#asge

Virgil had left the sprite on an extra pillow next to him, one of his hands cupped over the tiny figure to monitor any sudden changes in temperature, which basically meant that he’d gotten an unwanted earful at close range.

For someone who’d barely been able to string two words together before, the sprite certainly had a set of lungs on him. Stars almighty, that was loud.

“Will you cut that out?” he groaned with his face still half-mushed into his pillow, only earning himself an alarmed, shrill whistle-chirp and frantic scrabbling under his hand in response. Ugh. Sprites.

Did the guy not remember Virgil literally going to embarrassing lengths to save his life a handful of hours ago, or something?

Well. Actually, thinking back, he was pretty sure the sprite had been more-or-less unconscious at that point, only latching onto Virgil’s proffered magic after much nudging and coaxing of that terrifyingly unresponsive form. Maybe he actually didn’t recall any of that.

In that case, he had a little more sympathy. Not enough to keep him from pushing up onto his elbows and sending the noisy creature a nasty glare, but enough that he didn’t jump directly to mostly-facetious threats on the sprite’s life. See? Forget what everyone who’d ever met him had said, he was a master of restraint and compassion.

“Seriously, pipe down. I’m trying to sleep over here.” Okay, so not that much compassion.

The sprite’s wings were aggressively fluffed up behind him, meaning they hadn’t turned into frostbitten hunks of flesh and fallen off in the night, which was good. Virgil knew elemental beings were far more resistant to physical damage than most mortal types were, but feeling someone so iced-over always brought around that old panic anyhow.

Mostly assured that the sprite wasn’t going to keel over the moment he wasn’t in contact with him, Virgil retracted his hand entirely, leaving the sprite sprawled out on the pillow, breathing hard as his bedraggled feathers puffed up further. Virgil shifted into his fluffier form, as though his fur coat would chase away even the memory of the chill, and curled up more firmly, wrapping his tail around his paws. If he could just get a few more minutes of rest…

“I’ve been abducted,” the sprite said to himself, the words starting as a near whisper and slowly growing to a near wail. “I was nearly frozen, hunted for sport, and now I’ve been kidnapped away for my transgressions!”

Uggghh. He shifted back, mostly for ease of speech, and rolled his eyes when the sprite tried to scramble back and mostly just tripped over himself.

“I didn’t kidnap you,” he grumbled, turning his head to stare with one half-lidded eye. “I basically saved your life, actually, so maybe you should be a little more gracious.”

“Gracious?!” the sprite echoed in a shriek that was far too high-pitched for Virgil’s sleep deprivation-fried brain. “I’m fairly certain you threatened to end my life, not preserve it!”

Now, that much was probably true. Even if he hadn’t meant it, he certainly might have said something along those lines. He tended to get a little snappish when he was irritated, and also when it was cold out, and also when people bothered him in his own damn territory.

In short, the sprite had been dealt an extremely unlucky hand last night, in regards to Virgil specifically. And… intentional or not, he had almost gotten the tiny idiot killed.

He still remembered how his spiteful satisfaction at scaring the living daylights out of a rude intruder had slowly begun to shift into a creeping feeling of dread as the sprite utterly failed to do anything resembling normal flying, let alone escaping. The moment his fingers had wrapped around that ice-cold frame, the apprehension had abruptly firmed into the certainty that something was terribly wrong.

No creature of fire should ever feel so still and icy, especially not a lively, quick-burning sprite.

Virgil’s ears pressed flat against his skull, his guilt swamping him again. He supposed he probably at least owed the guy an explanation. Uuuuggghhhh.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told the sprite, tucking his hands under himself in an act of goodwill. “I know we got off on the wrong foot—,”

“The wrong foot?! An upside-down centipede has less wrong feet than our meeting!” the sprite screeched, continuing to be far more verbose when he wasn’t in the middle of freezing to death. Funny how that worked.

“Okay, fine,” Virgil cut in. “I heavily implied that I was going to murder you, but in my defense, I had no idea you were actually in a prime state to be murdered at the time, and also I’d been having a really bad night.”

The sprite stared at him like he was insane, and Virgil felt his shoulders rise to hunch up around his ears. This was why he didn’t talk to people.

“You had a bad night?!” the sprite asked in a near-shout, his tone incredulous.

The indignant question was accompanied by a twitch of movement, like the sprite had attempted to throw his arms up in an exasperated gesture only to find one limb restrained. He looked down at the sling around his injured arm, blinking in bewilderment.

“Okay, that one wasn’t my fault,” Virgil protested preemptively. “You were already like that when I— hey, hey! Don’t jostle it, jeez!”

He reached forward despite himself, gently batting the sprite’s hand away from the sling. Naturally, he earned himself a buffeting slap from one of those tiny wings for his good deed, but going by the horrified stare the sprite sent his own appendage, Virgil was fairly sure the motion had been entirely instinctual.

“Seriously, don’t mess with that,” he instructed, slowly withdrawing once it became clear that the sprite had gone stock-still with fear. “It took me ages to put together a sling that tiny, let alone tie it. Just leave it be.”

The sprite’s face pinched with uncertainty. “You made this? Why?”

There it was, the exact question he’d been trying to avoid. Great, just great.

He shrugged, faux-casual. “Maybe I just didn’t want some random pesky sprite dropping dead in my stretch of woods. Bad for the decor or whatever.”

The sprite narrowed his eyes at him, clearly not buying it.

“Look,” Virgil said, trying to head off the accusations of nefarious plots that he could practically see on the tip of the sprite’s tongue, “I clearly could have murdered you, and I didn’t, so can we just agree to not ask any more questions and part ways as unfriendly strangers?”

“What did you mean, you were having a bad night?” the sprite asked, apparently deciding to completely ignore Virgil’s very reasonable suggestion.

“I mean, I was having a bad night,” Virgil repeated with the slightest growl to the words. “I got robbed by annoying pixies twice, and now I’m going to have to go repair those boundary markers and make sure that nothing snuck in while they were down, which means I’ll have to waste a whole day just scouring the forest when I have winter supplies to be storing—,”

“Twice?” the sprite echoed, face pinching even further into a confused frown. “I only stole one boundary marker— and under severe duress, with all intention of returning the pilfered power once I had recovered at home!”

Virgil rolled his eyes, ignoring the tacked-on excuses. “Yeah, but you were the second sprite to do that. Like, my bad for thinking both times were you, but in my defense, the other sprite looked pretty damn similar—,”

“There was another sprite?” the sprite interrupted again, and this time he didn’t even seem to notice Virgil’s annoyed growl, his entire body gone tense with a sudden sharp focus. “You’re sure?”

Virgil frowned, a foreboding feeling creeping up on him. “Yeah, especially with what you just said. In hindsight, there were signs that the two of you were different. You were tripping over your words, while the first guy nearly woke the whole forest with all the maniacal shrieking laughter.”

“Remus,” the sprite whispered with wide eyes, his hands fisting in the loose fabric of the pillow. “Did you see which way he went?”

For the first time, he was leaning toward Virgil, practically hanging on his every word as he sought the answer.

“I dunno, north-ish?” Virgil replied, ears flicking back in slight bewilderment. “I wasn’t exactly close enough to catch him. What, do you know the guy or— woah! What are you doing?”

The sprite had pushed himself to his feet in one determined motion, and now pinwheeled, trying to keep his balance atop the soft surface of the pillow. His wings were lifting sluggishly into position, like he actually thought the ragged limbs would carry him anywhere in his current state.

Virgil hovered a hand nearby, prepared to catch the idiot when he want toppling down, but the sprite ducked away.

“I’m going to go find my brother,” the sprite spat, looking as though he’d like nothing better than for Virgil to try and stop him. “He’s out there, alone!”

The sense of foreboding doubled. The odds of a fire sprite, even one ballsy enough to steal three territory markers, surviving a winter storm all through the night were extremely low.

“If you go out there in this state, the only thing you’ll accomplish is crashing and dislocating your other shoulder,” he warned, trying to soften the bite in his voice as much as possible. “The forest is huge. There’s no way you’ll find him, wherever he is.”

Whatever condition he’s in, Virgil didn’t add, because even he had some tact.

“I don’t care,” the sprite said, chin lifted stubbornly as he started taking wobbly steps down the side of the pillow, heading for the edge of the bed. “He’s my brother. I’m not going to just abandon him!”

Virgil groaned. There was virtually no way the other sprite was alive, but there was no point telling his guest that, not when the tremble to his chin showed that he was already well aware, and determined to see this through anyhow.

…At the very least, anyone who’d lost family deserved the closure of finding their body.

The sprite reached the edge of the bed and surveyed the drop, lifting his shaking wings into position to catch the den’s still air the best they could.

With a sigh, Virgil reached out and wrapped his hand around the sprite before he could jump, lifting him up into the air despite his furious protests.

“What’s your name?” he asked, and the non-sequitur was enough to grab the sprite’s attention for at least a moment.

“It’s Roman,” he snapped, and the way his wings were smacking at Virgil’s hand in protest were entirely purposeful, this time. “Now, let me go—!”

“Okay, Roman, look. You’re going to get yourself killed if you go alone,” Virgil informed him. “And seeing as I just spent a ridiculous amount of time preventing your untimely demise, I’ll be really irritated if you kick the bucket now.”

Roman’s face screwed up with clear anger, but before he could start shouting, Virgil set him down solidly on his shoulder, making sure that he was well balanced before releasing him.

“So,” he continued, swinging his legs around to stand himself, “if you promise not to yell directly in my ear, I guess I can keep all that hard work from going to waste by going with you.”

He could practically hear the way Roman’s brain ground to a halt, struggling to shift gears. “You’re going to help me?”

Virgil shrugged his unoccupied shoulder, heading for his den’s entryway. “Might as well. It’s not like it’ll be too difficult to track down the scent, if he smells anywhere near as strong as you.”

Roman laughed, a short, surprised bark. “He— Trust me, he’s much worse.”

(And afterward, if Roman’s spark had already extinguished by the time he found him– he would find him– Remus would figure out how to burn to death the human way, too.)

They’d never be able to come back to this valley, anyhow. Remus had snatched three whole territory markers from a shifter as he headed north, using the decision-making process that had gotten him labeled ‘a danger to himself and others’ at his first colony.

What could he say? Roman was the closest thing he had to impulse control.

He’d considered going back for another one– the temperature drop as the sun set was killer, literally– but stealing foxfire was the sort of thing one couldn’t repeat without getting gleefully disemboweled by a pissed-off fox shifter, and who would track down Roman then?

Already planning exactly how he’d make fun of his brother for losing to a measly storm, Remus flapped his wings sharply, sending another wave of warmth through them and ignoring the way the cold pit in his chest deepened a bit more.

It didn’t matter. He’d always wondered what it would feel like to gutter down to ashes, anyhow.

The world’s most torchable forest continued to look the same no matter how far he flew, all thick-trunked trees and mossy undergrowth that he’d normally be eager to taste test. There was barely anything resembling a breeze, so the murmur of rustling leaves had been completely overtaken by the hum of insects and distant calls of night birds.

The lack of wind was just another stroke of bad luck. Normally, without any drafts to coast on, sprites would find a perch to occupy. He couldn’t glide for long, meaning that his half-frozen wings were working twice as hard to keep him in the air.

He had to keep moving. Roman was out there somewhere, perched in one of these identical trees or flitting from branch to branch in his own search. If he actually cared that Remus was missing, that was. Remus’s brain was beginning to suggest otherwise.

Maybe he’s glad to have the chance to get away from you, his mind offered. You should hunt him down and break his wings into little frozen splinters.

There was a heavy thud and rustle nearby, and Remus veered towards it, because investigating things that could potentially murder him sounded way better than listening to the squishy gray matter in his skull.

The source of the commotion turned out to be a sizable bear, shuffling its way down the trunk of a large tree. Remus circled around the scene on quiet wings, taking in the practiced movements of the beast.

Oh yeah, that could definitely murder me, he thought, successfully sidetracked. In a single hit, even. One of those paws probably weighed as much as three of him.

It was a moon bear, he was pretty sure, just barely able to see the telltale sliver of cream fur on its chest in the dark of the night. Not one of the more carnivorous species, boo.

No idea what it had been doing up there, but he didn’t have time to pursue the distraction any further.

With all the turning, his glide had shifted to more of a controlled fall, and he flapped his wings a few times, ignoring the way the bear’s attention shifted towards his direction. The flaps were frustratingly weak, slowed by encroaching icy numbness, and he forced another surge of warmth through them.

His spark pulsed painfully, and in the next moment, his vision blacked out entirely.

His wings flailed out to try and brake automatically, but vertigo had struck like a viper, and he could hardly tell up from down. There was wind in his ears now, which probably meant that he was currently hurtling towards a very splattery end.

He’d always said he wanted to go out screaming and covered in someone else’s blood, but he couldn’t even draw breath to yell, his whole body struggling to right itself amidst the pain of nearly burning himself out.

There was a sudden impact against one wing, hard but thin– a branch? Any semblance of direction vanished as he tumbled head over heels through what felt like an endless stretch of bush. Each stinging lash hurt, but by the time he hit the ground, his momentum had slowed enough to make the impact totally agonizing instead of extremely fatal.

He lay there for a few long moments, stunned or possibly paralyzed. He couldn’t really tell if the snapping sounds had been the branches around him or all of his bones. Slowly, his vision began to fade back in, each blink bringing a new arrangement of black spots.

Distantly, he finally registered an odd sound, one that was gradually growing closer.

Snuffling.

Oh, right. The bear.

Moon bears weren’t particularly active carnivores, but their primary meat intake was carrion. He remembered because he’d thought it was extremely funny, and also an excellent fact to gross Roman out with.

Remus attempted to twitch a wing, and failed miserably. His whole body felt like it had been tenderized into a paste.

… He was pretty sure he counted as carrion, at this point.

Getting eaten by a bear was a cooler death than hitting the ground because he forgot how to fly, at least.

The rustling of leaves intensified as something began pushing past the bush’s branches, presumably searching for him.

There was the sour taste of misery on the back of his tongue, knowing that if Roman was still alive out there somewhere, Remus had abandoned him with not even a corpse left behind. It was his own fault, he thought with a pang of aimless violent fury. If he’d been smarter or quicker or more reserved about his search, he wouldn’t be in this mess.

He was distracted from the impulse to bite down on his own arm– half to vent his anger and half because if something was going to eat him, he wanted the first bite– by the sensation of something soft and warm grazing him.

It was like his body remembered it was freezing all at once. He leaned against the warmth despite himself, his breath catching as a new wave of involuntary shivering agitated every bruise and bump he had, and struggled to think past the sensation.

The thing grabbing him wasn’t a bear mouth, he realized, mildly disgruntled. There were no teeth. Only a bunch of flexible, appendage-like protrusions poking through the brush and curling around him.

The mystery of it all was the only thing keeping his mind off his shrieking nervous system as his battered frame was steadily pried free from the bush’s tangled grasp. He stared down at the fleshy lump settled across his chest like a band and abruptly realized he was looking at a fingernail.

A hand. Had a human somehow grabbed him? Remus blinked, dizzily sinking into the warmth of it. Maybe they could help him with the forest fire. He’d been planning to set something on fire human-style, hadn’t he?

“Try to stay awake. Your body temperature is dangerously low,” a low, measured voice informed him.

Remus hadn’t even realized he’d closed his eyes until he opened them to the sight of a considerably larger face looking down at him. Not human after all, going by those fangs and the round, fuzzy black ears atop the stranger’s head. Where had he seen those ears before…?

The stranger had continued talking, not that Remus had caught any of it, and was now levering his arm up between two fingers and pressing on it. It felt gentle, but sensations could be deceiving in the cold, so it was totally possible he was about to watch his humerus get snapped in two. The stranger was staring at him expectantly now, as though a question had been asked.

Remus didn’t have an answer, but having finally figured out just what kind of shifter was holding him, he did have something to say. Inhaling past his bruised ribs, he tilted his head back against the palm he was resting on to make eye contact.

“You’re beary hot,” he managed, and with his piece said, proceeded to immediately pass out.

–

Remus woke up to fur in his mouth.

“Pfah,” he said, coherently.

The fur underneath him twitched, everything swaying slightly as though wherever he was laying wasn’t exactly solid ground. He was also sweltering, which was a great state for him to be in if he didn’t want his spark to go out from overstress. Really though, how much fur did one have to inhale to start coughing up hairballs?

There was a careful oversized breath, and then the surface below him abruptly shifted to something much flatter and smoother. Fabric, Remus realized, his cheek pressed against distinct woven threads.

“Hello,” a voice rumbled through him, large and close. “You’re on top of me. Please don’t be alarmed.”

Remus waggled his eyebrows blearily, still too disoriented to even contemplate being alarmed. Besides, he didn’t startle easily. He was normally the one alarming.

“Did you at least buy me dinner first?” he asked, his delivery weakened by the instant pain that blossomed in his chest. “Ow.”

“My apologies,” the voice replied. “I was unable to reduce the bruising of your ribs, since applying ice would have only worsened your condition. I did not prepare any dinner, because you were unconscious.”

Either this guy had the best deadpan in the business, or the innuendo had completely flown over his head. Remus was delighted regardless.

He struggled to push himself upright, his entire body protesting severely, and a giant hand lifted into his line of sight, hurriedly curving around him as a supportive measure. The feeling was familiar, and Remus went rigid as he recalled exactly how he’d gotten here.

“Where are we?” he asked, all traces of his lackadaisical attitude gone.

If the stranger was surprised by his sudden intensity, he didn’t show it. “My home. It’s a cave near the northwestern edge of the valley, and I brought you here after seeing–”

“You motherfucker,” Remus swore, and twisted to bite down on the stranger’s hand.

The fingers contracted briefly, but surprisingly enough, didn’t collapse down to instinctively crush him.

“Ow.” The stranger’s voice was insultingly monotone about the attack, which admittedly hadn’t even broken skin. “Stop that. There’s no need, I don’t intend you any harm.”

Seeing that his best efforts weren’t cutting it, Remus unlatched his jaw and craned his neck to scowl up at them. “Forget harm! You kidnapped me while I was in the middle of something!”

“Yes,” they replied dryly, “dying. I noticed.”

“How long has it been?” Remus asked, shoving to his hands and knees. “Is it still night?”

There were two hands hovering anxiously over him, now. “Not long has passed. There are still several hours until dawn breaks. Why?”

“Because I’ve got a featherbrain brother to find,” he said, “so sorry to smash-and-dash, stranger, but you’ll have to abduct me to your cave against my will another time.”

The stranger went quiet for a long moment, during which Remus painstakingly managed to push himself up to a standing position, though his wings were limply dragging behind him.

He couldn’t really see very far before his vision went blurry, so he wasn’t sure entirely where the exit was, but he could figure it out. It was a cave, after all: either he’d find the opening or he’d walk endlessly deeper and deeper into the earth like a dumbass.

Before he could successfully balance well enough to take a step towards one of those destinations, though, a shadow fell over him.

“My name is Logan,” the shifter spoke up, “and I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

As easily as a breeze would pick up a leaf, Logan scooped Remus off his feet back into his cupped palm.

“Nobody ‘lets’ me do anything!” Remus snapped back, thrashing as best he could against the grip. Seeing as he currently had the strength of a newborn kitten, it didn’t do much. “Come on, you can eat my corpse later, I’ve got time-sensitive shit to do!”

The comment earned him a minor twitch. “I have no desire to eat your corpse. That would defeat the entire purpose of this venture, which is to prevent you from becoming a corpse in the first place.”

“My corpse, my business!” It was frustrating to know that if they had met in normal circumstances, Logan was exactly the sort of stiff-backed repressed nerd that Remus would have delighted in teasing. Almost as frustrating as the fact that the dork wouldn’t let him go!

With a huff, Remus gave up on avoiding agitating his wounds and threw himself into struggling with no care for bodily harm.

“Listen to me,” Logan tried, sounding slightly more harried. “Your internal temperature is only barely beginning to recover. If you expose yourself to the frigid weather outside for any longer–!”

“Oh, I’ll expose myself alright,” Remus snarled, because what was the point of nonsensical threats if they couldn’t also be saucy? “Roman is out there in that weather!”

“And you’ll be no help to him if you choose to freeze to death out of simple, ignorant stubbornness!” Logan literally growled, the noise vibrating through Remus and lingering in the back of the shifter’s chest. “I will help you search once you’ve stabilized, but until then, you are at my mercy.”

Remus stared up at him, in utter disbelief that someone could make playing nursemaid to a sprite sound so threatening.

Logan’s expression softened, but his grip remained firm. “I refuse to sit by and watch such foolishness. I won’t be made to explain it to your brother.”

Maybe it was the way his words assumed Roman’s survival after Remus had spent the whole night imagining the worst, or maybe Remus was just exhausted enough for a rational argument to have an effect on him for once.

Either way, he clearly wasn’t winning this fight. He let his body flop limply against Logan’s hand with no little amount of petulance.

“If you don’t help me search, I’ll learn how to perform surgery on giants just so I can fill your organs with flesh-eating wasps.”

Logan took the concession for what it was, and only raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t it be simpler to lock me in a room with the wasps? My flesh would be eaten either way, right?”

It was the perfect question to distract himself with. Remus launched into a heated defense of the differences between external versus internal flesh consumption as torture methods, barely noticing as Logan carefully moved his limp wings back into a more comfortable resting position.

The shifter kept asking questions as he cupped his hand against his chest, creating a cushion of warmth on all sides. Remus kept talking even as drowsiness began to set in, a sprite cradled up against the heartbeat of a bear shifter. Heh. He had always wanted to cuddle something that could maul him.

Remus knew the warmth rekindling in his chest was his spark. Still, it felt a little like hope, too.

… Blech, Roman had been rubbing off on him.

He tried to call for him, but his voice didn’t carry far in the first place, and amidst the shrieking of the wind and creaking of the trees, it felt like his words vanished into thin air the moment they left his mouth.

Roman tried not to imagine Remus’s words out there somewhere, a cry for help dragged far away with the dead leaves and the topsoil.

His throat was aching by the time he gave up, collapsing against the furthest corner of the hollow and wrapping his wings around himself to try and avoid the worst of the biting winds.

They should never have come out here, not even for something as harmless as a race. Every sprite knew it: in Fulmo Valley, storms hit hard, and they hit fast.

It was easy to dismiss the dangers when they were looking down at the valley from a bird’s eye view, content in the knowledge that even if one of the Big Folk that denned down there saw them, they could dart away in a blink.

It was a lot harder when he was flightless, only one wrong move away from being completely grounded, down on the forest floor where nearly any wild creature would have no trouble tearing him to shreds.

He shuddered, only half from fear.

The other half was from how utterly soaked he was. The temperature drop would have been a minor annoyance in other circumstances, but now? While he was drenched? He couldn’t create a spark in these conditions, let alone a flame big enough to bring him any warmth.

Roman attempted to wring his shirt out miserably, his hands already growing stiff with the chill. He didn’t even want to think about how cold it would get once the sun fell past the horizon.

He’d have to get out before then, or else he really would be in trouble. The storm wouldn’t last forever; once it cleared up, he could climb out of this damp hole and let the last few hours of sunlight dry his wings, and then find Remus and get home!

That was doable. Easy, even!

Roman shuffled his limbs in tighter, watching the rain continue to fall outside. All he had to do was watch the storm and wait. All he had to do… was…

-

When he next jolted awake, Roman was greeted with the undeniable purple-pinks of dusk falling.

“No!” he cried out pointlessly, struggling to his feet on half-asleep limbs.

Approaching the opening to his hollow only confirmed the truth: he’d slept past all but the final fleeting moments of sunlight.

His face scrunched up in pre-emptive dread, Roman flared his wings out and found that half of his feathers were still damp and the other half had dried stiffly into the smushed-up position he’d fallen asleep in.

He’d be hard-pressed to even reach the ground in such a state, let alone fly home.

For a moment, he entertained the idea of waiting til morning, using the hollow as a refuge and hoping that he could survive the night’s cold embrace.

But his magic was already sapped from keeping him alive during his last nap. It was only going to get colder from here, and his inner spark had barely sustained him this far. It would gutter easily in this kind of weather, and then his body would be all that was left of him, cold and curled up in a corner. The only ones to ever know what had happened to him would be the next owls to nest here.

Besides, Remus was still out there. No matter how recently they’d become un-estranged, he wasn’t going to abandon his brother!

The determination that flared up in him at the thought was almost like warmth, and he rode that high all the way to the edge of a branch, spread his wings wide, and attempted to glide to the next tree over.

Key word: Attempted.

There weren’t exactly thermals all the way down here, and without perfectly preened primaries, his flight pattern resembled less a smooth arrow reaching its target and more a propeller seed wildly spiraling down to the dirt below.

Roman crashed into the ground shoulder-first with a sickening pop, his wings held aloft to keep them from buffering his fall.

A broken arm was bad, but a broken wing was lethal, especially if it set wrong.

Once he’d thoroughly familiarized his face with the dirt, he finally stopped groaning long enough to push himself back upright, delicately avoiding putting any pressure on his limply-hanging left arm. It seemed like his shoulder was dislocated, not broken, going by how manageable the pain was when he wasn’t moving it directly.

Still, even the relief of his bones all being intact couldn’t take the sting off of the fact that he was now solidly on the ground, more exposed than he’d ever been in his life.

Roman swallowed thickly, tilting his head back and following the lines of the trees up, up, up until he nearly lost his balance and fell back over.

That was where he belonged. Not down here, scurrying about underfoot like some common field mouse.

Something rustled in the distance, and Roman snapped his gaze back to floor-level so quickly his shoulder twinged in protest.

Belonging or not, he’d be worse off than a mouse if he didn’t get moving. He clearly had a long way to go.

Time passed in a blur, marked only by the sky darkening and the world around him growing somehow even colder than it already had been. His pace slowed, bit by bit, right along with it. In the corner of his vision, he swore he spotted ice crystals forming on his soggier feathers.

When he spotted the flickering light ahead, his brain felt frozen-over, mind churning slowly enough that he didn’t think twice before staggering towards it. Fire sprites weren’t meant to be cold, certainly not for this long, and his spark was urging him towards the flickering shadows regardless of the source.

It could have been the beginnings of a forest fire, and Roman wouldn’t have cared so long as he could find a nice, well-stoked flame to curl up in.

When he got closer, the source became evident. An eerie light was radiating from a small ball of glowing purple flames, bobbing a few inches off the ground.

Roman couldn’t resist the urge to practically glue himself to it, letting the flames flicker around his wings and ease the sharp, icy pain that had been shooting through them with every step.

The flames weren’t particularly hot, more wispy and ephemeral than a natural fire, but they were built off of raw magical energy. Simply standing there and soaking in the ambient magic was enough to provide some energy to his inner spark.

For a few long moments, he clung to the flame, shivering and debating with himself the merits of trying to siphon from the magic directly. This much was enough to stabilize him and keep him from growing any weaker, but the moment he left it, he would be right back down to banked embers.

If he tried to drain the magic in it, though…

Other than being extremely impolite to steal others’ magic, constructs like these were usually used to mark something, and if he consumed it, whoever set it might be pissed. Especially since the caster was sure to notice the sensation of a construct flickering out.

But he was so cold. Surely, if he took it and then left, they wouldn’t go to all the trouble of tracking him down? Once they saw that the culprit had booked it, they would simply create a new one rather than waste any energy on hunting him down? Most fire-magic users were on the smaller, less territorial side, so his odds of getting away clean were good.

Once he found Remus and got them both home, he could recover his own magic stores and even come back to offer penance! Sure, it was rude, but it was a matter of life or death. Namely, his.

Decided, he dipped his fingers into the small bubble of magic at the core of the flames and began to siphon it into himself.

It always felt a bit strange to borrow someone else’s magic, the feel of it foreign for the few moments it took to convert into his own flint-strike energy. He wouldn’t be able to use it to iron out his wings until it did, but he figured he could keep hurrying along the ground until then.

That was fine. It would take the caster some time to reach this spot, so he wouldn’t be caught.

Though the wind had died down, the sound of rustling was still audible.

He wouldn’t be caught, he repeated to himself, his shoulders beginning to rise up apprehensively. He was just imagining it. There was plenty of time before anyone got here–

Behind him, there was a low, eerie cackle.

–unless the caster happened to be nearby already.

With dread already running icy fingertips down his spine, Roman slowly turned his head to look over his shoulder.

And then looked up.

There was an exception to the rule with fire types, he remembered as he craned his head back to meet two eerie glowing eyes and a pair of pointed ears.

Shifters were big folk, and fox shifters were just as territorial as their infamous lupine kin. In fact, they were known for frequently marking their territory borders out in foxfire.

What little color Roman had managed to regain abruptly drained from his face.

The shifter’s eyes narrowed with either glee or fury, both of which would make sense, since he had basically just caught a defenseless idiot stealing the magical equivalent of a big glowing ‘keep out’ sign.

With the reputation foxes had for trickery and playing with their food, neither emotion was particularly promising. Roman took a step back, his heart racing.

“Not so bold, suddenly?” the fox asked, dark amusement practically dripping from each syllable. “You seemed to feel right at home just a minute ago, little bird.”

The moniker made a shiver run through him; he’d almost prefer to have been called a thief outright. At least that would indicate that the shifter recognized some semblance of personhood in him. Birds, on the other hand– foxes ate birds.

Another step back, the temporary warmth of the foxfire already fading as he desperately tried to channel what little magic he’d stolen to dry his wings.

“You think you can just run away now?” the fox asked, a little bit of ire leaking into his tone. “Actions have consequences, you know. Did you really believe you could come into my home and steal from me again without paying the price?”

Roman opened his mouth, intending to put some of his earlier promises– he’d come back, he’d return it, he just needed the warmth for a little bit, please– to words, or even to ask what he was talking about, ‘again’, but he could only force a handful of nonsense syllables between his chattering teeth before the shifter cut him off.

“Or maybe you just thought I wouldn’t be close enough to stop you. Typical.” Now he was the one to move, a single step forward erasing any distance Roman had managed to put between them. “Looks like it’s your unlucky day, huh?”

Roman’s wings flared out as though they were in any shape for a takeoff, and he jerked back, nearly stumbling over his own feet as he automatically tried to retreat from the threat.

Those luminescent eyes seemed to catch the motion, every bit a predator sighting prey, and a sharp-edged grin slowly spread across the shifter’s face, the light of the foxfire glinting off fangs that looked as long as Roman’s forearm.

“Why don’t you try your little plan out anyhow?” he mused, dropping into a crouch fast enough that Roman had to muffle a yelp of fear. “Go on, then. You get five minutes before I come looking.”

The guy was toying with him. Roman wasn’t stupid, and he could literally see the fluffy grey tail twitching with anticipation behind the shifter. In his current state, it would be almost impossible for him to get away. He hesitated for a moment, wondering if it wasn’t better to try and talk his way out of this–

“Go,” the shifter loomed over him, lips pulling back to transform the smile into something mean, and when he slammed both hands on either side of Roman, it was with enough force to snap bones.

The last bits of his self-restraint snapped, and he gave into the screeching instincts in the back of his mind, twisting on his heel and bolting away. His wings fluttered indecisively between tucking flat so he could run faster and rising up into a defensive mantle, half-expecting to be struck from behind before he’d even made it more than a few feet.

No blow came, though, only another cackle, this one higher-pitched and less human than before.

When Roman dared to steal a glance over his shoulder, there was no trace of the giant. All he saw was the tail end of a sleek, animal shape vanishing into the shadows of the trees around them.

-

Despite his best efforts, his pace began to slow after what felt like only moments, the icy air seeming twice as painful after that brief moment of warm respite.

Fight or flight could only get him so far, especially when his version of flight was a lot more pathetic than usual.

His wings were dried enough to fluff out, but the feathers were still heavily misaligned, and he certainly didn’t have the time for a preening session. As he was, he could only hop and glide for short, wavering distances. It was quicker than running, but barely.

For every step he took between glides, his shoulder was jarred painfully. Roman had taken to biting the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out at the harsher jolts. The fox could almost certainly track him down by scent alone, but he wasn’t about to make it easier by whimpering like a newly-hatched.

He barely noticed when his mouth started tasting like blood, too busy watching every shadowed cranny and rustling branch for any sign of those glittering eyes. He’d thought of trying to find another hollow, but they were all far above him now, and the shifter could simply reach in and snatch him up besides.

He kept moving, gritting his teeth against the temptation to drop to his knees and huddle against the cold. Almost impossible meant still possible, and there was no way he was going to give up when there was even a chance of success.

That chance was growing slimmer and slimmer, though.

By the time the low chittering laughter of the fox began to echo from what felt like every direction, Roman’s hope had grown thin, worn away by the cold and the pain and the futility of it all. He botched the latest glide, missing the landing and just barely avoiding toppling over by letting his knees hit the dirt hard.

His wings slumped, the edges of them gone completely numb alongside his hands and ears. The effort it would take to get to his feet just didn’t seem worth it. Not when he could hear the fox’s amusement fade into something like an agitated yowl.

The sound made the hairs on the back of Roman’s neck stand up, and he pulled his limbs in tight, wondering if the shifter was irritated that he hadn’t put up a good chase. He’d tried, alright? If he’d been caught on anything other than what was shaping up to be the worst– and last– night of his life, he would have left this cursed valley in the dust.

The near-silent taps of fox paws circled around him for a long moment, the shifter shaking his head agitatedly before shifting smoothly to the big, bulky steps of his more humanoid form.

“Do you have a death wish or something?” he bit out, as though Roman wasn’t screwed either way. “If this is a trap, it’s failed miserably.”

Roman squinted up at him, turning the words around in his head and trying to fit them together in a way that made any sort of sense.

“I knew sprites were birdbrains, but I didn’t expect you would forget how to fly,” the shifter continued, his nose wrinkling in frustration as he leaned closer and then reached out with one big, claw-tipped hand.

Wings drawing up like some paltry shield, Roman curled over on himself, his breath hitching in fearful anticipation, but there was no crushing pain. Even as calloused fingers wrapped around him, those sharp nails didn’t graze him, not even when his wings automatically gave a few struggling flaps.

Being plucked off the ground and lifted unwillingly into the air like a songbird in the talons of a hawk should have made his body stiffen up with fear, but all he could focus on was the sudden warmth of the grip. Despite himself, the tension began to seep from him, his limbs going heavy and lax.

The shifter sucked a breath in through his teeth, his brow furrowing as he lifted Roman closer to his face with ease. “You’re freezing,” he grumbled, as though he didn’t know, as though that wasn’t the whole reason Roman had ended up in this situation in the first place. “Aren’t you a fire sprite? What…?”

A fingertip carded through his feathers with surprising gentleness before moving to tuck his drooping wings against his back, making it easier to shift his grip up slightly. His hand opened up slightly to form more of a loose cradle than a fist, and Roman felt his head start to loll back.

He was exhausted in every sense of the word, his mind too fogged-up with encroaching sleep to dwell on the fact that he hadn’t been viciously murdered yet. Really, if he couldn’t stop it from happening, he at least didn’t want to be awake for it.

“Woah, hey,” the shifter said, and now that his voice wasn’t seething, he sounded shockingly normal. Most of the tales he’d heard about shifters painted them with a more feral brush, Roman mused as his eyelids began to droop. “Hey, don’t fall asleep. Are you listening? Don’t– hey, come on–,”

The grip around him tensed slightly in a delicate warning squeeze, one that was completely harmless to every part of his body except the dislocated shoulder that had, at some point, settled back against the giant’s hand. Even the slightest pressure sent spikes of agony through the injury.

He tried to twist forward, jerk away from the pain before the hold could grow any harsher, but the shifter’s thumb drew in closer as though to bar him from falling, and his shoulder smacked into it with enough force to make a sickening popping sound.

Roman let out a short, strangled scream, his vision whiting out with pain as he grabbed at the other arm as though to hold it still or claw away the stabbing pain in his flesh.

The shifter was swearing above him, voice low and panicked, and Roman was distantly aware of the palm under him flattening out and shallow breaths growing louder. He caught glimpses of a huge face far too close, wide eyes flickering over him, but he couldn’t even balk away without risking sending more of that agony shooting through his nerves.

“Okay, okay,” the shifter tried, voice too unsteady to be soothing, “I’m gonna fix this, alright? Just hold on.”

A familiar purple flame sprang to life around him, the magic open and unbound, and some insistent part of Roman shied away, trying to remind him of something important about the last foxfire he’d encountered.

“It’s okay, just take it. You definitely need it, it feels like I’m holding a feathery icicle. You can’t fall asleep until you’re warm, got it?”

The magic was staticky against his skin, a cure for the cold dangled in front of him like a will’o’wisp ahead of a lost traveler, and there was still a part of him that was shrieking about accepting, but there didn’t seem to be another option.

Every time he tried to let his eyes fall closed and succumb to sleep, he was jostled just slightly, enough to add a new twinge of pain to the aching waves radiating from his shoulder. The voice kept coaxing him, sounding all concerned but refusing to let him rest, and eventually Roman gave in and reached out for the magic.

It chased away the lingering chill like the sun’s rays banishing shadows, the strength of the heat borderline painful for a moment, before easing into a steady comfort. He turned his head against the warm surface beneath him, and this time, there was no objection as he sank into unconsciousness.