THE HOODED MAN // OPEN

[ORPHEUS]

[align=center][div style="max-width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: arial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 1.4;letter-spacing:.1px"]Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity. There was an end to all things. When said to Hamlet, the words were meant as something to push him away from his grief. Stop wearing dark clothes, don't be sad — move on. But there was something about death that made it so impossible to step away. Getting close to someone was winding yourself around them, colors bleeding together at the edges until there was no clean way to separate them. Orpheus couldn't imagine what it would have been like to be two people the way that Reaper and Gabriel had been. To lose someone that wasn't just close to you, but a part of you... the closest he'd been to that was Brigand, but losing him wasn't like losing the other side of a coin. It was climbing up construction scaffolding, higher and higher until you stood on the roof, only to watch everything that had helped you get here crumble as you stood on the edge. It was better up here, but you wanted to come back down.

Maybe at that point, the solution would be to jump. To trust in your own feet and your ability to recover even if you don't land just right. Orpheus — he's a fragile thing, for all of the scars on his body and all of the hard days he's lived through. Making that jump might very well kill him, and that is the scary part of healing. Losing someone that gave you stability, something to cling to, and having to find a new way to trust in your future.

Now isn't the time to wax poetic or to get lost in thought. The stench of decay pulls Orpheus closer like a rope around his neck, even though his heart drags nervously in the dirt to try and slow him down. The last time he had been this close to a long-dead body was an unpleasant memory. All he can remember is dark blood and glassy, milky eyes. It's worse this time, everything's worse and his chest feels tight now, until bright eyes manage to focus in on Reaper. For a moment, Orpheus is sure he's hallucinating as his eyes fall on the teeth, the tongues, the eyes, and the way he disappears. Reappears. At that point it's instinct, his paws finally working again as he pushes himself towards the attacker, powerful hindquarters shoving him at the other (larger, mutated) lion. Although he doesn't assume he could fully stop Reaper, he attempts to dig his claws into his hindquarters and sink his teeth somewhere on his back.