broodmother:

kyluxcantina:

“If travel is searching
And home has been found

I’m not stopping
I’m going hunting”

–

Please reblog with your response to the above prompt, or submit your response to the kylux cantina!

Hux had spent enough time on the mountain to know what it felt like to be watched. Stalked. Hunted. He was familiar with eyes on his back, the ghost of teeth on his neck; a phantom kill. He shared his territory with wolves and bears, even the occasional foolhardy cougar who came too far north following the deer, so he knew the only thing that stood between him and a death of teeth and claws was his hunting rifle and a slick of commons sense.

But this wasn’t a wolf. It wasn’t a bear, or a cougar.

It had came down the mountain with the spring melt, and whatever it was, it was smart. He had found no fur, no scat. No fresh kills, no dens or nests. When it followed, it walked in own tracks; he’d only discovered that when he doubled back after a nearly getting caught in a squall and found his footsteps still picked out in the snow nearly as fresh as when he’d left them, if a little deeper.

Like so many predators, the nights were when it was at its boldest. It never came too close while he worked around the cabin during the day, whether he was replenishing his stores of fire-wood or starting the post-winter repairs. Hux never saw it then, never so much as heard it, but he could feel the weight of a watchful gaze on all the softest parts of him. He kept his rifle beside the axe and the woodpile; somehow, it did little to comfort him, but time to worry and fret and hide away was not something he couldn’t afford.

Darkness came creeping back over the trees; the days were quickly growing longer after months of night, but the hours of light were feeble and fleeting still. Once the sun went down, the cold at that time of year could still kill a man quicker than any beast, so it was time to retire inside, to bar the door and draw the heavy curtains, and set about his cooking pot on the fire. It was a lonely life and a hard one, especially having known the kiss of luxury and power in his relative youth, but a man could learn to love the simplicity of it. A man could learn to love the loneliness, out of necessity if nothing else.

Hux snuffed out the lanterns and let the fire die down before climbed into a bed built for two, piled with a punishingly poor selection of furs and quilts. The silence of night smothered like its own blanket, and what little sound there was would be damped by the snow – dampened, but not swallowed entirely.

He had became familiar with the sound of his hunter’s uneven gait; he assumed it was somehow injured from the off-beat, almost clumsy footfalls – animals that stalked humans usually were, and so he had also assumed at first that it would either die or attack within a day or two. That had been nearly two weeks ago, and it had circled his cabin every night since. On the third night, sick of his disturbed sleep, Hux had unbarred the door and knocked it wide, ready to confront the sickly beast; he stood on his porch with rifle in hand, and watched something dark slither into the gloom of the treeline. He’d fired a single shot after it, hitting one of the pines in a shower of bark splinters.

The warning shot didn’t work. It had came back the very next night, and every night since. Hux didn’t try to catch it again; he didn’t so much as twitch the curtains. He lay in bed and listened to it circle the cabin with a belly full of ice until the meek light of dawn began to scratch at his window, and he could pull together an hour or so of meagre rest. Something had to change – and it did. On that night, the door to cabin began to rattle.

It had started with scratching at first, so light he almost couldn’t make it out at first, then gradually louder until it forced Hux to sit up in bed, eyes fixed to the sliver of moonlight that oozed under his door. It flickered, interrupted; the handle shook again with a greater violence, twisting back and forth. Hux reached for his rifle left propped against the nightstand before he got up, heart in his mouth, the short hairs on the back of his neck on end. He crossed to the door, floorboards creaking beneath his uncertain feet. For a long moment, he simply stood and watched the door shake until finally – finally, it was too much. He struck the door with the butt of his rifle, as hard as he could manage, and the commotion outside stopped instantly.

A breath hung on the wind, a soft rasping gasp that was entirely human-inhuman.

“Hux?”

Weakness washed over him like a cold wave, robbing him of his own breath. God help him, he knew that voice in just one word, though it had never been so thin and reedy before.

“Hux, please,” the voice said, “Christ, it’s so cold. Please let me in.”

“I can’t do that,” Hux said, and he fought to keep his own voice from wavering. It hurt just to hear him again, so clearly in need, “You know I can’t.”

“I’m soaked to the bone, Hux. I haven’t eaten in days,” there was another rattle of the handle and Hux readjusted his grip on his rifle. He had to pull himself together. He had to knit anger out of his hurt, “If you don’t let me in, you’re going to find me frozen to your porch come morning.”

“You’re not getting in here, Ren,” Hux said, “You better be on your way.”

“Why?”

rattle rattle

A voice like dry leaves. Like brittle twigs that snapped when trod upon. A voice he’d heard every morning, every day, every night since they’d left the world behind together; a voice that had said I hate you as often as it had said I love you, and still left Hux aching for both.

“Hux, why?”

scratch scratch

“I thought you loved me Hux.”

“I did love you,” Hux blurted, teeth clenched. He’d meant to ignore it until dawn chased him away again and he could make a break for the nearest town. It was more than a day’s hike away but there would be no choice, but even that chance was looking slimmer by the second, “That’s why I put you in the ground myself, Ren, so the birds wouldn’t get you. The cold took you that winter and I dug your goddamn grave with my own two hands. So no, I won’t let you in.”

Hux pressed the barrel flush to the wood of the door. It shook and jumped beneath it.

rattle rattle

scratch scratch