The Wildness Within

Sugar and Spice 1

AN: Time for Ash and Gwyn to spend some time together bonding :D

The first day that the cold one went off to hunt, Gwyn didn't know what to do. The warm one was there, but he gave Gwyn space, and he seemed happy playing with a plastic wallet thing that made tinny sounds and required the pressing of lots of buttons and yet never seemed to do anything except make more tinny sounds. It was the worst musical-instrument-game that Gwyn had ever seen, and it smelled bad.

The cold one – Augus – didn't wake him from his nightmares and was already dressed when Gwyn woke up tangled in blankets and screaming so loudly that Ash was there too.

It was strange that they didn't wake him from nightmares because most people did. But Gwyn knew that he could do terrible things in that wake-sleep space between dream and reality, where he didn't quite know where he was and could easily be in his cousin's clutches again.

After he'd settled and had breakfast, Augus had told him he needed to go hunting.

'There will be three days remaining to us when I return, before I have to deliver you to the Raven Prince for whatever your apprenticeship might entail. I'd rather not put off my need to feed any longer. Do you understand?'

Gwyn understood, and then Augus had gone, and Gwyn kept going back and standing in the doorway of Augus' bedroom wondering why it took a week to digest humans. It was just meat. Why did it take so long?

There was a sense of relief in not having to talk. He felt stranger and stranger in this place that wasn't his. The smells were becoming familiar, he knew the layout of the house, he even knew the best places to hide if he was in danger, but it didn't feel like his. There were paths in the forest that he knew almost as well and they, at least, felt something like home. But in Augus' home, he felt like a silent shadow. He was a temporary ghost.

His cousin was still out there.

His cousin had escaped the Bird King.

No one believed him when he said that his cousin always got what he wanted and that he would come back and destroy all of them. But the Bird King couldn't find him. Even Gwyn understood that the creature that stunk of bird musk was so powerful even he should be able to find Gwyn's cousin.

More and more he just thought that if he went back, he could somehow prevent something terrible from happening. Maybe he could save the brothers.

Augus asked him to wait. Gwyn would wait. But he didn't want to. The longer he waited, the worse the feeling got. He wasn't a prophet or clairvoyant by any means, but he couldn't help but wonder if some eldritch foreboding hung over him. A promise of revenge and punishment. The longer he waited, the more it would hurt.

On the first night Augus was gone, he slept on the foot of Ash's bed like a dog, and he didn't care that it was like a dog because sometimes he even pretended that he was a great staghound or wolfhound and that his clumsy hands were paws and that his lack of talking had nothing to do with his cousin and everything to do with being a dog. Ash understood it. Gwyn didn't know how, but he understood. He made room for Gwyn to do that, without actually treating him like he was lesser. Not the way his cousin would.

The next day that Augus was gone, Ash brought a whole box of food wrapped in plastic from the human world. There was even a bucket of chicken which tasted both delicious and disgusting at the same time.

'That's KFC for you,' Ash said, laughing at the expression that Gwyn made – a mix of uncertainty and happiness both. 'It's like...I dunno man, a lot of shit over there is processed. That's- We're more sensitive to that. But it also- they do this shit with flavours, man. Preservatives and glutamates and it's the fucking best. I'm not even really supposed to eat meat outside of like...my proper prey. But I'll make an exception, y'know?'