The wood is dead and rotted with damp, and silverfish creep from the drafty holes from which you can peer into the woodland dark beyond. He does so, twists his tattered nails into the soft cabin walls, and presses the thick of his body against it, watching violence with a hunger through the fractures in their refuge. Outside, their prisoner cries for mercy in the hands of his steely companion. He growls something wretched and cruel in his ear, and tightens his grip on the prisoner’s chin. Aarhir stops breathing for a time as it nears, tense and trembling and full of fear, anxiety, disgust and want.
Just as the screaming begins, Aarhir gasps and the blade carves lazily across the man’s throat -- ear, to pointed ear -- ripping, rather than slicing. Faruq would have it last a while, and watch his eyes flutter as the centuries drain away from him. There’s knot in Aarhir’s belly, so full of tension it reopens his wounds, and they weep through his linens and dribble down his hips, and stain the moss-coated walls as he grinds himself into them. Faruq lets the man’s lifeless corpse drop to the floor, and Aarhir sighs, and wishes it were him.
