twolegplace ever after happily ] butchermaw

[spidersong]

The wind howls against the windows like a restless beast, rattling the glass in its frame. Spider's thin black tail flicks against the worn wooden floor as she prowls through the cluttered kitchen, her red-stained paws leaving faint impressions in the thin layer of dust that seems to coat this corner of the room. She pauses by a bloodstained butcher's block, sniffing the air with a faint sneer of amusement. Dried herbs dangle from strings, their brittle leaves crumbling to dust when she brushes past them. Her sharp claws rake lightly against a wooden beam as she circles back to the window, standing on her hind legs to peer through the frost-clouded glass. Snow swirls furiously outside, a blinding white haze that obscures the street and blankets the ground in an unbroken sheet of ice.

"Lovely weather for a stroll," Spider quips, the corner of her mouth curling into a smirk. "Though I suppose we're stuck in here for the foreseeable future. What a tragedy. I'm sure you had very important warrior duties to attend to." She drops back onto all fours, her movements as smooth and deliberate as a shadow gliding across the floor. With a dramatic sigh, she drapes herself across a ragged cushion near the crackling fire, stretching her limbs out as if she owns the place. Her black fur gleams in the firelight, the white patches stark against the shadows that flicker across her lean frame. "You know," she begins, her voice almost conversational, "I don't usually do this sort of thing. Playing house with a Clan warrior. It's not my style." Her gaze darts to Butchermaw, the intensity of her stare softened by an almost playful gleam. "But I'll admit, it's... quaint. In a filthy, makeshift sort of way."

Her ears twitch as the butcher moves somewhere in the background, the sound of heavy boots and clattering metal grating against her nerves. She wrinkles her nose, her tail flicking sharply. "Does he always make such a racket?" she asks, her tone light but her irritation clear. "You'd think the storm outside was bad enough without him adding to the noise." Despite her complaints, Spider remains curled by the fire, basking in its warmth as the chill in the air gradually recedes. For a moment, she is silent, her sharp tongue stilled as she watches the flames dance. A few moments pass in which she just relaxes, the room silent. Before the mood can grow too heavy, she rises to her paws, shaking out her fur with an elegant stretch. Her claws click against the floor as she approaches the kitchen counter, where a scrap of raw meat has been left unattended. With a sly glance over her shoulder, she drags it closer, sinking her teeth into the edge with deliberate slowness.

"I'm helping myself," she says lightly, her voice dripping with feigned innocence. "Don't worry—I'll save you some. Maybe." She saunters back to her spot by the fire, her movements unhurried, her smirk firmly in place. "This blizzard might not be so bad after all," she murmurs, her words barely audible over the roar of the storm.


@BUTCHERMAW​

 

[BUTCHERMAW]

✦ Where Spider's motion was as constant as the storm flurrying about outside, Butchermaw's motion was more akin to the snow already fallen to the ground: still, except for where that powerful storm moved it. She still wasn't sure how much of the influence was intentional – did the black and white feline just happen to be magnetic, or was the draw curated, shaped, and crafted to attract the daylight warrior? Did it matter, when she'd enjoy the pull regardless? Her eyes certainly followed the other around the room as she paced, too transfixed to call out cautions that would fall on (intentionally) deaf ears, like a compass intent on finding north.

Daylight warrior. She spared a brief glance to the dreadful weather outside. There wasn't any actual sunlight out there, not when the clouds and snow were such stern bouncers, and Butchermaw had to assume there weren't any warrior-ly duties for her to attend to, either. "Gee, I guess those mice are going to have to fail to catch themselves after all." In no small part because if she didn't assume that, she'd have to head back outside and leave Spider. Unattended. It would be just plain rude to leave her by the fireside, at risk of catching alight all by her lonesome.

Admittedly, Butch didn't need the fire to risk burning up. More than just the marks on her face felt iron-red as Spider conceded, in that back-handed way of hers, that this was… nice. "What about playing house with a famous mascot?" She asks, fishing for a fuller compliment and maybe just a moment more of that still-water stare that she could drown in, given half the chance. Spider, set against the homely glow of Butchermaw's hearth, was as tempting as that still-water on a summer's day, current weather be damned.

Her human's clattering hardly registered as such to the red and white cat, and Spider's irritation struck her as less urgent when they were in the safety of Butchermaw's home. What was a little noise compared to the safety of four walls and a roof, the constant supply of fresh meat, and the warmth of a fire? Still, she found herself placating, "He'll go to bed soon, and you'll have the run of the house," because for all her rationalisation, she couldn't leave Spider uncomfortable. She considered, very briefly, leaving the room to weave about her human's ankles and quiet him, but she lingers too long and Spider moves and that solves that, then.

It's not like she could move while her friend was, some strange rule of the universe only allowing one of them to move at once (a rule that Spider was content to break, and Butchermaw didn't mind having broken). Spider slinking between the food and the fire, both provided by the daylight warrior, felt… right. No matter how much Spider took and how little that left her, it sat right in her gut to provide. Before she could say something to that effect and make a fool of herself, her human rukus'ed into the doorway and spoke in that strange, human tongue, before disappearing again. The house quietened, and Spider dubbed the blizzard not so bad after all. "Not bad at all," she echoed a memory, and the storm, and her racing heart, did not quiet to match the house

"I think he was saying goodnight to us," she explained, and, oh, here's another service she can provide: interpreter. "I think he called you Cleaver. It's one of the claws the butcher uses to cut meat, the big one."​

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