Xoris

Chapter Fifteen

"Hey." Xoris felt a nudge in his ribs. "Time to wake up- Dear Palkhiv!" Pomona's voice cut off as soon as it began as he sat up, rubbing at his face.

"What?" He looked at her concerned, while she stood still in shock, turning her face away. "Is everything all right?"

"...If being covered in eyes is considered all right to you, then yes, everything is perfect." She put a hand on her chest, breathing out slowly, focusing her wide eyes on the ground.

"Oh, sorry," he responded, blinking slowly at her as he tried to take in his surroundings. He clenched the skin along his body, trying to shove down the steadily building heka in his system. "I didn't mean to look like that, or startle you."

Pomona watched as every sign of being Stained left his features, a sense of relief almost washing over her. At a moment of staring, she shook her head, pacing across the grass, a little crisped from the night's heat. "It's fine. I probably shouldn't have been surprised. I already knew about your strange, extra mouth, after all."

With that, she made her way over to the stone she had rested her weapons on. She had called them tonfas, but as Xoris watched, wary of any sudden attack, he realised that wasn't what she was reaching for. Instead, she dipped her hands in a brown satchel, rummaging around until she pulled out a wad of dried, pink meat. She took a rough bite out of it before reaching a piece out to him. "Here, are you hungry?"

He stared at the chunk in her hand. It was the same meat he'd had back at the monastery, and despite being dried, it still seemed decently fresh. And yet, something in his mind held him back as a sense of wrongness flooded through him. But why? It wasn't even the kind that came from a Beast. So why, when he took it from her, could he only seem to stare at it blankly, feeling guilty for even holding it?

"Oh don't worry. It was freshly mined. I salted it right after I bought it, so there shouldn't be any chance of it going bad," Pomona explained, but even with that reminder, he didn't feel any better.

Without warning, a vivid image flashed through his mind, showing Humans he didn't even know, carting endless amounts of meat from the mines, cleaning it before selling it at the market.

Humans can't live without taking from the land. They cause pain simply by fighting to survive.

His hand quivered as that strange, wordless voice spoke once again, trying to command his thoughts and actions. It told him not to eat it. He couldn't. The very concept of it hurt to think of, despite no Beast being harmed in its creation. He clenched it tightly, his hand beginning to shake wildly. Was he so much of a monster that he couldn't eat anything that didn't derive from pain and suffering?

"Are... are you all right?" Pomona leaned down to where he was sitting, scrutinising his expression. "Can your kind not eat that? I'm sorry, I didn't know."

A quick breath pulled through his lungs as she reached towards him, the soft skin on her wrist exposed as she held out her hand to take it back. His teeth itched as he stared. There were so many veins running through it, light green through the pale white. A phantom sensation played across his lips as his mind relayed to him of how tender the flesh would be, how sweet and fast blood would flow if he bit into it. His heartbeat ran in his ears, feeling hot in its fast sets of three. It would be less hairy than last time...

Then he was widening his eyes as he forced himself to feel a sense of guilt and disgust at the intrusive thought. It was wrong, but that's all it was, after all. He didn't... he couldn't just want to do heinous things like that. That wasn't who he was. He clenched the strip of meat tighter in his hands as they began to shake rapidly, hating how it almost felt like his own body was being squeezed just as hard. It was just one mistake. That didn't define him, right?