thinking about varang with an anurai
You’ve taken down three of her best warriors by yourself. You’re the only thing standing between the Mangkwan and the caravan you’d been travelling with. Weak children who worship a weak mother. Because of you, they’ve gone, fled into the forest on their mounts. Your face is speckled with blood, cast with cutting shadows from the fire.
She moves in slow strides, aware of your eyes following her. You make a mighty form— jewelry crafted from bone, feathers woven into your hair, sharp knives held like extensions of yourself, sawtute skulls at your hip. Your heart will be delicious.
But you’re faster than she expected. Riku goes down with a wet sounding cough, blood gurgling from his open throat. Then her back is held against your armored chest, scarred arm crossed over her torso and gripping her arm to hold her still, your nails biting into her skin.
“Stay back!” You snarl at her warriors, fangs gleaming in the firelight. The polished curve of your knife presses against her throat until blood drips down her skin in thin rivulets. “Or I cut.”
She grabs your kuru, makes the bond with a swiftness that discloses how often she’s done this. Your body jolts at the sudden connection, grip going slack on her arm. The muscles ache, branded by your fingers with bruises that will come with the sun. And your minds touch.
It flickers, becomes almost blinding through the bond, rippling up her kuru like lightning.
The pain of thunder—the bullets, your mind screams hatefully—ripping through your arms and legs, the agony of laying under your mother’s cooling corpse for hours while your home was raided, then carrying out the funeral rites the best way a child could. All the kills, your knives plunging into flesh, the trophies fashioned into armor. A righteous fury burning brighter than any fire she’s seen, one that’s brought you both to your knees.
You let out a cross between a war cry and a curse as you sever the bond with the swipe of your arm. The absence of you feels like a mighty chasm cutting through a valley. Your ears fold against your skull as you hiss at her, rising unsteadily to your feet to loom over her like a palulukan out for more than just blood.
Varang releases a shaking breath, lower lip trembling lightly as she stares up at you in something bordering on reverence. Then comes her voice, quiet and raw in the face of your truth.
“I see you.”