Chapter Text
“Silence buys time, not freedom.”
– Border-runner’s warning
The morning is colder than it should be.
Ra’zirr wakes curled tight beneath the pine roots, back stiff, tongue dry. The air smells clean, too clean. No sweetness. No smoke.
The skooma is gone. He made sure of that.
But the ghost of it lingers behind his teeth. His chest feels hollow. His paws tremble, not enough to notice, unless you know what you’re looking for.
He knows.
Ra’zirr sits up slowly, rubbing the heel of one hand over his eyes. There’s grit in them. Shame. Smoke. Sleep that didn’t stick.
He checks the satchel. Just coin, a worn cloth scrap, and the crumpled edge of his restraint.
No bottle. Good. Still, he sniffs once. Just to be sure. A soft grunt leaves his throat. Disgust, not relief.
“This one is finished with that,” he mutters.
It sounds like a lie. So he doesn’t say it again.
He eats nothing. Drinks from the stream until his throat stops tasting like fire. Then he wipes his face on his sleeve, checks the dagger at his side, and starts walking.
North. Not toward anyone. Not toward anything. Just away. The road hums underfoot. Empty. Wrong. Ra’zirr breathes deep and keeps walking.
The road bends northeast, threading through brush and bare stone. The sun barely cuts the tree line, and Ra’zirr walks in the shade of it all.
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t hum. The silence presses down. Heavy. Expecting something.
Every few steps, he sniffs the wind.
It smells of pine bark, dry leaves, and old ash. Something else, too. Sweat, maybe. Oil. Something packed too carefully to be woodsmoke.
He slows.
Not fear. Not yet. But awareness, the prickling kind, just under the fur. Behind him, the trail curves out of sight. He stops, crouches by a stone, and listens.
Nothing.
Then a shape, far up the hill. Not close, not moving fast. Just… there.
Ra’zirr blinks once. Same coat? Same gait as the man from before? Maybe. Maybe not.
The figure doesn’t follow. Just fades back into the trees, casual as breath.
Ra’zirr stays still a moment longer. Then he stands and starts walking again. Slower now. Lighter on the paws.
“This one is not prey,” he mutters.
But the road does not answer.
By late afternoon, Ra’zirr finds shelter.
Not a cave. Not a camp. Just the shell of a hunting blind half-buried in brush, one corner slumped where the beams have softened with rot. It’ll hold for a night. Maybe two.
He ducks inside and sniffs first, just instinct. Old wood. Cold moss. Dust and an old bird’s nest. Nothing living.
Nothing waiting.
He lays his satchel down and crouches near what’s left of the fire pit. The stones are undisturbed. No warmth.
He doesn’t trust that.
Still, he begins pulling damp leaves from the floorboards, clearing space with slow, quiet movements.
That’s when he sees it. Scratched into one of the inside beams, almost invisible unless the light hits it just right, is a single name:
Lark.
The R is crooked. The K trails. A knife did that, not a claw. Ra’zirr’s tail stills.
He remembers hearing it at the camp, the quiet voices behind the fire. “Tell Lark we’re not packing sugar next to timber again.”
The name rides with weight now. He brushes the carving with one claw, then pulls his hand back. Too clean. Too recent.
The bottle in his satchel had no name on it. But he’s starting to think that if it had…
It would have been this one. He doesn’t sleep right away.
Instead, he sits in the dust beside the beam and watches the woods through a crack in the wall. Just in case.
He tightens the drawstring on his satchel, even though it’s already shut.
Checks the dagger.
Listens to the wind.
It smells like pine and wet leaves, but something beneath it still stirs the fur on the back of his neck.
He doesn’t say the name aloud. He just watches the dark. This one walks alone. But someone else sets the pace.