Hands Like His [prose/flash fiction]
CW: transformation, injury/blood, hurt/comfort
started 4/23, completed 1/24
for m.
Knots were made to be tied by hands like his. He could be playing fiddle with those fingers. Instead, they're threading another set of stitches into my leg. He's mumbling something about fishing wire and fishing hooks and fishing but it gets lost in the rhythmic piercing. For the makeshift needle to work, he has to curl it underneath the wound, where it pokes out the other side, migrating upstream despite the currents of red and sweat electric. Now he's going on about the traps, how he didn't want to set up the traps, how he knew he'd set up the traps wrong. Seems to me they work just fine. I only still have my leg because it's more of a bear's than a human's now. How he'd even pried it open with those rib cage fingers I don't know and now fur is glued to his palms with my blood.
You're an awfully long way from home,” he calls out, back to me. I want to tell him home is nowhere. I say nothing. “What brings you up all this way?” Salmon. Famine and salmon. “Preparing for winter.” The words still sound like themselves, but blunted. Gruff. Not quite yet grizzly. “Surely that can be done down south.” A defensive surge... a threatened animal's reaction. Not anger, but lightning in my bones. I pause for a deep, human breath. “Why not here...?” A grumble creeps out all the same but he laughs. “Got me there.” “And you?” A pause. A shiver of crickets. A realization: my brain is more molasses than I thought. Soon I'll stop making sense, even to myself. “Long way from home...?” “Oh.” Another laugh, bite-sized birdsong. “That's what I'm looking for, I guess.” “That can be done down south.” He's come back, a bowl in each bandaged hand. Gestures beside me using one of them. “Why not here...?” The fire chirps. It had all been set up when I came to: The grate for the pan. A tent a little too small for me, at least for now. “Got me there.” I take the other bowl from him as best as my halfpaws can manage. I'm suddenly ashamed of the stubby thumbs, their own migration north to meet my other shrinking fingers. I wait for him to sit and start eating before bringing the bowl to my lips—or trying. I won't get reacquainted with my body until the post-shift phase, but after so long I'd hoped to have gotten a handle on some of the growing pains. Even if I can't get a grip on a fucking spoon anymore. The sloshing broth settles enough that I can pour it into my stomach. It tastes like all the soup in our one ocean. As I lower the emptied bowl, so does he, having put his down to help me lift up mine. The wind singes. “Gotcha, bear.” He's barely a parr-length away. “Here...?” “Why not?” And I'm running upstream, to whatever lake must have spawned me.