[Bless] Talkative [Speak Softly/The Killing Moon]

[Ruriska]

This moment was one of the few times in The Killing Moon’s life where he found himself unsure of what to do. The blessing was over and done with. It had happened ages ago. Something about ‘patience and knowing when to take advantage of silence’ (he couldn’t remember the exact wording, it had been hours...), which had been a tart rebuke for the overly talkative doe to maybe be a bit quieter.

But he had underestimated just how appropriate it had been.

Because the doe would not shut up.

And he couldn’t seem to get rid of her.

He’d been polite at first. Speak Softly was nice enough and that deserved some measure of princely charm on his part. But now he’d stopped responding entirely. Instead of the ‘ums’ and ‘hm’s’ he’s offered near the start, he stared blankly at her, ears flat, giving her nothing to work with.

It didn’t matter. She made up his part of the conversation and simply kept going.

Even when he’d transformed into a wolf and run off, she had somehow found him. Either she was a master tracker or the Swamp was trying to punish him for something. Listening to her with sensitive canine ears had been far too much and so he had returned to a stag, trying his best to resist the desire to turn back just to close her mouth with his teeth.

“This buck is sooo nice! I really, really like him! We could chat and talk and we were just walking along and then a bird just pooped right on his head! But he smiled and said it was ‘good luck’! Isn’t that great?” There was a very, very brief pause that gave him no space to reply. “He’s much better than the last buck I met. I think there was something wrong with that guy. Like,” her voice lowered ever so slightly, as she tried to sound sincerely concerned, “in the head. He just kinda, like super mean.”

The Killing Moon went somewhere else for a little while, disconnected from his body and thought of other things. Like sleeping in a quiet grove, with no irritatingly talkative does.

Too bad he hadn’t found a bird form to just fly away with.

That would have been useful.

The sun started to sink and still Speak Softly talked.

He had her whole life story now.

It wasn’t very interesting.

Then just as his patience had begun to wear thin enough to snap, she said, “ok, well, I gotta go, thanks for the chat!”

The Killing Moon blinked back to life.

“Oh,” he said.

She stared at him with a smile, waiting.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“Bye bye”

Satisfied, she trundled off, as happy as he’d ever seen any doe.

The Killing Moon let out a long sigh of relief and stared sourly down at the ground. “Are you happy?” He asked the swamp and then shook out the cramp in his neck. If she ever got pregnant again, somebody else could handle it.

He shifted back into a wolf, ready to take a good long nap.