#qo writes

It lives in the woods, they say. 

With a razor mouth and writhing limbs, all ashen fur and ruby gem eyes. He hadn't seen it, and that wasn’t for lack of trying. So many nights he’d spent staring into the dark trees that stretched for him, branch fingers tangling in his hair as he walked. 

So many nights with nothing but the giant star cat’s one eye keeping him company, the fireflies lighting his way. He knew the trail by heart by now. One step left, one right, one down and a fall up until he was finally standing where he was supposed to be. 

Where those glinting eyes would greet him, rending claws spreading dirt through his hair. Where fire from torches did not burn and they cupped the fire between them.

It lived in the woods, they say. 

His chest burned whenever he came here. He told himself that he’s getting out of shape and that the sharp sting that formed beneath his eyes is from the heels of his hands digging into them.

His cheeks get wet, anyway. 

The carcass was more macabre now that it was when it happened, and he looked away from it. He couldn’t quite figure out whether his inability to bury it was a curse or a blessing, whether the rings of colorful flowers were nourished by the blood that ran rivers through the clearing or whether they would have grown despite it. 

He forced himself to go closer, hands clenching and unclenching, feeling somehow incomplete without their clawed, furred counterparts enveloping them. He settled for hugging himself, brushing away the ice that he swore was there, the one that no one from the town could ever see.

There had been something so thoroughly maddening about that - something that tore away at the cracks and made him want to scream until his voice gave out, until he splintered apart, until he coated the whole world in the ice that grasped his heart. 

You must be mad, they said. 

He should have known when they couldn’t see the ice that coated him from head to toe, the flames that pixies use to spell their poems, and feathers that always seemed to drop from a raven as it passed you by. 

He should have known what they’d see.

It’s a monster, they’d said. 

Was, he corrected in his own mind, hands running over ashen fur, the stench of rot cloying his nose. He wondered whether he could stomach taking a bone, something to bind into the ice that seems to never let go once he lost those warm nights of grasping at the fire. 

But he couldn’t bring himself to light one now, let alone stand near it. He traced the charred fur, sulfur and smoke and burned flesh writhing within his mind, a play of shadows where the town becomes a living mass of undulating pain, razor sharp and burning up from within. 

And those fangs had glinted, the claws unsheathing before those gemstone eyes found him in the dark, coiled in rope and caked in blood and mud from having been strung from the nearest horse until the creatures refused to run further. He’d been no more than a struggling sack of potatoes to them as they closed in on the clearing.

You or him, they’d sneered. 

That was the moment he’d attempted to carve open his own throat upon the blade pressed into his neck. If he was gone, there would be nothing stopping fangs from tearing the rest apart. 

He’d failed, of course. 

And here he was, sitting next to the remains with tears trailing down his face. It had taken him too long to convince the town that he had let go of his previous notions - that he had made a mistake and stepped sideways into madness instead of forwards into the family business. 

He leaned forwards, pressing a kiss above the one eye that was not a bloody crater, the eyelid closed as if merely in slumber.

Above, the star cat blinked.

A single drop of silver stardust slithered from the eye, sliding down the outer parts of the cosmos before finding its way to him. Softly illuminated, he traces the parts that lit up, the carcass glowing as if buried under layers upon layers of moondust. 

The gemstone red cracked open, covering a wince with a fanged smile as sickening squelches of bone and sinew and muscle knitted itself together. 

There’s no such thing as love for monsters, they’d growled. Besides, it is already dead. 

He cupped the chin, kissing along those glinting, deadly fangs as the tears continued to stream. 

A true love's kiss, huh? They said, rubies glinting in the moonlight. I wouldn’t have bet on it.