He keeps dropping the cotton. He's broken two twigs. There's blood on the feathers.

Dreamcatchers had been an important cultural aspect of Zephyr, but that place doesn't exist here. There were some similarities between Zephyr and Elysium that brought some sort of comfort, but it had long since begun to fade. These days he found himself withdrawing, figure growing gaunt and skeletal, he found himself becoming paranoid and jumpy at even the slightest noise. For the past few nights, he'd had raging nightmares that had kept him up until dawn; nightmares that had carried on into his conscious during the day.

It had started with the body painting. Sakasu had no way of knowing, but the sight of the red smeared over his pelt had inadvertedly pulled long forgotten memories from a locked chamber in his head, had reawakened demons he'd convinced himself were never there to begin with.

He'd decided to try an old hobby to get it off his wind. It wasn't working. Instead, every creak of the twig in his grasp makes him flinch considerably and causes him to drop the branch, drawing forth a flurry of wicked curses as stress visibly builds on his shoulders. He swallows harshly as it drops to the ground, forcing down the rough cry that threatens to burst from his throat, and picks it up again while attempting to bend it back into its circular shape. He steels himself against the inevitably creak, eyes squeezing shut as it bends beneath the force and creates small, barely noticeable splits in the bark.

It's not conventional, but he grasps the two broken ends in his jaw so they wont spring apart, ignoring the bitter tang in his mouth; and, with fiddly paws, manages to tie the wool around the twig and begin tightly winding it so that when he releases the twig from his clamped jowls it wont snap open.

The voice in his head is screaming that it wont work, that the wool will break or he'll crush the wood, and as his eyes begin to sting due to having them open for too long and his eyelids become sore, his shoulders begin to shake and he drops it again.

The cry that leaves his lips is strangled and cuts off midway through as he hunches in on himself, forehead meeting the ground as he attempts to steel his nerves and catch his breath. But it's not fucking working, and with an irritated, upset growl he kicks the half-finished dreamcatcher away.