Caerus (almost)

[Tristan]

Thorn Paw’s urgency yipped warning to drop the would-be toy, but fires spread through dead brushes uncontrolled. Predictably, the girl wriggled and wormed, slithering from his arms like captured fish. Her insistence won her freedom with full compliance on Tristan’s part. He dropped the twig of a girl at her request. Splashes abounded.

Almost immediately she plopped forth, darting through water as though she was made of it herself. Tristan’s legs heaved heavy as tree-trunks but followed shortly after. Icy waters clung to his beard as he emerged upon rocky shores, water licking his heels as he stared, fixated as the Trollstone beyond. Already, the shards of crystalline specks formed within the curls of his beard, but the cold was familiar. He did not wish to ignore her frigid fingers, and so he wrapped himself in their embrace like a blanket. But he was not immune. The body prickled with the chill, translucent hairs stood sentry along his chest, but they served only to darken the war-paint decorating his physique.

The scents of anger and disappointment rolled from Thorn Paw, and he glanced dismissively at the old wolf. Curiosity over-powered; he’d never seen another person in the Otherworld: trolls, wolves, and fairies flourished, but pretty girls did not. Her whimsy danced the plinky-plonky paths of water bubbling tiny waterfalls in the creekbed, and Tristan was utterly bewitched speechless by her peculiarity.