Broken Bonds: Chapter 1

The sky had only just begun to lighten when a child’s cry pierced the still morning air. This was not the petulant wail of a toddler who had not gotten their way or the warbling shriek of a hungry infant. This was the piercing cry of a newborn, ripped from the warmth of its mother’s belly. Its breath clouded in front of its mouth, screaming in shock at the life it was suddenly born into. 

A creature held the child, a drakiri of massive size with glowing amber eyes and long teeth and claws. His shoulders were broad, his mane thick and dark. As he gazed down at the screaming child who wriggled blindly and deaf in his hand, his lip curled in disgust. He had not anticipated having another child, in fact would have preferred not to. But upon learning of its existence and its mothers refusal to surrender it upon birth, he’d had to take things into his own hands. 

He looked down at the drakiri who lay before him, a small dracus whose yellow eyes had long since closed, her face and throat scored with marks from his claws. She had fought him fiercely, and his sides and forearms stung with scratches. If she had fought any less valiantly he would have left her to bleed out and the babe to rot in her belly, but he had bred her for her fierce wildness, she died well. 

Marcus set the child aside and reached into the wound he had created in the mother’s belly, ensuring he had not left a babe behind. Only one child? Her womb must have been weak, not ideal but he hoped the child at least had her fierce nature. 

He looked at the child at last, ignoring its pitiful wailing as he turned it over onto its belly. It was too young for him to say what its horns or mane would look like, but its tail was short and stubby, its folded ears set on the sides of its head. It had the faintest indication of striped splotches along its neck and sides, but the markings were muddled and indistinct. Nothing impressive, not even his own gold coloration had passed on, just the chestnut of its mother. What a disappointment. At least it was a male.

Marcus picked the child up in his mouth, holding it around the middle instead of the throat since his mouth was too large and the child too small. He felt its small body shake in the cold and with the ferocity of its cries, but he felt no pity. He ignored it until it quieted, even then he only paused to ensure it was still breathing. He could faintly feel its chest move, but the cries at least had stopped. 

He flew from the trees, breaking through the low-hanging mist that descended from the morning sky and flying toward the rising sun. Nearing sunhigh, he reached his compound, a group of buildings constructed to house himself and those he held close. Closeness in this instance was only an indicator of how well he could control those under his purview. He trusted no one. 

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

A young drakiri slept in his nest on the second story of his house. It was the only home he’d known, but it didn’t feel like much of one. There were no personal effects in the house to suggest a family lived there, no furniture to really speak of. There was a living room, a kitchen that had never been stocked or used, a guest room that had never hosted a guest and two bedrooms upstairs. The concept of a house like this had been foreign to the young drakiri when he had been brought to live here, but he’d been so young that it quickly became his new normal. 

Much like everything in his life, the house was built for efficiency, not aesthetics. Even his nest was fairly bare bones, a scattering of brittle bracken fronds and old dry moss simply to keep him off the concrete floor when the nights were particularly cold. 

Like most nights, Abel slept fitfully, tossing and turning, unable to find a comfortable position and understandably cold due to the lack of glass or shutters in the windows of his room. He had woken up several times during the night, the last being when predawn light filtered through the window and began to brighten the room. 

He blinked at the bare ceiling and frowned as his heart hammered in his chest for a breathless few moments. It was an unwelcome feeling, and it didn’t go away until he lifted his paw to rub at his chest. His toes were terribly cold, so he shifted to lay on his belly with his hind legs tucked close to his body and his forepaws folded under himself. He closed his eyes again and fell into an uneasy sleep. 

Exactly no seconds later he woke with a start to the door opening downstairs. His room was bright with mid-afternoon sunlight, and he blinked the pain away as his eyes adjusted to it. His heart raced in his chest when he realized who must be downstairs and he scrambled to his paws. He licked frantically at his mane, trying to get it to settle but it was as unruly as ever. Would he be upset? 

Abel had no time to worry about it, as the footsteps rapidly grew nearer, heavy with the weight of the paws that stalked toward him. He sat down and gave his throat a few more desperate licks before he looked to the empty doorway. 

Marcus appeared, massive and scarred head high. He swept Abel with his piercing gaze and the younger drakiri shuddered despite himself. 

“Welcome home,” Abel said, averting his own gaze now that he felt the full weight of his father’s attention on him. 

A heartbeat passed before Marcus snorted in derision, turned and walked back toward the stairs. 

Confused and expecting rebuke for something he must have done wrong, Abel remained still, eyes fixed on the floor to his right, but he heard nothing. He’d hardly dared to breathe, but once he felt safe enough to take a proper breath, his nostrils flared and his eyes widened in alarm. Blood! 

He looked to the doorway, expecting to see smears of blood on the concrete where his father had stood, and instead found a scrap of fur. 

Abel stood sharply and started forward, realizing quite suddenly that this wasn’t simply a scrap of fur, it was a whole newborn. As he neared the child, his tail twitched in alarm when he saw its small chest rise and fall. It was alive! Where had it come from? Where was its mother? Why was it here?

He stepped out into the hall, carefully placing his paws near the child so he wouldn’t risk stepping on any fragile parts of the newborn, and looked down the hall. His father’s scent was mingled with old, dried blood and the musty scents of the late-autumn forest. Was there another scent there? If so, it was too muddled for him to make it out properly. 

Abel looked down at the child once more, and with his heart racing in apprehension, he lowered his head to press his nose to the babe’s side. Alarm shuddered through him from nose to tail tip when he felt how cold the bundle of fur was, and he looked around his room. The only warm thing he had was hardly more than a shredded scrap of fabric, what had once been a blanket but was now the ruin of angry nights spent doing the only thing he felt he had any control over. 

He hurried and scraped together the scattered remains of his nest, heaping the dry bracken and moss together and then laid the ruined blanket over it. It wasn’t very soft and hardly had enough bedding, but it was what he could do immediately. 

Abel returned to the child and picked it up carefully by the scruff, remembering seeing one of the mothers on the compound do the same with her draklings. He walked stiffly and slowly, convinced that if he walked too quickly he would snap the babe’s neck. When he reached the nest he panicked for a moment, realizing he didn’t know what exactly he should do. Should he lay on the nest with the child? There wasn’t room for him, he’d squash it flat. Should he leave the babe on it? Babies couldn’t regulate their own temperatures, he remembered someone saying that once when he was younger. And though he'd dragged the nest into the sunlight that shone on the floor through the window, it wouldn’t be there forever. 

He placed the child in the nest, pacing back and forth around it as he wracked his brain for what to do. If only he was smarter…

Babies were supposed to cry, weren’t they? Why hadn’t this one? Babies were also supposed to be clean, this ones fur was dry but it was crusted to its body, doing nothing to help keep it warm. 

Abel screwed his eyes up as he rasped his tongue over the child’s back. He felt the rough flat of his tongue catch on the crusty fur and begin to rake through it, but as he licked the child his heart skipped a beat when the babe caught on his tongue and tumbled out of the nest onto the floor. He winced, expecting the newborn to cry, but he just laid there breathing weakly. 

Panic filled Abel as he picked the child up again. This time, Abel laid his chest on the nest with his hind legs to the side. He placed the child between his forearms and licked the child clean. It took a while, it was unpleasant, and by the time he had finished his tongue was sore, but the child’s breathing felt a little stronger. 

Abel nosed the child closer to his chest and tucked one of his forepaws close to keep it there. 

Stressed and lost, Abel looked around his room, as if seeking help from the bare concrete walls. What now? 

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

“What are you gonna name him?” 

Abel looked sharply at the drakiri standing beside him. She was significantly smaller than him, some kind of mystic crossbreed, he couldn’t remember what. Her name was Jennifer, and she was the only drakiri on this compound he trusted enough to bring here and ask questions. 

“I don’t think a name is as important as figuring out what’s wrong with it,” he snapped. 

“What’s wrong with him,” Jennifer corrected. “It’s a him. Can’t you smell that?” 

Abel looked at the nest where the child slept, unsure of anything anymore. He’d never been this close to a newborn, he didn’t know anything about them, even how to tell the difference between a him and a her. 

Jennifer approached the nest and frowned as she leaned her head down to sniff at the babe. “He needs a name. It’ll make him fight harder to stay alive.” 

“Stay alive?” Abel asked, alarmed. “Is he about to die??” 

“He’s tiny and cold and probably hungry,” Jennifer said, her voice exasperated like it often was when she thought he was being dense. “So unless you’ve suddenly grown tits and can produce milk, he’s gonna starve.” 

Abel’s heart fell and he stared in dismay at the child. “I don’t want him to die,” he rasped, throat tight. 

“Where’d he even come from?” Jennifer asked. “You said your dad brought him home?” 

“I woke up and Marcus was coming upstairs,” Abel explained as Jennifer laid down in the nest and curled herself around the child. “He dropped him off, didn’t say anything, and just left. I dunno where he came from.” 

Jennifer looked up at him, her brown eyes dark, and she breathed out in a huffed sigh. “Well we can worry about that later. Start thinking of a name for him, but go to the mess hall and see if Tessa has milk.” 

Abel groaned inwardly—Tessa was the cook who prepared meals for those who preferred their meat cooked. She didn’t like kids and especially had it out for Abel because he’d wound up in a fight that had tipped over a cauldron of stew as big as he was that she’d spent a day and a half making. He’d had to adapt to the taste of raw meat pretty quick after that or he would have starved. 

“Can’t you go ask her?” he asked. “I can stay with the kid.” 

“So you can drop him on his head again?” Jennifer asked accusingly. 

Abel winced and regretted telling her about that…she had a point, though. She could fit in the nest, he couldn’t. And she had belly scales that would warm the drakling faster. 

“Fine,” he sighed, hanging his head. “I’ll be back.” 

Abel was reluctant to leave the child’s side, even if Jennifer was probably the better suited of the two of them to look after him. He leaped down the stairs, landing heavily and trotting to the front door. He pushed it open and kept his head high as he trotted across the compound. 

The concrete buildings had been constructed before he was born, serving as a home for the drakiri who followed his father. There were several individual homes built similarly to the one he stayed in, but they were smaller. Two long buildings bordered the compound’s east and west fronts, one a barrack with beds and nests, the other the mess hall. Both were constructed simply and with tin roofs to direct rain away, though there was nothing in the construction that suggested they were built to be pleasing to the eye. Everything was harsh angles and bare white concrete, not a drop of paint in sight to try to hide the buildings in the trees that surrounded them. It didn’t really matter, though, when every drakiri that lived there was trained to fight and didn’t care what happened to the people or creatures they attacked. 

Abel trotted to the door of the mess hall, and his stomach churned with unease when he smelled cooking meat. Was Tessa here tending to the fire? If she saw him, she would certainly throw something at him and tell him to get out. He wasn’t looking for a concussion, but he couldn’t leave there without something to feed that poor, hungry child. 

He peered through the doorway, his tail held aloft, muscles tensed to leap back in an instant. But he didn’t hear anyone moving inside. He slunk into the mess hall, staying as low as he could, his ears straining for anything that could suggest Tessa had returned. 

Abel reached the kitchen and stepped through the open doorway. There was a brick fireplace set into the far wall with cooking pots and pans hanging from the wall to his left. He saw a rack of knives on a wooden table that was stained with old and new blood, and though he knew that was where the cook must have prepared the game the drakiri brought back, he couldn’t help but gulp in alarm at the thought of himself on that table. 

He crept toward the only contraption in the room that he didn’t understand. He’d heard it called an ice box, though he didn’t know how it worked. It must have been magic, because when he opened it, a light came on and he felt a blast of cold air that stirred the fur of his mane and made him shiver. This was where milk would need to be kept, right? It went bad if it was out for too long, didn’t it? 

But what would it be kept in? Try as he might he didn’t know what to look for. There were several containers and brightly colored fruits and vegetables, none of which were milk. He saw a tall metal container that looked something like a jar, but he wasn’t sure if that was what he needed. 

He reached out and pulled the jar out of the ice box, used a claw to hook the wire that held it shut and opened the lid. He sniffed surreptitiously at the contents and grinned fiercely. That was definitely milk. 

Abel picked the container up by the metal handle so it dangled from his jaw, the container resting against his chest. It wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t a long walk back to the house. 

He had just left the kitchen when a drakiri cast a shadow in the doorway. A sprite stood there, her mohawk mane tall and neatly groomed, her mostly-furless body stiff with suspicion. 

Abel froze, not even daring to breathe, hoping she hadn’t seen him yet, but he lost hope of that when she let out a shriek and ran at him. She was a quarter his size, but seeing that tiny, wrath-filled sprite spring at him waving her horn around, Abel yelped and scampered away. In his panic he clipped a tall shelf and spilled about a million rags onto him, and he heard Tessa cry out in indignation. 

“I’m going to skin you!” she bellowed—how could something so small be so loud? “You’re gonna be on the menu tonight, boy!” 

Abel’s ears pinned flat against his skull and he tucked his tail between his legs as he fled the mess hall, half-blinded by rags that clung to his horns. The milk container jostled and bounced against his chest, the metal handle creaking against his teeth as he ran for his life back to the house. He slammed the door shut behind him and leaped up the stairs, grazing his paw pads against the concrete floor in the process. 

He all but collapsed as soon as he reached the room, panting once he had set the milk jug down. 

“You found some!” Jennifer said, her ears perking up. 

“Why do you sound so surprised?” Abel demanded, grimacing at his friend. 

“Because you fuck up a lot of things,” she replied, paying his indignation no mind. She carefully stood up from the nest and moved toward Abel, gesturing with her tail for him to open the container. He obliged and flinched when Jennifer leaned toward him. 

“Chill, we need this,” she said, pulling the rag that had become wedged between his half-grown horn and his head. “Grab him and hold him.” 

Confused but willing to listen, Abel picked the child up, his blood freezing. 

“He’s so cold,” he breathed, his throat tight. “He’s not even moving!” 

“Babies are fragile,” Jennifer said, her voice almost inappropriately calm for how panicked Abel was. “Sit there and tilt his head up for me.” 

Abel did as he was told, but he didn’t understand what she was doing. Babies needed to suckle, didn’t they? They didn’t have a way to do that, was he going to be able to eat at all?

Jennifer reached into the container with the rag and scooped out what looked like a glob of thick milk that clung to the rag as it tried to run back into the container. Abel’s face screwed up and he asked in dismay, “Is it rotten?” 

“Does it smell rotten?” Jennifer demanded. “Abel, you really gotta learn some stuff. This is the cream, it floats to the top and has the most fat in it. Lean over here.” 

Abel leaned toward Jennifer and she grabbed another rag that had stuck behind his ear, dropping it on the floor. She set the first rag that was covered in cream in the middle of the second and pulled the corners up. She twisted it slightly and Abel watched as the cream began to drip from the cloth. 

“Hold his mouth open,” she said. “Gently, you’re a lot bigger than he is.” 

Anxiously, Abel opened the baby’s mouth and held it open so Jennifer could drip milk into his mouth. It took several tense moments before the baby’s tongue moved, swallowing finally. It took an hour before the newborn fought Abel to close his mouth and turned his face away. 

“I think that’ll be enough for now,” Jennifer said. “He’ll need to eat like that every couple of hours.” 

“So often?” Abel asked, alarmed.

“He’s a baby,” Jennifer said, rolling her eyes. “His stomach is tiny. Just do what I did when he gets fussy. I’m going to see if I can find a bottle for him, that’ll make it easier than using the rag. Keep that lid closed, the spell will only keep it cold for a few days if the lid’s open.” 

“A spell?” Abel peered at the lid and saw tiny scratches on the inside of the lid. It might have been runes of some kind, but Abel couldn’t read them. The letters blended together until his eyes ached trying to look at them and he shook his head to clear it. 

“Yeah that’s how it got here without spoiling. You see any cows around here?” Jennifer said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You need a bigger nest too. I’ll see if I can find anything better suited for a baby.” 

Abel’s head swam with everything that had happened, but all he could do was hold the child close to his chest and wipe the milk from his chin. 

He looked up and said, “Jen.” 

She looked over her shoulder at him, pausing halfway out of the door. 

“Thank you.” 

Smiling, Jen said, “Don’t thank me now, you’re a parent now. You’ll be cursing me before long.” 

Surprisingly, Jen was wrong in that regard. Abel had never raised a baby before, but from what he understood, they were supposed to be loud and difficult to handle. Once Abel had figured out the routine the baby needed to keep, he found it simple enough to handle. Jen managed to find a bottle, which made feeding the child significantly easier, even if it didn’t make waking up every few hours any easier to swallow. More than once, Abel fell asleep with his cheek on his forearm and the bottle propped against his other forearm as the child ate, which resulted in a crick in Abel’s neck that gave him headaches. Still, it was a small price to pay to make sure Abel did what he needed to do. 

Jen hounded Abel to give the kid a name, but no matter how hard he thought, nothing had felt right. It wasn’t until he opened his eyes in the wee hours of the morning to see the child looking up at him through newly opened eyes that a name came to him. 

“Good morning, Nathaniel,” he said. “Good to finally see those eyes of yours.” 

Marcus had vanished for a week after dumping Nathaniel on Abel’s bedroom doorstep. The child’s origin was a mystery to him, but that mystery was settled when Marcus entered the house and asked with disinterest, “Did he live?” 

Abel had left Nathaniel to nap in the soft, fresh moss, downy feathers and even sheep’s wool that Jennifer had brought to bulk up his nest. He’d been about to go out and find himself something to eat, but had been shocked to find Marcus standing in the living room instead, staring him down and asking that question. 

“Did who live?” was the first thing that came out of Abel’s mouth, and he regretted it the moment he heard himself say it. Marcus wasn’t one to play games, and he didn’t appreciate sarcasm. 

The silence that stretched between them said more than if Marcus had shouted, and Abel squirmed under his own pelt as his father stared him down. It felt like he had ants in his mane and he curled his toes until the tips of his claws pressed into the concrete. 

“I’m sorry,” he said at the same time Marcus growled, “Shut up.” He winced. 

“You answer when spoken to, and you will say nothing more,” Marcus said, his voice deceptively calm. “Did. He. Live?” 

Abel’s heart thundered so hard in his chest he could hardly hear the question, but he nodded sharply. He’d hardly finished the motion before Marcus moved forward and stood right in front of him, so close Abel could smell the blood on his breath from the meal he must have eaten that morning. Abel turned his face away, trying to ignore the fear-scent that bathed his own tongue, and breathed shallowly to try to keep himself from being sick. 

“Did you suddenly develop a hearing problem while I was away?” Marcus asked, his voice frighteningly calm. “You speak answers when you are spoken to.” 

“Yes sir,” Abel breathed. 

“You have? Do I need to knock the hearing back into you?” Marcus growled. 

“N-No sir,” Abel stammered. “I can hear you fine.” 

Marcus leaned down, and Abel shrank to avoid his father touching him until his shoulder was pressed flat to the ground, his belly hidden only by his own legs. Marcus’s voice was low and controlled, but Abel knew that was when his father was most furious. Marcus was not one for explosive anger, rather calculated responses that were severely out of proportion, yet completely justified in his mind. 

With his teeth inches from Abel’s ear, Marcus asked, “Then why have I had to ask you the same question twice?” 

Heart in his throat, Abel struggled to even remember the question, his mind reeling and flailing for something to grab onto. Somewhere in the chaos he found the question and dug his claws into it, latching on and using that to scramble out of the turmoil in his head. 

“H-He lived,” he rasped. “He’s alive. His name is Nathaniel, I-I’ve been feeding him.” 

Marcus stayed where he was for a long, terrifying moment, then blew a huff of air into Abel’s face before he stepped back. “I’m surprised,” he said. “He’s stronger than you already.” 

Abel’s vision darkened around the edges with relief as Marcus moved away toward the staircase, but it was quickly replaced with fear as he asked, “Wh-where are you going?” 

Marcus looked over his shoulder and Abel shrank away again, though he did not cower against the floor this time. 

“To see my son,” the older and larger drakiri said. 

The floor dropped out from underneath Abel and the room spun. Son? That made him…Abel had a brother. And he’d come so close to losing him already. 

Learning that Nathaniel was Abel’s family by blood had impacted the way Abel treated him. He was significantly more protective, hovering over his brother and making sure that he ate every two hours on the dot. It took several days for Nathaniel to figure out how his legs worked, and once he did it took coaxing to get him to walk across the room, unsteady as he was. 

“Look at you go!” Abel would praise him. “You’re doing so well, Nate!” Seeing his baby brother walk across the bedroom for the first time was the most proud Abel had ever been of anything, and things only improved from there. 

Nathaniel followed Abel everywhere, waddling around on unsteady, chubby legs, his short tail curling back over itself and raised high in the air. He didn’t grow very quickly, but he was certainly cute. And the bigger he grew, the more Abel saw of himself in the kid. They had the same bands of color over their eyes that bled into their manes, though Nathaniel’s grew in shorter and stayed that way. They had the same splotchy stripes down their backs and over their shoulders and thighs. One major difference, though, was that Nathaniel seemed more keen to explore and insatiably curious. 

By the time Nathaniel had begun learning to talk, he had explored every inch of that compound, even places where he probably shouldn’t have been, like the kitchen in the mess hall. That had been a particularly stressful day, as Tessa had taken an instant liking to Nathaniel, scooped him up and carried him in a potato sack for the rest of the day, meanwhile taunting Abel and telling him he should have kept a better eye on his brother if he didn’t want things like this to happen. Then he’d been chased out of the mess hall with pans and cooking utensils being thrown at him for not leaving fast enough. Nathaniel had returned that evening with a turkey leg bigger than his head clamped in his tiny jaws, tottering back and forth unsteadily. They’d shared that prize, with Abel making sure to give him the most tender parts so he could eat them even with tiny, weak milk teeth. 

Eventually, Abel gave in to Nathaniel’s pleading looks and took him out into the forest. They didn’t go far, there was a clearing maybe a ten minute walk away that had overflowed with flowers and bees buzzing around in the spring and summer. This time of year, it was full of dead grass and sad-looking trees, but it was better than nothing. At least there would be plenty of interesting smells for Nathaniel to explore. 

Nathaniel charged ahead of Abel, stumbling over his own paws but catching himself well enough. He squealed in delight as he pushed through the undergrowth and emerged in the clearing. He ran into the middle of it and leaped at a tree that must have fallen sometime in the early fall, as its roots were still wet and alive. 

Abel frowned as he neared the roots of the tree, sniffing at them. They weren’t just alive, they looked freshly earthed. The ground beneath hadn’t even had time to dry out, and as Abel looked closer at the trunk, he saw deep gouges in the wood, where sap hadn’t yet collected. Something had knocked this tree over, and it had happened very recently. 

“Nate, stay close to me,” he said, looking over to see his brother clamber onto the tree trunk. Nathaniel looked happy and he didn’t want to dampen his fun, but they had to be safe. 

“Okay Abow!” Nathaniel said, his voice high-pitched with youth and carefree as he leaped down off the trunk. He landed with an oof of expelled air but didn’t seem at all upset at the rough landing. 

Abel couldn’t help but to smile, and as he watched Nathaniel waddle from patches of grass to dried up brambles, snuffling at anything he could reach, he became enthralled with the idea of watching his baby brother experience everything life had to offer. He’d have to show Nathaniel that there was so much more to the world than this compound and the people living on it. 

His ear twitched and Abel’s head snapped around. He stared into the trees, his eyes narrowing as he peered through the bare branches. Slowly, he saw the breath clouding from a short snout, and heard a snort that made his heart fall. 

“Fuck!” was all Abel had time to say before the javelina leaped out of the undergrowth. It barreled toward Nathaniel, hooves throwing up clods of earth with each step. It was bigger than Abel, and fast as a devil. He had a split second to throw himself in front of the beast before it would have trampled his brother. Abel grabbed Nathaniel in his mouth and tried to leap out of the way, but the javelina’s sharp hooves crashed down on his back. 

Abel cried out in pain, and as the javelina fell ass over tea kettle to the ground, Abel forced himself to his feet and ran blindly. His eyes were stretched wide with fear, deafened by his heart hammering in his ears, muscles burning from how hard he pushed with each stride. He heard the javelina pursuing him, imagined he could feel its breath on his tail, and through the panic an idea emerged like an island in a storm at sea. 

He dug his claws into the ground, whipped around and threw himself at a tree. His claws gouged into the bark as he pulled and pushed himself up into its branches. It wasn’t an enormous tree, but it was strong enough to hold his weight. He glanced over his shoulder and leaped farther into the tree with a cry of alarm that was muffled by Nathaniel’s scruff. The javelina was standing at the bottom of the tree, pacing back and forth. 

“Abow?” Nathaniel asked, squirming in discomfort. “Ow, Abow!” 

Abel couldn’t respond, but he knew it must be uncomfortable to be held like this for so long. Nathaniel was too big now to be carried any other way. 

He looked down at the javelina, who had begun to back away, thinking it was leaving. But his heart stopped when the massive animal lunged forward, throwing itself against the tree. The trunk shuddered, branches swaying from the force of the blow. He felt the scraping of the javelina’s tusks against the bark, chips of wood flying to the ground. It backed up again and Abel knew where this was going. It would knock the tree down with them in it and kill them both while they were trapped under the branches.

Claws aching from holding himself in place, Abel moved Nathaniel into one arm, holding him close against his body as the tree shuddered again under the javelina’s weight. 

“Nate, you know how you climbed that tree on the ground?” he asked, voice trembling. “You gotta do that now too, okay? You gotta dig your claws in and hug on tight, okay?” 

“Why?” Nathaniel asked, looking up at him with round eyes. 

“Cuz that thing down there wants to hurt you,” Abel said, holding Nathaniel against the thickest branch on the tree. “You gotta hold on tight. I’m gonna make it leave us alone, okay? You gotta be brave, Nate. Don’t you let go.” 

He waited until he was sure Nathaniel wouldn’t budge, then he looked down and waited for the javelina to lunge forward again. 

Abel snarled and dropped down from the tree to land on the javelina’s back. It squealed deafeningly, whipping around faster than Abel could have anticipated. He held on with all four sets of claws, but as the pig whipped to the right, Abel’s body flung to the left. He felt his claws tear through its flesh before he hit the ground. He had enough time to draw his legs up before the javelina’s tusks slammed into his belly. 

Pain seared through him and he bellowed, though the cry of rage became a panicked and agonized screech as the javelina thrashed its tusks against him. It lifted him off the ground and threw him over its back like he weighed no more than a sack of flour. He hit the ground in a heap, dazed and breathless. He had only enough forethought to move his paws to cover the back of his neck before the javelina stomped him with its sharp hooves. He held his breath, but each strike made it harder and harder to hold. 

Panic set in and he thought the javelina would never leave, but he couldn’t have stood up and run, he felt broken skin and damaged muscles, maybe even broken ribs, he just had pray that it would stop. 

Abel was slowly losing his grip on consciousness when the javelina snorted, smashed its tusks against his neck one more time, and then turned. He watched as it trotted away with its tail high in the air as if it hadn’t just beaten a drakiri nearly to death for no reason. 

The taste of blood flooded Abel’s mouth as he turned his head to look up into the tree. Nathaniel clung there like a dark little beehive, staring down at him with round honey-brown eyes. 

“Abow?” he asked, but his voice sounded very far away. 

“I’m okay kiddo,” Abel rasped. His own voice sounded muted, and it felt like he was peering through his own eyes from the very back of his head. His eyes closed as he murmured, “It’ll be okay,” and his cheek rested against the muddy ground.