Two Crows Watch from the Gallows Tree (part 5)

"So you daughter after all." He took the finished bear meat from the fire and offered it to her. "You warm? Need bigger fire?"

(Marrow Man sitting there naked with his dick out: She looks cold; better make sure this human isn't freezing)

(haha this fren smol and broken, but still good)

She took the meat, then realized she was cold after all. Somehow a goat-man was more in tune with her needs than she was herself. How had he realized she was hungry and freezing when she'd been so distracted she hadn't noticed? Perhaps there was still a scrap of paternal instincts alive in him even now.

"I'm okay," she murmured, but she did shift a little nearer to the flame now that he mentioned it. "Thank you."

(Throwing Lilo and Stitch lines at me, giving me feels like that? Come on now!)

The Marrow Man nodded. "You shivering something awful, not good. How long you out here?"

(Hahaha)

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I was just trying to get far enough away… I don’t know how far I am, though.”

"Far." He reached again for the bear. "You walk back soon maybe, you get back before day break. Or stay through night, walk back in morning when it warmer. They worry if you not there in morning."

Ky nodded. “If I’m going back, I’ve got to go before they wake up.”

"Mhm." The Marrow Man set another chunk of meat on the fire for her. "But you stay little longer, talk more?"

Ky nodded. Why not? Somehow, she felt less need to be guarded around him than she did anyone else. She didn’t need to protect him from her emotions. She could just feel them and voice them and not worry about them hurting anyone else but herself. “Sure.”

"Good." The Marrow Man took more meat for himself, chewing. "I coming from small village near here. Four days northeast. They talking about big white bear, say she steal a mama and a baby girl and eat them up. I eating a dog in barn loft and the farmer say this, and I think I eat the bear and see how that fill me up. So here I am, and she not fill me up so much as I thought."

That seemed oddly poetic. Or, at least, karma. "At least you avenged them."

"Bears eat peoples all the time," the Marrow Man said indifferently. "Wolves eat peoples, spiders eat peoples, cats eat peoples. I eat peoples sometimes. We all hungry." He patted the bear's stained flank. "She hungry too. Not enough food up north so she come down here thinking she find some good food. She right, but she young and stupid. Like I say." His gaze softened momentarily. "I like bears. Always like bears, even before. They strong, they sweet. They good mamas, sometimes good papas too."

Ky nodded, unable to say that she agreed. They were terrifying. She liked absolutely none of the things he listed. But she tried to think of something positive to say in agreement. "They're beautiful."

"Maybe she a mama," the Marrow Man mused. "Maybe she have cubs she hunting for. But she going in my belly now. She stupid, she fight me, so maybe the cubs go hungry or maybe they smarter than mama." His grating voice had grown wistful, and he trailed off, hand still resting on the bear.

Ky hesitated, somehow even uneasier at the thought of him personifying the bear. But, she supposed, what was the difference between a bear and a human, if you yourself were caught in between human and animal? Talking to him had returned at least a slight desire to live, and it was unsettling to be sitting next to someone who saw no difference in a bear and a human. She supposed she should be grateful that he had the bear -- that he was, somehow, planning to eat by himself in two days. "Maybe so."

The Marrow Man stirred and prodded the fire with a stick at the edge, bringing the embers back alight. He gazed at her from across the flames. "You still scared?" he asked her. "You still think you want die?"