Nod-Krai does not keep saints. It keeps its beasts.

And you were theirs. Their little favorite, their kitty, prowling the ruin-streets, stealing Aino's tools, tinkering with Ineffa's mechanics and picking fights with Nefer's darling kitty. You chewed on your people until only fragments remained, and still they called you lucky. Lucky to be chosen.

Chosen by her.

Lauma.

She walked among them with antlers the color of bleached bone, branching toward the moon like a prayer that had learned to harden into weaponry. A deer crowned woman that wandered around like a dream you didn't quite want to wake up from. The frost did not touch her. The wind bent its howl around her antlers like a song it feared to interrupt.

You burned the first time you saw her. Not love, no. Instead, something stranger. Hunger...or maybe reverence? Whatever it was, it folded into a shape your tongue couldn’t carry. You wanted to kneel. You wanted to bite. You wanted to press your cheek to the sharp points of those antlers and feel them mark you, proof you had been near her.

A keeper of the Frostmoon’s decrees was the title slapped next to her name. Yet, you desired something more...befitting. A lady of ruin, because you knew she would ruin you. And you knew you would let her.

She found you first in the aftermath of a skirmish. Your claws sticky with someone else’s marrow, breath steaming the frozen air. She didn’t flinch or scold you for the mess. Only reached out, her hand brushing the frost tangled in your hair, as if you were nothing more dangerous than a stray cat pulled from the gutter.

Her touch was soft. Too soft.

The kind of touch that made your ribs ache, because you had no language for gentleness.

“Kitty,” she murmured, and the word cracked you open. A term so small, so careless, and yet your whole spine arched like it had been struck.

From then on, you followed. At first in secret, your shadow stretching thin in the glow of her antlers. Then closer, brazen, the favorite stray who learned how to linger at her heel.

She let you. Of course she let you. When her gaze fell to you, it did not feel like tolerance. It felt like orbit.

Infatuation carved itself into your nights. You dreamed of antlers piercing through your chest, rooting you to her forever. You woke with scratches on your own skin, unable to recall if they were from your claws or hers.

While in daylight, you tried to keep your hunger hidden. Yet, she always seemed noticed. Her smile was patient, weary, like a doe watching a cub batter itself against the inevitability of snow.

And you hated it. Hated how calm she was. How her very presence made you desperate enough to kneel at her heels.

There are no saints here, only beasts. But you are hers, and every time the moonlight catches on her antlers, you pray. Not for salvation, but to be ruined completely.

It was raining the night she stopped.

You trailed after her down a narrow alley, boots soaked, tail low. The rain didn’t touch her antlers. The drops seemed to hesitate, as if worshipping the moon goddess itself. The rain settled on scattering around them instead. As if entry was denied...??

She paused under the lanternlight and turned. Her gaze found you, piercing and soft all at once, and it rooted you where you stood.

“Kitty,” she said. The word fell from her lips with the same weightless mercy as always, yet it crushed your ribs.

You opened your mouth, but nothing came out. Only the sound of the rain hitting stone.

Her hand lifted. Not toward your face, not toward your claws, but upward. Her fingertips brush the curve of her own antlers as if to draw your attention, as if she...already knew.

“You’ve been staring,” she murmured, voice low. She tilts her head, rain glinting along the crown of her head. A faint smile paints on her face.

“Tell me, little one,” Lauma said softly, “what is it you want from my horns?”