♧: learn that your muse has died (ALL THE FEELS, SK, ALL THE LOVE)
((For the future of the CAMP AU and the lost duck plot line. I bring you, ‘Almost feels’ with Hum!Khan))
A circleof trees that was once alive, no more. Heated by the touch of fire, brokenbeneath the bale of winter and blackened by the onset of slow, creeping rot. Brittleskeletons, dressed in pallid green moss and the perfumed with the chew-able pungencyof regrowth. Left of the old growth forests emerald heart, one man’s soft stepsbent twigs that were already black beneath the bark as he made his way back frompatrol. Back to a very humble, sparse encampment. Amidst the sturdy beetles anddutiful maggots this journeyman had made himself temporarily at home. Thestench warded away most creatures, humanhunters included. Human hunters most importantly. Humans most importantly.
Hell,after all, was other people.
Faded black locks, striped with premature white,growing in idle, wild waves. Skin tanned by near constant exposure to theweather, the light, and the wilderness. A beard coming in, sheer salt thatformed a handsome frame to his sharp features and fierce eyes. Physically, hewas as unmanaged and un-manicured in his musculature as ever he had been inyouth, but it was less evident now beneath the many layers of a travelling wildman and a barely billowing great coat.
Crows. Four of them,ranging in size from the unusually large to the short and stout. Sheddingfeathers. Colliding with each other in their flight, and scrambling one overthe other in chaotic synchronicity. The foursome drew Shere Khan’s attentionskyward with their melodic folly. They had his eye just long enough for him tonotice that the birds came bearing gifts. A rigid piece of card, rimmed inblack lace was hurled to the earth by corvid claws. As if desperate to avoidlanding, the birds gave a few more hurried flaps and panicked croaks as theymade their way back towards greener canopy.
Sending them away with narrowed eyes, Khanstooped to lift what had been delivered. A program. Some noble was now missingtheir funeral invitation, and account of events to occur. At the same time thathe recognized what he held, however, Shere Khan recognized the face on thefront. A swarthy, dirt encrusted thumb slid to block the crown – just to becertain – and then slipped slowly down to caress the inked face.
Silentand stoic, the woodsman hoisted his coat up at the shoulders and continuedtowards his camp.
Therewas darkness now. Stars twinkled distant and cold, and the moon was no morethan a blade’s edge in the black sky. Shere Khan was alright with all of this.He didn’t much care for the idea that any body, astral or earthly, see him thisevening. He has already done something he tried only to do on the very rarestand most necessary occasions. He had built a fire.
It washard. It had been, and it would always be hard. To be right.
“Youwere weak,” Shere Khan eulogized, “You were good. You lived justly. You putfaith in others, and kept loyalty in your heart. You believed, and now…yourweakness has been your end. Time takes soft hearts. Beauty in brevity, and allthat. Our bitter poison keeps the rest of us alive. A burning venom that willnot let us sleep.”
ShereKhan paused, realizing in that moment that he was speaking to no one. Loweringhis head briefly, he took a slow and measured breath before searching theflickering shadows at his side and back.
“Of allthe weak and wonderful people that I have outlived,” he told the fire, “he was…themost recent.”
Agentle flick of the wrist, and what small token he could have kept caught fireand quickly turned from a white to black.
“Too-rah,old boy,” the old cat sighed, “Sleep well.”
floatinglightsandsunflowers
