some of us fight wars you will never see

it is the cold, nipping drizzle pelting against his muzzle and saturating his fur until he is damp that wakes romulus up. it is not a soft lull to consciousness but a rude awakening. he starts with bristling fur at his nape and along his spine, teeth bearing and low warning growls emitting from deep in the strong column of his throat. heart thuds rapidly in his chest, too loud in his ears as he wrenches himself from the cold stone where he's ...collapsed? curled up?

ears slick back to his skull as he takes rapid stock of his surroundings; not making sense of the strange things that he can think of only as caves; though the foreign architecture does not strike him as nature made. the desolate stone buildings sing a lonesome song, beckoning him into the shelter they offer all the same.

it is only after romulus ascertains he is in no ( immediate ) danger that he cautiously draws near the nearest one, shrugging inside the rotting doorframe; dispelling naked wood stripped of it's bark and shaped to fit the archway. a steady 'drip, drip' comes from a small hole above, in which dismal grey light of the dawning morning peeks through.

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whisper-thin and dazed; aimless, crept and crawling through the raingather. lost, and not  –  for the prince of spurned things and all undesirables ever murmurs lowly, luringly into his ear. it was in this alcove, where measly mornlight cuts a weak and watery way through all that dreary gray, that the boy had sought shelter and  ( undeserving as he was )  the solace of his own equally dreary company. but then there is a great splintering, and the head full of mind-mud sloughs away and is replaced by the familiar, ever-known damp of fear; and he uncoils himself over, whirling about from stonebed only to jerk away with a wild wail at this great thing that stood at the mouth of his thundery cavern on this mountain of where he's sure gods rest.

the spiderling scuttles away, thin breast heaving with a prolonged, too long breathless wheeze; back and back and back until the sharp ridge of his spine met the cold wet, pitching corner; the farthest he'd be able to get.

had he dishonored malacanth somehow? had he brought  —  whatever this great and terrible thing, come to rent him to ribbons, and supply him as offering?

shivering, splintering, too;
he's never been more cold.

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