Matiir went where she dragged him. Sometimes he led, still young enough to be distracted by curiousity when he had the energy for it, but she was the one who had a goal. A direction. He wanted nothing more than to shake her hands loose from her end of the chain. To win free of the binding that tripped him when he ran and made him follow a human for no reason other than that it hurt to go another way, he would have done a great deal. Yet still, no matter the opportunities she gave him, and they were admittedly few, he never attacked. He caught meaning in her words sometimes. And that meant she was not prey, not hunter, not competition to drive off… 

He could not understand how this was so, as everything else about her told him that she would be soft if he bit her, and bleed when he scratched. But he put no effort into struggling to find an explanation, trusting ingrained instinct over confusion. He was glad enough she’d taken him away from that place where the air was dying before it did, and that she never forced him close to the kills made by hunger alone. 

Still, he snarled when she came too close. He watched her whenever she held a blade, and never once spoke an intelligible word. Though his vocabulary of sounds was impressively varied in its own right. He dropped to his side more readily once she’d chosen a campsite every day. This time was no exception. He flopped onto his elbows and belly as soon as she started tying the chain around a tree.

The distance they’d set between them and whatever wish or curse was being played out around the Zarnofskys and the limited rations were taking their toll. He was tired. Not dangerously so, she fed him more than he’d have caught on his own in this shape, enough to let him keep up with her determined strides. And he was used to travel, though usually at his own pace and discretion. Even the worst of his aches and pains and abrasions from that first night had faded. But his body now wasn’t suited to the movement he asked of it: his knees and back ached, the tops of his toes were worn raw from being dragged so often, his neck was stiff. And the chain hobbled him, every step catching at the sores he’d already caused by pacing in that cell. 

Panting, he watched the woman go about her routine once she’d secured him, but that soon grew boring. So, he heaved himself up and stretched, grumbling, before shaking out and raising his nose to scent the air idly. He was comfortable here, more than he had been in a long while. The smells were familiar, the trees were welcoming giants, the air wild. He let out a low, distance eating groan, stuttering near the end to turn it into a series of similarly loud grunts, and then stood listening. 

There was only brief silence in response as birds quieted to listen and then started up again.

He tried again, letting the sound grate from his throat in a huff until he ran out of breath. Silence, again, and the distant creak of a tree in the wind. His head tilted, and the youth shuffled his knees forward until he was sitting, crouched, looking more like a frog-legged gremlin than a boy, staring intently through the dappled light. Something was there. He yawned at the unknown watcher, tongue curling up and lips drawing back from teeth that shut with a click before snorting and shaking the itch from his scalp.