the stale air.

It turns its massive head to look above to the sky in unison.

They both turn back to Momoshiro with synconicity.

Oh… that. He’s looking at that. Rois could not see it but did not need to to know it was there because it always was, it was the miasma that caused life to flee, the crippling weight of want that whispered without words into ears that could never block out the guttural sounds of a phantom beast that wanted to be sprung free. Many a-time there had been treks to those of the spiritual kind that either dismissed the butcher at the threshold of their property or-- more often than not-- could not glimpse it entirely, figuring it a fragment of mental illness, some guy that thought his weary form was being stalked by the shadow of a monster. There was no doubt about it however, those bandages, the bloodied rings, the tightness against the skin, they were some sort of sealing charm… the crude kind. Something far less splendorous than Momo was probably used to, the sort that came from western influence and not eastern and was birthed by the hands of witches in their lonely abodes in deep, dark forests.

The pressure lessens. Wanes a touch. It coincides with the coming of the half-fiends voice, which comes no less sharply but just a little angry,

“Wait-- stop-- you can see it?”

From wanting the other to leave, to wanting the other to fight, to wanting the other to stop in his attempts to leave-- feverish emotions like flame flicker violently in invisible winds, unpredictable in the way they lean. He is unpredictable. Could change moods within the span of a few heartbeats. That is a danger in itself, a person both volatile and erratic, who could not tame his emotions and had thoroughly become a victim of them in day-to-day life; and maybe it would not be so terrible… if the looming shadow and its fangs like guillotines did not exist. It’s waiting. It’s waiting for a chance, the merest sliver of weakness to erupt in fiery glory, it wants the fox bent-backed against its fangs, crushed bones and spilling innards and a neutral face twisted in pain--

“I am half shroud-fiend.” This was not a secret, it was never kept from anybody. Rois’s guard isn’t completely down, the man is still stiff in words, expression still fixed in a sneer, Momoshiro says he was not threatening him but that was a lie, calm. Just calm down for a damned second, you don’t want people to die, you’re not like it, another lick of sweat against his neck. Momo does not need an answer as to whether it fed off of anger… the physical effects were plain to see. It’s so hot…

“Don’t come any closer, or I will do something we’ll both regret. I am not scared of you.” This is also a lie (it was better for the other to think he would do something as crazy as letting a monster suddenly rampage unfettered), growled out with the beginning of steam at his lips, burning, its smile grew, burn, “But to pay me back for wasting my fucking time, you should speak, seeing as running your mouth seems to be a talent of yours.”

The irony.

“I want to know what it looks like.”

 

[Momoshiro]

Momo stopped.

Not abruptly, and certainly not in response to the threat. He simply allowed his next step to remain unfinished, one foot settling quietly against the earth as his attention returned to Rois.

The question was different this time.

There was still anger in it, still that sharpness that seemed to accompany nearly everything the man said, but beneath it was something else. Curiosity. Perhaps even a measure of desperation. Momo could recognize the difference between someone trying to provoke him and someone genuinely asking for an answer.

His eyes shifted past Rois once more.

The thing was still there.

Or something was.

It remained difficult to perceive in any consistent way. A smear of darkness between the trees, there one moment and gone the next, like smoke caught in a wind Momo could not feel. Then came the suggestion of that enormous head again, those terrible teeth, before the image fractured and disappeared behind the trunks.

Momo frowned faintly.

"I can see something."

He looked back to Rois.

"But I don't know what it is."

There was no shame in admitting that. Momo had spent enough of his life among spirits to know better than to put a name to something merely because a name would make it easier to understand.

"It's difficult to look at directly. Sometimes I see smoke. Sometimes I see a shape. Sometimes..."
His ears tilted back slightly. "Sometimes I only know that something is there."

His gaze settled briefly on the bandages wrapped around Rois's body.

"And it seems to be attached to you."

Momo's expression remained thoughtful rather than suspicious.

"I don't know if it is a spirit. I don't know if it is something you've summoned, something that followed you, or something else entirely."

He paused, considering the man in front of him.

"But I know it isn't ordinary."

The foxkin's eyes narrowed slightly as another flicker of darkness moved somewhere behind Rois.

"But I find it curious that you can't see it."

There was no accusation in the observation. Just a quiet statement of what Momo had noticed.

He finally took a step closer, though not enough to crowd the other man.

"You said you are half Shroud-fiend."

His gaze returned to Rois's eyes.

"Perhaps that is the other half."

A small pause.

"But I would rather not guess."

Momo's attention drifted toward the strange presence once more.

"So if you want to know what it looks like..."

His expression softened into something almost apologetic.

"I can tell you what I see. I just can't promise you that what I see is the whole of it."

 

[Rois Sinclair]

Momo could recognize the difference between someone trying to provoke him and someone genuinely asking for an answer.​

It is a shame that he couldn’t.

The white haired male steps forward, the red-head steps back immediately.

So much for being the big bad guy, all bark, no bite. Rois wasn’t someone who wanted to fight, he just had to, because somehow the idea of being walked over stung more than the idea of another dying… but now that Momo was not so immediately new to the butcher, it was slowly getting into the idiots skull that the foxkin just talked like that. Just… talk, stop. Talk, stop. Toneless. The ‘threat’ of before isn’t forgotten, ‘... trying very hard to make me angry-- that is not in your best interest’, but like boiling water cooling Rois becomes less tempted to listen to whatever whisperings were within his wrapped skull and stays on guard for something. Anything. No matter how disarming the exorcists facade seemed this was still a man armed with some ornate steel, and stranger still, someone who could glimpse what he had failed to do in his eight long years with the tyrant at his back.

A waning moment of silence washes over the scene, if there was wind to dance leaves above their feet it would have done as such, but in the deathly absense of sound nothing comes between their intense bout of eye-contact. Thinking. It would... be a shame to give into the violence that nipped at his heels from that prior failing to understand the other, emotionless beings gave the butcher the creeps, if he could not understand how someone was feeling then he did not know how to react to them. It would have been simpler in a way if the fox dared to utter another perceived threat or figured his rudeness needed an answer, but as always… when there was no retort to anger there was no reason to lash out. It leaves the half-beast a little stranded, honestly. As it always did.

Because what was the alternative to anger…?

The first person in forever to see it without it really being there… was this a chance that could be easily thrown away?

“... It isn’t ‘attached’ to me or following along.” Slowly, softer now, his tongue dances about his fangs in a nervous habit but he would not allow himself to look away. That low, rolling voice is still guarded. “... It is inside of me… half of me.”

Rois sported numerous biological anomalies, but none could be shared with the beastkin afar without getting close, and the interaction was still too short in the tooth to trust him with that. At least the teeth and black nails could be seen at the very least, the splitting of red in the slitted pupils of a serpent. Did… Momo want to see? Was that touch of apology upon his face due to the unknown, the desire for knowledge slipping through fingers…? Guessing, it was always a guessing game with these sorts. As such, there would be no ask for consent. A hand raises. Slips beneath one part of the bandages at his jaw.

Then two. Then three.

They are lifted very, very slowly away from his skin.

“Do you s̷e̴e̸ ̸I̸ T̶T̸T̸T̶T̶-----”

Teeth, teeth, teeth teeth TEETH--

It happens and ends in the span of three seconds: suddenly-- like the coming of lightning, a flash into existence-- surrounding the fox both to each side and above in its enormity are a magnificent splaying of leg-long yellowed teeth jutting out from sore pink flesh like crooked stalactites, a fierce heat batters him from head to toe as if a furnace door has been swung open and has come to burn him to the bone, a light, a swallowed star blinding in its ferocity down an open throat wanting, it wants, its wants him so much, the jaws shift open with a loud crack and a sweeping of wild wind and a pink glossy tongue riddled with grotesque veins lurches forth----

-- And then its gone. The only thing that proved it was there was the fact that Momoshiro now stands inside-- at the center-- of a lengthy V pattern upon the earth… the ground is smouldering. Embers dance along the black lines like fireflies, slaves to the rolling of black smoke; at the very least none of Momo’s attire had caught alight, but the heat was very, very slow to leave the oppressive atmosphere. Amongst it all Rois is just standing there, looking wide-eyed, confused, the bandages are back down along with his hand, the butcher stares long and hard at the scorch marks. It was there, but…

“... Did you see it then?”

This is somehow an earnest question… he doesn’t remember those last few seconds at all.

 

[Momoshiro]

Momo had just enough time to register the movement beneath Rois's bandages before the world opened its mouth.

There was no warning. No gradual manifestation. One instant he was standing before the butcher, and the next there were teeth.

Great, yellowed things erupted into existence around him, filling his vision from every direction. Heat slammed into him hard enough to steal the breath from his lungs, and Momo recoiled on instinct, ears flattening against his skull as his hand snapped toward the hilt at his side.

The sensation was overwhelming.

Not merely heat. Not merely the sight of something impossibly enormous occupying the space around him. The Shroud itself seemed to buckle beneath the sudden presence, every instinct he'd cultivated since childhood screaming at him that something was wrong.

Then the jaws vanished.

Momo stumbled backward, his sandals scraping through the earth as he caught himself. His sword remained half-drawn before he seemed to realize what his hand had done.

For several seconds, he simply stared.

The blackened earth smoked around his feet.

His breathing was faster now. His ears remained pinned back, and his tail had fluffed considerably despite his best efforts to ignore it.

Slowly, very slowly, Momo looked toward Rois.

"...Yes."

The word came out quieter than he intended.

His eyes flicked toward the empty space where the creature had been, then back again.

"I saw it."

Something about the question made the exorcist pause.

There was no certainty in Rois's voice. No recognition of what had just happened. He genuinely seemed not to remember those few seconds.

Momo's ears slowly lifted.

"You can't control it."

The realization settled quietly.

Rois had said it was inside him. Half of him. Yet whatever had emerged had done so without warning, without command, and apparently without Rois even being aware of it.

His hand eased away from his sword.

There was no reason to draw it. Not yet.

Instead, two fingers shifted almost imperceptibly against the fabric of his sleeve.

Something stirred beneath the Shroud.

Momo did not look down. He didn't need to.

A thin curl of shadow slipped from beneath his sleeve and disappeared into the grass at his feet. Another followed a moment later, so faint that it might have been mistaken for nothing more than a trick of the lingering smoke. They moved soundlessly through the grass, circling outward before settling into positions just beyond his immediate reach.

His spirits.

Neither manifested fully. There was no dramatic appearance, no sudden change in the air. Momo simply felt their familiar presence settle around him, quiet and obedient.

A precaution.

Something to catch a blow.

Something to give him a heartbeat of warning.

Something between himself and those teeth, should they appear again.

Only then did Momo take a measured step backward, putting a little more distance between himself and Rois.

"You're more dangerous than I gave you credit for."

 

[Rois Sinclair]

Rois badly wants to spit out, ‘Of course I can’t control it, no shit’ but… doesn’t.

He doesn’t because it wasn’t something to be defensive about. It is an absolute fact he had come to understand many years back, its peace had been made, there was nothing that could be done about it and so it had to be lived with and mitigated and its wants had to be satisfied or the worse came to pass, how many people had died? Across Khurun in his and his staff’s travels, how many times had innocent people shared last moments together upon the mountainous rise of those teeth, bleeding out, limbs sundered, swallowed whole to burn in light and fire? Men and women and children and babies, the old and sick, the young and hopeful, the barren towns left behind in quiet ruin which smouldered and fizzled as the ground did between the two. Rois does not take a step forward to encroach on Momoshiro’s personal space, he does so because the dry grass in front of him at the bottom of the V shaped scar is beginning to actively burn, the red-head takes his boot to it over and over in an attempt to stamp it out before it does so.

“No, I can’t. When it is here, I’m not here, I don’t know where I go… but it’s like we switch places in reality, or something.” Mumbled, the skirtings of harshness there are frustration for the little embers that refuse to die beneath the grinding of a heel. “So I’ve never seen it; I don’t know what it looks like, I don’t know what it does when it’s out… besides eating everything living it can, according to other people.”

He cannot feel guilt for those who have died at its hands. Taking all that upon your shoulders was the sort of burden that would break a man. The shadowy form is back… lingering, fading, watching, waiting. Finally it did not appear that a fire would come to consume them as the blackened patch becomes a concave, smoky spot that contains not the reds and oranges of a wildfire striving to be born but the greys of plant-life dead. Some part of Rois wants to keep eyes upon the furling of weak smoke. Maybe five minutes ago there would have been glee in the puffing of the fox’s tail and the way ears fell and rose like the wings of butterflies against his snowy skull, but without the violent desire to harm Momo there isn’t anything to be proud about.

Being dangerous isn’t a good thing, not like how being 'strong' was. Not when that danger had no direction and lashed out in every direction… in any direction. When everyone was in danger it meant those who you loved were, too. The thought of those teeth turning upon his treasured ones… the thought always makes the man feel sick.

“Usually no-one can see it till it is actually here; that is why I am surprised you mentioned it.” … Was that a touch of honesty? A statement not growled out in hostility? No indication that he knows spirits have manifested about the foxkin, the fiend does not watch them or give signs in its wavering form that it notices either, the glint of its red eyes are fixed… solely… on Momo and nothing else.

“It does not speak, just… makes noises, I guess. In my head, that is.” A hand is raised to ruffle his hair, the crinkling of his nose, it was a little difficult to describe and Rois is very aware of how crazy he sounds, “... But in the noises I can understand words. I know what it wants.”

Him.

 

[Momoshiro]

Momo remained quiet for a long moment. Behind him, his tail swayed slowly.

The admission settled differently than everything that had come before it. There was no bravado in Rois now, no attempt to provoke or posture. Just a blunt explanation of something terrible that had become so familiar to him that he had learned to speak of it almost clinically.

Momo's gaze drifted toward the scorched earth between them. The last wisps of smoke curled lazily upward, carrying the faint scent of burned grass. His ears remained attentive, though his expression had softened.

“So you lose yourself when it comes out.”

It was not quite a question.

His eyes lifted again to Rois, studying him with the same quiet focus as before. Then, briefly, they shifted toward the dark presence lingering at the edge of his awareness. Momo could still sense it. He could still see the vague shape of it, though it seemed content to remain half-hidden from the world.

He did not pretend to understand it.

Not yet.

“That must make it difficult to know where you end and it begins.”

There was no accusation in his voice. Only observation.

Momo's gaze lingered on him for another moment.

And then, despite himself, a colder thought surfaced.

If Rois truly had no control over it... if he disappeared whenever it emerged... if whatever lived within him could slaughter everything around it without his knowledge or consent, then what happened when the next village stood in its path?

What happened when there was no one capable of stopping it?

For an exorcist, there were unpleasant answers to questions like that.

Sometimes the kindest thing one could do for a cursed vessel was to destroy the vessel before the curse could claim another life. Much like putting down a beast that had become too dangerous to control. Not punishment. Not vengeance.

Prevention.

The thought was there for only a heartbeat.

Momo hated it immediately.

His fingers curled faintly at his side before relaxing again.

He had no intention of killing Rois based on suspicion alone. Not yet. The man standing before him was still a person. Whatever else he might be, whatever darkness had been forced into his flesh, he was still here. And until Momo understood what had happened to him, deciding that death was the only answer would be little better than ignorance dressed up as certainty.

“I know something of that feeling,” Momo said quietly.

“I cannot say I know what you are carrying. Not truly. But I know something of what it means to have another presence living inside you, something tethered to you, for better or worse.”

His gaze lowered for a moment, his expression becoming distant.

“There is a weight to it. Even when it is quiet. Even when nothing is happening, some part of you is always aware that it is there. You carry it when you walk, when you sleep, when you try to laugh... and after enough time, you begin to wonder if you are carrying it, or if you have simply forgotten what it feels like to be without it.”

His thumb brushed lightly against the hilt of his sword, almost absentmindedly.

He paused, considering whether there was anything useful he could offer. For once, he did not rush to fill the silence.

“You said you know what it wants.”

Momo's crimson eyes returned to Rois, waiting for him to elaborate.

 

[Rois Sinclair]

He had known, for the longest time, that it would probably just be easier if he was dead.

No more hurt, no more torment, no more hoping that something terrible didn’t occur every time it all got too much and the threshold of the demon’s patience had been reached, all he knew were broken buildings and burning trees and blood smeared violently upon the earth over and over again. Rois did not know their faces. Didn’t know their stories or what their final moments had been like. All that mattered was that they ceased to exist because he had been close, so it had been close, and it did not care about things such as morality. It would take, and keep taking till it was satisfied… and it was all the butchers fault for daring to continue to exist.

But it was hard to die when people relied on you.

And Momoshiro is trying to relate, but he is so foreign to the concept of opening up that words as soft as the foxkin breathes them could never fall from his mouth. He is holding out an olive branch, trying to bridge the gap between them without physically getting closer, you’re not alone, we share something, and… Rois’s heart is so hard that the red-head cannot easily reach out back. It’s difficult. It’s been so long and he’s been so alone in it all that the man does not know how to respond to Momo initially, there it comes again, the silent pausing to think, logical steps.

“I… it is just part of me now, I’ve gotten used to it.” An airy false laugh, there is no real humour there, “We do not end, we overlap. I am very aware that with the severity of how much we cross over that it is impossible to separate us now.”

Mere spiritual possession would not see the altering of ones biology, it had altered him physically, he had altered it in turn, and now they were like a muddled mixture of play dough-- the colours were blurred and dreary and trying to carve one from the other was impossible. Rois is a little awkward. He is off-put seeming because now, like any normal person, he has to figure out a way to say what he wants to without seeming too desperate, too gentle, too off-guard, the man still has a front he wants to wear and that front is ‘I am scary and dangerous do not forget it!’.

“I guess… I was thinking, because you can see it, you are some kind of spiritualist.” A mumble, his hand comes to touch at the back of his neck in an insecure rub… mentally he’d add, a good one, but such a thing could not be said aloud, “... Maybe you’d… understand.”

A squint, a look from left to right. A pause; uncomfortable.

“... It wants to eat you, but… that is all it ever wants to do. It is just a dumb animal.”

No, it is a monster.

“Everything needs to eat. That’s just how living works.”

It is a demon that wants to consume the lives of as many people as possible.

“Is it… wrong, for wanting to live?”

Even if it cost the lives of so many others?

 

[Momoshiro]

Momo remained quiet for a while after Rois finished speaking.

His gaze lowered, following the subtle movement of his fingers against his sleeve. There was no easy answer sitting on the tip of his tongue, and for once, he didn't seem particularly interested in pretending that there was.

“I don't think wanting to live is wrong.”

The words came quietly.

“I think most living things want that.”

His eyes drifted toward the shadow for a moment, studying the strange shape as it flickered at the edge of his perception. He still didn't understand it. Not really. He could see it, could sense something of what it was, but that was hardly the same thing as knowing it.

“And I suppose... if that is all it knows, then I can't really blame it for wanting to eat.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of Momo's mouth.

“Though, between you and me, I imagine I must be rather tempting.”

His tail gave a lazy flick behind him, the faintest hint of humor returning to his expression.

“I am told I'm rather delicious.”

The joke was deliberately terrible, offered more as an attempt to ease the heaviness of the conversation than because he expected Rois to actually find it funny. After a moment, however, Momo's expression softened again.

“But I understand what you mean more than you might think.”

His gaze lowered briefly.

“I have cursed spirits inside me. Horrible things. Some of them are violent. Some of them would gladly tear apart anything given the opportunity. I've spent a very long time learning how to live with them without letting them decide what I do.”

His fingers brushed absently against the sleeve of his haori. In the shadows nearby, the two spirits he had released lingered silently, their attention turning toward him for a moment before settling once more upon Rois.

“So when you tell me that it feels like the two of you overlap... that part isn't unfamiliar to me.”

Momo looked back toward Rois, his expression quiet and sincere.

“I know what it's like to carry something terrible inside you.”

He let out a quiet breath and looked toward the ground between them.

“I won't lecture you on right or wrong. I only know that you're the one who has to live with it. You have to carry what it does, whether you wanted it or not. You have to wake up knowing what might happen the next time you lose yourself to it.”

His ears lowered slightly.

“That sounds... very heavy.”

There was no accusation in his voice. If anything, there was something almost tired about it, as though he could feel the weight of the question simply from hearing Rois speak about it.

Momo was silent for another moment before continuing.

“Maybe that's why you're asking me.”

His eyes met Rois's again.

“Not because you want me to tell you whether it's a monster.”

His gaze flickered briefly toward the shadow.

“You already know it is.”

Another pause.

“Maybe you just want someone who knows what it's like to carry that weight acknowledge it, acknowledge you.”

The faintest smile touched his face, though it held little happiness.

“If that's what you wanted...”

His shoulders relaxed slightly.

“Then I can do that much.”

 

[Rois Sinclair]

Rather delicious?

“... ‘Must have weaker taste-buds than I do. Beastfolk taste… like something alright.”

Momoshiro’s attempt at joking is met with a straight face and actual honesty from a man that has eaten every race at least thrice, but it does succeed in something... the hard edges of once sneering lips soften and a touch of tenseness leaves, inch by inch, it is almost becoming a normal conversation. Somehow. This was incredibly out of the norm for most people, but Rois was completely at ease when violence and anger were shunned to the side so severely that he no longer felt like there was danger afoot, could stop checking his shoulder for others, did not have to keep eyes upon the sword that the Foxkin oft toyed with by way of gentle touches… it never felt good to be angry. To throw yourself into fights, to put lives on the line.

And in response, up there, the shadows shift… and though it remains as a vague image the beasts mouth comes to a slow and soundless close, no longer anticipating the need to bite. The scorched earth rests, fizzling out into hardened marks and nothing more.

And Momo sounds wise as he preaches, and he sounds like he might care a little, and he utters it all in a voice like spun silk and eyes like the reds of the earth, natural, rich, but without the fire of his own. Men weren’t usually like this. They were usually cut from rock and spoke with voices like barking dogs, they sniffed out threads and pulled them apart with clenched teeth to reveal weakness, but… the fox is not doing that. And there are superstitions about foxes. Sly and wicked things, thieves, comprised of cunning and guile, yet Rois did not think the seemingly tender Momo wanted to trick him into stealing his coin-purse or nibbling on his bones the moment a back was turned like a feral animal.

Maybe he is just a homosexual. That turned many men soft.

“It… does feel good to know that my thoughts are not as totally radical as I once thought.” Admitted with a beat of something good, it wasn’t quite happiness, but it was a start. Even manages to meet the other in the eye for a brief moment before looking away (somewhat shyly), anyone else would have commented about how the fiend was a hell-born creature that did not deserve to eat because of what it was. But… Momo understood… just wanting to live…

“How… do you keep the violence away? Is it just their nature? Do you have seals, too? Do you talk to yours-- I cannot talk to it unless it talks to me first-- is there any way I can make it safe? Maybe calm it down when it is out, so that nothing bad happens…?”

Spoken all at once in a hurried tone, a raised black claw scratches at his chest in a rare touch of nervousness, Rois does not want to join in in Momoshiro’s flitterings of happiness. That would be awkward because the notion of him being happy was ridiculous clearly, and some small part of the red-head wishes the other male afar wasn’t all swaying tails and slight smiles because he is not used to talking to someone like that. Was it weird… scary… or just new? It frazzles him, and the crocodile butcher of the sands was not supposed to be easily unnerved. Kindness was a blight, a sickness, a weakness; it held hands with peace and peace was a foreign concept to he who walked always in fire.

Yet, still, despite mentally wanting to shy away… his heart wants to tentatively reach out dark claws… and engage with it.

He is trying. And that is very rare indeed.