Willow crawls into this latest den on her belly, nose low to the ground. Lets her tail drag in the dirt a bit to blur her tracks. Down under the rocks, where it smells like spruce and wet earth. Warm fur.

There's no way to build a fire, but there's still light. One of those little glow-lights you can tap to turn on and off. She makes her own light, but when she's not there, or when she's in wolf form, the lights go out. She doesn't need them in the dark.

Oz is curled up on his side, head on his arm, writing. Light shining on his belly.

"Hey."

She whines. Rolls herself up beside him and rests her chin on his hip. There's still blood in her mouth from hunting, an edge of it she brought back to share with him. But he's curled so tightly now. Stops in mid-sentence and reaches out with his fingertips to comb through her fur.

It's still something she's getting used to. This taste for blood that has nothing to do with vampires. Rabbit, tonight. Little brown spirit that ran ahead of her for miles, twisting through the trees. Bitter-sharp taste of animal-fear even when it was out of her line of sight. Rolling, finally, in the loose needles and the first snow-layer, breaking the rabbit's neck while they bowled through the half-dark, blood on her tongue too sweet for her heart to ever slow down.

He puts the pen down, finally, and rolls her head in both his hands. Growls to her softly in his human-boy voice.

Fingers under her chin. Stroking her teeth. Dirt and human-smell, cold water in the air. He feels so cold, buried in her fur, even with the skins she's brought in here, even with the closed space slowly warming to the heat of their bodies.

She changes.

Mud on her hip in the faint light, this smear on the whiteness that Oz's hand slides to instantly. Rubbing his fingertips in it. In the blood smeared over her lips.

Uses them both to make designs on her breasts. Knotwork over the tops, looping around her nipples where they're pulled into tight points. Spit and more dirt to mark her face.

Pulls her down beside him and rolls her onto the skins, onto her back. His thigh between hers, kissing her like water.

One palm on her heart while he rides her. Fiercer than he ever was with her, before. He bites, now. Growls and whines when she bites him back. Arches when she flicks surges of power down his spine. Just holding him, finally. His mouth down beside her ear, whispering witch ... witch ... witch...

All the designs smeared by the time they finish. Almost fully dawn.

She's nearly asleep, warm and wrapped in him. Waiting for him to change so she can, too. Ginger wolf and strawberry wolf, far down underground. The last pack that came seeking them said they could feel them miles off, a crackle in the air that made them wonder what, exactly, they were. Witch-wolf, bare-breasted in her human form, marked by her own hand and by Oz's, collecting small bones for jewellery, forest growth for spells.

Her books, Oz's notebook are all that have made it this far. The light'll die, sometime between now and the next moon, when the pack comes down from the higher mountains, looking for them again.

And she thinks eventually they'll be ready. When she's got everything she can out of the books, when she doesn't need them anymore. Knife, then, a few of the crystals she brought, the skins she sleeps in, and they can go up. Not yet, but soon. Maybe by the time it's fully winter. She wants to hear Oz sing where the air's thin enough that only she can hear him.
 
 
 

jane
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