Soteria

[Tristan]

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A yank dug claws into his soul and wrenched.

He tumbled, paws swiping at anything of purchase, finding his face dug into the grass. With no lack of embarrassment, he hopped to his haunches. His beard clung to grass clippings, and probably some sort of smudges across his face, distinctly less orderly than the war paint fastening his brow with purpose.

She spoke the name that summoned him, though he did not recognize it upon hearing it with human ears. “Nimeda, it is you,” he said. Her dress fluffed suddenly from sodden and sticky. The curves of her bare skin beneath caught his eye, likely emboldened by the heated flames of Long Eye’s passion when last they met an honorable man averted his gaze. Nimeda was modestly attired soon after, but Tristan remained shirtless, the hair on his chest thick and warm. The paints scrawled like hawk-feathers wrapping his shoulders. In this world he was muscled with the might that lived up to monstrous legend: a figure cut from the shards of myth everlasting.

“What is the need you have of me?” His question settled in his bones, certain to answer the call.