are you ready to do violence?

samot boy-king, god of books and wine, the last wolf alive affiliated with aldebaran icon via @imperialhare

[deadlyandvast-blog]

thisdeadvessel‌:

Somehow, Jessamine thinks as her footsteps slow, it doesn’t seem as if a dog- or at least, some sort of canid creature- should be in the enclosure with a number of distinctly prey animals. She cannot claim, of course, to be an expert on animals- she had precious little time for that sort of study, in life- but she remembers the hunting dogs she had as a young woman, trained impeccably to heel to her command and sit still under her hand when she touched them, and before that, the small ball of fluff she’d had as a girl, a creature barely substantial enough to be called a dog.

They’d all loved to chase things that ran.

But she can’t deny that there’s something compelling about it, beautiful. It isn’t here to hunt- it shows no signs of readiness or desire to pounce. It’s curled tightly around itself, and it’s eyes, when it opens them and looks up at her, hold the same destitution as she feels hers do, of late. They call to her, and she’s crouching neatly beside it before she even realizes.

She learned as a girl not to reach for things she doesn’t know it’s safe to touch, but her fingers skim the grass regardless, the backs of her fingers just barely feeling the prickle of fur as she murmurs, “I do not believe you belong here any more than I do. Have you come to get away? Or to enjoy the same privileges the others enclosed here enjoy?”

Her next exhale is a huffed almost-laugh. “I wonder, do you bite?”

So she did notice him after all. Samot can’t decide if he’s displeased or not, vanity for a moment warring with a wish to fade, for once, and be left to his moping. Ah, but it is done, and it would be unseemly to run now, wouldn’t it?

His ears flick when she speaks, her voice soft but her bearing with a rigidity in it that reminds him of his cousin the Empress, the lines of her garb severe against Tranquility’s rounder aesthetics and the festival’s lights.

She looks melancholy, too, a little remote, a little longing, and Samot doesn’t feel quite like speaking yet, but he can give her that; leans his muzzle into her hand and gives a gentle lick, then stretches down on the grass and wags his tail, inviting, look, you may touch.

[deadlyandvast-blog]

@thisdeadvessel

With time Samot extends his range outside of the Sea of Crises. The beaches of Nectar are beautiful, and the birds that reside there are great conversationalists — but Tranquility is the one that he likes most, with paths dappled in soft sunlight and its whispering deepwoods. 

Today he is the wolf again. He has been the wolf often as of late, the shape like putting on a beloved old coat after a long summer, free from the melancholy that lingers at the edges of his moods when human. Like this he can meander between the vendor stalls just as well, and admire with a knowing eye the craftsmanship of cloth and baskets and jewels, and herd errant bear cubs back towards their parents. One of them offers him a pat on the head and a stick of something sweet in thanks, sticky and thick under his teeth, and he’s licking the last remnants from his chops when he approaches the enclosures. There’s gates further along, but he is only a wolf now, and so flattens himself to slink underneath the fencing, shaking dust off his fur once past. 

No one looks twice at his presence, save for the goose that chases him over half the length of the enclosure. Strains of music drift from further along the festival grounds, and he should be heading there now. He is not interested in the other animals, though the nervous looks the ponies shoot him are entertaining.

Instead, he finds himself lingering. Somewhere under the trees someone is playing the guitar, and he can hear children laughing somewhere not far away from here, just behind the corner.

Samot closes his eyes, and curls his tail about his paws, and thinks — even wolves are not so free from melancholy after all.

But someone is near, footsteps too light to be a bear, and though he does not think whoever it is will make note of him, only a wolf still, if a beautiful one, he opens his eyes again, slowly, curiosity too deep a habit to shake.

[deadlyandvast-blog]

notproperlysocialized‌:

Will almost laughs, little scoff of surprise. “It’s unconventional,” he allows. “You’ve, ah, a high opinion of how badly I care to know.” His tone is wary, but there’s a catch of amusement to it, tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“This isn’t one of those fairytales where there’s power in a name, is it?” he continues, eyebrows drifting up in an exaggeration of concern. And then, recklessly: “I’m not ready for that level of commitment.” It comes out meaner in delivery than he intended. He lets the bite of it hang between them.

Will pauses for a moment, draws the point of his tongue barely to his upper lip in thought. His heart is beating light and fast in his throat, but distantly, as though behind sheets of clouded glass. He’s not entirely sure why he doesn’t step back and back again, leave this scene as a glittering mirage. But the familiarity of it has him heeling, pacing ruts. Something breathless and taunting. It presses nauseatingly under the divot of his collarbone.

“What did you have in mind?”

Samot scoffs, muzzle dipping down and ears flicking as though shaking off flies. “Once upon a time I could rewrite the world, and it would fold around the words under my pen. Of course there is power in names. Didn’t your shadows teach you that?”

Circles, still playful and open, mouth soft. Gentle, gentle, heedless of the man’s raised hackles. Power in words and meaning in bodies; he is still standing there, looking at Samot, parted lips and watchful eyes, he has not said no. “But you would not bind me anyway, would you. Too much commitment, as you say.”

He prances close, head tilted back to hold the man’s eyes. Muscles bunch under fur, uncoil as he rises on his hind legs, the claws on his front paws catching briefly on the collar, hot breath and wet tongue on the man’s face, bumps their foreheads together then disengages, paws back on the ground and body twisting to turn, looking back over his shoulder and grinning as he saunters away.

“Catch me, hunter.”

[deadlyandvast-blog]

notproperlysocialized‌:

“Oh,” Will says quietly, blinking back at the boy-wolf. The way the word jars from his throat makes him realize that his breath had stuck in his chest, a burr of surprise and some many-hooked feeling that drags sharp through him. Realization hits him heavy, crumples into his ribs.

“I don’t think I can chase something before it runs,” he says, his voice half-distant, faltering, but eyes trained tightly to the man before him. Searching. His eyebrows are lowered in something like a frown. And then the man is a creature, again, the soft give of fur against Will’s legs, snaking through and away. Will doesn’t reach out to touch the ruff of his neck, although he could.

“And,” (a breath) “I don’t know if that’s wise,” Will says, as the now-wolf steps lightly away. The sound is rough, half-finished. “You seem like the sort to play with your food.”

It’s an observation, not an ultimatum. There are, of course, other observations he thinks of making, like “I have a wife and a son” or “I don’t even know your name”, but they seem foolishly rudimentary, clumsy. Parrying with a wooden blade. They ring a little hollow even to his own ear, under the confused roar of blood lurching stop-start through his head. Will closes his eyes, again, as if to be alone. The dream logic of the situation is fraying around him to reveal a worn-through glimpse of something dangerously substantial, careening uncomfortably in his chest.

“What do they call you?” he asks, after a moment, like steadying himself. He mirrors the wolf’s movement with a step backwards. Not retreating. Replying. A tug on the space between them. “No - that’s the wrong question.” There’s that vigilance again. His voice is low, weaving.

“What do you call yourself?”

“Wise? Perhaps not.” He does like to play with a catch, it’s true, especially if the catch asks nicely. “But it would be fun.” Samot paws at the ground, claws clicking on concrete, dips into a play bow, fur brushing along the ground and long legs stretched in front of him in in open invitation before he bounces back, tail swishing and ears tilted to the side.

“I could make you work for it,” he teases, needling at the sharpness he can feel in the man. It’s been some time since he’s allowed someone else’s hand on his fur, but he thinks he wouldn’t mind this man’s. “A name for a chase, wouldn’t that be fair?”

[deadlyandvast-blog]

glimmeringbone‌:

Adelaide considers the glass for a while before she sips and leans herself against a wall. She composes herself again.

“I remember,” she says. Her voice is smooth again. She does not say what it is she remembers. Tristero’s voice, the words on a page, the sights of her own eyes. Does it matter? It was long ago.

Quietly. “I have done regrettable things, that I might end their suffering. So I must imagine they regret as well. If I did not believe that…” If she did not believe that, would she still have done them?

She does not like the echo of an answer that begins to form in her mind.

Samot watches her for a moment, the gleam of her pearls like so many eyes, the shadow doubt casts on her tone. He wonders how she might have ruled, in his place; how they might have talked, had the lines between the City of First Light and Nacre been more open, instead of letting it wait until now, both of them a world away. 

“Perhaps it is the duty of a ruler to do regrettable things, so the ruled do not have to.”  What does regret taste like to her, he wonders. “We have a different perspective. And a responsibility, to them and to ourselves.”  

Heavy as that mantle is, and in spite of himself his thoughts once again turn to Samothes, his acceptance of the encroaching dark, to Samol’s creeping fatalism, nights of furious arguing. Semantics, responsibilities, the things they thought couldn’t be fixed, that Samot thought (knows) he must. He takes another swallow from his bottle.

“How do you bear it? All of this —” he hisses between his teeth, hunting for the words. “Being the last thing before the dark. Before the Nothing. Endings.”

[deadlyandvast-blog]

notproperlysocialized‌:

“Didn’t they?” Will asks, a little peal of amusement in his voice. It isn’t funny. Not really. But in this slice of slow-time, walking shoulder-to-shoulder with a god, he can pretend that it is. Laughter squeezed out before atrocity. Not hysterical but eerily calm, the placid black surface of a lake full of drowned men. He catches the eye of the princely creature beside him, quirks an eyebrow. “Not in their original incarnation, perhaps.”

Will considers elaborating for a moment, the pause thick between them. Hannibal hasn’t trailed him here, to his knowledge, it’s true. But his shadow has. Or shadows that look like him. Every stray branch casting the shape of something hungry, and Will waiting to be devoured like searching for patterns in storm clouds. His gaze flickers again from toe to crown of the other man. Shadows, indeed.

“I haven’t decided whether I’m relieved,” he says instead. “In their absence I think I might have started chasing myself.”

He turns away, briefly, scans the station as though to confirm there isn’t anyone trailing them. Only a handful of commuters cluster the platform, absorbed in their own daily rituals. When Will speaks again, his voice is light, absent. “A hound without a hunt, chasing my own tail.”

“So find new prey,” Samot says, and reaches over the thin distance between them, the pads of his fingers light along the line of jaw, the scratchy stubble. He is tempted, for a moment, to press down, to leave the imprint of his passage on him. Another shadow marking a claim. But there is no satisfaction in so overt a gesture, is there?

He is gentle when he nudges the man’s turned head back towards him, his touch light as leaves, but the look in his eyes is flickering flames, his slow smile a dare. “A tail is too easily caught, for a hunter such as you and what a waste that would be.” 

It’s in the things he hasn’t said yet; the story Samot does not need the details to just yet. Shadows are fickle, violent; it takes heavy or beautiful things for them to linger. 

There is no warmth in him to linger on the man’s skin when Samot pulls back and folds himself once again into the wolf, weaving between his legs then dancing away, playful, coy. “Why, we could hunt together, if the lack of a shadow bothers you.”

[deadlyandvast-blog]

notproperlysocialized‌:

Will leans back slightly to study the man, touching his knuckles to his mouth in thought. This god, this creature - and he is that, no doubt - finds him like the point of a knife, right there, along the sternum. They’re cruel words, intended not to inflict pain but to leave a mark. And yet Will finds himself curious. The sensation is not unlike digging around inside a wound to pry out the bullet. Who knows what else one might find under the skin.

“I wouldn’t say that the things that follow me -” he raises his eyebrows in emphasis here, holds his gaze steady, the line between them tense - “are family. Then again, I was never close with mine. My family, I mean.”

Will tips his head to the side, a question materializing in the lines of his brow. “Maybe that’s just how it is. We remake our families into something different when the original is dissatisfying.”

He lets the words hang there for a moment. Testing, perhaps. The Will that wonders and wants, the Will with cold eyes, occludes the others, briefly. His eyes flicker from the man’s circlet to his throat, cataloguing. And then something shifts, a shearing, and Will blinks almost imperceptibly away. When he refocuses, the animal warmth has returned to him, a pressure under his breastbone that wriggles uncomfortably.

“But no. I don’t think the relationship is familial. It’s too…” He trails off, tasting the words on his tongue as though licking bile from his mouth. “Intimate. And violent. Not violent like, ah, a fist fight. Violent like a natural disaster, or the sea. I don’t think family has ever made me feel something so…” Again he trails into silence, eyes falling shut for a moment before snapping open, bright and sharp. “Vindictive. Vicious. Something like that.”

“Remake our families, or remake ourselves.” 

Sometimes both. But really Samot is content to accept any answer. There’s nothing he wants out of this man, nothing to be disappointed about, only the slow burn of his curiosity, the filling of time with conversation. And to catch the way his face shifts, his eyes flick at a word from Samot, fleet bright things like glimpses of fish under the surface of a stream.

Viciousness would be lovely on him, Samot thinks. He’s not unpleasant to look at now, already, even without the broadness of frame that Samot usually favors, but with eyes fierce, with blood on his face — Samot thinks he can picture it, and he cannot entirely fault those other shadows, if this is what they were hunting for, if that is what they meant to turn him into. 

“They didn’t follow you here,” he remarks. The city is red-bright, its shadows stark. He waits for a train to rumble past before he speaks again. “That must be a relief.”

[deadlyandvast-blog]

glimmeringbone‌:

The wine glass clinks moving off the shelf, and Adelaide fills it with sharp movements. She must breathe, because she can. Because she must. How quickly she lost the habit of it. But she is not dead.

Samot’s son, she must remember, is dead – didn’t Tristero say? Father was cut off from his kin, forced to guess from the news that reverberated westward after the end – and Samothes reforged iron-hard in the wake of it. If not dead himself.

Gods are a dying breed. Her family keeps its borders as it shrinks. Ah, it was easier when Samot was merely Adelaide’s enemy, a wolf seizing more than his share.

She drinks, and dares not look at him. Queens do not shed tears.

“We are all sorry, aren’t we.” Wine and books. How nice it must have been to choose one’s domain, in the times before the laws narrowed. She supposes he might choose again, if he could. “For mortals, too, it is their affliction.”

“But we’ll accept your apology… if you fill our cup.” She holds it out, grip loose, and keeps her eyes away.

Quietly Samot crosses the room, tips the mouth of his bottle over her glass, watches as it fills, a lovely dark red in shade. Twists when there is enough, and wipes the sole droplet left with his finger.

He pulls a new chair. He sets himself down. There is no more light here than was in his room, the walls thick, bare of windows. At times it was like this, in Marielda: the volcano’s hallways mercurial, their master too fond of secrets.

“Me more sorry than most, I think,” he whispers, and smiles down at his hands. “Do you remember before the past was set? I think of it often.” That guilt is his to bear, too.

“Mortals...” He shakes his head. Thinks of his cloak laid on broad shoulders, of small cobbin feet on the stone of his city’s streets. And the stars, falling. “I don’t know. Is it?”

[deadlyandvast-blog]

notproperlysocialized‌:

A slight shiver runs jaw-to-throat through Will at those words, some note of recognition plucked, sharp little exhale. He watches the other man from the corner of his eye, warily.

“Hm,” Will acknowledges, “I know the type. No doubt less literally than you mean it. But I’ve met men or -” a pause - “creatures who aspired to something like that. Nothing in their hearts but want. Not for something so banal as power or recognition but just. To consume, absolutely.” Some kind of expression crosses his face, here, an unreadable thing between a rueful smile and a snarl of disgust. It settles somewhere flat, tired. “To take beautiful things and crush them. In doing so, elevate them.”

Will slips his hands into his pockets and turns to face the man - the god - as they walk, flashing him a look of mild appraisal. No, he doesn’t look monstrous. But monsters, real monsters, rarely do, in Will’s experience. Perhaps he ought to feel afraid, or repulsed. Instead, there is something like recognition. The suspension of breath when one encounters, in the bristling flesh, a predator previously only glimpsed between the pages of books.

“That is bold,” Will scolds, joking lilt just barely there. “Did they - well, only my sanity.” He frowns. “And a few other things. Most everything I had, actually. My sense of self, of security in that self. My family. Everything that was… good, and whole, about me.”

Will tips his head back, eyes closed. Deep inhalation, heavy exhalation. When he opens his eyes again, there is something bitter there, a hard black kernel. But there’s curiosity, too, winking sharp. He fixes the other man with a pointed look.

“I guess that’s the nature of things like that. To take until there’s nothing left. But you know? The worst part is, when they’re away from me, I miss them.”

Samot smiles, sideways and sly. He knows he pushing a little, and why not? The man answers so readily, losses bared like a throat. He watches back when Samot looks at him, and part of him leans into this like an animal on the trail.

“I took a god’s name for myself, once, after I killed her,” he says, and for a moment he pauses, eyes half-lidded, remembering the taste and shape of it, the twisting and clawing and the heat of Severea’s name at the back of his borrowed throat, her myriad shapes and songs. And the beauty of it, that he wanted nothing but to keep it close, and hoard it to himself, until she came back for it... it would be false to say he does not miss it, sometimes, though now he can craft beautiful things of his own, though he has other names to hold to his heart. “I stole her name and her body and her shapes then I ran, because they were so beautiful I could not bear to see them go to waste. And the shadow that became of her caught up with me and made me spit them back, and she was beautiful then too.”

His eyes glitter, full of mirth. It’s his favorite story about himself, all changes and shadows in the night. 

“I killed her, but she forgave me. Her brother called me his son, and gave me a name, and now we are family.”

And what of your shadows? ask the tilt of his chin, his open hands at his side. Have you made them family too?

[ukrainian-psycho]

[newblogisjacindaelena]

  Luca Galavotti

[deadlyandvast-blog]

notproperlysocialized‌:

The muscles in Will’s shoulders stiffen as the wolf circles him, an almost-shiver of tension. The wolf is dangerously close, close enough to - ah. Will breathes a sharp little stab of air as the wolf slides against him, just close enough to create a ghost of friction against Will’s jacket. And then he’s behind Will, breath hot on the back of his neck. Will’s eyes fall lightly closed. It’s only a momentary gesture, but the promise of fang, the insinuation of a swift bite to the spinal cord if he missteps, is not lost. The wolf moves on, then, rounds Will’s shoulder, and the moment passes.

No sooner has Will started to formulate a response than the wolf is no longer a beast but a man. The wolf-that-is-a-man crouches before him, eyes still feral-bright, and tilts his head. “Oh,” Will says, quietly.

The man is beautiful, in the way of masterless things, and quite suddenly the heat of his gaze begins to itch where it touches Will, faint burn of blood rushing to skin. Will blinks. When he speaks again, his words are cautious, a path picked between precipices:

“It’s not so much that I’m ungodly as that I’ve never had a reason to believe.”

Bedelia’s voice rings in his ears, scathing. You’ve just found religion. That’s a different sort of belief, though, Will thinks. A starving, thankless kind. He rocks back on the balls of his feet slightly, studying the man before him. Then again - who knows what kind of god this creature might be, what kind of faith he might demand?

Will touches his tongue to the point of one canine tooth in thought. Then, slowly, as if contemplating the taste of each word: “The creatures I’ve known… seem at first to be made of shadow. But they coalesce, gradually, into something with the liquid weight of blood, or oil. Blue-black hide. Feathers, sometimes, so dark they’re slick with it. And antlers. Always antlers. They, ah.” He falters, trace of a frown twitching across his forehead. “They come to me when I’m awake, as well as asleep, but always with the same… haziness? No. No, they’re quite clear. But with the crawling quality of looking where no light penetrates. And always with a cleverness to them. As though they see things… through and… past me. That others don’t.”

Will closes his eyes again for a moment, in thought or in reprieve. When he opens them, something mad and reckless seizes in his chest. He raises his eyebrows, tips his head slightly, indicating: walk with me?

This strikes Samot as unreasonable. That one may not devote themself to a god, that they may be too distant to be of immediate concern, certainly. But to not believe at all... well, how do people figure the sun came to be? The earth under their feet? The animals they hunt? It is possible their gods have hidden, perhaps; gone remote, in the far places of the world. 

Or in dreams. He paints a good picture, this man who watches back when Samot’s eyes are on him. Antlers, feathers, shadows shifting with changeable shapes; Samot understands it better now. Fearlessness bred out of familiarity. 

And something else, still. Edges under the rounded lines of where his caution used to be. Samot smiles, inclines his head in response. Lead the way. 

“I was a shadow before I was anything else,” he offers, casual, as he unfolds from seated to standing. An anchor or a probe, maybe both. “Before I had a body or a shape, knowing only hunger and the hunt as my own. I became more, but there were others like me. Killers, word-eaters, shape-changers.”

His finger taps against his lip, as he considers the man. The sun burnishes the gold of his hair, as though to make a liar out of him: in the stark red of the day he must look the furthest thing from a shadow.

“If I may be so bold — did they take anything from you?”

[deadlyandvast-blog]

glimmeringbone‌:

“Dealt with.” She repeats that phrase and feels her mouth dry with the taste of wine. “He was dealt with. Yes. Long after.”

He is dead. Both of them, dead. In that permanent way that so many suffer, not only the line of Tristero. She will end it, Adelaide reminds herself, but the thought does not warm her this time. With her grip on her power slackened, how many more will die?

How will she be spared from her sorrow?

“He was my brother,” she says finally. Stiffly. “And I saw him only once more, for a moment, as I died and my death sent him into the Heat and the Dark.

“He was happy.”

She stands, abruptly, and retreats to Samot’s kitchen, to find a glass in which to pour wine.

Ah, but he can be such a fool at times. Eyes always on the big picture, assuming the pieces will fall in line, missing the obvious. Hadrian’s bone-headed cluelessness, the mages’ interference with Maelgwyn, this —

Now he watches the coil of her grief, and is that anger? he would be, in her place — guilt blooming like heat at the back of his mouth. Acrid and sharp. Samot dislikes it very much. Even his wine’s extravagantly floral bouquet cannot mask the taste of it. Nacre’s vintages ran towards bitter, he remembers; bitter, but sweet. 

The glass is cool under his hands. His chair scrapes against the ground when he rises, and he trails after his cousin, though he allows a certain distance between them. It is not his wish to corner her.

“Adelaide...” He hesitates, uncharacteristically, then forges on. “I spoke carelessly, and I see now I should have kept better informed.” Softer: “I am sorry. For both of them. And I apologise.” 

Samol called him that, sometimes. The boy who apologized. It feels like lifetimes ago. And still, that sunburst taste that lingers on his tongue. He is out of practice. He wants to say my father is dying too, and has the urge to laugh, which he drowns with another swig of his bottle. What incredible, horrible gods of death they make: to lose, and to lose, and find themselves alone in the end.

[siriusdraws]

doge lord

[darksilenceinsuburbia]

[abigaildonaldson]

Balenciaga Spring/Summer 2006

[deadlyandvast-blog]

notproperlysocialized‌:

A little soar of adrenaline and gratification in Will’s chest as the wolf stretches out and descends from his perch, long white body moving with the smooth inevitability of glacial meltwater. The wolf steps closer, and Will feels it bodily, like an intrusion - a distortion in his sense of physical safety. It’s not unwelcome, though. He holds his hand breathlessly still as the creature sniffs it. The heat of his exhalation is searing in the cool mist of rain, and the flash of his lower canines scarlet-bright. Will has the unnerving sense that he is in some manner of fairytale contract, that he has just signed over his true name in letting the wolf take his scent. This pallid creature of the fey come to collect. How fitting.

The wolf seeks Will’s eyes - Will is here struck once more by the unnatural sheen of indigo as they meet, the violent dazzle - and, he swears to god, smiles. Smirks, almost, a coy expression that hardly belongs on a canine muzzle. Will shudders an intake of breath, tries to hold his gaze steady. And then - the wolf speaks.

Will has not heard a wolf speak before, but he has heard a rat speak, now, and that’s not so different, he supposes. Still, something curls and uncurls inside him, some animal excitement. The wolf’s voice is a low, rolling sound, distant storms. The covered edge of something playful. Will shakes his head slowly.

“No,” he replies, at some length. His voice is cautious, thoughtful, but a coil of naked intrigue arches through him, like the movement of some great cat. “I don’t think it will be.”

Will lets his hand fall, braces himself instead with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting on the backs of his wrists. Respectful, but active.

“I’ve met creatures like you before,” he says, quietly, “but only in dreams. Waking or otherwise.“ He tilts his head just slightly. “I’m not dreaming now, am I? It’s hard to tell in this place, sometimes.”

Will doesn’t say: I know about your kind. I know about beasts that are not-beasts, with eyes full of dark intelligence like the flash of an insect’s wing. I know about the ones who move mirage-like and smile terrible smiles. Yes, this awakens a certain acid nostalgia in him, stinging the back of his throat with anticipation. The corners of his mouth quirk upwards despite himself. This is, perhaps, the most base familiarity that has been afforded him since he arrived in the Sea. He could almost laugh. Doesn’t. He doesn’t want to be rude.

“You’re not dreaming. Though I have done that as well, at times.” Stretch of legs as he moves again forward, ripple of fur as he brushes against the man’s shoulder, circling, inquisitive. Deeply pleased that he didn’t flinch away or turn his eyes, unlike some, intrigued by the very same. 

Samot is fond of picking apart mysteries. His claws click on the ground as he pads around the man, muzzle by the back of his neck under the unruly fall of his hair, lingering only long enough to catch his scent in full, to feel the warmth of his blood under the skin and tease at a threat before circling back. This man is not prey. Samot’s tongue lolls out when he sits again, smiling, smiling. 

“They call me a god, where I come from,” he says, and now he is the boy, white fur turned to pale skin and golden hair, circlet upon his brow, head cocked and elbows on his knees in a mirror of the man’s own body. There is a bit of the wolf still to him, irises too wide, canines too long. “But you do not look the godly type, so perhaps I will be something else. Will you tell me of those creatures you’ve known in dreams?”