fawn - stosuh.

chapter 5

bro i forgot everything about this story so i had to reread it 💀 god help me 

Hosuh never did like his mask.

Gatherings happen once every three months - four times a year. They greet the spring with hymns; celebrate summer with fires; mourn the snow with blood seeped into the crystalline fleece. Autumn, though - autumn is different. They don't do anything in autumn. They do not sacrifice, they do not sing.

They wait.

"What did the Saviour say?" Ann whispers in his ear, her breath the smell of eggnog. Hosuh pushes her face away, turning to watch the foggy window.

"He said you should not blow our cover."

"No, seriously." She blows a tress out of her face, fidgeting with the painted mask in her hands. "Father must've told you. He trusts you enough."

Hosuh sighs, hating the fact that she is right. And God, he wishes she would not be. "The Saviour said there are impurities to be eradicated," he says, swallowing down the rancid aftertaste at the thought of what those words will mean soon enough. "More than there were last time."

"Shit."

"Now shush," he bites over his shoulder, fiddling with the rusting lock bolted to the door. The wood is soft enough to imprint crescents on, which is why Ann refused to go anywhere near it; her nails are longer, just by a margin, and evidence cannot be left behind. It was a weak excuse, but Hosuh went along with it, too tired to argue. "We have around an hour until Father comes back. At this rate, we will have to run there and back."

"Whatever. It'll be worth it." In the darkness of the shack, Hosuh can't see her frustration, but he can definitely feel it, radiating off her in acerbic waves. "We'll be able to skip most of the gathering."

"Yeah, but then we will have to go through purification," he rolls his eyes.

"It's fine. What are a few chants gonna do to you?"

"There," he hisses, shaking out the dents in his fingertips. With a satisfying click of the lock, the door unlatches, its creaks louder than a tiger's cry. Ann immediately shuts up, the gleam in her eyes swallowing her pupils whole. She shoves Hosuh aside and steps into the whispering breeze of the night.

"Okay. We run to the market, buy some fake blood, scuttle back here like mice," the girl rounds off, so quiet it's almost like she's mouthing the words. She wraps a fist around Hosuh's sleeve and braces herself. "Keep up."

"Ann, when I said we had to run, I didn't mean weEWHAEGAFEH-!"

☉

Some say a dog's soul is an old friend reincarnated. Hosuh always found that thought terrifying.

Candidly, it would explain the human eyes on some mutts. The white sclera peeking from corners; the profundity of what should be hollow. Vessels built not off of genetic heredity, but instead, a collective conscience, painting old memories alive.

And now, as he sits in front of a dozen faces, all peering with the same sort of profundity that should not be there, his irrational fear of human souls in husks of animals multiplies, like an infestation of hideous parasites.

Tigers. Lions. Pigs. Deer. Lamb.

His father is the only rabbit, and he is the only one out of the countless faces whose mask does not have eyeholes. The tigers sit together; the lions sit together; everyone sits together but the pigs. They all sit, disorganized, incoherent, heads lolling, no form of symmetry or structure.

Autumn is the only time there is no balance.

He knows this is a time of remediation; a limbo without thoughts - without even the concept of thoughts, for that matter - but he cannot help but wonder what phase the moon is in tonight. He cannot help but toy with the edge of his mask and sneak glances at the lamb that is Ann, waiting for her cue. The little baggy in his pocket weighs a thousand worlds.

He cannot help but know that instead of sitting in this random field, with the cold rattling him to the bone and painting his cheeks red, he would rather be doing homework.

the next chapter will be way longer!