RP Tag, You're It

Phoenix

Phoenix

Member
“Fire Opal, are you sure you’re ready for this? This is a big task. I’d understand if you want more time to prepare before you take on something like–”

“I’m ready, Obsidian. I’ve been working toward this for six years. Have some faith in me. Believe that I can do this. Please.” The man looked at her with soft eyes, eyes full of concern and love. A hand reached out and brushed her almost waist-length curls back from her face. Then it stayed there, holding her cheek.

Fire Opal knew what his hesitation was. She was small, she was young, and this meta was rumored to be particularly dangerous. But she was also the most powerful meta on their team. Sulphur didn’t have her combat skills, Malachite didn’t have her raw power, and Lapis could never hope to hold a candle to her ability to track. Fire Opal was the right choice for this.

But she was also his sister. His baby sister, not even eighteen yet. Obsidian was overprotective of her. She wanted to go out and see the world, to fight for their cause. They were newly formed, and they needed the power that a meta like this could offer. A meta who made people disappear so completely. And so violently, if the scenes were to be believed. Whoever this guy was, whatever he did, he could be useful. And Fire Opal could be useful. She could prove it.

She would prove it.

With a soft sigh, he finally let his shoulders fall in defeat. “Alright. Alright, I’ll trust you on this. Don’t die, understand? I can’t lose you, too, Opal.” She jumped up, her amber eyes bright in her freckled face. She threw her arms around his shoulders, giggling.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! I promise, I won’t let you down.” He wrapped his arms around her shoulders in return, weaving his arms through her curls. “And I promise… I won’t die.”

The next three days were spent preparing her gear. Sulphur made sure she had all the cards and identifications she would need to get what she needed along the road. He made sure she had her nine mil, and was still up to date on how to use it. She didn’t need the gun, but she would take it to appease Sulphur. Lapis made sure she had the right clothes. Winter clothes, despite knowing that Opal would never be able to freeze to death. A heavy, fur-lined coat, heavy and thick denim jeans, long-sleeved thermal tops– but Opal knew she’d be wearing her leggings and a long-sleeved shirt and nothing else. Especially not the heavy winter boots she insisted on.

But Malachite was the most important for this.

“Now, show me again.”

Opal threw the punch at the bag, then jumped and slammed her heel as high as she could, using her heat and fire to propel herself high enough. Then she rolled when she dropped, getting behind the bag smoothly, hooking her ankle out at just the right space to take a normal human down. Then, just as quickly as she had rolled, she popped back up and dropped into her fighting stance again. Malachite clapped her on the shoulder.

“That was smooth. I think you got it down. I wish we had more time to give you more judo lessons as well, but you should be okay with just boxing. Now, kid, you promise you’ll be safe, yeah? Kathy and I wouldn’t know what to do if you died, and I doubt your brother could be consoled if you were taken out.”

His words were worrying, but his voice was light and playful, the smoothness of it carrying the twinkle of teasing. His honey-colored eyes watched her with delight, and he ruffled the top of her head. She laughed and slapped his arm away.

“You think something could get me? Me? I’ll cook them alive if they even try.”

“Now, tell me– what’s the most important thing to remember when you’re tracking?”

She smiled and chimed back, “Always have enough water, never stray too deep without my compass, and make sure they never get the drop on me.”

“Thattagirl. You’re ready for this. Don’t worry, your brother will see that when you get back safely.” Another hand on her head, this time smoothing back the stray curls that fell from her ponytail. She beamed up at him, a fierce smile that showed just the right amount of teeth.

“Thank you for believing in me, Mal.” Her raspy voice was soft then, and there was a genuine thankfulness in her eyes.

He smiled back at her, a much softer smile than her feral one. “Any time, any place, kid. Now get out of here. Go sleep.”

And sleep she did. And she dreamed of a snowy forest, and an epic fight. She dreamed of a faceless opponent, a monstrous man that she had to fight. She had to subdue him to get him to listen to her, and she was stronger, and faster, and when he got too close, she burned him. She dreamed of bringing him back, willingly and grateful, even, and she dreamed of her brother finally accepting she was strong enough.

The next morning came and went with a bit of fanfare. Everyone was there when she arrived in the garage. Sulphur, with his hawkish face and fluffy blonde hair and three-piece suit. Lapis, with her soft smile and her fashionable dress and her four-inch heels. Malachite, standing broad and smiling and dressed in his typical jeans and leather jacket. And finally, her brother. Obsidian, standing there in his button-down and slacks, a worried smile on his face. They were all there when Sulphur handed her the keys to her Kia and she hugged each one of them goodbye. They were the last thing she saw of the Emerald when she backed the car out and took off.

The drive out to Michigan was long, but she made it there in what she felt must have been a record time. Thus began her search. She would spend an entire day looking, and then catching up on her heavy diet at night. She brought full backpacks of food with her on her expeditions. She made sure she always had food in her hands as she searched.

It was seven weeks and two states when she found the first trap. A pitfall trap, nearly covered up by snow. She looked at it, dusting the snow off of it. Light and powdery, and not compacted at all. Artificially covered up judging by the disturbed snow around it. And the setup looked very new. Either she was in the territory of a psychopath, or she was close to finding her forest-dwelling meta.

She continued on her way, following a path of traps and avoiding them easily, thanks to Malachite’s training. She followed them, as they marked the way. It was the dead of January, almost two months since she had started this hunt. The entire time had been spent driving from forest to forest, eating at diners, and sleeping in her car. She was thankful for her ability to sleep only four hours and be completely well-rested. She was less thankful for her metabolism complaining about food every five minutes.

But finally, the hunt was almost over. She could feel that she was closing in on him, whoever he was. They had some reports, of course, of the horned monster in the northern woods. A territory that spanned from Vermont to Montana, making it difficult, if not impossible to catch him. But Opal would. Opal would catch up to him, and she would bring him home. She could do it. She could be the one to do it.

Finally, she started to see real tracks. They were light, and strange, and clearly not animal. They were barefoot marks from a human, but they barely sank into the snow. This was definitely her guy. They were following a trail of much deeper marks, tracks like Opal’s own, despite her attempts to leave as few marks as possible. Her hollow bones and own bare feet helped to keep her from sinking too deeply, but she knew there would be no running once she engaged with this meta.

She started to push forward with renewed vigor and hope. She left her snacks in the bag, keeping her hands free to fight should she need to. She hoped she needed it. She wanted to fight, to prove herself against someone strong and powerful.

Then, she made a choice. Now that she had a real trail, it would be quicker for her to catch up by air. She took a few running steps and launched herself up. She wrapped her body in heat and allowed it to carry her. She moved high, high into the trees, and started to follow the trail, using her eyes to telescope out and follow the tracks.

It wasn't long before she found him.

She found a blood trail, then a man. A man leaning over a body. Opal flew just slightly past him and landed in a tree, high up, and looked down. And she immediately felt her blood run cold for a moment before warming back up. The man she had found had a head of black curls, a halo of them, topped with another halo of antlers. They were curled back over his head like a crown, branching beautifully off into long segments. His skin was tan, naturally, and placed him somewhere in the ethnic range. He had a broken nose, and sharp features underneath a short, curly beard.

None of that was what made her blood run cold. No, that was solely due to the fact that he was crouched low over a body, and was actively eating it. It took her by surprise, and for a moment she was unsettled. But her own brother was also like this. He had to kill people to live. It wasn’t cannabilism, but it was close enough for her to be able to relax. She watched him for a long minute, trying to decide the best way forward.

She could take a picture of him. That would be the smartest thing to do, to have photo evidence of him to show the others if he bolted on her. But she didn’t want to do that. Something in her gut was telling her he wouldn’t run once he saw her. Something was telling her to show herself to him. She swallowed.

Whatever this feeling was, it was strange. She felt like he was safe for her, despite the fact he was halfway through eating a body, and had cracked open the chest and stomach, and was actively eating some organ. He had an axe nearby. He could be a threat.

But he wasn’t. She knew this instinctually.

So with that, she made a choice, and Opal was nothing if not dramatic.

She stepped off the tree and dropped, using heat to guide herself to the ground with just enough weight to crash into the snow, but just enough protection to keep from breaking anything. She looked up, her loose curls splayed red across the snow, her black clothes a stark contrast, and made eye contact with the man.

This close, she could tell he was young. Maybe her age, if a little older. He was still a kid, too. His curly hair was a deep black with brown highlights. And his antlers were even more impressive up close, the bone colored pale against his features, but with a soft brown tip. None of that was what caught her eyes and held them, though. His own eyes, blue like looking at the dawn through ice, were what caught her attention.

She felt a curious warmth blossom in her chest. Her world felt like it had suddenly snapped into perfect clarity. He blinked at her, and she felt the warmth spread through her body, and she hummed softly at it. It felt good, whatever it was, and it compounded on the idea that she could trust him.

So it was with a smile that she addressed him. “Hi. Whatcha doing?”​
 
Tonight’s hunting had been good. It was a pleasant surprise, given the state of the prey when he found it in that pit trap. This one was a hiker, underprepared for the harsh winter. The blizzard probably hadn’t helped, the one that brought in an extra three inches of powdery snow to hide the disturbances around the pit. And to hide the trails that would otherwise be well-blazed.

Frozen half to death though the man was, he still had plenty of fight in him. He had only known that there was a hand offering him a way out of the freezing hole in the frozen earth. It wasn’t until after, until he’d caught his breath and actually looked at his savior, that he saw the black sclera and branching horns.

For a half-dead man, he was fast. It was probably the adrenaline and the rising hypothermia, but both of those were allies to the predator that followed him. Adrenaline clouded his thoughts, hypothermia guaranteed that eventually, he’d go down. He went down swinging, but he did go down. He’d needed to hit the prey hard with the ax to get it to stop thrashing. He didn’t kill it, though. He needed it to stay at least a little bit warm for as long as possible. Human hikers weren’t the only ones who felt the cold, after all.

It came back around about halfway through the right arm. It was too cold to do anything more than make pitiful little cries by then, which it somehow continued as he used the ax to leverage the rib cage open. As far as the hunter was aware, it shouldn’t attract too much attention; almost everything else was too smart to come out into the cold like this. Even if the storm was gone and the night was clear, the world was still almost silent.

Silent enough that he heard the rustle of the nearby frozen tree as something heavy landed in its branches.

He didn’t look up at it, though. He had dinner; anyone that saw him at this time of year would have trouble recognizing him when he put on a human face again in the spring. He felt whatever-it-was in the tree watching him, but he had food for tonight. If it wanted to be a problem, it would come down and cause a problem. Though, how it could’ve even gotten up there…

There was a dull thump on the snow near him, and he lifted his head to look at the figure now on its back in snow that was melting away from it in a fast-retreating line. A small, delicate female human, without the heavy clothes he’d come to associate with other people, lay on her back and smiled up at him. Her face was sprinkled with red freckles, her hair was a huge mane that spread out of her head against the white blanket beneath her, her eyes were the gold of an afternoon sun on the lake. She was very pleasant to look at, pleasant enough that he made up his mind not to brace for a fight or growl out a threat.

“Eating dinner,” he said, like a slightly twitching but mostly frozen human was a perfectly normal dinner to have. He looked at the torso, then back at the girl in the snow. She didn’t seem bothered by the cold. She looked… happy.

Happiness was something rare out here. He reflected it back to her, his mouth soaked in blood that was cooling as soon as it touched air. He looked at the torso, and then laughed, softly. He remembered enough of normal good manners to make a quiet joke:

“Want some?”
 

Her smile burst into a full grin, and she laughed, a soft and ringing sound like bells. She pushed herself up and into a sitting position, keeping her heat tight to her body to avoid melting all of the snow around them any more than she had to. After all, it was so pretty out here, in the dense white with the red splatter on the ground. And still, she didn’t feel like she was in any danger, even being so close to the young man across from her. "Actually, that doesn't look like the right meat for me. I prefer roast beef."

Her curls were dusted with powdery snow, clinging to them and making her look like she was part of the forest, despite her black clothes. As though she had sat there for long enough for the falling snow to have coated her in a fine layer of soft white. She brushed a loose strand back from her face as she looked him over, and what he was doing.

She pushed herself to her feet, her thin body on display with her tight black clothes. She was small, smaller than she should be. That much was obvious even to herself. Opal ate far too little and did far too much for someone who required a six-course meal at every opportunity. She walked the few feet to where he sat, and then she sat down in front of him, maybe three feet away.

“But feel free to keep eating. I won’t stop you.”​
 
Her laugh sparked a laugh from his own chest, softer, like a cat creeping in the snow. Real, though, still real. He had no reason to lie to people by laughing. The hunters and trappers he associated with, when he went into towns, didn’t bother hiding their real feelings. He liked people like that. He liked that she laughed easily, because it didn’t feel like she was lying, either.

“Yeah? I can’t really handle anything roasted, myself.” He settled back on his heels, and then put his hand back in the man’s chest. The body shuddered, but the spark of consciousness was almost gone. “Last call for a piece, by the way – at least before it gets cold. It’s still almost warm.”

He held up a kidney, as if offering it out to her. She was so tiny that he had a feeling she’d need the food – though, probably not his food. While she was pretty, it was clear she didn’t eat enough. He could see the bones in her face, the same way he saw his when he looked in a mirror. But he knew his wouldn’t go away. Sure, it got slightly better and slightly worse depending on when he ate. But she didn’t have that starved look in her eyes, that hollowness that sometimes he caught in his reflection. She probably had better things to think about than food.
 

She eyed the organ in the young man’s hand and tilted her head thoughtfully. She hummed for a second as she genuinely considered it. She could just… cook it. That would make it safe enough to eat, wouldn’t it? Even as the thought crossed her mind, she shook her head with a small smile. As curious as she was, watching him eat the man completely raw, she simply couldn’t accept.

"I'm positive. But thank you for the offer. I think it might make me sick, or I'd try some." She leaned forward on her knees, head in her hands. She gave him a soft smile. The feeling of warmth continued and flooded her gently with some kind of soft feeling. Contentedness, maybe? Whatever it was, she felt safe. She felt at ease. She felt like there was no danger to her sitting this close to the monster her brother had sent her after.

Monster. Monster was subjective. He was no more a monster than Obsidian was. He was just a boy, a kid like her, and he might have had some peculiarities, but he was by no means a monster to her. Not with that soft laugh and the offer of food at what amounted to his table. He was at least a considerate monster if he was one.

She bit her lip lightly as she stared for one more second at the offered organ before looking back at his eyes. His eyes, that made her feel relaxed. His eyes, that sparked that curious warmth in her. His eyes, that helped her to relax. It was like all the stress and tension she had about this mission had been drained from her. Like he was a safe haven from it.

Curious.​
 
He laughed again, and settled in to sit next to his meal. His dad had taught him that three times was polite when offering food. If someone said no three times, they really weren’t interested. But she was firm about the second time, and he’d decided a few years ago not to listen to his dad anymore.

“More for me! But… Most people wouldn’t even be interested then. They get squick about raw food. But not like, raw fish or anything. People are weird.”

He was sure why people thought his kind of raw meat was bad, obviously. People didn’t like thinking about being eaten. Nothing did. But he was thinking about food all the time, had his habits and routines around it. That made her all the weirder for just sitting there looking interested.

He bit into the meat that was still just warm enough, and sighed softly as he chewed it. He was still a long way from the fullness that usually led to sleeping and not-remembering-tomorrow, but it was nice to have a mouth full of warm. She was warm, too. Sitting this close to her was like sitting next to a space heater. Most people weren’t that warm, especially not in the snow. And sitting there with her face in her hands, she looked like a little kid. Something only emphasized by how tiny she was. When he met her eyes, though, he saw something behind them that he recognized. He had known enough other hunters to see someone who was used to following, to watching.

But she wasn’t scary. Not at all. She wasn’t here to hunt him, because she didn’t have a gun or even a knife with her. It was pretty sure that even if she’d come out here hunting him, she hadn’t been aiming to kill him. He didn’t really understand why, but maybe she’d explain, if he gave her the space.
 

"I'm not like most people, but surely that's obvious by now." She watched him eat, her eyes staying warm. She was right, she was sure. She wasn’t like most people. Certainly, most people would have been upset by his eating habits. But Opal had spent a long time being told that even though she was special, she was still prey. That even though she was fire incarnate, there were things out there that were better than her. Things like Obsidian, and like this guy sitting across from her. She was well aware that there were things that would just consider her food.

Just take ghuls, for example.

"Out of curiosity, what does it taste like?" The question slipped out without much thought behind it. But she was curious. For all she knew, it tasted like chicken or beef or pork. She imagined pork must be the closest taste to it. After all, wasn’t that cannibal phrase for people “long pig”? It would make sense, then, for it to taste like pork.

Her eyes drifted down to the body. She flexed one of her hands and looked at it. She could offer to heat it for him, maybe. Not cook it, since he seemed to like it raw, but maybe just make it warm again. Even though her real strength lay in fire, she could control her output to just heat. She hummed in the back of her throat as she stared at the body– well, what was left of it– and pondered making the offer.

She looked back up to him, her expression still serene. She examined him a little closer. Her eyes took in his individual curls, twisting in perfect coils so much tighter than her own spirals. She looked at his face, unmarred by scars or age. He was lovely, really. Pretty, for lack of a better word. Even with the already thick beard. None of her family members had beards, and she didn’t get out much, so it was odder to her than it probably should have been. But those eyes offset the beard, bringing him out of handsome and back into pretty.

She closed her eyes and smiled a little for a moment before letting her eyes catch his again. She began to play with one of the long spirals that fell over her shoulder. It bounced and curled around her fingers as she waited for her answer.​
 
He looked at her again, catching her bright yellow eyes as she looked deep into his face. That was a weird question. Not a bad question, but it wasn’t something anyone else had ever asked him. He’d had to get used to raw meat, after what happened with his dad. Now he couldn’t really imagine eating anything else. So it took him a minute to parse out the best way to describe it to an outsider.

“Raw meat. So blood, mostly,” he decided, peering over the chest to see where it was already coagulating. He put the rest of the kidney in his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully before moving on to the next part. “I think I left him in the hole a little too long. Even with the chase, everything else got frozen out.”

Which was a shame. His nose let him taste things that most people wouldn’t – fear, anger, despair. He liked those flavors, when he was like this, when he’d made the food run to survive. Other times he noticed other flavors. Sometimes the blood was sweeter, or fatter, or saltier. He suspected that had something to do with diet and exercise. But the meat itself? That didn’t have much to it. And he preferred it like that.

But tonight’s food was admittedly kind of bland, even by his standards. Frozen, sick, and scared, but that was all. If he wanted flavor, he’d need to wait for hunting season to start again. Food was much better at fighting when it had spent its whole life outside. But meat was meat, food was food, and he was happy to have something to keep the hunger at bay tonight. Even with an audience.
 

She hummed in response and nodded. The motion was thoughtful and slow, and her eyes drifted down again to the body. She dipped a hand into the snow and lifted it up, turning her attention to watching it drip in droplets from her hand. The speed was slowly growing as she melted more and more of it. Soon, she knew, her palm would just be full of water, clear but for the red tinged from the man’s blood.

"So, iron? That's what blood tastes like, right? Or does everyone have a specific taste?" She looked back at him, letting the water continue to run from her hands. She didn’t even stop to consider that she was showing him part of what she could do. That she was showing him her heart. But that didn’t really matter to her. He could see what she was.

Her brother would be mad at her, of course, for revealing so much about herself to this young man. He would have scolded her for how she was going about it, but in that loving way he did when he was worried about her safety. Still, she let all of the snow run in rivers down her palm and to her knuckles, where it rained down on the ground.

The inner warmth she was feeling, it was more than enough to keep her warm outside as well. He was keeping her warm. She would have to think about that at some point. What it meant and why it was happening and how to explain it. But right now, she couldn’t find the words to explain it. And she didn’t care to. She just wanted to enjoy it as the warmth washed away the tension of her first mission. She just wanted to sit here and talk to the curly-haired man, with his soft laugh and his even and collected voice.​
 
He didn’t look, but he listened as the water struck the snow in rhythmic drips. She was melting it on purpose. Was she trying to show off what she could do? Maybe, but she didn’t need to. He could feel her heat easily with how close she was to him. Was she bored? Was he boring her? That wasn’t good. He looked up at her, and a bit of earnest worry now shone in his eyes. Worry that disappeared when he saw her face.

It wasn’t often he saw a person who was content, anymore. He knew the word, and the expression, and the feeling – he found himself content any time he finished a hunt and went back to his cabin. But people almost always had something to worry about. Even his dad had never really looked peaceful. But she did. And all the worry went away when he saw that.

“Iron, yeah. A little bit like…” he tried to remember textures or flavors that she’d understand. Three years was a long time to go without something his prey experienced every day, and emotions weren’t seasonings humans used. “Greasy, I guess. Some people taste a little different, but at this point he’s all textures.”

He tore the meat in his hands in half, as if to demonstrate. It peeled apart along the grain of the fibers that made it up, and it peeled easily. The softer meat was easier to get down than the diet of trappers he was used to, even as the winter cold got into it, but it probably looked less appealing than the clean beef or chicken found on supermarket shelves.
 

She watched with fascination as he tore the meat in his hands. She picked up another handful of snow and absently let it melt as she watched with a small gleam to her eyes. "That makes sense, I guess. Given it's so cold."

This was comfortable. For a moment, Opal thought about just how comfortable it was. A small frown came over her face as she tried to recall the last time things had just been comfortable. But the longer she thought, the further back she had to go. Until she was back to before Zeheb’s death. Until she was all the way back to the apartment in Virginia. Had it really been that long since she had just felt comfortable in the presence of another human? Well, being?

When had she stopped being comfortable and at ease?

Well, whatever the case was, she turned her focus back on to the cannibal across from her. She would take the comfortable air between them and she would love it and nurture it for as long as she had the chance to. Her mission was quickly being forgotten the longer that she sat across from him. All that really mattered was the soft conversation and the gentle air between them. All that she cared about was more of whatever this soft warmth was. So she smiled again, watching as he tore the meat apart with his teeth, watched him chew it, watched him swallow.

To say she was fascinated would be underselling it. Opal had always admired Obsidian’s predatory tendencies. She had encouraged them even before everything Zeheb, and now she had the ultimate predator sitting in front of her. Of course she was fascinated by him. He was a marvel, a wonder, a shinning example of what people could become, if they were lucky.

“Do you like it?”
 
He looked up at the unexpected question, his blue eyes focusing on her in the dark. She was being very… nosy? Curious. That was probably better. It sounded like less of a bad thing, “curious”. Because it wasn’t a bad thing! Just different.

He could already tell she was different. Did she think she was safe because he was eating someone else, he wondered, or was she just brave? Either was okay – one was definitely more reasonable than the other, but both were okay. She was the first person he’d talked to in a while outside the bars he went in to figure things out about prey. And besides, she was way too small to be better than what he was already eating.

“This one, or any?” He wiped some blood off his chin, then shrugged. “I like any. This one’s not my favorite, but he's warm enough, and he’s going to be filling, so he’s good enough for tonight.”

He took another bite, and watched the water drip between her fingers. And the growing ring of melted snow in the clearing. The thought occurred to him that he could ask her to warm the body back up –

And judging by the way that turned his stomach, that was a bad idea. So he’d just enjoy it cold.
 

She nodded her head and leaned back, criss crossing her legs in front of her. She absently wrapped her hands around her ankles as she watched him eat. He was a bit of a messy eater, but that was fine. It was probably hard to eat a person cleanly. She thought for a moment before answering, "I meant any."

After a moment, Opal started to rock. It wasn’t a terribly noticeable rock, but it was still a rock. Just an absent movement as she thought, as she watched. That same small smile that had been dancing across her features stayed, even as she got lost in thought. It had finally occurred to her that she was supposed to be asking him to join Slate. She was here to specifically do that.

But the longer she was there, the less she wanted to do that. It wasn’t that she didn’t think he was worth it, or anything like that. But he was… gentle? He was gentle. That was the closest words that she would be able to come up with. Soft, gentle, even though he was a creature so much better than her, so much like her brother. He was treating her with a gentleness that she didn’t want to see changed. And it wasn’t that her brother changed people, necessarily. It was just that she remembered who Lapis used to be.

For a moment, a flash of sadness crossed her face, followed by resolve. And then her eyes refocused on his sharp face. Despite the dark, she could make out his features just fine. Her vision was better than normal people’s. Bird eyes, Sulphur called them. Better for seeing in general, but great for long distances and the dark. After the resolve, her face broke into a full grin, her teeth flashing white in the darkness.

“I've never met a cannibal before.” She rocked forward and closer to him, her neck arched slightly to lift her face to look up at him. Her eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, the bits of iris that were visible around her enlarged pupils. A small ring of pure fire in her eyes that seemed to convey a new kind of earnestness.

She had decided that he wouldn’t be coming back with her. He was going to stay out here, free and happy. Not that he wouldn’t be happy with Slate, but she could feel it in her gut. This was right. Right here, right now, it was right. And he would stay right if she had any say in it.​
 
She started to move, slow rocking back and forth. She didn’t seem to be scared, though. Sometimes prey started to rock when they were in the hole for too long. But she was just rocking. Just thinking, it seemed. He didn’t interrupt that. The silence between them was light and comfortable, like the silence he had when he was alone. They weren’t waiting for anything, it didn’t seem like. She was watching him, and he was listening to her.

He didn’t miss the sadness, though. The flash in the golden eyes under the red hair like a fox’s face. He looked up at her just as she looked back at him, and he smiled, as warmly as he could. He didn’t think he was upsetting her, but her eyes softened again when she looked at him, and her smile widened to a grin.

He laughed, when she asked her question. When she sat closer to him, and called him something he’d realized a while ago he couldn’t be.

“I’m not really a cannibal.” he said, still laughing as he rummaged in the cold chest for more food.
 

His smile sent a bolt of warmth, pure and sunny, through her. Whatever it was she was feeling, she got the feeling he was also feeling it. Whatever this light and gentle thing was. Was this friendship? Was that what this was? Was this how you made actual friends? Opal wouldn’t know. She’d never had friends growing up, and then high school had been hard enough for her that her brother had let her home school.

She liked it, whatever it was.

"But you're a person eating a person. What else would it be, silly?" She giggled a little, tilting her head. Her long curls fell over her shoulder and draped in front of her shoulder. His laugh was pleasant. Just on the deeper end of average and a little hoarse, but it was pleasant to her in a way she couldn’t describe.

She watched him dig through the chest cavity as she spoke, unbothered by him eating. He seemed to be picking pieces methodically. Maybe he had favored pieces, or pieces he liked less. She supposed that made him just like everyone else. At least, in terms of liking and disliking things. She couldn’t let herself forget what he was. Her brother wouldn’t have let her. Or…

Maybe she could forget, for just a bit.​
 
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