Damien
you are the storm before the calm
and the ache after the silence
and the ache after the silence
Damien caught it when she didn’t smile. Just a flicker in the starlight, the taut line of her mouth when it should have curved. She followed, boots crunching up the slope, and though she didn’t say it, he felt the weight of it: the Fangs gave her little worth holding onto. He knew the feeling. The peaks didn’t spare much for anyone.
Later, when the cat showed itself, he let his eyes rake the pale form below. The big male prowled with the kind of presence only grief gives—heavy, circling, restless. The chuff cut through the dark like a cough against a coffin lid. Damien’s jaw locked. For an instant he saw the animal not as a ghost to be tracked, but as a mirror. Both of them bound to losses they hadn’t asked for, pacing the edges of absences that never quite filled in.
He’d told himself the female’s death was necessity. Truth was, it had been. But the sight of the male hunting shadows in the snow made the reasoning taste like ash. Theea felt it too—he saw her throat tighten, the sheen in her eyes. When her shoulder pressed into his, it grounded him. A silent I see it too. It wasn’t comfort exactly, but it was solidarity. That was rarer, and maybe better.
They waited the cat out, silently counting breaths until it finally turned and slipped down the slope, moonlight dripping from its fur. Damien’s hand stayed lifted in the signal until the last pale trace vanished into the maze below. Only then did he lower it, flexing stiff fingers once against the cold.
He leaned toward Theea, voice a thread of breath. “We go slowly. Keep our distance.”
They rose in tandem. The trail the leopard set was mean and narrow, jagged with stone teeth under the crust, but Damien moved steady and, when the rock pitched, he gave her his hand without ceremony. A grip strong enough to haul, quiet enough not to boast. Once, on flatter ground, he dug in his pack for a strip of jerky in this trying time and offered it across without a word, a faint tilt of his browline serving for question.
Below, the leopard carved its way through the night, broad head bent low, following some line of scent only it knew. Damien kept them wide and above, ghosts trailing a ghost, his eyes sliding from paw prints to wind-scoured drifts to the faint ripple of muscle under fur.
His shoulder brushed Theea's again in the dark, but he didn’t shift right away. He lingered for a heartbeat then kept walking, measured and silent, letting her warmth stitch itself into the cold. His gaze dipped to her, the stars painting silver in her hair, and something unspoken settled there: she carried her own griefs too, and maybe the two of them weren’t so different from the beast below.
The cat padded onward, and Damien followed, his breath a thin fog, his thoughts caught between predator and partner, the living and the lost.
Later, when the cat showed itself, he let his eyes rake the pale form below. The big male prowled with the kind of presence only grief gives—heavy, circling, restless. The chuff cut through the dark like a cough against a coffin lid. Damien’s jaw locked. For an instant he saw the animal not as a ghost to be tracked, but as a mirror. Both of them bound to losses they hadn’t asked for, pacing the edges of absences that never quite filled in.
He’d told himself the female’s death was necessity. Truth was, it had been. But the sight of the male hunting shadows in the snow made the reasoning taste like ash. Theea felt it too—he saw her throat tighten, the sheen in her eyes. When her shoulder pressed into his, it grounded him. A silent I see it too. It wasn’t comfort exactly, but it was solidarity. That was rarer, and maybe better.
They waited the cat out, silently counting breaths until it finally turned and slipped down the slope, moonlight dripping from its fur. Damien’s hand stayed lifted in the signal until the last pale trace vanished into the maze below. Only then did he lower it, flexing stiff fingers once against the cold.
He leaned toward Theea, voice a thread of breath. “We go slowly. Keep our distance.”
They rose in tandem. The trail the leopard set was mean and narrow, jagged with stone teeth under the crust, but Damien moved steady and, when the rock pitched, he gave her his hand without ceremony. A grip strong enough to haul, quiet enough not to boast. Once, on flatter ground, he dug in his pack for a strip of jerky in this trying time and offered it across without a word, a faint tilt of his browline serving for question.
Below, the leopard carved its way through the night, broad head bent low, following some line of scent only it knew. Damien kept them wide and above, ghosts trailing a ghost, his eyes sliding from paw prints to wind-scoured drifts to the faint ripple of muscle under fur.
His shoulder brushed Theea's again in the dark, but he didn’t shift right away. He lingered for a heartbeat then kept walking, measured and silent, letting her warmth stitch itself into the cold. His gaze dipped to her, the stars painting silver in her hair, and something unspoken settled there: she carried her own griefs too, and maybe the two of them weren’t so different from the beast below.
The cat padded onward, and Damien followed, his breath a thin fog, his thoughts caught between predator and partner, the living and the lost.
