Snow ✓

Captain of the Sky

An orbit to a halfling like Tres who had lived more moons than even he could be bothered to count should feel like a blip, a burp into the void of a lengthy lifespan—but as orbits go, this had to be one of his worst. That coming from one on the losing side of the war that had cost his kind the planet. He had spent little time with humans since then, but those he had were proving themselves proper villains.

He awoke, painful and cold, head feeling like a bruised pumpkin that had long collapsed in on itself, exposed innards now caked in rot, cooking in the sun. A dull ache plagued his left side and his eyes were so heavy in his sockets that he kept them closed, the backs of his eyelids orange, as he thought dumbly—

Fire.

He opened them to a searing white light and sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. The ceiling was ablaze with it. Blinking back tears, his head rolled loose on his shoulders as he surveyed the room. There was little to see save a single slab of grey in the wall of an otherwise white box—he the centerpiece, strapped to another slab he took for some sort of metal. Beside it, a small table with a mean looking display of gleaming implements. He recognized the only bloody one as a sewing needle.

Ah. It was all rushing back to him now like putrid water slogging through a crumbling dam—

Snow, more than he had ever remembered seeing fall through the Holókaustos' canopy had instilled in him a pestering wariness for which he could not explain, and he insisted they check in on the girl. He and Hurgo stumbled from the tree line into a world of white. Nothing separated ground from sky. It was no easy feat looping around the snowdrifts the howling wind sculpted with rough hands. More than once, he lost the solthus under all that moving white. The house he had moved through with a human woman in his arms all those moons ago eventually appeared right in front of them like a fever dream, not a light on and the door swinging loose on its hinges.

The sanest part of him knew then that the house was empty, but the other reasoned the man had left the girl before.

Throwing caution to the dogs, he ran inside. Hurgo gave a warning yelp that went ignored. Darting from room to room, Tres gave only cursory glances around corners downstairs as he made toward the boy's study. His negligence earned him an ugly surprise. As he reached the threshold, Tres heard more than saw someone at his back, right before a blunt object connected with his temple. Hurgo snarled on the landing behind him as Tres went down, sunbursts in his eyes, before cracking his head on the floor and blacking out.

He woke to being dragged like a prized kill through a throng of mortals down a dimly lit corridor made of pristinely carved, black rock. His mind stuttered, their collective chatter a dull buzz between his ears as he blinked up at their uniforms, all black with a silver pin of a bird escaping a star fastened to their chests. His head swiveled, vision bouncing from gawker to gawker, until his eyes locked onto Hurgo writhing on the ground, trapped between wolf and man—muzzle shortening, foaming at the mouth, claws scraping on the floor as he unleashed a caterwaul that arrested the crowd's attention. A thin tube stuck out of his neck and above him stood a man in a long, white cloak who simply pushed up his spectacles at the sight.

As more of the onlookers noticed Tres was awake, they began to elbow each other like school children. Before the man dragging him on his back by the ankles could catch on, Tres yanked his knees up to his chest, sending him careening toward him. Tres caught him by the face and urged the fire bubbling up in his gut out through his fingertips. The onlookers ripped long, black sticks from their belts and shoved them into Tres' side, filling him with a spark that made his head snap back, his ossueta crawl, and his vision burn white, yet he held on, sinking his fingers deeper and deeper into the screaming man's melting flesh, until, one by one, the assailants stepped back, sticks falling limply to their sides, faces pinching at the stench of burning meat.