#thecozykirin

[thecozykirin]

DWC June 2026 Day 2: Vibrant

@daily-writing-challenge She'd mentioned it once, just once, while sitting on the windowsill at Chuck's with her knees drawn up and her shawl wrapped tight as she watched the last of the gray light drain out of the Boralus sky. She hadn't been talking to Ridley, not really. She'd been talking to the air, or the gulls, or whatever invisible thing she was always half-listening to. "Back home," Sybil murmured, her voice carrying the weight of a forest she might never see again, "when autumn turned, the sky would sing. Colors, like—like someone spilled dye across wet cloth. Green an’violet and sometimes a pink so pale ye'd think ye dreamed it. Me mam used t' say it was th’hidden folk shakin' out their skirts after th' harvest, lettin' the hem trail through the stars." She paused, her fingers had moved on the sill, tracing slow arcs. "I miss that. Th’way it moved like it were breathin'. Like the whole sky was alive and it wanted ye t' know." Then she'd gone quiet, and Ridley had grunted something about drafts and shut the window, and that had been the end of it. 

Except it hadn't. Because the words had lodged in him the way a splinter lodges under a nail—small, invisible, and impossible to stop feeling. He'd lain awake that night on the floor of the room they shared at Chuck's, staring at the water-stained ceiling while Sybil slept curled on the cot with her shawl pulled over her head, and he'd thought about a sky full of breathing colors, and he'd thought I ain't never seen anyfin' like that, and then he'd thought she ain't gonna see it again eivver, not 'ere, not wiv that collar on 'er, and then he'd rolled over and pressed his face into his arm and told himself to go to sleep.

He didn't go to sleep.

He started collecting bottles two days later. Not obviously, of course, Or in any way that could be traced or questioned or, Mother forbid, explained. Ridley would sooner swallow his own tongue than explain. He simply started noticing them. The green ones first—wine bottles, mostly, thick glass with that particular murky sea-color that taverns threw out by the crate. Then blue, which was harder to find. Apothecary vials, the odd flask from the Tradewinds Market, and a chipped perfume bottle he fished out of the gutter behind the Ashvane Company Yards while pretending to check a dead drop. Purple was the worst. He found exactly one, and it was a slim, elegant thing that had probably held something expensive once. It was in a bin in Upton Borough, just being there long enough to fish it out made him sweat through his coat, but once he had it in his hands he wrapped it in his handkerchief and tucked it inside his coat with the care of a man handling a grenade.

It was Pebbles who caught him at it. "Wha' the fuck are you doin'?"

Ridley froze, crouched behind a stack of fish crates on the wharf, one hand closed around the neck of a red glass bottle he'd spotted glinting between the slats. Pebbles stood three feet away, arms crossed, blonde hair spiking in the harbour wind, wearing the expression of a boy who has just witnessed an adult doing something profoundly stupid and wants a full accounting. "Nuffin'," Ridley said.

"Yer nickin' bottles."

"I ain't nickin' 'em. They're rubbish."

"Yer nickin' rubbish bottles an' puttin' 'em in yer coat like they're gold." Pebbles' eyes narrowed. "You gone soft in the 'ead?"

Ridley straightened up, drawing himself to his full height—which was considerable, and usually enough to end conversations with teenage boys. "Drop it." 

Pebbles did not drop it, because Pebbles had never dropped anything in his life except other people's coin. "Is it fer 'er?"

The silence that followed was so sharp you could have cut a sailcloth with it. "Wha'," Ridley said flatly.

"Sybil." Pebbles tilted his head, foxish and knowing. "It's fer 'er, innit."

"It ain't fer anyone. I told you, it's—"

"Rubbish, yeah." Pebbles looked at the red bottle in Ridley's fist, then back at his face, and something shifted behind the boy's sharp eyes. Not mockery, or rather, not only mockery. Something softer and more careful flickered briefly in his gaze. "Right. You want 'elp, or wha'?" Ridley stared at him. "Don't just stand there gawpin',” Pebbled snapped. “I got places t' be. You want 'elp collectin' yer not-fer-anyone rubbish bottles or not?"

What Ridley wanted was for the dock planks to open up and swallow him into the harbor. What he said, after a long and agonizing pause, was: "...Blue ones. An' green. Nuffin' cracked too bad." Pebbles flashed a smile that was both feral and delighted in the way of a boy being let in on a secret and took off down the wharf at a loping run before Ridley could add conditions. 

By that evening, Pebbles had recruited Oliver. "I found three!" Oliver announced, bursting through the back door of Chuck's with his too-big coat bulging at the front, dock rope straining. He upended the coat onto the table with all the ceremony of a merchant unveiling fine silk, and three bottles rolled out: one green, one brown, and one that might have generously been described as yellow if you squinted and had a forgiving disposition.

"Tha’ one's brown, Ollie," Pebbles said.

"It's amber."

"It's brown."

"Syb says amber's just brown tha's been kissed by th' sun."

"Syb says a lot of fings." But Pebbles set the brown bottle aside rather than throwing it out.

"Wha's it all for?" Oliver asked, bouncing on his toes with the barely contained energy of a child who suspects a secret and would rather die than not be told it.

"It's a fing," Ridley grunted.

"Wha' kind of fing?"

"A fing fing. Don't worry ‘bout it."

"Is it a present? Is it fer Syb? Pebbles said—"

"Pebbles needs t' learn to shut 'is mouf." Ridley shot a glare at Pebbles, who was examining a blue bottle against the lamplight with a facade of practiced innocence. "It ain't—look, it's just somefin' I'm doin'. Wiv lights. An' bottles. An' it don't need explainin', a'right? Just...find more blue ones."

Oliver processed this with his entire body—chin jutting, brow furrowed, and fists clenched at his sides in concentration. Then a grin split across his little face, and his eyes lit up. "Yer makin' 'er somefin' pretty."

"M’endin’ this conversation, Oliver."

"You are! Yer makin' Syb somefin' pretty cos you like 'er—"

"Ollie." Pebbles cuffed the boy lightly on the back of the head. "Shut up an' go find blue bottles." 

_________________________________

The shed took him four nights.

It was an old storage lean-to that had been abandoned since the Ashvane Company had consolidated the nearby yards. It was too small to be useful, and too out of the way for the guard to bother patrolling which is why Ridley had used it once or twice for dead drops. He worked alone, after dark, when Merrick was elsewhere and Sybil was sleeping. The bottles went along the back wall first, arranged on a shelf he'd hammered together from scrap timber. Green ones in a long row at the bottom, ranging from near-black to the pale milky colour of shallow sea glass. Above them were the blue ones—the apothecary vials, the flask, and three squat bottles Pebbles had liberated from a chandler's bin. The single purple bottle was in the center, slim and jewel-dark. And scattered among them, the reds and ambers and that one yellow-brown Oliver had insisted was amber. They were to serve as warm tones to break the cool, the way firelight breaks through fog. The broken pieces went on a second shelf, and this was the harder work. Ridley had taken a hammer to the bottles that were too cracked to stand and broken them into rough shards, and then he'd spent two nights fitting those shards into a wooden frame he'd nailed across the wall—overlapping them and layering the colours until green bled into blue which bled into purple which bled into rose, with gaps between to let the light fracture through. His gloves were ruined by the end of the first night and his fingertips were cut to ribbons by the end of the second but he just wrapped them in scraps of linen and kept going. Ridley didn't know what an aurora looked like. He'd never left Boralus, and he'd never seen the sky do anything more dramatic than rain sideways. But he remembered her words, like someone spilled dye across wet cloth, and he remembered the way her hands had moved when she said it, tracing slow arcs on the windowsill, and he built what her hands had drawn. When he tested the lantern on the third night, the light hit the bottles and the shards and scattered across the opposite wall in a wash of colour—green and blue and violet and rose and the deep warm red of the single red bead Agatha had contributed, all overlapping and rippling where the uneven glass bent the light into soft, trembling bands. It wasn't an aurora, or the sky she had grown up under. It was bottles and broken glass and tar-stained planking. He stood there for a long time, looking at it, and he thought: it ain't enough. And then he thought: nuffin' I do is ever gonna be enough. And so, he adjusted the lantern two inches to the left, because the purple wasn't catching right, and kept working.

_________________________________

"Where are we goin'?"

"Out."

"I can see that, Ridley. Out where?"

"Just out, somewhere. It ain't far."

Sybil walked beside him through the damp evening streets of Boralus, her shawl pulled tight against the salt breeze, bare feet silent on the wet cobblestones. She never wore shoes if she could help it, as she said she couldn't feel the ground properly through leather, which was the dumbest thing Ridley had ever heard and also, privately, drove him mad with worry about broken glass and nails, but he'd learned that arguing with Sybil about shoes was like arguing with weather. She kept glancing at him, studying the side of his face with patient curiosity. "Yer bein' very strange," she observed. “Yer walkin' like ye've stolen somethin' and haven't decided whether t' run or not."

"I ain't stolen nuffin'."

"Yer hands are in yer pockets."

"So?"

"Ye never put yer hands in yer pockets, ye always keep them free. So eivver ye've stolen somethin', or yer nervous, and I've never once seen ye nervous about anythin' that wasn't—"

"Can you just—" He stopped walking and drew a breath before releasing it through his teeth. "Can you just...come wiv me an' not ask questions fer five bleedin' minutes? Is that somefin' you're capable of?"

Sybil blinked, then her head tilted in that familiar birdlike motion. "Five minutes," she said. "I'll time it."

"You ain't got a clock."

"I've got somethin' better." She tapped her chest, over her heart. "This one keeps perfect time.” 

Ridley made a noise that wasn't quite a groan and started walking again. Sybil followed, quiet for once, or at least as quiet as Sybil got, which still involved her humming under her breath and occasionally murmuring to a stray cat that wound between her ankles. Meanwhile Ridley's pulse was doing something he refused to acknowledge. His hands, stuffed deep in his coat pockets, were clenched into fists around nothing. This is stupid. This is the stupidest fing you've ever done, and you once let Merrick talk you into robbin' a cadet, so the bar weren't exactly 'igh t' begin wiv— The shed loomed dark and shuttered ahead. He turned down the narrow alley beside it, boots splashing through a shallow puddle that reflected the amber glow of a distant street lantern. The lean-to door was right where he'd left it, warped and salt-bleached, the latch held shut with a bit of wire he'd twisted into place.

"...Ridley?"

"Yeah."

"Is this it, then?"

"Yeah."

"It's a shed," Sybil said carefully.

"I know it's a shed."

"A very nice shed, I'm sure—"

"Just—" He turned to face her, and the expression on his face must have been something, because Sybil's teasing died in her throat. Whatever she saw there, whatever mix of terror and defiance and raw, exposed wanting was written across his features made her go still. "Close yer eyes," he said.

"What?"

"Yer eyes. Close 'em."

She studied him for one more heartbeat, then she closed her eyes. Her lashes lay against her freckled cheeks, pale and fine. The collar gleamed at her throat and her lips were slightly parted. Standing there with her eyes closed, trusting him in a dark alley in a city that had given her no reason to trust anyone, she looked so small and so certain that Ridley's chest seized like a fist had closed around it. He turned to the door, and unwound the wire. His cut-up fingers fumbled with it several times and he swore under his breath. "Are ye all right—"

"Fine. Keep 'em shut." The door swung open with a protesting creak. Inside, the shed was dark, the lantern sitting cold on the stool where he'd left it. He crossed the threshold, fumbling for the tinderbox in his pocket. The wick caught on the third try, and the flame crawled up, small and golden. He adjusted the lantern's shutter, angling it toward the rows of bottles and the mosaic of coloured shards in their rough wooden frame. The light hit the glass, and colors bloomed across the opposite wall, rippling, overlapping and shifting with every tiny flicker of the flame. Green bled into blue, deep and cool as winter twilight. Blue dissolved into violet at the edges where the purple bottle caught the light and threw it wide. Rose and amber crept between, warm threads through the cool wash, and at the center, where Agatha's red bead sat, a single point of deep crimson pulsed like a heartbeat. The broken shards fractured the light further, scattering it into soft, trembling bands that wavered and breathed on the rough grey planking. "...A'right," Ridley said, and his voice came out rougher than he liked. "Open 'em."

Ridley heard her step through the doorway, her bare feet shuffling onto the gritty floor. He heard the sharp, soft intake of breath that followed—a sound like someone being struck, except gentler. He didn't look at her, instead he looked at the wall, at the colours, at the imperfect wavering bands of green and blue and violet and rose, and he said nothing because there was nothing to say that wouldn't come out wrong or too much or not enough. "Ridley." Her voice was barely a whisper when it came, and it cracked down the middle like thin ice. "Ridley, what—how did ye—" 

"It's just bottles," he said quickly. "Found 'em around, mostly. Pebbles an' Ollie 'elped. Agatha found that red bit in the middle, dunno where, she just gave it to me. It ain't—I know it ain't the same as wha' you—I know it ain't right, it's just glass an' a lantern an'—"

"Ridley."

"—it don't move proper, like you said, the real ones move different, I know that, but the flame sort of—if you leave the shutter cracked just a bit it flickers an' the colours shift, see, an'—"

"Ridley."

He stopped, swallowed, and forced himself to turn and look at her. Sybil stood three paces inside the door with both hands pressed over her mouth. Her mismatched eyes were wide and luminous, catching the reflected colour—green on one cheek, violet on the other, her sandy hair lit rose and blue where the scattered light fell across it. Tears tracked down her face and over her fingers, silent and steady. She was weeping the way rain falls—quietly and inevitably, as though something had simply opened inside her that could not be closed again. "It's just bottles," he said again, helplessly.

She shook her head, dropping her hands from her mouth, and her lips were trembling. The smile that broke through the tears was the most devastating thing Ridley had ever seen—it wasn’t the crooked and careful half-smile she typically wore, but wide open and radiant with grief and gratitude so tangled together he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. "It's home," she whispered. "Oh, Ridley. It's home, it's—”

"I didn't, it's not—" She crossed the space between them in two steps and her arms went around his middle, her face pressing into his chest and she held on like the floor was tilting. Sybil was shaking, he could feel it through his coat, through the leather and the layers, the fine tremor running through her like a plucked string. She made a sound against his chest. A hiccupping little "hhh—" that dissolved into a wet, shuddering breath. Ridley broke then, his arms coming down around her, heavy and uncertain. One hand cupped the back of her head, his fingers sliding into the loose braid at her nape. She was so small against him, the top of her head barely reaching his collarbone. He could feel the ridge of the collar against his wrist where it circled her throat, cold bronze against warm skin, and the hatred he felt for that strip of metal in that moment was so vast and so quiet it didn't even feel like anger anymore, but a black mark on his soul. "I can't give you Drustvar," he said into her hair, low and wrecked. "I can't. I ain't got—I don't know 'ow to fix anyfin', Sybil. I don't know 'ow to make it right. Any of it. But you said—you said you missed the colours, an' I fought maybe—I dunno. I just fought maybe you shouldn't 'ave to miss everyfin' all the time." 

She pulled back just enough to look up at him, and her face was wet and flushed and blotched with crying, and the coloured light played across her skin. "In all me life," Sybil said, very quietly, her voice thick and cracked and musical even in breaking, "no one has ever tried t’give me the sky." She curled her fingers into the fabric of his coat and pressed her forehead against his collarbone, the heat of her tears soaking through to his skin.

"Don't—" Ridley’s voice cracked and he cleared his throat viciously. "Don't read nuffin' into it."

Sybil laughed, the sound wet and ragged and warm against his chest. "Wouldn't dream of it," she whispered, and her fingers tightened in his coat. He held very still with her warmth against his chest and the lights pooling around them both. The stone he'd been carrying inside of him shifted—not dissolving, not yet, but settling somewhere deeper, somewhere it could put down roots and grow into whatever terrifying thing it was becoming.

[thecozykirin]

Daily Writing Challenge November Day 2: Heartache

@daily-writing-challenge

The jar had been warm last night.

Full of dancing golden light, it had glowed on the windowsill of the family’s traveling wagon like a captured sunset. Kimiko had squealed with delight as she caught each one, paws cupped gently around their soft bodies before placing them inside. She had caught six in total and named each one. Soo-ha touched the lid gently, then touched Kimiko’s wrist. “Not too long,” her digits said. ‘They don’t belong in jars.’ She’d begged her mama not to let them go just yet, just one more night, just one more bedtime with their light. She put some leaves in their jar, along with a stick, and two tiny drops of honey off her breakfast bun. She was proud of that part, the honey. They’d like that. Pandaren liked honey, and fireflies must too.

She'd promised to let them out first thing in the morning.

But then breakfast came. And chores. And Mr. Bolinn’s new brew experiment had exploded again and Suzu started crying when the steam set off the wind chimes. And by the time Kimiko remembered the jar—they weren’t glowing anymore.

Her small paws trembled as she pried off the lid and one by one, the tiny bodies tumbled into her palm. Still, fragile, and dim. They had made her night beautiful, and she had forgotten then. Kimiko carried the jar away from the wagon, to the edge of a tree grove. She didn’t want her papa to see her crying. Didn’t want her mama to—A gentle bell chimed once and Soo-ha was already there. Not close, just near. She always was, when Kimiko needed her. “Mama?” Kimiko’s voice cracked and the silver bell on Soo-ha’s wrist jingled as she knelt quietly in the grass beside her eldest. Kimiko’s lip wobbled. “I—I didn’t mean to. I forgot. I didn’t mean to…”

Soo-ha reached into her robes and pulled out a folded cloth, spreading it on the grass. She sat beside her daughter, not saying a thing. She opened her notebook and wrote slowly: “It hurts, doesn’t it?” 

Kimiko nodded, her nose runny. “They were supposed to be okay. I was gonna let them out. I just...forgot.”

Soo-ha turned the page: “Even the kindest hearts forget sometimes. But only kind hearts cry like this when they do.”

Kimiko stared at the ink until the letters blurred and she opened the jar. One by one, she tipped the fireflies out onto the cloth. She cupped her paws around each one, whispering their names like tiny prayers. “Shoo. Dandan. Whisper. Bloop. Tea. Nib.” She buried them in a shallow hole she dug with a stick and packed the dirt gently, too gently. She wished she had something more, something proper. But she was eight, and all she had was her voice and it cracked halfway through the goodbye. “I’m sorry,” Kimiko whispered. “I’m sorry I forgot. I liked your light and I hope there’s a great big sky where you are so you can shine again.”

Her mama reached into her belt and from it one of the tiny sealed ink bottles, she uncorked a single drop of shimmering violet ink and flicked it over the grave. Soo-ha traced a circle around it, her brush gentle and slow. As the ink dried, a faint glow emerged, not real light, but something made of chi and memory. Six little flickers rose briefly into the air, curling like mist.

Kimiko gasped. “Is that them?”

Soo-ha shook her head. “Not them,” she signed softly. “But what you remember. What they gave you.”

That night, Kimiko left the jar open, she didn’t catch anything else. She sat on the step with her mother behind her, silent and close. And when a firefly blinked past her shoulder and kept going, free and golden, she didn’t chase it. She just smiled and let it go.

[thecozykirin]

DWC February 18th - Failure

@daily-writing-challenge

The alley they ducked into stank of rotting fish and last night’s piss. Rain dripped from crooked gutters, pattering off Merrick’s shoulders as he paced, boots splashing through puddles. Ridley braced his hands on his knees and tried not to be sick. His head rang, a dull, throbbing ache behind his eyes. The inside of his mouth tasted like copper and the world had that too-bright, too-sharp look it got when he’d burned his mana too low – every lantern haloed, and every sound a little too loud. “Fuckin’ useless.” Merrick’s voice cracked like a whip and Ridley flinched even though it wasn’t aimed at him, not physically. Merrick spun on his heel, wet hair whipping around his face. He was younger here—no beard yet and his cheekbones still a little softer, but his eyes were already hard and sharp, the way Dampwick carved boys into blades. “What in th’ actual fuck was that back there, Rid?” he demanded, stabbing a finger at him. “Tell me. Walk me through it nice an’ slow, yeah?”

Ridley swallowed against the bile in his throat, his pulse thudding in his ears. “I—” He straightened up and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, leaving a pale smear of spit and rain. “I had the ward up, Merry. It held. Guard went under, didn’ he?”

“For three fuckin’ seconds.” Merrick’s laugh was sharp and ugly. “Three. I coulda counted it on one hand an’ still had fingers left t’flip ya off with.”

Ridley’s jaw clenched. His hands shook so he shoved them down into his pockets so Merrick wouldn’t see. “You had me castin’ all afternoon,” he muttered. “Practice this, practice that—‘gain, Ridley, again— my mana weren’t topped up. You know it don’ come back quick.”

“Oh, ‘ere we go,” Merrick sneered, throwing his hands up. “‘My mana, my poor li’l mana, ohhh, I’m so tired.’ By th’Tidemother’s barnacled tits, boy. You’re a half-elf, for fucksake. You’re meant t’be cracklin’ with it—”

“That ain’t how it works,” Ridley snapped before he could stop himself. “You know that. You drain it, s’gone till it grows back. An’ mine just…grows slow. Ain’t my fault.”

Merrick stalked closer, close enough that Ridley could smell the wet wool of his coat and the sour tang of sea-salt and cheap tobacco clinging to him. “Not yer fault,” he echoed, voice dropping low. “Right. Not yer fault that the guard half-wakes ‘cause his brain’s not properly smothered just as I’m pickin’ the lock. Not yer fault that his shift partner comes ‘round the corner, mouths off, nearly sees us, an’ I gotta blow half my own mana torchin’ ‘em both before he screams.” He jabbed a thumb back toward the dark mouth of the alley, where, beyond damp stone and hanging laundry, the warehouse roofs hunched against the sky. “Not yer fault we leg it outta there with half o’what we promised ‘cause we ain’t got time t’search proper. Not yer fault we’ve now pissed off a client who’s got more coin than sense an’ a long memory for boys who botch his jobs.”

Ridley stared at him, throat tight. Rain trickled down the back of his neck. “We’re alive, though,” he said, but it came out small. “Coulda gone worse.”

Merrick’s lip curled. “Coulda gone right if you’d held the spell like you said you could.”

“I did hold it—”

“For a basic sleep ward on one fat guard with more ale than blood in ‘im,” Merrick cut in, savagely. “That ain’t complex, Rid. That’s baby work. That’s the shit kids in Silvermoon do ‘tween their little harp lessons an’ learnin’ how t’say ‘please pass th’ wine’ in three languages.”

Ridley flinched again, this time because it hit somewhere tender. “I told ya,” he said, voice rough. “I tell ya every time. I ain’t like you. You can stand there tossin’ fire all night, an’ I’m winded off three cantrips an’ a ward. I can’t make it go faster just ‘cause you want me to.”

Merrick snorted. “Yeah, well, maybe if ya ate somethin’ other than cheap beer an’ stale bread between jobs, yer body’d have somethin’ t’turn into mana. That’s how it works, yeah? Magic pulls from yer own strength. You burn it, ya gotta put it back. Food. Rest.” He spat the words, parroting their aunt by pitching his voice in a falsetto.

“I do eat,” Ridley shot back. “When we can afford it. An’ I do rest. I just…don’t refill right. You’ve seen it. I’m not—”

“Not good enough?” Merrick supplied, eyes flashing. “Yeah. I have seen that. Over an’ over. Every time I try t’pull ya into somethin’ bigger than runnin’ messages or nickin’ coinpurses.”

The words landed like blows and Ridley’s shoulders hunched around them. “I ain’t sayin’ I’m useless,” he said, quiet and stubborn. “I can still do things. Just gotta be simple. Straight lines. Nothin’ too…layered.” His fingers twitched with the memory, the tips of them still buzzing faintly. “You know that. You keep askin’ for clever shit an’ then act surprised when it backfires on me.”

Merrick huffed, pacing again, the alley too narrow to hold his frustration. “You’re the one who said you could manage it,” he shot over his shoulder. “‘Give me another week,’ ya said. ‘I’ve got it this time,’ ya said. You want me t’treat ya like a kid who can’t light a candle without singein’ his own hair, say that. Don’t puff yer chest an’ promise work you can’t follow through on.”

Ridley’s cheeks burned, anger and shame bubbling together in a hot mix. “I had it,” he insisted. “When I’m fresh, it’s fine. But we’d already warded the window, an’ the street, an’ the bloody dog, Merrick, you wanted everythin’ muffled—”

“So you know you run dry quick, an’ you still blew half yer tank on makin’ the dog sleepy?” Merrick wheeled on him again, incredulous. “Why d’you think I did the silence on the street, huh? Why d’you think I handled the reinforcement on the window? I left you one job. One. Easy. Job. Knock the guard out, keep ‘im down. That’s it. An’ you still—” He broke off with a sharp, wordless noise, running both hands back through his hair, flinging water off it in a fine spray. “You’re gonna get us killed one o’ these days.”

Something in Ridley went cold at that.

He’d heard Merrick angry a hundred times. He had called him a fool, a lazy sod, a half-brained little dock rat. That was all…noise. Familiar. This—you’re gonna get us killed—burrowed beneath his skin and clung there like burs. Ridley looked down at his hands, pale against the dark of his coat. The tremor hadn’t gone yet, he curled them into fists until his nails bit his palms. “Then stop takin’ me,” he said, voice low. “You’re th’ big brother, yeah? You’re th’ clever one. The talented one. Go on your own.” He tried to make it bite, but it came out hoarse.

Merrick froze mid-pace. “Don’t be fuckin’ stupid,” he snapped, almost on reflex. “I ain’t lettin’ you run ‘round Dampwick on yer own

Ridley’s mouth twisted. “Thought I was the one gettin’ us killed.”

“You are,” Merrick shot back, but it didn’t have the same heat now. More like he was throwing stones out of habit. “But at least if yer with me, I can drag yer arse out when you faint on a rooftop again.”

“That happened once.”

“An’ once is more than enough, cheers.”

They glared at each other until Ridley’s legs gave a little wobble he couldn’t hide. The adrenaline was leaking out of him, and underneath was that hollow, shaky exhaustion that came when he’d burned too deep. The kind that made the edges of his vision go fuzzy if he stood still too long. Merrick noticed, his gaze flicking down as he worked his jaw. “Can ya cast anythin’ at all right now?” he asked abruptly. “Or are ya completely tapped?”

Ridley hesitated. His pride said to lie, but his body, sagging against the damp wall, said otherwise. “Maybe a spark,” he admitted. “Little light. Nothin’ big.”

Merrick grunted. “Show me.”

Ridley frowned. “Why?”

“Because I fuckin’ said so.”

Old habit had him obeying even though he wanted to tell Merrick where to shove it. Ridley drew a slow breath, and reached for that thin thread inside him where the mana lived. It was feeble, a frayed wire, but he coaxed it up, letting it pool in his palm until light bloomed there, a small, steady glow that was no bigger than a coin. Simple, familiar, and safe. Trying to prove something, he flicked his fingers, trying to twist the light, shape it—but pain stabbed behind his eyes, white-hot. The glow fizzled, guttered, and went out. Ridley hissed, grabbing his head with both hands as the alley tilted. “Fuck,” he breathed. “Okay, that was—yeah. No, M’done.”

When he blinked the spots away, Merrick was watching him with a strange, tight look. Anger was still there, but something else had crept in under it—worry he hadn’t quite stamped out. “Ya get that every time?” Merrick asked. “The…stabbin’ in yer head.”

Ridley shrugged one shoulder, embarrassed. “Only when I’ve pushed too far. It’ll ease. Just need food an’ sleep.”

Merrick swore under his breath, “An’ you didn’t tell me that part,” he said. “That it hurts like that. I thought ya just…got tired. Like normal tired.”

“I am tired,” Ridley said, a little defensively. “Just with extra stabbin’.”

Merrick’s mouth twitched despite himself, like he wanted to smother a laugh. “You’re a fuckin’ idiot,” he decided, but there was less edge in it now. “Next time, you say somethin’ when it starts hurtin’. I ain’t havin’ you scramble yer brains just so some posh bastard gets his baubles.”

Ridley blinked at him. “Thought you said I weren’t comin’ next time.”

“I said you’re gonna get us killed,” Merrick corrected. “Didn’t say I were dumpin’ ya. You’re my problem. Ma made sure o’that when she spat y’out.” He stepped in close again, but the heat in him had cooled; his hands went to Ridley’s shoulders, fingers digging in just enough to steady, not to shake. Up close, he could see the sheen of sweat at Ridley’s forehead, and the hollowed-out look around his eyes that meant the pain was still knifing behind them. Merrick clicked his tongue. “New rule,” he said. “You don’t do clever. Not on jobs. No layered shit, no fancy twists. Straight-line spells only. You feel that stabbin’ start, you say somethin’. I don’t care if we’re halfway through nickin’ the Lord Admiral’s drawers, you open your mouth. You keep it simple, you keep it steady, an’ I don’t have t’turn two guards into roast pork ‘cause you overreached tryin’ t’impress me.”

Ridley stared at him, heart doing an odd little twist in his chest. “I weren’t tryin’ t’impress you,” he muttered, but it rang hollow even to his own ears.

Merrick smirked, quick and mean and fond all at once. “You’re always tryin’ t’impress me, Rid. S’pathetic.” His thumb flicked once, light, against the side of Ridley’s head—far from the worst of the ache. “Save it for when you’re holdin’ a spell clean for more’n three bloody seconds, yeah?”

Ridley ducked his head, but he didn’t pull away. The alley swam a little less now that he had something solid under his hands—Merrick’s sleeves, the rough wool damp with rain. “Fine,” he said. “Straight lines. No clever. You do the complicated shit. I’ll just…be your cheap lantern.”

“Lantern’s useful,” Merrick said, already turning and moving back toward the mouth of the alley with that restless stalk that never quite left him. “World’s dark as a hag’s arse most nights. Come on. We’ll nick a pasty off Gresham’s cart, get somethin’ in you before you keel over an’ crack yer thick skull on my boots.”

Ridley pushed off the wall and followed, legs shaky but holding. The air outside the alley tasted only slightly less like piss. “Thought we were broke,” he said.

“We are,” Merrick tossed over his shoulder. “Lucky for us, I’m very good at solving money problems that belong t’other people.”

[thecozykirin]

DWC February 21st - Ardor

@daily-writing-challenge

The sun in Boralus didn’t so much shine as it did seep slowly and warmly through the harbor fog, turning every salt-slick rope and green roof faintly gold.

Ridley had claimed a patch of a roof for himself on Chuck’s, out where the shingles flattened off near a crooked chimney. From here he could hear the distant clatter of ship bells and gulls squabbling over fish guts. It was a good spot for smoking, thinking, and not being looked at.

Today it was, unfortunately, also a good spot for getting flowered.

“Stop fidgeting,” Sybil murmured from behind him.

“Ain’t fidgetin’,” Ridley grunted, absolutely fidgeting. He sat cross-legged on the warm tiles, shoulders hunched, and arms folded. “Roof’s slanted. ’S common sense not t’ go toppin’ off it.”

“Mm.” Her fingers threaded gently through his hair again. “The roof is steady. You are not.”

Ridley rolled his eyes at the chimney in front of him. “Got claws on me boots, don’t I? I’m not gonna—” Something soft brushed the tip of his ear and he jolted. “Oi!”

Sybil laughed, a breathy little sound that always made his ears perk. “There,” she said. “That’s the last circle.”

“Last circle o’ what?” he muttered. “You been pokin’ an’ prod—”

She shifted around, bare feet whispering on the tiles, until she was kneeling in front of him, skirts puddling burgundy around her legs. In the curve of her lap lay a crown of flowers, wild little things she’d scrounged from cracks in the stone roads, from window boxes, and from the stubborn green that grew wherever the city forgot to stamp it out. Pink and white clover, little yellow starbursts he didn’t know the name of, and a few blue sea-flowers that traders brought up from the coast. Threads of his own hair washed with late sunlight, caught for a moment as she measured the circle. “I told you,” she said, head tilting. “A crown.”

“I ain’t five,” Ridley muttered, but his voice came out softer than he meant.

Her eyes lifted to his, both bright as if she’d been drinking the light. “Crowns aren’t only for children or kings.” Her lips quirked. “Sometimes they’re for foolish men who sit very still an’let me near their ears.” She lifted the crown. “May I?”

He almost said no. It was right there on his tongue, but her brows were knitted in a kind of fierce concentration, like this small, silly thing mattered. And it hit him, suddenly, like the kick of a gun: She could be anywhere, and once upon a time she had been anywhere—forests and halls of stone and all the places before the rope and the flames. Now she was in Dampwick, on a roof with him, coaxing something pretty out of scraps. “Yeah,” Ridley said, a bit rough. “Go on, then.”

She smiled, and that was it. He’d trade a dozen dumb flower crowns for that smile, easy. Sybil shifted closer on her knees, so close he could see the freckles dusted across her nose, and the tiny ink-smudge on her thumb from whatever she’d been scribbling earlier. Carefully, she set the crown on his head, fingers brushing his temples, his hair, and the tips of his pointed ears. The tips had always made him itch. Often they made him pull his hood up, and hunch his shoulders like he could hide the elf out of his skull. But her touch was reverent, like he was something rare and precious, not a half-blood mongrel. “Hold still,” she murmured, tucking a stray lock behind his ear. “The wind likes to steal.”

His heart did a strange, hot little lurch at that. “Well th’wind ain’t gettin’ it,” She leaned back on her heels to look at him properly. “Well?” Ridley demanded, suddenly self-conscious, reaching up as if to pull the thing off.

Sybil’s hands flew out, catching his wrists. “No,” she gasped, then softened, easing his fingers away from the flowers. “Leave it. Please.” He froze. Her palms were small and warm against his scarred knuckles. She didn’t realize what that word did, the please. Or maybe she did. With Sybil it was hard to tell where accident ended and intention began. “I like it,” she said simply. “Like this, you look…hm.”

“Ridiculous?” he offered, because someone had to.

She laughed again, that fragile bell-sound. “Like the stories,” she said. “The ones about knights with crowns of summer on their brow an’ blood on their hands. The kind who think themselves monsters but stand between the village an’ the dark all th’ same.”

His cheeks went hot. “That’s a very long thing t’ fit in one word.”

She tipped her head thoughtfully. “Beautiful,” Sybil said at last, and his brain promptly stepped off the roof.

He stared at her, and she stared right back, utterly guileless, like she hadn’t just carved his ribs open and set his heart in the sun. “Nah,” Ridley croaked, “I’m— I ain’t—”

Sybil’s thumb brushed feather-light over a scar on the back of his wrist. “You are,” she said. “Even if you do not see it. But that’s all right.” Her eyes softened. “I see enough for the both of us.”

Something in his chest caught fire. Not the wild, hungry blaze he knew from rage, or fear, or the rush of a fight—but a steady heat, low and bright, like coals banked for the night. The kind of warmth that lingered and promised to still be there come morning. He swallowed around it. “You, uh. You want one too?” he managed. “Crown, I mean.”

A spark lit in her mismatched eyes. “Oh, I already have one.” She reached up with a sly little smile and plucked a sprig of clover from his crown, then tucked it behind her own ear, fingers slipping into her shaggy hair. The tiny green leaf glowed against the sandy blonde, as bright as any jewel. “Now we match,” she said.

He huffed, but his lips twitched. “That ain’t how crowns work, Brighteyes.”

“Who says?” she asked, wide-eyed. “Did a king tell you? Or a prince? Or Merrick?”

“Definitely not Merrick,” Ridley snorted. “If he told me anythin’ about crowns it’d be t’ nick it an’ pawn it.”

Sybil’s mouth curved. “Then let it be me, hm?” she said. “Let me say how crowns work. Two fools on a rooftop, sharin’ what’s green an’ growin’ between ’em.” She touched the clover behind her ear, then the circlet on his head. “Seems a fair law t’ live by.”

Ridley huffed, but it came out more like a laugh. His hand moved before he could think better of it, rough fingers brushing that tiny sprig where it nestled in her hair. The bit of green looked ridiculous and perfect there, as stubborn as she was. “Fine. We’ll…match, then. Just this once.”

Sybil’s eyes went soft and molten, the harbor sun caught in both colors at once. “Not just once,” she murmured. “I’ll make you crowns in summer an’ in fall, with sea-bloom an’ dockside weeds, whatever I can coax out o’ the cracks. Till your whole life is ringed in green, Ridley Laamb, an’ you’ve no choice but t’ believe you were meant for it.”

Heat flared under his skin, the slow, fierce kind that had nothing to do with the sun. “You’re daft,” he muttered, but there was no weight to it. His thumb slid along the back of her hand, tracing the bones there, memorizing the shape. “But…if you’re set on it, I s’pose I can…put up with a few flowers.”

“A few,” she echoed, delighted. “We’ll start with a few.” She leaned in, pressing her brow lightly to his, flower crown bumping her forehead. For a moment there was only warm tile, and gulls, and the faint salt-touched wind around them.

[thecozykirin]

Daily Writing Challenge November Day 1: Sweet

@daily-writing-challenge A story based on our mains from BFA! You'll be seeing them a lot soon <3 Small TW for implied / referenced abuse ________________________________________ The rain came sudden over Boralus that day, heavy and relentless. The kind that clogged gutters and churned filth down cobbled alleys in thick rivulets, black as rot and cold as plucked teeth. A thousand rooftops hissed above as Ridley drew his coat tighter, boots scuffing through puddles the color of ale gone flat. He had gone out on an errand for Merrick. Something small. A message. A package, it didn’t matter now. He’d turned the corner toward the crooked loft and spotted her. Sybil was slumped against the alley wall behind the butcher’s, soaked to the bone, and shivering like a plucked bird. “Oi,” Ridley snapped, already striding toward her. “What’n th'fuck are you doin’ out here?”

She didn’t answer, she just blinked at him with those eyes, one lavender, one brown, and tilted her head slow, like she was listening to something only she could hear. “…’m fine,” she mumbled. “‘M just waitin’. Waitin’ for th'street t’swallow me.”

“Bullshite,” he grunted, crouching. “You ain’t fine. Yer lips’re blue.”

She made a noise. Not quite a laugh, but not quite a sob either. “He said I talked too much. So I stopped.” Her voice was thin, breaking at the edges. “Now he says I look too sad. So I came out t’bleed it into the rain.”

Ridley’s fists clenched.

Fucking Merrick.

He looked her over. No bruises today, at least none he could see, but her feet were bare, red with cold, and her fingers were locked stiff around the frayed hem of her shawl. “C’mere,” he muttered, sliding an arm behind her back. “We ain’t doin’ this out 'ere.”

Sybil didn’t resist as he gathered her up, nor did she protest when he hooked his other arm beneath her knees and lifted her like she weighed less than a fawn. She just breathed—shallow, and hitching. “Y’reek of pipe smoke,” she murmured against his collarbone.

“And y'smell like a drowned rat,” he shot back, teeth grit. “S’pose we make a good match.”

She was quiet for a beat, then whispered: “Sweet, that.”

Ridley froze for just a blink. “…Whot?”

“Carrying me. All rough an’ ugly an’ angry about it. It’s sweet.”

He scoffed, but it came out thin. “Ain’t nothin’ sweet 'bout me.”

“Still is,” she said softly. “Even sugar tastes bitter if you burn it.”

The streets blurred around them, Boralus groaning under the weight of rain and rot, but Ridley didn’t stop walking until he reached the loft. The old stairs creaked under his boots, and the door squealed open with a push of his shoulder before slamming shut with a kick of his heel. He laid her down in front of the hearth which was just ash and cold stone now, but it’d do—and stripped off his coat to wrap around her. She didn’t move. “…You hungry?” he asked.

“No,” she whispered.

“You hurt?”

“No.”

He paused, then knelt beside her. “…Want somethin’ sweet?”

She turned her head. “Aye.”

And that night, Ridley stood over the brazier stirring a pilfered tin of condensed milk and stale oats into something clumsy and hot and laced with honey he'd pinched off a stand in the market a week back.

Sybil watched from the floor. Still quiet, but shivering less now. When he brought her the mug, she didn’t say a word. She just sipped from it, then blinked. “…Burned it.”

“Yeah,” Ridley muttered.

She took another sip. “Still sweet.”

[thecozykirin]

DWC February 17th - Blur

@daily-writing-challenge

Ridley had stopped counting the years a long time ago.

Numbers still cropped up in the quieter moments, though, the way old injuries ached when a storm rolled in. Two hundred was coming up on the horizon for him, with Merrick past it already. Their mother had been gone so long her face came to him in pieces now—her hands first, work-roughened and smudged with grime, he could still recall clearly the way they’d felt when she’d caught his wrist as a boy. He sat on the edge of a warehouse roof in Dampwick, boots hooked on the gutter, Boralus breathing and creaking below. Fog smeared the gaslamps to halos and somewhere a bell tolled the change of watch. The night smelled of tar, fish, and mold in the Ward, one thing that hadn’t changed throughout the years.

Half-elves lived strange, long lives—too long for humans and not long enough for the elves that had sired them. Human lads he’d run with as a boy were a couple generations of headstones deep by now, bones soft and names worn off the wood and stone. Elves he’d watched strolling through the markets of Silvermoon when he was barely up to Merrick’s elbow during his rare visits there were still out there somewhere, sharp-eyed and unbent, treating two centuries like a long afternoon. 

He and Merrick sat in the gap between.

Ridley rubbed his thumb over the knife at his belt, feeling for the tiny notches he’d carved into the handle over the years. He’d started when he turned a hundred, and Merrick had laughed his head off, called him sentimental, then stolen the knife for a week and added three more just to fuck with him.

There were more now, too many to remember the story of each one.

He thought of their mother again, because counting always led back to her. She hadn’t even made it to sixty. Humans in the Dampwick often didn’t because work and sickness and bad men had their own clocks. She’d gone into the ground when he was still a coltish little thing and Merrick had less scars than he did sense.

Ten years, she used to say, was a long time to stay angry at someone.

Ridley huffed a breath. Ten years was nothing now. A quarrel you forgot between one war and the next. He’d carried grudges longer than that without meaning to and some of them had outlived the people who’d earned them. He tipped his head back and looked up. The stars over Boralus were mostly hidden by cloud and smoke, but he knew where they ought to be. He’d sailed by them enough. Whole constellations that had watched him go from a skinny rat of a dockbrat to the man he was now, scarred and broad-shouldered, with more grey at his temples than his elven blood strictly allowed for. The human in him always ran ahead, eager to age, while the elf side dug its heels in and tried to keep the years from showing. “Make yer mind up,” he muttered, not sure which half he was talking to. 

Merrick felt it too, though his brother would rather chew glass than admit it. Two hundred and nine, and the cracks were showing in the big bastard in ways only Ridley noticed. The way Merrick’s knees bothered him after a long day on his feet at the bar, the longer pauses between one drink and the next, and the nights he fell asleep in a chair and didn’t wake up when the dock fights spilled out into the alley. Half-elves could see three centuries, if they were lucky and careful. That was the number, give or take, people tossed around when they talked about them like curiosities, long-lived, prodigiously talented, and awkwardly perched between worlds. He thought of the Silverwing estate out in Quel’Thalas, of their sweet aunt Jilene with her soft hands and softer voice. Hawkstriders he’d known as sleek yearlings were long dead, their great-grandchicks wearing the same bright colors and the same proud neck arches, products of careful breeding and meticulous records. The family lines on the birds’ charts marched on in neat columns, new names inked in where old ones were struck out. Ridley and Merrick weren’t on any neat chart though. They were Lanril’s bastards, sired on a human woman he’d grow tired of—footnotes even in their own family. Jilene tried, in her way, to pull them closer, to stitch them into the Silverwing lineage with polite invitations and careful gifts, but time had already done its work. Those halls belonged to people who measured life in thousands of years while Ridley measured it in dock shifts, Merrick’s bad plans, scars, and the weight of the knife at his hip.

He flexed his hand, watching the tendons stand out. Strong still. Quick still. He could climb a rigging, knock a man down, and drink a sailor twice his size under the table. But there was a new awareness in the way he moved now, a quiet counting under the skin. How many more winters will his body be able to shrug off the cold. How many more summers before the heat drove him indoors, grumbling like the old Kul Tiran men who sat on crates and shouted advice at passing crews. He remembered being fifteen, pressed against the tavern wall while Merrick brawled in the street, teeth bared and laughing through blood. Those men had seemed ancient to him then: thirties, forties, faces cut with weather and worry. He’d assumed he’d be dust before he ever looked like them. He looked older than some of them now, and younger than most of the elves who’d call him “boy” without thinking. “World weren’t built fair, was it,” he said softly, to the fog, to the distant bell, to no one.

If he were human, his life would be nearly over. If he were fully elven, he’d still be in what they'd call his “prime,” with all that airy talk of centuries ahead. Instead he was here, balanced on the roof edge, with more of his life behind him than ahead and no map for what the next hundred years were meant to look like. He thought of Merrick, and of the day one of them would go into the ground without the other, and his throat tightened. But he didn’t fear the years themselves. Time was just the tide: it came in, went out, and took what it pleased. He’d learned how to work with the tide. Learned how to judge the pull and give himself enough room to move; how not to fight the water, but angle his body and let it carry him where he needed to go. Maybe that was all there was to it when it came to living longer than you were meant to. Not clinging to every passing thing in blind panic. Not pretending the clock wasn’t ticking, just…learning how to float.

He pushed himself up finally, joints protesting, and swung back onto the roof proper. Down on the street, someone shouted; somewhere else, a bottle broke as Boralus turned another hour older. Ridley rolled his shoulders, feeling the weight of almost-two hundred years sit there like another scar. Heavy and familiar, but not unbearable. “Right then,” he murmured. “Let’s see what the next bit’s got in it.”

[thecozykirin]

Daily Writing Challenge November Day 3: Crush

@daily-writing-challenge

Yasashi Kumatani had known exactly three things that morning:

The stew needed more spice.

Suzu had spit up directly into his beard.

Something was coming. Something...chaotic.

The knock on the door was not so much a knock as it was a flourish. Tap-tap…sweep…dramatic pause…knock-knock-knock-knock-knock.

Yasashi opened the door with a sigh already halfway out of his chest. “Benjiro.”

Standing at 6’0” with his black fur groomed to perfection, and ears perked with calculated cuteness, was none other than Benjiro. Ex–Wukao, rogue flirt, and fluffy menace. He looked exactly the same as always: small, smug, and dangerously scented of plum blossom oil and sweet sake. “Sashiii!” Benjiro cried in greeting, his arms wide. “My mountain, my thundercloud, my grumpy rice cake!”

Yasashi stared at him, arms crossed, and his expression flat. “I didn’t tell you where we lived.”

Benjiro smiled like he absolutely read it in the stars. “I felt it. In my soul. Like warm miso soup calling me home.”

From behind Yasashi’s legs, a small sound escaped. “…Hhhh.”

Benjiro’s ears twitched. “Was that a sigh of longing?”

Yasashi frowned. “That was my daughter.”

Benjiro blinked and Kimiko peeked out from behind Yasashi’s legs like a starstruck puppy. Her cheeks beneath her fur were flushed and her eyes were glowing. She stared at Benjiro the way some Pandaren stared at the sun setting over the Valley of Eternal Blossoms. Yasashi followed Kimiko’s line of sight with the wary suspicion of a father who had once hunted Mantid, the Sha, and the Horde but now faced a far more chaotic adversary: the sparkly-eyed gaze of his own child. 

Benjiro blinked again, slowly, then leaned slightly to the left.

Kimiko mirrored him.

He leaned to the right.

Kimiko did the same, her little claws gripping the hem of her father’s pants, tail twitching with effort as if trying not to explode from sheer awe. Benjiro tilted his head, ears flicking. His grin widened into something dangerous, not malicious dangerous, more like I am about to lean into this so hard your soul will leave your body dangerous. “Oh-ho-ho. Sashi. Is this what I think it is?.”

Yasashi exhaled through his nose like a bull staring down a particularly flashy rooster. “She’s eight.” He didn't even blink. “Turn around.”

Benjiro puffed up. “What, and break the heart of your clearly enchanted daughter? Do you see her eyes? That’s moonbeam tier infatuation, my friend.” Benjiro stood proudly, paws on his hips, “She’s got all the classic symptoms. Heart palpitations. Tunnel vision. Tail wagging. It’s adorable. I’m adored.”

Yasashi’s eyes narrowed to slits. “She. Is. Eight.”

Benjiro gave a sage nod. “And yet wise beyond her years. She sees my greatness.”

Behind Yasashi’s legs, Kimiko let out a soft little squeak, gripping tighter. Her whole face was pink beneath the fur. Her tail thumped once, betrayed by her body and her voice came in a tiny, reverent whisper. “Papa…” Yasashi flinched. He knew that tone. It was the same tone she used when she saw freshly steamed sweet buns. He didn’t look down at her, he couldn’t look down. Kimiko whispered, “He’s cute.”

Yasashi stood perfectly still. He stared past Benjiro, past the border of camp, past the clouds, past the very boundaries of reality, and into a realm of pure, screaming internal monologue: No. No. No no no no no no no no no no.

Kimiko peeked up at him with the wide-eyed earnestness of a child who had just discovered her very first crush-shaped disaster. She gave the fabric of his pants a little tug. “He’s really cute,” she added, as though clarity might help her case.

Benjiro made a delighted sound, something between a chuckle and the soft gasp of a bard being praised mid-ballad, paws clasped in front of his chest in a mock swoon. “I am honored, young blossom. You have exquisite taste in mysterious, well-scented older men.” 

Soo-ha appeared silently behind Yasashi, holding Suzu in one arm and a fresh page in her notebook. She held up the parchment: Our daughter’s in love. You may commence suffering.

“I am suffering,” Yasashi growled. “I’ve been suffering since I opened this door.”

Benjiro bowed with flourish. “A pleasure as always, Sash.”

Yasashi pointed at him like a general ordering an execution. “You sleep outside.”

“But it’s drizzling.”

“Good.”

[thecozykirin]

DWC May - Day 2, Placate

@daily-writing-challenge ( Slight warning for heavy themes! )

It happened again. She hated herself for it, but desperate times had called for desperate measures. Clawed hands flexed.

Fur rippled over taut muscle.

Eyes like lanterns in the dark flared with hunger. And the taste of iron was thick on her tongue as the beast tore through the enemies of the caravan. Her family was safe now, and that alone made loosening the hound’s leash worth it. The beast stood panting among the trees, chest heaving, caught between the instinct to run and the compulsion to rend. The night air filled her lungs like frost, but the rage inside her boiled. Until – “Ethel,” came a voice. Low, firm, and steady as the tide. Berwin approached her slowly, his gentle brown eyes on the beast’s that glowed almost like fel fire. He came to her without arms or armor. Just a broad-shouldered man of the sea with calloused hands and a quiet kind of strength—the kind that does not shake when the wind howls. His eyes were wide, but he did not stop walking. The Worgen growled.

A warning. A plea.

Berwin didn’t stop. “Ye don’t want tae hurt me,” he said, voice calm, though his heartbeat thundered against his ribs.”Ye wonae”

The beast snarled, ears flat, teeth bared. She reeked of blood and her hands—no, paws now—twitched. Berwin stepped closer.

The beast’s breath came quicker. Saliva dripped from her jaws. One paw lifted as if to strike, and he did not flinch.

“Ethel,” he whispered again, this time like he was saying a prayer.

Something inside her trembled.

That name—her name—was an anchor. Not a chain, not a cage, but a lighthouse cutting through fog. The Worgen lowered her paw.

Berwin stepped closer, only a hand’s breadth away now. “Ye cam back ance.” he murmured, gaze locked to her green lantern-glow eyes, once pools of hazel. “ Ye can come back again, th' others ur waitin'." The beast let out a long, shuddering exhale. Her body still shook with the effort of holding itself back. But she didn’t move.

Berwin extended his hand fully now.

The Worgen stared at it.

A pause.

Then—

She leaned forward.

Her head—muzzled, terrifying—brushed against his palm, gently, like a frightened animal remembering affection. Her shoulders sagged. The trembling grew worse. “There’s mah girl…” Berwin’s voice left him in a sigh. “I’ve got ye.” he said, wrapping his arms around her frame. “Yoo’re safe.” A low whimper rose in her throat, part growl, part sob.

And then the shift began.

Slowly, like winter retreating from spring. Fur melted into flesh, claws retracted, joints realigned.

When she collapsed, she was Ethel again—naked, bruised, gasping for breath, and curled against him like a child who'd been on the verge of drowning. “I didn’t mean—” she choked, voice shredded. “I didn’t wanna—” “I ken.” he whispered, his rural Drustvar accent thick on his tongue now as his voice rumbled soothingly in his chest. “I couldn’t stop.” Ethel mumbled against his chest, eyes heavy. “But ye did,” Berwin said, pressing his lips to her temple. “Ye cam back.”“I’m still ah monster.” she choked.

Berwin pulled back, just enough to cradle her face in his hands with a weak smile. “If a monster i whit ye ur ‘en yoo’re mah monster.”

And under the moonlight, with the woods silent and their friends still breathing, he knelt in the dirt beside her, unafraid.