She prowled silently across the camp, her ears picking up on the faint foot falls of a small rabbit. Her talons flashed out and ended it's life without it probably even knowing.

“Meliel! Please! Stop doing that! Please!” A voice that she held a special kind of hate for cried out. The tone in it brought about a stab of fear and anger. “Meliel, it’s not right!”

Cata licked the most of the blood clear from her beak nervously, looking towards the tent. “What...?” She muttered. In a way, it seemed to be the most foreboding thing in the entire prairie. “Snaky?” She asked.

No response, though she could just barely hear him stir.

She carefully approached the tent, forgetting about her current state of bloodiness. “I swea-” The statement died on her tongue as she parted the tent flaps and saw the tears on his face.

“Who?! What?! Where?!” He yelled as he shot back to wakefulness. In a sick way she enjoyed seeing him shaken up.

She threw the rabbit at him. “Why the fuck are you crying?” She also threw on a little false bravado.

She watched him try to calm himself, almost wanting to laugh. “Onions. I was cutting onions.” He lied, clearly.

She let out a huff and leveled yet another death glare, though she was sure her smirk permeated it. “Tell me, you idiot. If there is something around that can make you cry, I think I should know before it EATS me.” She yawned.

He sighed. “A horrible dream, and a horrible memory. That’s why I was crying.” He then yawned back at her.

She looked over to the rabbit she had thrown. “So... are you going to eat that rabbit? I’m still hungry and I was hoping that it would wake you up.”

The snake looked down at the rabbit for a long moment before smiling. He looked back at her, then the rabbit, then repeated the process, an unnatural glee dawning on his face. He burst into laughter. He picked up the rabbit, and tossed it back to her, the laughter continuing all the while.

“Don’t you dare get hysterical or I will see how well you can laugh with a few holes in your throat.” She gently caught the rabbit.

The laughter slowly died down, but a few tears fell off with the laughter. “I can breathe just fine, I’d rather you not give me a tracheotomy.” He replied, somewhat over his trauma she supposed.

“To be honest, I’d rather stick my talons in a fire and get another replacement then help you, you weird ass snake.” She turned away to hide her glee at his misery. “Try not to wet yourself.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem.”

She looked down at the rabbit and sneers, her disgust turning the taste in her mouth sour. She tossed it onto the embers of the fire and watched a cloud of half dead embers fly into the air, smoke turning into an unseeable black smog in the night air. “I hate you.”

Just faintly, as if the wind wanted her to hear him, she caught a few passing words from him. “I do not hate you, my friend.”

“Fuck you. And not literally, before you crack anything else.”

Slightly amused that she still heard him, Marty replies. “Sleep well, and I hope your dreams are better than mine.”

With that, she threw her wings over her head to blot out his voice, amusing herself with imagining the several ways he could die the next day.

The rest of the night passed quietly, with no more confrontations.

-----

She had a really good dream that night.

REALLY good.

She knew that because her wings felt a little stiff and she knew her face was blushing from the heat she felt. She bathed in the imagined afterglow and felt the specifics slowly fade from her mind.

She stirred slowly awake and looked around, knowing her blush still persisted. She cracked open her eyes and blinked them for a few seconds before taking in the fact that Marty had somehow conjured up a tea pot. “Oh great. You somehow fit a kettle in your pack.” She mumbled, sarcasm at her disposal even when not completely awake.

“Why not? It’s not like I need to carry that much in there. Anyways, do you like tea? If so, how do you like it?”

“Bloody.” She mumbled, then shakes herself awake. Why does the snake carry around a tea kettle? “Why th- Not going to ask. Just. I. Er.” She groaned. “I hate you.”

“So you’ve said. So you want me to steep blood in boiling water. That’s going to smell awkward.” He looked around while she stared at him blankly.

“It’s pomegranates. Bloody tea. Pomegr- You actually thought I liked blood in my tea? What is wrong with you? Do you think I’m some kinda sadist who gets her fucking kicks off of draining blood from small animals and listening to their screams?” She felt offended in a deeper way.

“I’ve met worse. And I’ve never heard it called that before. Let me look in my tea things for some dried pomegranate seeds.” He poured his cup of chai, rummaging through the pack to pull out a few familiar seeds. He set her half aside to steep. A delicious fruit smell emanated over the campsite and she sighed a bit in memory.

She looked off into the distance and pulled out single seed to numb her growing desire. Withdrawal did weird things to her.

“So. Any idea where the hell Ivan is, why the fuck he thinks that getting away from me-” She blinked. “And the group is a good idea, why he seems suicidal, or anything like that?” She asked, turning her mind away from her plots to kill the snake. Honestly, just hitting him with some sort of poison that would knock him out would be her best bet. Not that she actually planned to off him, that was just in case he did turn out to be the bad guy. Always paid to be prepared. ALWAYS.

She felt tense.

“Could be any number of things, and psychology was never a specialty of mine, but I do have a few guesses.” He lifted up his hand and began counting them off. “One, he is afraid he’ll get you hurt. Two, he might be afraid one of you will hurt him. Three, the spider god whatever thing decided to possess him. Four, he’s trying to misdirect some hunter only he knows about. Or five, he’s playing hide and seek and forgot to tell everyone.” Marty shook his head. “Five is pretty unlikely, knowing him.”

She bit back her response, something that was becoming all too familiar to deal with while talking to the snake. “Fuck you-" She said for good measure "-and is there any chance he will attack us?” She looked to the distance and thought about what she had in her pouch. Her head was lightly pounding.

“If options two or three are to blame, then that is quite possible. One or four he might also attack to get us to leave him alone so you don’t get hurt.” Marty looked acrossed his cup at her, waiting for her reply.

She sipped her tea, shutting her eyes as she carefully school her features to avoid showing just how tempted she was to take off after Ivan on her own. "In case he tries to fight, or we end up in a hostage situation, or what have you, what is your plan of action?”

“If he tries to fight us, I plan to use compulsion to make him go to sleep. It should do minimal to no harm to him. If we have to fight others, I’ll draw their attention while you catch them from behind. And before you take offense at me saying that you’re some sort of backstabber, you happen to be a decent amount faster than I am.”

She blinked and sips the rest of the tea. “Nope. That is a horrible fucking plan.” She nodded, making shit up off of the top of her head just to be contrary. He deserved it.

‘Alright, I’m up for suggestions.” Marty gestured for her to speak.

“I’m willing to bet that he will try ANYTHING to get us to leave him. You know, stab little children, stab himself, give up parts of his soul, whatever the fuck goes on in his little head. Or, maybe we’ve been going the wrong way this entire time.” She smiled and carefully gives him back the tea cup. “Or maybe this is still a trap and you are still waiting for me to let down my guard. Or maybe you spiked my tea like I planned on spiking yours.”

“Only thing I spike drinks with is alcohol. And like I said before, I wouldn’t have bothered setting a trap for you. If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve done it from the get go.” Marty sipped a little more at his sissy Chai brew and then continued. “As for us going the wrong way, it’s entirely possible, but I have my doubts that we’re on the wrong path.”

She groaned. “You are missing the point. We are chasing after a guy who thinks like that, so we should think like he thinks for a second and try to figure out exactly what he is willing t-” She blinked. “I think I’m going to need a vacation after this.” She clutched her head. “Damn it all. Fuck.” Her head pounded harder. She considered that she might indeed have been poisoned, just to piss her off a little more and threw it to the side as it sounded like a stupid plot device.

Plot device. Ok, maybe she did need help.

“I’m going to go fill the canteens while you try and get inside his head. You know him a lot better than I do.”

“I’ve already been in his head. It’s not easy to explain and I don’t want back in there for a long time. Go stay on the mainland, he said. You’ll be safe there. Go live your life while your brother decides to try and right the wrongs of the world.” She hissed, glaring up at the sun behind squinted eyes like it was personally responsible for everything that was bad. “Fuck everything.”

----

She remained in her sitting position, staring blankly at the sky while her head pounded. She tried to distract herself with thoughts of what could go wrong and found that that only made her head hurt worse. She shuffled her wings over her head to block out a little noise, her headache on the verge of a migraine. Her wings are around her head. “Damn.”

“No luck?” She felt like cursing but knew that would only make the pain worse. She held out on relinquishing her pride for a long moment.

“Headache. Poppy. Please.” She moaned, shuffling towards him. Her pride spiked up, and despite her stomach wanting to revolt and start a new country else where, she pulled her pouch off of her wings and threw it at him. The few feathers still attached to the clamps didn't hurt quite as much as her head. Or her pride. “Give me a few poppy seeds from here, will ya? I’m not going to trust myself to keep from fucking up the doses.”

“Withdrawal headache, huh? Those are no fun.” He pulled out five seeds, FAR more than she needed and she couldn't bring herself to tell him otherwise. “Here you go.” He handed her the seeds, then closes the pouch up tight.

She sighed. “Look, don’t you dare think less of me.” She tried to salvage the shreds of her pride. She looked around. “Just.” She closed her eyes and turned away. “Why do you have to be so nice? Why can’t you be easier to hate unconditionally?” She chewed through the seeds. “Damn it, I hate you and I feel bad because you haven’t done anything to really deserve it. Make a mistake or something.”

“I’ve been annoyingly chipper, that’s worth hating someone over. I’ve been known to do that myself. As for thinking down on you for a minor poppy habit? You haven’t spent years of your life doing nothing but drinking.” Marty flicked his hands randomly, almost as if he wanted to flick away his past mistakes. “I’ve made plenty of mistakes, I just have happened to have learned from a few of them.”

“Ok. Shut up. I now have reasons to hate you and killing you is starting to sound good again.” Her eyes remained closed. “Ever had multiple prosthetics interfere with one another?” That's what it was. The pain was clearly from her limbs, not from anything else.

“Can’t say that I have, considering I’ve built most of mine. Hard to have that be a problem.” She opened her eyes, a cooling relief rushing through her body as she felt her energy free up and surge out. Her head cleared up in a short while.

“Cool story. Mind shutting up? It doesn’t matter how godly you are, I can still kill you eventually, just like everything else in this fucking world.” She said, surprising herself with the note of desolation that hung in her voice like a fly trapped in a web.

“I’ll shut up. If you want me to, though, I can take a look at prosthetics that aren’t needed for flight. I might be able to help with the interference problem.” He said with an annoying tone of helpfulness.

“Remember? You touch me and you don’t get to have little snake men with anything.” She snarled, looking at him. “Can we find him before you drive me nuts?” Now that was an honest question.

His face went into an odd half smile “Sure, just let me clean up camp real fast.”

She walked away, feeling unsteady and knowing her body was betraying the feeling. She forced herself to straighten her gait. “Right. Just. I.” Words are literally failing her. “I hope I never see you again.”

Marty looked back at her. “If it happens, it happens. Whichever way it does, I hope you are happier.”

“Stop being a nice guy. Start being a helpful guy.”

Marty shot her a look of annoyance and she almost smirked back.“That’s it! I’m dunking you in the stream!” Marty gestured at her and she found herself in the air, floating over to the stream. In almost a mockery of comedy, he sets her gently down in it.

“If you make a single wet feathers joke I will come after you.” She said, but lightly chuckled, finding the tension broken. “When I find Ivan I want to lock both of you in a room together until either your drive him sane or he drives you crazy.”

“I don’t know about the former, but the latter happened long ago.”

“So how many times has the female companion crept into your bed late at night and slit your throat?” She wondered aloud. “Oh wait, you only live once, right?”

In a small voice, he replied. “Five times.”

“Whatever.” She stalked out of the stream, water streaming off of her body. “No comment.”

The camp was soon cleared by the surprisingly swift snake. “Shall we head out?”

“Sooner we find him, the sooner I can forget about you, snake boy.” She made it a point to not look at him.

“Right.” He spun around, ending while pointing to the east. He then created a gateway, and to her non shock reformed his wings and prepared to take to the sky. “Ladies first.”

She flew through without comment, her face blank.

Marty ran through, once more forming and reforming his wings as they pass the threshold. Closing it behind him, they soared into the east.

She continued to not talk, glad that he wasn’t violating her ears with his voice for a change. It felt good to not listen to him.

Almost as if he could tell that she was ready to kill him, he wisely didn't talk.

----

He looked to the skies, his eyes slightly watering. He hadn’t brought water. No water. His throat was parched and he regretted his decision but he had to get away. There was no point unless he got away.

He took a deep breath and shut out the screaming noises that all the things were making around him. They were singing, not screaming, what was he thinking?! They were heralding his demise. Such sweet song. The song of the world.

“Heh...” He laughs, opening his eyes and looking around. “Heh...hehehhe....” He laughed deeper before going into sobs, but still he pushed on, one leg after another, pushing towards a destination that he couldn’t pretend to know.

And you know, he didn’t even care.

"Free-e-e-eeeeee..." He hissed, looking around suspiciously. "I'm free as a biiiiiiird..."