RP Where The Wild Things Are



He laughs! Aspen’s grin is wide, pleased with herself for being the cause of his joy. There’s a brief moment of confusion when he stops, and she tilts her head to the side and opens her mouth to ask, but he is already turning back to the deer and away from the Aspen.

She doesn’t linger on the oddness, because there is snow to be rolled in! She finds a fresh patch that doesn’t have too much mud or dirt and flops down, scrunching up her nose and rubbing her face in the snow to clear off the blood. Her clothes are never very clean, but she rolls around a little so that they’re less dirty.

Lyle finishes up with the deer around the time she finishes her tidying. She lifts herself from the snow, feeling the cold on all of her skin and fur now. It’s not just that she was rolling in the snow - the sun is behind the trees, which is usually a sign to head back to her den. Nights are cold, in the forest. So, as much as she’s enjoying the unexpected company, she will have to go inside and hope to see him again come morning.

“No,” she answers, with a hint of petulance. Still…

A sigh escapes her as a warm cloud of steam. She lowers her head slightly, looking for the sun again and finding only long shadows. When the sun goes to bed, so should you. “Will go in den for nighttime,” she relents.

Her tail hangs low, her ears drooping slightly into her tangled hair. She doesn’t want to say goodbye.

 
Lyle’s face melts into a smile at the childish petulance, the gentle refusal to go to sleep. Without thinking, he reaches out and rubs her wet hair, almost like one would a dog or a particularly affectionate cat. Halfway through the motion, he almost hesitates – but follows through. “I’ll finish up here, and I’ll see you in the morning, kiddo. Sleep tight.”

The hesitation is a sign that he might need to rethink his plan here. The sooner she goes to bed, the sooner he has the space to do just that. That, and start setting traps. If he’s really lucky he’ll catch something by morning, but he doubts that. It takes time and patience to wait for people to fall for something like a pit trap, and it’s pretty clear that Aspen hasn’t seen many people around here lately at all.

No, the traps are probably going to take a few days. He’ll take that time to at least settle around here, see if he can’t find an empty cabin. It’s going to be important to stay close to Aspen if he really wants to go through with his plan – he’s a much better hunter than she is. Bigger, stronger, more efficient. More experienced. She’ll need him around to gain any weight. And besides, he can keep anything more dangerous than himself away, too. It’ll work out in the end, he’s sure. It always does.
 


It has been a very long time since Aspen has been touched by another human. She doesn’t know what to do with it; something in her delights at the brush of fingers against her hair, and something else snarls and aches, fierce and so sharp that she nearly gasps.

She’s sure her face must look very peculiar, as confused as she feels, and she feels both relieved and terribly sad when Lyle lifts his hand away. Shaking herself, she bounces between her paws to get some of her momentum back and then scurries over to the entrance to her den.

“Night!” she squeaks, squeezing through the crack in the rock very ungracefully in her current form. Midway through, her fur shifts to something equally short-haired but gray, her tail shedding in reverse and becoming hairless, and then she’s through and into her sanctuary.

Rather than evaluate her feelings, Aspen opts to collapse into her nest. As usual, it seems, the day has left her exhausted, and she burrows into the furs and fabrics with a great big sigh.

But most unusually, she has something to look forward to come morning. Someone to talk to! Meat she doesn’t have to hunt for! How exciting.

As her eyelids droop ever closer to closing for the night, Aspen digs two carefully preserved scraps of fabric from her pile and presses them to her face in turn, breathing in the faint not-her-scents that cling to them.

She wonders what her momma and poppa would think of Lyle. She isn’t sure what she thinks of him quite yet, but she wonders. If things were different, maybe they could have met him, and he could’ve sat with them for dinner. They would eat something warm, she decides, something like warmed deer meat. And they would talk, with words and sentences that line up the right way the first time.

Her chest aches, that same fierce hurt that overtook her earlier, and she curls around herself, pressing the fabric scraps to her chest as though, this time, she can protect them. She doesn’t know when she falls asleep, only that the warmth of a full stomach is a sweeter lullaby than any she’s sung to herself.

 
LJ watches her slip into her little hole, barely containing a wistful sigh. It’s pretty clear she’s not scared of him at all anymore, which is what he wanted. But she’s also out of reach again, through a space he can’t even dig into. If, in the morning, she realizes what’s happening –

No, no. He can’t think about that right now. The night sky is clear, the air is heavy with animal blood, and LJ can still feel the slight burn of hunger under his skin. He glances up at the stars, and lets the sigh out in a small curl of warm breath, still warmer than the air around him, somehow. He knows that he shouldn’t waste any time, in case that’s an issue, but he starts by jogging off into the forest to collect some things.

In an hour, he has a loose lean-to structure set up between her entrance and the treeline. There’s still no sign of people, and the nearest trail, he knows, is still a mile or two away. That’ll be the best place to put his traps, if the earth is warm enough and he can find a shovel or some ropes and a sturdy tree. The nearest town is even farther out, and his antlers will make him stick out like a sore thumb if he doesn’t change shape. Which would burn up energy that he needs to hunt, both for himself and the little furball.

He decides for sure he wouldn’t feed her his food. He has no idea how that might even work, but he needs every scrap he can get his teeth around. Besides, feeding people to somebody without them knowing is crossing a line.

He catches himself in that train of thought. Humans, not people. He has to keep drawing that line, or else some bad feelings will come back. He’s not human. He doesn’t even know if Aspen is human, but she is registering as edible, at least. He just needs to put some more meat on her. A few weeks, maybe the last month or two before winter ends – heck, if he really wants, he can probably keep up the ruse through the summer so he has something ready if next winter finds him as unprepared as he is now. Not thinking ahead is how he ended up in this situation in the first place, with no tools and no extra food, picking on – not a kid, he can’t think about her as a kid, because she’s just gonna be food, eventually, and he can’t feel bad for eating when he needs to eat. Picking on something as small as Aspen, he decides, is still a sign of how rough the winter has been on him. But now he’s thinking ahead.

Next winter will be better. He settles in to the lean-to that barely keeps out the wind, eyes heavy and bones aching. He just has to make it through this winter, and work on Aspen. He’ll make it to next year, and he’ll be prepared.

He drifts off into a deep, dreamless sleep, lulled by the soft sounds of the woods and the warmth of his hopes.
 


Aspen wakes with a start, her heart slamming itself against her ribcage. She scrambles out of her pile of pelts and fabrics, throwing them off of her and skittering away until her back hits the wall. Still shaky from the wave of panic brought by the too-familiar dream, she stares wide-eyed at the cave wall opposite, then turns whip-fast to check the entrance to her den. Just barely enough light filters through the crack to see by, and she can sense no danger on the other side.

Her breath is ragged in her ears, burning in her lungs, and she huddles in on herself with one eye to the world outside and both hands clutched tightly to her chest until she feels less breathless. The Shift is waiting for her as patiently as the sunrise, itching under her skin, and she lets it flow through her as soon as she has the presence of mind to accept its offering.

Something with claws, Aspen thinks, curling her fingers and silently berating herself for sleeping in a form as defenseless as a rat. Claws to hook and cut. Sharp teeth to bite and tear. Never anything less, before going outside.

Fur sprouts over her hands and down her tail, white and gray speckled with black, bringing with it a wave of warmth that relaxes her almost as much as the sight of sharp, deadly claws at the tips of her paws. She runs her tongue over her teeth, feeling for the points, and only once her power has settled back into her bones does she feel steady enough to move her mind from the present.

It drifts to the past, hastily skimming past the fading dregs of her nightmare, and she perks up with new excitement when she remembers the man she met. A person like her, in her forest! Her luck must be turning around. And he said her name was familiar, so maybe he can help her find her family!

She’s sure her momma and poppa would agree that expanding her search is smarter than staying put and hoping someone finds her, by this point. It’s been years, and there hasn’t been any sign of her uncle or grandma or grandpa. They must not be able to find her, so she’ll just have to find them. Won’t they be surprised at how clever she’s become, when she gets un-lost all on her own?

Buoyed by her thoughts, she climbs out of her den as quickly as she can. Lyle is sure to be around here somewhere, and the sooner she finds him the sooner they can start looking for her family!

 
Lyle’s mind stirs from the darkness as a sweet aroma fills the space behind his eyes. Something warm, he thinks. Maple sausage? No, there isn’t any of the spice. Dad likes experimenting, though. It could even be some kind of roast, the start of dinner. It’s enough to have him drooling in his sleep. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand as he rolls over, reaching for his blankets –

Cold sparks shoot up his fingers as he grabs a handful of snow. His eyes open, and he sits halfway up with a start, swallowing hard. He flinches a bit as his antlers knock against the roof of his shelter. The sun is high enough that it’s reflecting off the snow, flooding his vision with white. He grimaces a little and rubs his forehead with his other palm, swallowing hard as he orients himself. The smell is still there, something warm and sweet, a little earthy. He glances out at the clearing, and pauses when he sees movement.

It almost looks like a lynx. A really big lynx, gray and speckled with black in the blur. As his vision clears, though, he sees the way the limbs are arranged. The events of last night slowly bleed back in, the girl and the deer. The lingering hunger, the cold that hasn’t stopped chewing on his bones. Dad hasn’t made him breakfast in years.

It’s better that way.

But without him, Lyle needs to find something bigger to eat soon. Bigger than the girl – Aspen – to make her better to eat later. For right now, he has to keep up appearances. The girl doesn’t seem like she’s realized she’s in danger. He just has to keep it that way until he’s actually eaten and it gets easier. So he rubs his eyes, yawns, and sits the rest of the way up more carefully, crossing his legs in front of himself.

“Good morning, Aspen!” He adds a chipper note to the greeting, and relaxes a little. His smile shows no teeth. “Did you sleep well?”
 


There’s a new structure set against the trees near her den. Aspen can see feet poking out from it as she creeps closer, and a newly familiar scent catches her nose when the wind shifts. She grins, keeping her paws quiet against the snow. It seems like Lyle is still asleep. That just won’t do; she’ll have to wake him up so they can start the search!

She’s only a few paces away, preparing to pounce, when he suddenly moves, startling her. She hastily jumps away, shoulders shooting up around her ears and ears swiveling back. They stare at each other for a long moment, Aspen’s heart beating in her throat. Danger? something in her whispers, cautious and uncertain, too small to act on, and so she stays frozen.

Then it… fades. She has no other word for it, and no explanation for how the warning fire is doused so quickly. She shakes her head, hair whipping around her face, and blinks away the dregs of whatever had seized her. Her smile, when summoned, is almost a match to his, small and still faintly confused. “Yes, morning.”

She hasn’t decided if it’s good or not yet, but she won’t forget her plan. Ignoring the question, she strides closer to Lyle’s temporary den, stopping just out of arm’s reach, and sits in the snow. “Search for family now. Today,” she insists, before she can be drawn off course. “You know momma Aspen?”

He said he did when they spoke yesterday, didn’t he? That was a good place to start. She waits expectantly for the explanation that will surely follow, patient but eager.

 
It takes LJ a moment to scan through his memories of last night. Had he said he knew her Mom? His eyes zone out as he tries to remember, going back over their short conversations. It helped that she didn’t say much. Most of it stuck, but most of all –

Dead many years.

The ache starts to come back, and he shakes it off by nodding his head to the question.

“A long time ago. When I was Aspen-sized.” He’s going to have to keep track of his lies, but he can’t really worry about that right now. “But they’ve been dead for a while now. Like my Mama and Papa. I didn’t know there were other Aspens.”

His voice tightens, for just a second. He doesn’t meet her eyes when he mentions his parents, as the cold gnaws on him the way it’s begging him to gnaw on her. He can’t get sympathetic now. He has to commit to this. To survive. She’s sad, sure, and very small. But he can’t let that change his mind, not with his plans. He has to survive. Otherwise – he doesn’t know what. But staying alive has been all he’s known for so long, it’s all he can bring himself to focus on.

The plan. He remembers the plan, and looks back at her with a smile that banishes all the bitterness.

“We’ll search today though. But not right now! You haven’t had breakfast yet.” He scoots out of the lean-to, careful of his antlers. “You go ahead and get what you want to eat out of the carcass we buried last night, yeah? And I’ll build us a fire to warm it up.”

With that he stands and stretches, aware of his tallness, but trying to keep his movements open and slow so she can’t take them as a threat. Of course she isn’t scared of him. He’s just a person, after all, no claws or fangs like hers. He should’ve collected wood last night, but honestly the excuse to step away and get it together is perfect. Assuming she lets him leave, he’ll have just enough time to get rid of the achy feeling and focus on what was important, what had always been important – food.
 


He sure thinks about her question for a long while. Aspen tries to contain her impatience, but she still finds her claws raking at the snow until she finds dirt to tear up, gaze darting into the trees and back again.

The answer, when it comes, isn’t what she wants to hear. Her ears droop into her tangled hair, nearly disappearing in the speckled gray locks. Oh. She hadn’t thought of that. It has been years since her parents died (since she failed to save them, she thinks, but she shoves the thought away), and they were never very social with anyone who wasn’t family.

“Oh,” she says, voice small. Her eyes stay glued to her paws, and the snow, and the torn up dirt. She doesn’t know what to do with any of the information she was so eager to find, or with the unexpected revelation that Lyle’s parents are also dead. She doesn’t know at all.

She nods at his suggestions, head still bent down, then gives herself a shake and dredges up another smile, forcing it not to turn into a wince as she looks up and remembers how tall Lyle is. He met her parents when he was her-sized? That must have been ages ago, for him to have grown so much.

She pushes that thought aside, too, trying to find a less thorny trail to follow. Alright, so maybe finding answers won’t be as easy as finding other people like her and asking them. But she’s still going to search! And she won’t have to do it entirely alone, which is a definite improvement on how things were even a few days ago. She nods again, more firmly, and gets to her paws again. “Yes. Breakfast. I get breakfast. You get fire.”

It’ll be nice to have a meal she hasn’t had to hunt fresh. Bless the snow, and the kindness of strange strangers.

For a moment she considers Lyle with her blank white eyes, then she circles into his range to nudge her head into his knee briefly in thanks. It’s more of a light tap than anything, and she bounds away just as quickly, slippery as an eel in the strengthening light. She has a deer to dig up!

 



Eric should’ve listened to the guys at the lodge.

It’s too cold to find anything tonight, Kasey said.

You’re gonna get lost in the fog, Jay added.

But Eric is almost certain he’s still close to the trail. He just saw the last blaze, and really, he just wanted to check his fox snares. He’s leaving the area tomorrow; waiting until morning might fuck up the fur. He knows exactly where it is, too, twelve paces from the trail, and it was safe to walk into the clearing by the exact same path just this morning.

But it can’t be the same path, because this path gave out under his feet. He hit the cold earth hard and spent a few minutes fully dazed, staring up at the bare treebranches and clouds, before he found himself cursing the fucking amateur who’d put a human-sized pitfall trap on the edge of the clearing. He actually cursed himself raw, screaming into the dark where nobody else could hear him – especially not whatever unpaid conservationist had put it here.

But, when he finally rests his voice and actually looks at the walls of his cold prison, he notices a few things. They’re sheer, for one. Rugged and clearly hand-dug, maybe by shovel, but too sheer for a human to climb back up. He’s at least eight feet down, for two. This hole feels… really deep, for an animal trap. There’s a feeling in the pit of his stomach, and it’s not just the ache of waiting until after dinner to check his traps.

He traps animals for a living, after all. And he can’t shake the suspicion that this trap is out here for him.

But he’s already wasted his voice, and while he’s out of the cutting wind, the cold is sinking to the lowest elevation – the bottom of his hole. His body is starting to ache despite his heavy coat. His eyes and neck hurt from looking up, and before long he’s curled at the bottom of the hole, trying to conserve whatever heat he can until morning.

Or– wait, what was that? His ears might be playing tricks on him, but that almost sounds like the crunch of snow underfoot. Is someone coming, or has it just been too quiet for too long?

He can’t risk losing the chance. He finds a little bit of his voice from behind chattering teeth, praying that whoever it is can hear him.

“H-h-he…hello? Is- is - is ssssomeone th-there? Help, p-pleasse… help…”
 


The trail Barclay was following was so cold it may well have turned to ice, but he was stubbornly set on following it anyway. He had to find his niece. He just had to.

He tried not to dwell on what he'd found, when he finally realized that his sister wasn’t picking up her phone - hadn’t been for months, why hadn’t he noticed? - and made his way back to her little cabin in Oregon. He tried not to blame himself, for being too wrapped up in his ‘journey of self discovery’ and too late to do anything except bury the bodies of his little sister and her stupid, brave, kind husband. He does anyway. He’s certainly not going to blame his niece, wherever she is - and she must be somewhere, she must be alive, because there were only two bodies, and neither of them were Adelyn.

But she wasn’t in the woods around their cabin, wasn’t in the town, wasn’t anywhere he could find her in two years of searching. Two years, and she was just a little girl, last he saw her. Could she even run this far? He wondered, day after day, stone after overturned stone, sacrificing more of himself to the Beast every week so that he might have sharper ears, a more sensitive nose, less time wasted on cooking his food.

There were so many cracks that one little girl could fall down and get lost in, in the unforgiving wilderness. Adelyn was so young… but she had her own Beast, he knew, that power that ran through the heart of their family tree, that kept them safe when the world turned against them. She was strong, even though she shouldn’t ever have been forced to be. She would survive, until he could find her. He just had to find her. He owed at least that much to his sister, though in truth he owed so much more than that, more than he could ever repay.

Those were the thoughts consuming his mind as Barclay roamed the woods, his nose turned to the air to scent for any sign of his wayward kin. His ears were pricked, now that he’d gotten far enough away from the lodge to stop picking up on the chatter from the residents there.

That was how a voice caught his attention, faint and raspy though it was. His heart didn’t have the chance to leap, his hopes staying right where they were; it wasn’t a girl’s voice, wasn’t the sweet patter that he remembered hearing in the background of so many phone calls, so long ago. He still moved towards the sound, wrapping his scarf around his face and pulling a hat from his pocket to shove down over his ears. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but hopefully it’d be enough to fool whatever lost hiker had gotten his foot stuck under a rock this time.

“Don’t worry, I hear ya,” he rumbled, voice low and a little hoarse but as kind as he could make it as he looked around for the man. He didn’t see him right away, looking at his eye level, but his eye caught the yawning hole off the side of the path and he made his way over. “Ah, how’d you wind up down there?”

He knelt, and extended his hand. His arms were long. He should be able to reach the man, if he stood up and put his arms above his head. Then he could haul him up, and get him out of this… weirdly sized pit trap.

 
There’s a shadow at the top of the hole, and a hoarse, gruff voice and a long arm reaching down to where, if he stands up completely, Eric can reach it. It’s a deep hole for one man to get out of, but the extended hand would be able to pull him completely free.

So why doesn’t he take it?

Because there’s something wrong here. It’s a godsent – or it’s just a little too convenient.

“Did… d-did you dig… Is th-thisss….”

The violent shivering keeps him from finishing his question, but he looks wide-eyed at the offered hand. It’s too dark to see it clearly, but he can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. With the hand, with the voice, with the hole. He presses himself back a little, breathing shallow breaths of burning air. The realization that this is a hole made for him – made for a person, at least – has made him wary of the helpful stranger. Is this part of the ruse, he wants to ask. Is this a joke, or am I going to die here?

Or perhaps the stranger is really friendly. Perhaps the stranger does mean well. But he can’t shake the stupid feeling. He’s got to be sure. He’s got to be sure because whatever someone digging holes for people is doing, it can’t be good for the people inside. Any more than his snares are good for foxes.
 
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