instinct says to snarl, bite, devour. instinct says everything is in the chase and without a chase there is no point, not in this afterimage of a world, not when everything around her is doing its own ripping and tearing and shredding and killing and bleeding and suffering — the smell of blood is strong but the smell of fear is stronger, and she follows both across the ruined landscape and she howls and she hardly remembers that there was anything before, anything that could be called after, anything at all beyond the chase. all she hears is the call of blood. all she sees is red.
she’s being chased. she’s known that for quite a while and kept running, thrilling in it: oh, she’s not used to being on this side of a hunt, the prey, but she knows she can turn the tables anytime it gets dull. and it has. it has gotten dull and she has doubled back to where the detective is sleeping and she is bright-eyed and sharp-toothed and nothing — hardly anything, almost nothing, eurydice too far in the underworld to be found — left of her humanity, all bite and no bark. doesn’t remember her own name, much less the woman in front of her’s, though she thinks in that corner of her mind that still thinks in words and not simply instinct that she should, that it’s important — that even when she’s forgotten herself she should remember her.
this woman will kill her if allowed, so half-wolf half-woman kicks the gun to the other side of the hollowed-out half-shelter and doesn’t give her the chance.
neither does she attack. just ... stands, watches the detective watch her. this inaction is difficult: everything in her yearns for the taste of blood but she doesn’t give in, holds herself back for the first time since everything changed. doesn’t think it’d taste as sweet as it should.
@baseyra & daisy. are you here to kill me?
she isn’t sure how to answer — how to make the words form in her mouth when her teeth have turned to knives, or what the answer even would be. it’s been a while since anyone’s spoken to her. is she here to kill basira? ( oh, that’s the woman’s name. it slips seamlessly into a missing space in her mind & it fits just right among the other half-abandoned things, discarded in favor of the hunt. ) she should be. she is hungry and everything is prey to her, everything something to chase and eventually catch, eventually kill.
basira isn’t. it doesn’t make sense but she feels it bone-deep, deeper than the hunt. she didn’t think anything was more embedded in her veins as the call of violence, but basira is. for a moment the fear and hunger are each far away and she can see half-clearly, flickering between something monstrous and something terrifyingly human.
‘ basira, ’ she says. half-growled, but not malicious. it’s just how words come out nowadays. it isn’t an answer but it’s the only truth she knows — a yes or a no would both be lies, in their own way, but this is not. the hunt doesn’t know how to lie or deceive, it simply is.
still. she hasn’t decided an answer but she’s decided a not yet, at least, fighting against everything in herself, turning against her own urge to tear everything around her to shreds — and she backs up, no longer hovering over basira. several meters away and she sits on the ground and simply looks. hates the way the eyes in the sky gaze down on her, but there’s not much more she can do than echo their ever-present gaze — she doesn’t dare to blink as she studies basira. looks and looks and looks.
she should be here to kill basira, but she isn’t, she decides. there is plenty of prey around but basira is not among their ranks. the most minute shake of the head; words get stuck around the bones in her throat but gestures, she can do. ( it’s been so long since she’s communicated, since she’s cared enough to look at someone without seeing every muscle and tendon and sweet-sour blood and sharp-edged bone beneath the skin. )
