[i]Aaaaaahnggrrrrrrrrrrrrf…[/i] The rumble started low when she finished with her demands, reverberating through his chest with a rattling growl and emerging from his throat in a more plaintive groan. It ended in a quick huff. Promptly followed by a yawn that curled his tongue and bared sharp, yellowed teeth that clicked together beneath a glare he sent her way.

Then Matiir forced himself up and went back towards the tree she’d wrapped the chain around. He moved stiffly, leaning back a little to let more weight fall on his knees instead of his arms, slow, but still able to coordinate his efforts. The shackles clinked and rustled as he went, before falling silent when he stopped moving, turning around to press his back to the tree, hips twisted to the side, legs out, arms flat on the ground and chin settled so he could keep his eyes on her. 

They glowed green whenever his gaze angled just so to catch the fire light, but he was not only watching her and her knife. The fire had warmed him too, though beyond its light the night was still cold and wet, and the rags he wore quickly reminded him of that fact. More than that, however, Matiir could still feel the absence of what should have been, like a prickle on the inside of his skin, buzzing in his ears like flies. The combination of cold and unrest had him lifting his head often to shake away the feeling, and more than once rising to shift position, though nowhere was comfortable now. Each time, the chain rattled and he’d settle down as though ready to sleep, only to rise again a few minutes later. 

He’d watched her set up camp, recognising familiar movements he’d never taken part in before either, without moving from the fire’s heat as it reminded his muscles how to feel. He’d watched her grow comfortable, though he knew the knife meant otherwise, as he grew restless. And now that she was still, he could not be. 

His stomach was empty. That was nothing new. Still, he would have preferred it full. He was cold. Also, nothing new, the weather had not been kind this last week. These things he could deal with, given the chance the chains kept him from. But the dying air stirring in fitful breaths that had nothing to do with the wind… He didn’t know what to do about that, at all. 

Finally, more than halfway to morning, when the rain stopped and the chill grew more pronounced, Matiir grunted and pushed himself up from his latest position draped over an uncomfortable root. Then, still sitting, he twisted a foot up, knee going past his head, to scratch at the belly of the shirt he wore. The fabric bunched and tore and he wriggled back, hunching his shoulders up to duck through the hole for the head, still pushing with his foot until the motion, not easily managed in a human body, made him topple backwards over the root. Once he righted himself, Matiir found his hands impeded by the shirt with no way to push it past the shackles. Grumbling to himself, he tore the fabric with his teeth, grimacing at the feeling of gritty fibers in his mouth, though they weren’t quite as bad as feathers and left the rag where it fell as he turned his attention to the pants they’d put on him. 

If it hadn’t been for the cord tied tight about his waist, they’d likely have come off while Samaire dragged him. He tried rubbing them off against the tree, but that was no different. Eventually, after a long, cautious stare past the embers to Samaire’s still shape, he rose into a crouch, hands lifted loose to either side of his face as he ducked his chin to eye the knot. He couldn’t reach it to bite, too stiff from the cold, and his spine no longer bent as far as he was used to. Humans used their hands, he’d watch them tie and untie rope many times before now. He didn’t have the same dexterity, but he did have claws. In the end, he needed neither, and used the heels of each hand to push the rope down until he could simply slip free of the cloth. 

Finally…

Matiir shook himself when he was free of the clinging clothes, glad to have escaped their damp wrappings. He stretched and twisted, easing muscles that had grown tight, and rolling on the ground to scratch at all the healing itches crisscrossing his skin. New abrasions, peeling scabs, old scars and what felt like a trail of ants’ feet across his shoulders and down his arms. What hair he had left rose everywhere on his skin, even across his scalp it tingled and he moved more slowly to his hands and feet, enjoyment vanished, wary.

Despite his aches, when he finally shifted forward, his stiffness was gone. It had been replaced by the slow, tentative jerks produced by fear. He slipped forward, head and body as low as he could crouch, chain still slithering after him in its relentless, snaking snare. There were no birds calling. No bugs, or wind either. Only the occasional drip of water off a leaf. The creak of a waterlogged branch. He was stretched to the end of the chain, shaking from the chill or the strain, but ignoring it in favour of keeping his eyes and ears on the trees and shadows before him, occasionally lifting his nose to the air, though there was nothing new. Minutes passed, the hiss of an ember made him flinch and glance over a shoulder, ducking down even as it reminded him that he wasn’t alone in the forest. But the human keeping him nearby was not his biggest worry anymore. And he turned back to watching the trees. 

Still nothing. But the presence was building. He could feel it, and he didn’t like it.  

Then came a rustle, wind rushed, a deer coughed, his head came up, startled. Something crashed through the trees at the edge of his sight, a fleeting shadow that dropped to the ground with a strangled bleating, it thrashed for a few seconds before the faint pop of its spine forced it still. But by then, Matiir was already back across the small space, having leapt fully five feet in the air from a standstill, spinning as he went to rush the length of the chain and shinny up the tree it was wrapped around. And there he stayed, perched on the first thick branch, claws digging into the bark, out of reach of any other predators, keening faintly.