#Skin-Changer Leona

[dilatorywriting]

Monster Mayhem: Lion's Pride [Part 3]

Gender Neutral Reader x Leona Kingscholar Word Count: 6.2k

Summary: Your new job as a Full Time Royal Therapist does not pay nearly as well as you'd like. Or, Leona is more of a problem child than he would ever admit, but you're surprisingly okay at dealing with that.

[PART 1][PART 2] [PART 3]

Sometimes you felt like you hardly knew what it meant to be a functional person, living a comfortable life on the fringes of society. So in comparison, trying to think of what it meant to be an actual prince, ruling over all of said society was something you literally could not comprehend no matter how hard you tried to wrap your head around it.  

“If you’re a Prince, what were you doing in a hole?” you asked, because you had far too many questions and concerns, and this one at least seemed easy enough to address. And also because you were genuinely pretty curious.  

The newly dubbed ‘Leona’ twitched against your back and you felt the low rumble of his snarl work its way from the depths of his gut all the way up through his chest and out his mouth.

“Holy shit,” Ace wheezed. “Screw this. I’m getting out of here before I wind up implicated as an accessory in your murder.”

And so your trusty friend abandoned you to the wolves lions?—darting away so quickly he always forget his bag, shoes, and everything else in the process.

You waved after him as he departed, knowing full well that he’d wind up stumbling back within the week, maybe two at most. He always did, no matter how much he complained about your Present Company. Plain old ‘murder’ was actually one of his more polite accusations. When he’d run into your Hunter friend the first time, Ace had gone on a wildly incoherent rant about how he was going to find your corpse strung up in a tree like some weird, ritual, sacrifice. And then that had devolved into something-something cannibalism or other. The visiting Hunter had just thrown his head back and laughed, positively enamored with the grisliness of it all. Ace had vanished for almost an entire month after that encounter, but he did come back—glaring up at you with a miserable pout like you were the one who’d gone and fucked off for thirty whole days.

Leona snorted and you felt the puff of breath against the back of your neck.

“Coward,” he grumbled, though he didn’t sound particularly displeased about your friend’s sudden departure.

“Fear lets us be brave,” you responded, wise as a sage. Or maybe an old frog in a puddle.

“Yeah?” he intoned, rolling his eyes. “And when’s that little rat ever been brave?”

“There’s always tomorrow,” you chirped, and that snort turned into something dangerously close to a chuckle. Which—gasp!—how dare such a pleasant sound fall from the lips of someone so obstinately determined to be otherwise! You grinned at the low tones of it, only for the snickering to cut off sharply in his throat once he’d realized what he was doing. And then of course he shoved you forward and out of his lap with a great amount of indignant snarling.

You laid there for a few minutes—face down in the sun-warmed grass and laughing quietly about just how ridiculous this stupid Lion was, before finally sitting up with a pleasant stretch. He could put on airs all he liked, you knew there was kernel of something far less angsty and murderous buried at the heart of him.

“So,” you hummed, lazily making your way back to your feet. “What exactly have I done to draw the realm’s Prince to my doorstep?” You squinted at him suspiciously. “You’re not here about the fairy gate thing, are you? Because that was actually an accident.”

“The what?” he frowned, brow pinched in confusion.

You waved him off. “Ah, nothing, nothing.”

Something in his jaw twitched, like now he was going to push the subject out of principle of you being shifty. But he just sighed and brought a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

“I need your help,” he said finally. Just as crabby as the first time he’d asked, if perhaps just a touch less imperious.

You arched a brow. “I think you’ve mentioned that already, yes.”

Silence.

The Lion stared you down with a slowly deepening scowl, and you stared back with a smile as placid and unmoved as the shallow pond you’d nearly drowned Ace in not an hour before.  

“If I apologize, you’ll help me?” he asked after a long moment, the question turning sharp at the end on a bitten of growl.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” you hummed back and he crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said, with all the pleasantry of someone undergoing a root canal. And all the sincerity of Ace swearing that this was the last time he’d get caught evading the tax man, promise.

You sighed, feeling a bit cheated. But you hadn’t really stipulated anything beyond those two little words leaving his mouth, so if anything, that was on you.

“Alright,” you huffed. “What is it you need help with?”

The Lion glared at you suspiciously for a long moment—glowing eyes narrowed into slits and tail twitching back and forth like he was swatting flies. Finally, he sighed and lifted his hands out in front of him with a pointed flex.  

“It’s not supposed to be like this,” he frowned sourly, wrists twisting to display the pointed claws tipping his fingers. “I’m not supposed to get stuck in between.”

Your eyes traced the fluffy tufts of his round ears, the black-tipped tail swishing irritably at his hind, and allowed yourself a melancholy sort of huff.

“But you look good like this,” you pointed out sadly. Because he really, truly, did. Leona without his squishy lion ears would just be… grumpy. Miserable, and angular, and angry. Nothing soft worth coddling at all.

“That’s not the point!” he snapped, baring his overlarge canines at you. There was a darker cast along his cheekbones that seemed to be making a valiant effort to crawl all the way up into his fringe. “And don’t fucking say that!”

You frowned. One second this stupid dick wanted to be praised to the Heavens and back! Practically swanning about, demanding you bow down and acknowledge his blatant superiority. But, oh no. Apparently your meager half-sentence masquerading as a compliment was too much for his delicate, princely, sensibilities.

“Fine,” you griped. “You’re ugly.”

He growled—low and rumbling—and if he was anymore of a cat you’d say you could see his hackles raising in indignation. But before he could launch into another vicious, verbal, evisceration of your person, you cleared your throat loudly in an attempt to get him back on track.   

“What do you mean by ‘stuck in between?’”

He sneered down at you testily for a moment before reaching up to pinch at the bridge of his nose again and letting out a put-upon sort of sigh that was not at all indicative of the fact that he was the one asking you for help.

“The Shift. When you found me in that pit, I should have been able to Shift between that form and this one without issue,” he frowned, brow tugging down tight with something a bit more disquieted than his usual, flat, annoyance. “The iron was a problem, but once I was out of the trap, it should have been fine. I’ve dealt with cursed snares like this before, and the effects have never lingered as long as this one has.”

You blinked owlishly. That did sound… fairly unpleasant. And honestly, if you were in his position you’d also be at least a little concerned that something else was at play. But, still, all that being said—

“I’m sorry,” you frowned, more or less genuine. Perhaps leaning a bit harder into less.“But I don’t understand how that has anything to do with me.”

“You were down there with me,” he argued. “You dismantled the trap.”

Uh, yeah. By messing with bits that looked breakable until they broke. Not exactly a high-level intellectual pursuit.

You didn’t say that, of course. Because after a few days watching you scuttle about your homestead like a particularly vocal lizard in the dirt, you were sure he already thought you were stupid enough without you outright admitting to it. Nevertheless, the Lion observed your zip-lipped silence with an ever-deepening scowl.

“You took it apart,” he tried again, nearly a growl.

“Yes,” you said with a nod.

“You know how you did it,” he continued, firm. At your lack of affirmative, he pushed again. “You know. I watched you do it!”

You raised your hand nervously and made a little so-so tilting motion.

Anyone less refined would no doubt have had their head in their hands at this point, but Leona just curled his lip at you and looked like he was fighting valiantly not to put your own very silly head through a wall.

“It was charmed,” he spat. “Bound up with talismans, and cursed down to its very moldings. That isn’t something any random farmer could walk up and break.”

“Oh,” you blinked, taken aback, and struggled to recall if there had been anything so obviously enchanted about the trap you’d fiddled into bits. “Was it?”

And head had officially met hands. He ground his clawed fingers into his temples like you were a headache that with enough determination and massaging he may somehow be able to will away.

“Couldn’t you go just home if this is such a big problem?” you asked, still genuinely baffled at it all. “Get help from your family? I mean, you’re a Prin—”

“No,” he interrupted, emerald eyes gone glacier cold.

You frowned, as unimpressed by his prickliness as you usually were. But something in you was hesitant to prod at whatever it was that had managed to tug a feral rage so tightly across his face—like drawing a shade over a window until the entire home was cloaked in shadow, or slipping away behind a carved mask too heavy to ever wear comfortably. It was an expression so sharp and so bitter that if you hadn’t only just yesterday watched this stubborn man lounge about in the sun as your chickens hopped all over him like he was the world’s most carnivorous jungle gym, you wouldn’t ever have known that they could be the same person at all. 

“Alright,” you shrugged, and some of that angry, hunched, defensiveness eased into confusion.

“Hah?” he frowned.

“Alright,” you said again. “We’ll figure it out here.” He glared over at you balefully, and you waved off the obvious retort on the tip of his tongue about something-something-you have no idea what you’re doing-something-something-dangerous risks and lifelong consequences-blablabla. “I have a friend who would know a lot more about those kinds of traps and talismans that I do. He could help, probably.”

“Probably?” he scoffed. Though when he rolled his eyes, they weren’t quite so hate filled—lids hooded with a familiar, begrudging sort of irritation rather than outright malice.

“He’s a bit of an enigma,” you explained—wiggling your fingers in a little, sparkly, dance to emphasize the, well, enigmatic part.

Another huff. But amidst that grumpy bellyaching, you watched those fluffy ears of his slowly perk back up atop his head, and his tail swish leisurely behind him. The Lion certainly didn’t look happy (but did he ever? So was that really a fair comparison?), but he definitely seemed like he’d thawed into something less ‘frigid dead of winter’ and more ‘unpleasantly nippy spring morning.’

“Weirder than you, herbivore?” he sniffed, looking down his nose at you and crossing his arms loosely over his chest. “I find that hard to believe.”

Normally you would too. But, well…

“He’s charming,” you chirped pleasantly, and Leona’s face twisted up like you’d served him a bowl of rancid yogurt.

.

.

That night you composed a letter to your dearest Hunter friend. You thanked him for bringing you the White Moor Stag, elaborated a bit on the new marinade you’d been experimenting with, and then ended the whole thing with a polite plea for his aid in deconstructing the mechanisms of a magical trap you’d encountered. You bribed one of your two carrier pigeons with some snacks and watched it fly off into the unknown with a little, cream-colored envelope tied to its foot. Message talismans were much simpler and far more convenient, but the Hunter always seemed to appreciate the personal touch of postal birds.

Leona glared at you from the window, and made some dramatic swipe at your pigeon like he meant to knock it out of the air. The poor bird tottered about like an overfilled water balloon—jiggling and wriggling in its roundness before eventually righting itself and continuing on into the sky with a warbled coo coo.

“Don’t be rude,” you huffed at him.

“I can’t believe you still won’t let me in,” he sneered from beneath the fluff of that blanket you’d gifted him. “I apologized.”

“Yes, but you actually have to mean it,” you explained, not unkindly, as he prowled just beyond the glass. “But we’re making progress!” you beamed. “That’s something! Maybe you’ll make it in here within the next five years, hmm?”

“Or I could just wipe out the entirety of your ridiculous dirt farm now,” he threatened, a bit of that sandy magic swirling sinisterly along his fingers.

“You certainly could, your highness,” you agreed easily. His lip curled unpleasantly, but that glowing, gritty, arcana faded away and he didn’t move from where he’d tucked himself up under the duvet.

After another solid fifteen minutes of his pissy glowering and barbed insults, you pointedly unclipped the ties on your curtains and let them fall shut so that his ridiculous pouting was hidden away behind the thin, cotton, mess of poorly stitched flowers and herbs.

(You did leave a nice dinner plate on the ledge before that, with extra portions of meat and a neatly frosted cookie for dessert. Because as much as your day had been a bit rough, you had a feeling his melancholy extended far beyond being left out in the dark for another evening.)

.

.

The next morning, your doddering pigeon returned with an elegantly bound scroll—all embellished with golden filagree and tied up in a neat, crimson, bow.

“Why does this freak call you ‘mon cher ami,’” Leona sniffed, tongue curling awkwardly over the unfamiliar words.

You sighed and debated snatching the letter back, but all that would probably culminate in was the paper in tatters and a smug beastman lording his superior letter-wrangling skills over your head like a trophy.

“It’s just one of his little ticks,” you explained with a shrug. “I told you—he’s charming.”

“Ah, yes,” Leona drawled, tracing a claw along the parchment’s edge with a soft shhhhhft. A raised, white, line cut across the paper’s surface like the beginnings of a wound. “Waxing poetic nonsense in a foreign language. Rambling on about all kinds of useless fucking garbage. Charming.”

“You,” you snipped, reaching out to smack at his tightening grip before he could rend the poor correspondence to bits, “are not one to talk about ‘charming.’”

“Oh?” he scoffed. He maneuvered around your tutting to hold the letter over your head. Typical. When you leaned forward to try and wrangle it back, Leona leaned in closer—eyes going hooded and lips curling into a smug little smirk that promised all sorts of trouble. “Haven’t had any complaints about that before. Who’d be saying otherwise?”

“The person you left stranded at the bottom of a pit, you inglorious oaf,” you griped. His ears immediately swiveled to pin flat against the top of his head, and you used the distraction of his indignation to finally snatch back your prize. “Besides,” you huffed, straightening out some of the new wrinkles. “Not very Prince-like, is it? A real prince would have swept in to save the idiot in distress. Sword drawn, banners flying,” you sighed, a bit too besotted with your own imaginings. “Why did you have to be such a dick, huh? Ruined my fantasies for the rest of my life.”

“And what?” Leona snapped. “Some rogue bastard sending you cursive garbage does it for you?”

“Better than being left for dead in a hole after saving their life,” you smiled—perfectly, poisonously, pleasant.

Leona rumbled something indiscernible under his breath and turned to glare petulantly off across your garden.

“Besides,” you hummed, looking over the letter. “There’s more important things. Like this—right here. Do you know what a self-bored stone is? He’s thinking maybe there was a process like that with the iron shackles. Or maybe something to do with seeping the components in herbs… Hmm…”

“Whatever,” Leona scoffed. “I’ll try whatever it takes to fix this shit.”

You clapped him amiably on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, tête de noeud!”

“The fuck did you just call me?!”

“Poetic nonsense,” you chirped, and Leona looked half ready to drop you back into the hole where he’d found you.

.

.

The first attempt to aid the Lion Prince in his conundrum didn’t go particularly well.

You’d tried to work off of the whole ‘overlap with a self-bored stone’ theory, but all that really amounted to was you gesturing like an over-serious crossing guard for him to walk under every low hanging branch, every arch, beneath the stunted beams of the chicken coop. You dangled rocks from strings and waved around your little creations like slightly more dangerous pompoms.

Penelope clucked irritably when one of the pebbles fell with a plunk into her nest, and Leona frowned up at you from where the wayward chicken had firmly situated herself in his lap.

“How was any of that supposed to help?”

You drew a blank and promised to try something new tomorrow.

The next day you tried herbs. The Hunter had listed off quite a few that were known to cause lingering issues with magical creatures, and you harvested the lot of them from your garden with ease. You held them up to Leona’s face one by one, brow furrowed in concentration, as you waited for… something.

“How is this any better than the rocks?” he complained.

You pushed the bright, butter-yellow, blossoms of some Saint John’s Wort under his nose until he sneezed and shoved you away with a slew of indignant threats to your person.

The following few days were spent perusing your meager library. You carted every book you owned on magic, and binding rituals, and rune smithing out into the yard. Leona looked over at the slowly growing pile of tomes with a truly unimpressed scowl.

“You could have just invited me inside,” he griped, rolling his eyes. He was splayed out in the grass at your side, his head tossed lazily across your lap after he’d complained that he needed at least some leverage to see what you were trying to read.

“Nice try,” you hummed, reaching for your page of hastily scribbled notes. “But you’re not getting off without a genuine apology that easy.”

A week passed in this fashion, with you attempting to string together more and more ludicrous ideas—throwing everything you had at the wall and hoping something, anything, would stick. But Leona’s ears stayed tufted and round. That tail seemed to only grow more twitchy, his claws longer and sharper.

You sent the Hunter another letter and waited anxiously for a reply. When it arrived the next morning, Leona snatched it from your pigeon before you’d even made it out your front door. It was a miserable sort of day—pouring rain and with nothing but the grey cloud cover overhead to color the world.

He read it over once, twice, before dropping it to the ground. You could see the tendons twitching along his jaw, could practically hear his molars grinding in his frustration.

You plucked the note from the grass and looked it over carefully.  

‘Mon ami, while I am loathe to address this, perhaps it is not the make of this trap at all that is causing such a vexation? Is there any chance that rather than this being a lingering malady, that this friend of yours was simply unable to overcome the initial curse in the first place?’

You glanced back up at Leona, who was intermittently clenching his fists at his sides. You could see the harsh indentations from where his claws were digging into the skin of his palms.

‘Sometimes such things just happen, je crains. The flesh may be willing, but often the spirit is weak. You mentioned this Roi du Leon has a powerful family he may turn to for assistance. Certainly one of them may be strong enough to overcome this curse for him, even if he perhaps is not.’

“Of course it’s all because I’m a fuck up,” Leona snarled. Some of that spitting, sandy, magic of his seeped into the air. It bit at the rain like an overeager dog. You could see it dancing along his skin—fighting to pull his features one way or another.

“He didn’t say that,” you pointed out gently. “And even if you were, there’s nothing wrong with needing help sometimes. Your family—"

“—Would rather I keeled over dead and stopped sullying my brother’s perfect fucking reputation!” he snapped. “Heir to the King’s Roar,” he scoffed. “Stupid. I was never going to be a king to begin with. And even if I had been born first, they would have deposed me to put their flawless, favorite, golden boy on the throne anyways.”

That... That was a lot. You stared at the pacing Lion with wide eyes—unsure how to help, unsure if any attempts to do so would only make this worse. This was—this was so above your ‘happy, homey, hermit’ paygrade.

“Of course this is all because of me,” he hissed, that roiling, angry, arcana coiling around him like curdled milk. The pupils in his eyes flickered oddly from round to thin-cut, hard, lines. Beastly. “Of course it was because I wasn’t good enough.”

“Leona,” you tried, as gentle as you could be.

The Prince threw his head back and laughed. And laughed, and laughed.

“I should have known!” he cackled, borderline hysterical. “I should have fucking known!”

“Leona—” you tried again, reaching out a hand.

Only to be immediately knocked on your ass by an explosion of magic.

You’d heard of self-destruction—of implosion. The arcane wonders of the world were a wily and unyielding mistress. While creatures like Leona who were so naturally steeped in ancient magics and sorcery could control that beast more adeptly than some little mortal like you, it didn’t make them any less susceptible to its dangers. If anything, they had it worse. It was like sitting in a shallow stream versus wading out into a roaring ocean. So much more opportunity, such a higher aptitude for greatness, but far too easy to drown beneath the churning tides of it all.

The inky, geometric, swirls along his arms pulsed like a heartbeat. They crawled along his skin and traced black patterns into his veins. Even you could feel the horrible, dark, stickiness of it—as the magic ate him alive. His face twisted back and forth between human and animal, and you watched him contort and snarl under the weight of it before turning on you with a vicious roar.

Uh oh.

The first wave of magic seared the ground, leaving nothing but strange, grey, sand in its wake. The more he snapped and clawed wildly at anything and everything, the more that dusty desert spread. You managed to hop out of the way of most of it—sparing a single, sad, thought for all the poor plants you’d worked so hard to cultivate dying a miserable, grainy, death.

The next arc of magic shot straight from his clawed fingers, and it managed to catch the flesh of your forearm. It was sharper than any dagger or sword that you’d ever had the pleasure of accidentally nicking yourself with, and it tore its way down your arm like a raging beast, leaving an eerie, tacky, bubbling mess in its wake. And ouch did it hurt—like someone was taking a fistful of coarse sand and rubbing it into the open wound. You ground your teeth against the strange, gnawing, sensation and hastily wrapped a bit of torn fabric around the weeping gash to keep it a bit more contained. You waited for the worst of it to pass, for that initial bite to fade into a more manageable throb. But it didn’t. It just got sharper and tighter, hotter and hotter. For a moment it felt like your skin was crackling—like firewood popping and splitting beneath the weight of a blaze. From across the field, Leona made a noise like a hurricane given voice, and you bit back a groan.

‘Oh come on,’ you hissed to yourself. ‘Not now, please.’  

And while you’d been mostly referring to the Lion losing another brick of his sanity fort, your wound seemed to pulse at the command—a sensation not unlike the soft drone of the wards carved deep into the support beams of your dilapidated home, and an impression of words tingling along your nerves without any real shape or form. ‘Alright. Later then.’ Like a breath of wind along your fingertips. That pulsing doubled back, and the wrap you’d hurriedly tied around your forearm hummed low with gentle arcana.   

And then the cracking stopped. Just like that. Like it’d given up on eating you alive and decided to head home early for the day.

Huh, you though a bit dazedly, before hurriedly ducking out of the way of another swipe.

You clutched your still smarting but at least now functional arm to your chest, and Leona turned on you and your ethereal booboo with a raging snarl. But then that glowing glare caught on the blood trailing down towards your wrist in too dark, too thick, rivulets and his eyes went wide. It wasn’t much, but the strange bought of shock rocketing through him gave you a handful of seconds of ceasefire. You reached into your pocket with your uninjured hand and pulled out a thick bit of cardstock. This was supposed to be for emergencies, goddamn it! And you’d spent so much money on this stupid little thing! And—

You shook off the mildly delusional complaints bogging down your brain and unfolded the paper between your fingers. The sigils inked into it hummed against your skin, and the rain sluffed off its face like the cold and the damp were no bother at all.

“Fucking—” you flung the talisman at your ridiculous, rampaging, guest. It fluttered like the beat of a hawk’s wings and dove towards him with just as much vicious precision. “GO TO SLEEP!”

The enchantment smacked into his face with an echoing THUNK and you watched those too-bright eyes of his roll up into his head as he collapsed to the ground in a heap.

With the main source of all the Magical Warfare knocked unconscious, most of the miasma began to disperse—like dust caught up in a gale. The rain washed away the rest. It slid into the mud and seeped back into the earth. The plants and animals seemed to give a collective sigh, and some of your more courageous chickens even started to venture in close to peck at the leftover destruction.

You approached the felled Prince hesitantly. The talisman had been meant for subduing an enemy with a more human constitution, so you doubted it would keep him down for very long.

“Hey,” you grouched, poking his side. He twitched a bit but didn’t move otherwise. “Hey, asshole,” you tried again. Still, nothing. Uh oh.

You reached down to wedge an arm under him and hoist him upright. The singed skin of your forearm brushed along his jaw as you attempted to maneuver his bulk, and his nose twitched sharply at whatever scent was trapped in the dark, cracking, gash there. His brow scrunched up like you’d just doused him in spoiled milk, so naturally you went about waving your wounded flesh beneath his nostrils like the world’s strangest smelling salts.

After a moment he blinked back awake, face twisted up into the most properly disgruntled mien of distaste that you’d ever seen on a person who’d only just barely managed to claw their way back into the world of the living.

“Herbivore,” he rumbled, still looking more than a bit dazed.

Good enough.

You manhandled him back onto his feet as best you could—turning yourself into an impromptu crutch to try and get him mobile again. The sand shifted and sank beneath your heels, making dragging his ridiculous, dramatic, ass even more of a challenge. As you hauled him towards your cottage, you complained to him in earnest. Every little irritation under the sun. Half because you’d probably never have another opportunity to bitch at him so thoroughly without getting your own earful of grievances in return, half to keep him conscious—keep him focused on staying here. With you. And not… Wherever it was he’d gone in those moments of delirium.  

“I still don’t get why you call me that,” you griped, readjusting your grip on him when he’d started to slide down to the point his nose had buried itself against your collarbone. “Herbivore. I’ve cooked so much meat for you since you decided to crash here. Talked about how I prepare it, and the flavors I experiment with—I literally gave you some from my own sandwich when we first met! That I ate the rest of! In front of you!—”

When you finally herded him over the threshold and into your little cottage, the wards and their protection slipped around him like the soft current of a stream. You hardly even noticed the way the old magics ruffled his hair—and that was only because you were actively looking, half convinced the house was still about to toss up an invisible barrier and send him sprawling back into the dirt.

Leona wobbled on his feet, and his eyes were still too far away and grey.

You grabbed him by the ear and maneuvered his too-tall self into one of your rickety kitchen chairs. The wood groaned under the sudden press of his dead weight, but it didn’t collapse beneath him so it wasn’t worth fussing over. Once you were certain he wasn’t about to fold over sideways and crumple to the ground (or at least, that he was angled enough over a rug that he wasn’t going to crack his head on the stone floor), you rushed off to your bookcases and shelves and began hurriedly rumaging through your collection of nonsense.

The charms, the charms. Where were your emergency charms?! You’d thought you left them right there on the—Ah! There we go.

You pulled the raggedy binder from its place on the shelf, blew away the coating of dust that had settled over the top of it, and returned to your patient.

You flipped open the worn leather hooks and began sorting through the dozens upon dozens of sheets of enchanted parchment within. They were unimpressive—just small, rectangular, bits of faded paper inlaid with the softest kinds of magic. Not meant for much more than coaxing warmth into chilly limbs or placing a soft kiss over a scraped knee. But medicines were medicines—whether arcane in origin or otherwise. If you—if you just doused him in the things, that would probably work. Right? Of course it would. That made perfect sense.

So you slapped the first talisman square in the middle of his forehead. Leona swayed at the wet SMACK of the paper gluing itself to his soaked-through skin, but aside from the faintest, startled, widening of his eyes, he didn’t do anything else to complain. So you stuck the next charm to his cheek, and then another on the opposite one too.

“Magic overuse is dangerous,” you chastised as you went about layering a veritable novel’s worth of pasty, paper, enchantments up his arms. The soft spells worked their way into his skin, and you watched those twisting, black, shapes skitter back up towards where they’d once sat peacefully curled around his bicep. “Are you trying to kill yourself, hah?!”

Instead of snapping back at you like normal, he just sort of… sat there. Accepting your angry accusations in frosty silence. He absolutely looked like a cat that you’d fished out of a bag in the river. Pathetic, and sad, and droopy. And… quiet. So, very, quiet. You frowned, because as much as you didn’t particularly enjoy being insulted every minute of the day, the Lion’s biting little remarks had become… familiar, at the very least. Even if they weren’t entirely pleasant. Even if he was far from pleasant.

The dampness on his skin was starting to curl the edges of your talismans, and you reached forward with a huff to at least pull the freezing, soaked-through, vest off his shoulders. The leather jacket landed with a wet plap on the stone floor, a cold puddle already pooling around all its stupidly intricate, embroidered, edges. Something fluttered out of one of the open pockets—small, and off white, and crinkled. You stepped over the whole mess to retrieve a pile of towels and didn’t give it a second thought.

“Make a mess of my home, why don’t you,” you complained, dropping one of the towels over the entirety of his head before reaching forward to start drying him off with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. “Drip all over the floors I just mopped, why don’t you. Be emotionally constipated and almost turn my whole yard into a sand pit, why don’t you—”

A hand reached out to snag your wrist, and you let him pull you away from your attempts to rub all that stupidly thick hair straight off his head.

From beneath the curtain of the cotton towel, you could see Leona glaring at the long, dark, scratch curling along your forearm. It certainly wasn’t… nice to look at. The gymnastics of getting him into your cottage had managed to displace the impromptu bandage, so the whole of it was just there. Bruised, and dark, and odd looking. But ugly or not, it was hardly bleeding or anything anymore! And he was the one who had almost just self-destructed in your front yard!

‘Think of the accusations!’ you wanted to wail. ‘Can you imagine the garbage I would have to deal with if I wound up with a dead royal fertilizing my garden?! No thank you!’

But before you could complain about his fussing, his claws flexed against the soft skin of your palm and you saw the muscles along his forearm tense—like he was fighting to keep still.

“You should be dead,” he muttered, terse.

You huffed. “Look, I know you think humans are all sorts of pathetic, but I’m not that—”

“You should be dead,” he repeated, sounding as if the words had to tear their way out of his throat—scraping like shards of glass all the way up.

You stared at his dark eyes and dripping bangs—the shadows playing across his cheeks and the strange, hollow, wrongness that had settled over all of him. With a heavy sigh you plopped yourself down into the chair across from his and dragged a handful of the leftover charms your way. Pointedly, you took one and slapped it over the wound. And then another.  

“See?” you said, flexing your wrist in his grip to put the creeping, black, cut on display. The talismans glowed softly against your skin and the lingering whisps of darkness licking at the the injury began to fade. “All better. Not something a dead person would say at all.”

Leona frowned, but at least it looked a bit more annoyed than outright bleak. And besides, frowns were better than whatever that stoic, expressionless, numbness had been.

“Though I appreciate your concern,” you grinned, pointedly sharp and prodding. Like a toddler standing by with a stick, hoping to poke out a reaction. “Truly, whatever would I do without the Great Lord Lion there to fret over me?”

But instead of the acidic ‘I wasn’t fucking worried,’ that you were expecting, or even a more muted grumble of dissent, Leona’s brow just pinched in displeasure and your awkward attempts at teasing faded into terse silence.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, almost too quiet to hear—his head low and eyes lower.

You sighed and twisted your wrist around to pat at his hand. There was the faintest tremor in his fingers and you tangled your own between them to give him something to squeeze, something to hide the shiver of lingering malaise that he would no doubt deny with his dying breath. You observed the stern, tight, expression warping his otherwise handsome face—the miserable, puckered, angle of his mouth and the way the emerald of his eyes was cut through with a shadow of genuine remorse. You reached out with your other hand to pet at his soft, round ears. They squished flat beneath your palm and your lips twitched up into a fond, little smile. Leona tipped his chin just enough to glower at you from beneath his bangs with no real heat, and you sighed and gave him one more pat for good measure.

“You’re forgiven.”

.

.

.

TAG LIST [CLOSED]

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[thorinthehottotty]

Beorn - Brambles

A/N: This has been sitting in my drafts a while... Might make a part 2.

Summary: Leona finds herself in Middle Earth much different than expected. Not human as she always had been but a skin changer. Gandalf and Thorin agree she could be a great addition! There's only one problem... She can't control her shifts.

Warnings: Smut

When I arrived in Middle Earth, I thought I had died or found an adorable little dream of being a giant. It very quickly turned to a nightmare when I discovered I was infact a giant. Not only that but Bilbo reluctantly took me in after seeing my panic (he'd been rather panicked himself seeing me appear in a small vortex of darkness) apparently there was no sound and the poof I was there and the vortex was gone.

There was no preparing me for how I looked.

The tail was the first clue things weren't the same. A long thing that had an tuft at the end. I had reached for my face. My long hair trailed down into sideburns, soft ones that just stopped at the ball of my jaw. Bilbo offered a mirror and I was shocked. In my world I was blond, yes, but a soft, whispy blonde, not a mane of sandy blonde that was thicker than I'd ever had it. There was a streak of darker hair, a dusty brown, it streaked down the middle and even crawled down my spine. I had never been so hairy.

That was the only difference. Apparently I had grown to a hefty seven and half feet instesd of my previous height of six foot one. It made Bilbos house cramped and frustrating.

The only change I had zero complaints with was the change in my eyes. Instead of the dark brown, they were golden!

It took quite awhile for me to grow used to the appearance. Especiallu with how folks looked at me. Gandalf was a kind soul with answers for me. A skinchanger, he had suspected. Few left of them, if any.

It was a blow to the gut. I joined him and Bilbo when they decided to journey with a strange company of dwarves. Thorin wasn't happy when he discovered that I had no idea how to shift.

The first time was a painful and exhausting experience. My bones grew and shifted until I was even larger. There was something liberating about it. It was the first time the orcs had found us near Rivendell. It made me feel wild and untamable. Even when I saw the horror in Bilbo's face, I charged several wargs. It helped that I was larger than them. It was surprisingly easy to rip my teeth into their flesh and tear them apart.

They chased us into the secret passage just as an orc slashed me across the face with a sword. When I slipped back into my human form, I had a gash from my jaw to my temple. It didn't heal pretty. I cut my hair too, much to the horror of the dwarves. It made the fur of my feline form (much like that of a lion) long and unmanagable before. So I cropped it short.

In Rivendell I had a dream. It unsettled me. I dreamt of a bear, larger than any I had ever seen, running through a forest, chasing me. I couldn't shift in the darkness of the approaching night. All I could hear was my heaving breaths. All I could feel was the cool dirt under my feet and the racing of my heart.

I mentioned it to Gandalf and he seemed to grow worried for a moment. And then it was veiled by a reassuring look. He didn't join us in the misty mountains, not until he helped us escape. And again with the eagles.

Everytime the orcs were near, it made my skin prickle and stretch and I was forced into my second skin. I nearly had Azog when I was scooped up by talons. I had was so exhausted from my shift it I barely made it off the carrock they dropped us at.

"Gandalf," I call just as Bilbo scurries over rocks to peer where the orcs would be riding near. I smelled something unfamiliar and it stirred something greatly unsettling.

"Shh, dear."

"Gandalf we need to leave." I snarl quietly. Thorin casts me a glance when the old wizard brushed me off.

"Why?" He demands quietly.

"I can smell something. This is no place for us. There is a warning for us to stay away. We are in grave danger here." It was the best way to express it. Thorin looked at his other dwarves. We weren't at the edge of the border yet, but it was nearby.

A distant roar catches my ears and an involuntary rumble leaves me. I have the insinct to run far, far away from here. Thorin did not like my sudden animal like terror. It was unfamiliar too him. Orcs and wargs I would attack, he'd never seen my flight instinct.

Bilbo scuttled back then. "How close is the pack?" Thorin demands.

"Close! Too close, a couple of leauges, no more. But that's not the worst of it." Another rumble left me a those words and many of the company looked at me.

"The wargs picked up our scent." Dwalin guesses.

"Not yet. But they will do it. We have another problem." Everyone circled around him.

"Did they see you? They saw you," Gandalf guesses.

"No that's not it."

"What did I tell you? Quiet as a mouse," Gandalf proudly bolsters. Bilbo's anxiety seems to grow as no one seems to pay him heed. They all begin to give proud statements of it. My low snarl cuts them off.

"What did you see, my friend?"

"What form did it take?" Gandalf's sudden graveness has me tensing. "Like a bear?" He ignores me snapping to my full height to glare at him.

"Y-yes!" Bilbo gasps in shock, frowning in confusion. "But bigger, much bigger." I feel my heart sink to my stomach and a hand rises to cover my mouth. "How did you know?" Gandalf passes a glance to me.

"You lying fucker," I snarl at him. All this time he knew about my dreams. And still he did nothing for it.

"You knew about this beast?" Bofur demands glancing between us both.

"I've been having dreams of it everynight since my first shift and he's promised me it's nothing! That's what I'm smelling, isn't it?"

"I say we double back!" Bofur calls as Gandalf turns and wanders in another direction.

"And be run down by a pack of orcs?" Thorin snarls. This begins the uproar of voices that chatter nervously.

"There is a house, it's not far from here where we might take refuge." Gandalf murmurs slowly.

"Who's house?" Thorin demands.

"Where?" I call as well, dreading the answer.

"Are they friend or foe?"

"Neither. He will either help us. Or try to kill us." My gut says it's the latter. I sigh and the howling of wargs, the scent of it near by, mixed with the unfamiliar scent of bear apparently, has my skin rippling.

I give a pained groan and mutter a quiet 'oh no'. The company is pressing back as I double over, they'd seen it twice now to know to give me as much space as possible. I give a whimper of agony as my bones and muscles contort themselves.

"Calm, Leona, calm yourself."

"Calm myself!" I snarl back. "You expect me to calm myself?" A crunch has me dropping to my side to writhe in pain. My cries louder than they'd like but no one bothers to stop the reaction. Next thing I know, I'm furry and angry. My clothes ruined.

I look to Thorin, plenty ornary for the both of us. And off we all go, me hot on their tails. Gandalf directs us from the back as the sound of a mighty roar fills the air. We were fucked. He leads us right to the house, the bear fast. Maybe I can slow it down, lead it another direction.

Gandalf calls to me when I pause, only nodding them on as I turn toward the trees. They sprint onward, only Bilbo being the one to shout about it. Thorin tows him along by an arm.

When the bear breaks through the undergrowth my heart thuds in terror. It was much larger than myself. I figured it'd be the size of a grizzly and I could fight it fairly. Boy was I wrong. The great beast was enormous. Twice my size at least.

He skidded to a halt. I lowered myself to the ground a bit more and gave a mighty roar. A challenge to this great beast as he snarled loudly. And we were off. He chased me through the trees, thankfully not as fast as I was, but it was close.

He abruptly veered and I realized we were clise to the house. The dwarves still weren't there yet. I could here them shouting as he approached. Now was my turn to chase him.

The slammed the door to the house in his face. It wasn't latched as he snapped his teeth at them. I did the only thing I could think of and barreled into his side. He roared as I shoved at him, knocking us both from the door.

I was to my feet and running as fast as my tired legs could take me. But he was right on my heels, still livid. I tore off across a feild, dogding frightened animals that fled in out wake. Just as I reached the woods, wargs howled again and I felt the inate reaction drive you toward them, a different fire in me.

This big creature seemed to do the same. Animal insinct to kill those nasty orcs. They too fled at the sight of the two oversized preditors. Finally, as the sky darkened, I'm reminded of the dream and all at once I'm shifting back without warning. I gasp in horror and surprise, scuttling to my feet as I feel the creature's attention on me once again. It hurts but adrenaline numbs the pain. Stumbling about, I hear him quickly approaching.

I shriek when something closes around my ankle and jerks me down to the ground. It isn't painful but a big weight is on top of me all at once, pinning me as hot breath brushes over my ear.

"How stupid are you, little cub?" A voice snarls behind me, shocking me into a stupor. I am flipped when the weight is lifted. An enormous man glowers down at me, his golden brown eyes glaring. I shiver under his naked form and his scent hits me like a ton of bricks. He was a skinchanger as well! I gulp as he bares his teeth down on me, glancing lower. "Not a cub, just stupid."

I can't bring myself to say anything as he drops his nose to my neck and breathes in a trembling breath. The air changed. It was heavy and desperate all at once.

We latched onto each other desperately, teeth digging, nails biting. It felt so natural for me to open my legs for him and for him to stretch the most delicate parts in a way I never had been. Even as a man, he dwarfed me. I found myself rutting against him furiously as we clawed in pent up energy. I vaugely remember crying out in ecstacy and begging for more.

When he'd finished shortly after I had, a howl filled the air and he dragged off of me, wild eyed. "Back to the house with you. Go." He barked. I could barely walk but I made it in an hour, feeling the drippings down my thighs. This would not look good. So I prayed they couldn't tell what I had done. The naked factor would be enough.

I knocked at the door, weakly. My bones hurt still, I was exhausted, but my whole body hummed. I have no idea what had come over me, but my legs were weak.

The door flew open and I stumbled in, dropping to my knees as someone cloaked me. "Are you hurt?" Bilbo rushed me, dropping before me. "Did you kill him?"

"No, no. I'm okay. The shift's just taken a lot from me. You didn't tell me he was a fucking skinchanger too." The latter was directed to Gandalf. The wizard smiled sadly at me.

"So you two met then?"

"Quite the greeting," I grumble. "He told me to return here when the wargs circled back. He took off towards them."

"We thought he was torturing you." Bilbo's words had you chuckling.

"Hardly."

"Then what was all the screaming?" Kíli asked.

I clear my throat uncomfortably. "Uhhh..."

"He defiled you!?" Thorin roared, oddly perceptive.

"Relax. It was pretty mutual," I offer awkwardly. The dwarves stare in shock, Bilbo's jaw dropping nearly to the floor.

"You... You..."

"Can we just get some sleep, please?" Among the hay, Bilbo offered me a spare tunic that could fit me. Apparently he'd been holding onto extra since Rivendell.

Tomorrow I would have to face the strange bear-man that I had let take me in the forest. I'd have to ask him if that's how he greats all skinchangers...

@tomisbaeholland @fizzyxcustard @dabisburntnut

[nicolealiasas]

Everything You Need to Know About Menstrual Cups

All the details on where to buy, how to use, and everything in between. Get ready for some ~very detailed~ information on menstrual cups.

What is a menstrual cup?

As what you can obviously tell from its name, a menstrual cup is a feminine hygiene product that women use during menstruation; and yes, it is shaped and functions like a cup. It is similar to a tampon in a way that it is inserted in the woman’s vaginal canal to collect menstrual fluids. However, it is washable and reusable--for up to five years!

Menstrual cups have just recently gained popularity, but I found out that they were actually invented around the 1860s and 1870s! However, the first modern version that is closest to the ones available in the market today wasn’t invented until 1937 by Leona Chalmers (Source: Lunette.com).

How do you use a menstrual cup?

The menstrual cup is inserted into the vaginal canal through some folding and inserting techniques. Different brands have different shapes and sizes, but basically it collects blood and tissue from inside the vagina. If inserted correctly, it should not cause any leaks, as it will create a seal inside you. But don’t worry! It won’t get stuck in there. I’ll discuss those concerns further along this article. As for insertion techniques, you may watch this video for very detailed instructions on how to insert and remove menstrual cups.

Is there any preparation needed before using a menstrual cup?

Modern menstrual cups are made of medical grade silicon, so they are very safe and don’t need any special cleaners before use. They just need to be disinfected by boiling in water for at least 5 minutes before and after every cycle. You may just use a mild soap and clean water to clean the cup in between use. Cups also usually come in special little bags, so it is important to wash those at least every three cycles.

How does it feel?

It’s definitely quite uncomfortable and awkward during the first few days or cycles of using a menstrual cup, especially as you try to figure it out. Every body is different, so the size, the method of insertion, and the length of the stem, will all depend on your body and your level of comfort. It is very important to be comfortable with your own body before using a menstrual cup, because (if you watched the video in the link) you will really have to go in there. It is your body, after all, but I do understand that there could be some level of discomfort for some people. What I can say from my experience is that panicking will only make it harder for you. When you panic, your vaginal muscles contract, and will just make it more difficult to properly place your menstrual cup inside you. So, just take a deep breath, relax, and be comfortable in your own skin. It is also very, very important to cut your nails really short because your nails will hurt you if they are not trimmed, and can cause damage to the material of your menstrual cup.

Once it is properly placed inside, you shouldn’t feel it at all! You can forget about it for up to 12 hours, depending on your flow. Amazing, right? In some cases though, you may have to trim the stem of your menstrual cup, especially if you have a low cervix. You’ll know that you need to trim it if the stem peeks out of your vagina when the menstrual cup is inside, and it is no longer possible to push it in further. Just keep in mind to cut the stem little by little until it is comfortable, taking care not to puncture the cup. Some people say it is okay to cut off the entire stem, but I recommend that you leave just enough of the stem to grip with the tips of your thumb and index finger.

Is it messy?

I’m not gonna lie; you will definitely have blood on your fingers, especially when you take it out to clean. However, I think using sanitary pads is way more gross than using a menstrual cup. You know how gross it is when you try to pee when you use a sanitary pad, and you get to see and take a whiff of smelly oxidized blood? Yeah, you won’t get that with a menstrual cup because period blood only smells bad when it is exposed to air. But since the blood stays inside you until you take out the cup, it won’t actually smell like anything but regular blood. You will, however, have to take out the cup and tip it over the toilet to dump out the contents, so touching blood is definitely possible. We also expel uterine lining, so yeah, not all of the contents will magically fall off into the toilet as some of the tissue will cling to the cup. Simply wash the cup in the sink with clean water and mild soap, pat dry with a clean tissue paper, and you’re good to go!

Can I wear it while swimming or doing exercise?

I usually wear a tampon when I go swimming while on my period, but man, the menstrual cup is a LIFE-CHANGER. I was able to use my menstrual cup on two different beach trips, and while doing exercises like yoga and spinning class--yes, spinning class!! The first time I used my cup to the beach was when I went to Real Coast & Surf with my friends. I left the house at around 5:30am, and arrived in Real at around 10. I didn’t have to take out my cup during the trip, which I would have had to do with a tampon. I wasn’t scared of leaking or having a toxic shock syndrome, which is usually associated with the use of tampons for more than four hours. The second time I used it to the beach was during a family trip to Cebu. I was able to use it for a 6-hour long island hopping and snorkeling trip without worrying about having to change in the middle of the sea at all! For yoga and spinning class, I didn’t really feel the cup inside me at all, and it didn’t leak!

What are the things I need to consider before purchasing a menstrual cup?

Well, first of all, it is very important to mentally prepare yourself for the shift. Using a menstrual cup is quite invasive, even for people who have used tampons before. But there’s really nothing to worry about; it is your body after all. I myself learned so much more about my body since I started using a menstrual cup. Different brands also have different shapes and sizes, so you will have to assess yourself based on what is available in the market. Brands usually have guides on what to buy on their websites anyway, so there’s no need to worry. As a general rule, though, women below the age of 30 and those who have not given birth through normal delivery should get a small cup. Since the cup is inserted into the vagina, right up to the cervix, it definitely will break your hymen. No, it does not take away your virginity 🙄 Besides, virginity is a social construct (but that is another topic for another blog). However, if your culture or belief dictates that your hymen must remain intact until a certain time, you may have to reconsider your beliefs. Kidding. Talk to someone of authority about it, preferably your mom or any woman you feel comfortable with, before you purchase your own menstrual cup.

Is it expensive?

Getting a menstrual cup is definitely an investment, but it saves you more money and the environment in the long run since it is reusable and does not require replacement for up to two years--although some people say that it could last 5 years or even forever with proper care. The one I bought is at Php 1,199.00. If I use an average of 15 pads per cycle, where each pad costs Php 10.00, I would be spending around Php 3,600.00 on sanitary pads over the course of two years. The menstrual cup is definitely a cheaper option by Php 2,401.00! Tampons are much more expensive and need to be changed more often than menstrual cups!

Where can I buy a menstrual cup in the Philippines?

I only know of one local menstrual cup brand called Sinaya Cup. They are a social enterprise as well, so you know that you’re doing more good beyond yourself and the environment when you buy from them! For every Sinaya Cup sold, they will be able to provide cups to girls in underprivileged communities who need the proper feminine hygiene products the most. You may purchase it on their website or in various stockists. I bought mine off-the-shelf from Roots Katipunan.

Final thoughts...

Basically, I am advocating for the use of menstrual cups! It is cost-efficient, environmentally-friendly, and very convenient. It may seem like a small thing, but using a menstrual cup has really empowered me as a woman. We didn’t choose to have our menstrual period every month, so why do we have to keep suffering further with ~traditional~ feminine hygiene products that only make our lives harder than it already is? Women should be able to use products that fit our lifestyles without the negative stigma attached to internal-use products such as menstrual cups. As women, we have to power to own our bodies and our menstrual cycles, it is OUR bodies, after all!

I wish this blog entry has answered your questions about menstrual cups, and I hope that it has encouraged you to get one for yourself! If you have further questions, just let me know in the comments section below! :)

[dilatorywriting]

Monster Mayhem: Lion's Pride [PART 2]

Gender Neutral Reader x Leona Kingscholar Word Count: 4.3k

Summary: There is a Lion living in your chicken coop. This sounds like the setup for a really bad joke--you wish it was.

[PART 1] [PART 2] [PART 3]

There were wards carved into the wooden pillars of your small cottage that had existed long before you’d made your home here, and they had an ancient, cloying, sort of magic to them that always left you feeling swaddled in bubble-wrap comfort—safe and secure. Even against angry Skin Changers banging down your door.

“You won’t be able to cross the threshold unless you’re invited,” you called, hoping it might deter him from actually destroying your entire porch.

There was an irritated growl from the other side that sounded an awful lot like he was probably still going to wind up trying to put his claws through the paneling, so you pulled the door open once more and stepped aside with purpose.

“You are not welcome,” you said, cheerful, before gesturing for him to try and step inside.

The Lion Man sneered at you, his ears flattening pissilly atop his head as if such a fluffy show of irritation could ever be intimidating (even if he wasn’t drenched down the bone), and he moved to make his way into your home. But when his sandaled foot reached the threshold, he stopped. You watched as his brow furrowed and something darkly frustrated slithered across his handsome face. There was no great arcane barrier or explosion of magical prowess—just a gentle shudder you could see creep along his limbs as he tried to force himself to move and couldn’t.

“Was there something you needed?” you asked, after what was perhaps a too-long moment of watching him stew in a mucky mix of rainwater and his own burbling rage.

He scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning up against the well-beaten doorway like the slouch was supposed to be intentionally casual, and not because he literally couldn’t move anywhere else.

“I need your help,” he said—demanded. He stared down his nose at you like you were some sort of unpleasant looking bug crawling across the floor.

“Alright,” you shrugged. “And…?”

“And what?” he demanded.

You rolled your eyes towards the ceiling and mercifully gave him through a silent count-of-ten to try and figure his shit out. When all he did was curl his lip at you like a petulant noble in court, you sighed and turned back on him with a cheerful, customer-service, quality smile.

“Thank you for your inquiry,” you chirped. “But I’m afraid I’m all full up for the day. Good afternoon.” And closed the door in his face yet again, but this time with a polite, little, wiggle-wave of your fingers as you went.

The next morning arrived altogether uneventfully. The rain had stopped sometime during the evening, and the lingering moisture had left your little homestead shrouded in a lovely cloud of fine, glistening, mists. You headed out into the soft chill with a pleasant hum and armfuls of treats for all your critters.

And then you noticed that there was an extra animal making itself at home in your little farmyard—one that you’d assumed had eventually given up and stomped back whichever way he’d came.

The Lion Man was sleeping in your chicken coop—perfectly contentedly, too. Which you wouldn’t have expected from a near mythical creature dripping in precious gems and who spoke with all the haughty self-assuredness of someone who’d never been told ‘no’ in any way that mattered.

You glared at him for a moment or two, hoping the searing irritation in your frown would be enough to poke him awake. But the Lion Man just laid there, cozy as a clam in his bed of shredded hay.

“You’re scaring Penelope,” you huffed, loud, and tossed a handful of seed by his feet.

The birds squawked and hopped up to peck brainlessly at the treats—unbothered by the predator lounging in their nest. The rustling of their feathers and tap-tap-tap of their little beaks at least seemed to finally wake the lazy Lion Man, and he opened one glowing, emerald, eye to glare balefully at you.

“They don’t seem like they give a shit,” he rumbled at you, voice still thick and syrupy with sleep. And indeed they did not, bopping around without a care in the world. Your aforementioned Penelope had even shuffled herself into the Lion’s lap to reach some of the seed that had fallen into the folds of fabric pooling at his hips.

“Why are you in my chicken coop?” you asked, as polite as you could manage. It still sounded like you were giving yourself a root canal.

He stood with a languid stretch and your birds clucked at him irritably for a moment before settling into the warm spot he’d vacated.

“It was raining,” he complained. Like it was obvious.

You pinched the bridge of your nose and tried again. “Why are you still here?”

“I already told you, herbivore,” he yawned. His long, white, canines, glinted in the morning sunlight. “I need your help.”

You sighed a miserable sort of sigh and fought the urge to dig your thumbs into your eyes.

“Forgive me for not jumping at the opportunity to assist the person—or, sorry, whatever it is you are—who abandoned me to die in a hole,” you harumphed, turning pointedly to start trudging back to your cottage.

“You got out, didn’t you?” the Lion griped, slipping forward to dog at your heels.

“No thanks to you!” you accused, jabbing a finger in his direction. He rolled his eyes and you could practically feel the steam leaking from your ears. “I helped you once already,” you pointed out testily. “Twice, if you count all the rations you gobbled up. And you still left me behind without a second thought! Why should I bother doing anything else for you?”

His face twisted up into something sour. The grin he shot your way was all sharp teeth and vinegar.

“Ahh, that’s right. I should have remembered—humans are only willing to barter their aid if they’re going to be repaid in kind. So. Tell me. What do you want then, hmm?” He scoffed. “Wealth? Power? Protection?”

You stopped at the door to your home and spun on him, angry.

“This has nothing to do with being repaid,” you seethed. “This is about decency!”

He scoffed again and you fought the urge to just hurl the entire basket of seed into his smug face. Because you were clearly the adult in this situation and needed to act as such. Sure, Mister Lion Dude looked close enough to your age, and you knew well enough of Magic Beasts to understand he was probably decades your senior—if not entire generations—but clearly a wealth of time left no account for manners. So you were going to have to step up and be the mature one here, and not waste an entire week’s worth of grit on the petty urge to upend it all over his stupid head.

With a heavy sigh that was more a gust of incompressible cursing than anything else, you placed the basket aside and turned to him with a stubborn pout.

“Alright, then. A deal—as you’re so insistent that you know exactly what every one of us stupid humans wants. I’ll help you again. If—” you declared, “—you say you’re sorry.”

He frowned, that righteous loathing giving way to a heady mix of even more irritable confusion.

“I have nothing to apologize for,” he snipped, turning his nose up at you.

“Then I have nothing to help you with,” you smiled, barbed, and swiveled to retreat into the safety of your cottage. “Good afternoon, Mister Lion. And please don’t eat my chickens.”

The Lion did not, in fact, eat any of your chickens. Or your geese, or ducks, or even the little rabbits that lived in the walls. He’d passed out beneath one of the overburdened fruit trees that grew along the edge of the forest and slept there for the entire evening—sprawled out amidst the roots like the rough bark was as comfortable as any other luxurious bed. He was still there now, snoring softly beneath the gentle, yellow, warmth of the morning sun.

You watched him for a few quiet moments, throat catching on a curious little hum. You wondered how long he was planning to skulk about your little homestead. You wondered how he wasn’t cold and miserable every night. And surely he must have been ravenous by now. It’s not like you’d seen him eat anything.

So you raided your icebox for leftovers and heated them on the stove until your cottage was filled with the cozy smells of well-seasoned meats and sweet, berry, tarts. You packed up the meal into a neat, little, box, wrapped it all up in a tea towel to seal in the heat, and then dropped the thing in his lap hard enough to startle him awake.

The Lion glowered down at the mesh of checkered fabric in obvious distaste. But then the scent of what was tucked within said wrappings must have made its way to his nose, because some of that ire seemed to melt away and he sniffed curiously at the air.

“Thank you for not decimating my livestock population,” you said.

“You told me not to,” he snapped, tail whipping angrily at his rear. He reached out to pick at the folded edges of the parcel with a perplexed sort of expression twisting at his mouth.

“And you didn’t,” you responded with a shrug. “It’s appreciated.”

With that, you left to go about your daily business. Your garden needed tending, and one of the corners of the fence needed a new patch to keep it upright. You also hadn’t seen much of your foxes since Lord Lion had decided to make himself at home, and you wound up spending far too much time crawling around on your hands and knees—looking under bushes and into holes as you waved around a juicy chunk of roast beef in hopes of tempting them out.

There was the telltale crunch crunch of someone stepping through the dirt to stand at your side, and you glanced up to see the Lion Man looming over you with a heavy scowl—arms crossed loose over his chest.

“Is this what you do? Everyday?” he asked, sounded insultingly incredulous. His face was twisted up into a sneer that was entirely unimpressed. “Crawl through the muck like a worm?”

“Not every day,” you said after a moment of consideration. “And worms don’t have limbs. I’m more like a cockroach, maybe.”

He scoffed. “And you have the nerve to think that you’re too good to help me.”

“I never said that,” you frowned, sitting back on your heels and brushing some of the dust and grass from your pants. “I just said you needed to apologize first.”

“I’m not sorry for anything,” he said again, just as put out as before.

You waved a finger at him in a gentle tut-tut. “Ah, but we’re making progress. See, earlier you said there was nothing to apologize for at all. Now at least you’re recognizing that there is, in fact, an anything.”

You swayed your way back to your feet before he could launch into another rant about your mortal ridiculousness.

“A friend of mine hunted down a White Moor Stag last week,” you said, brushing the last of the grit from your knees. “It’s supposed to be delicious, and I’ve had some of the cuts marinating for a while now. You see, it’s this whole mess with orange zest, and molasses, and these little Red Eye chilies that I’ve been growing for ages now—”

The more you rambled, the more constipated he looked. So you cut yourself off and rubbed at the back of your neck, just toeing the wrong side of embarrassment.  

“R-Right. Anyways. I’m going to be cooking some of it up tonight to try. So—Well,” you waved your hand awkwardly around your head in a gesture that even you weren’t entirely sure made any kind of sense. “If you apologize before then, you’re more than welcome to come in and have dinner.”

He scoffed. “That’s not exactly a worthwhile offer when we both know you’ll just end up bringing me some tomorrow either way.”

You sighed.

“Probably,” you admitted. “Well. See you in the morning then if you’re still around, I guess.”

“You’re terribly accommodating to unwanted guests,” he sneered after you as you climbed the set of stairs that made up your teeny porch, and you waved him off with a grumble.

What was so wrong with being civil, huh?! You liked to think that your little cottage was homey and welcoming. You took in weird guests all the time! And you liked being known as that awkward but friendly recluse who could offer a wandering adventurer a fresh set of laundered clothes and a good meal. It was how you’d met all your other friends. Odd as they all were. In fact, if you were being perfectly honest, in comparison to some of your other compatriots, Mister Lion really probably was the most societally acceptable definition of ‘normal’ out of the bunch. Which was—not to rag on your dear friends or anything—but that was certainly… Uh…

You spent the afternoon shuffling about your kitchen, and then a long evening searing the meat to perfection. It tasted absolutely divine—totally ‘making noises not meant for polite company’ and ‘curling your toes under the table’ levels of yummy. You happily set aside some portions for your friends whenever they inevitably stopped by (with an extra-large and prettily packaged one for your Hunter), and then packed a small box of leftovers to set at the front of the icebox. Just as the Lion had said you would. Because unlike him, you were nice. And kind. And really didn’t want him to get hungry enough to start eyeing your chickens in earnest.

The next morning when you ventured beyond your front door, you noticed something a bit odd.

Your brow scrunched and you shifted the little box of meats into one hand so you could use the other to poke around your very neat looking garden.

“I don’t remember weeding this yesterday…”

Nor had you had time to fix the fence amidst all your fox chasing. Or prune the berry bushes. And normally your trimming was not quite so, err, ugly, lopsided, like the work of a toddler with safety scissors imperfect. More of a scorching, really, than any kind of clipping. There was a soft dusting of glittering, arcane, sand scattered along their roots.

The Lion snorted and snatched the food from your hands with a scowl. It was a weird, tiny, twisty expression—and way more performative than he’d probably intended it to be.

“Then you must be even stupider than I thought.”

“Huh,” you mused, plopping yourself down on one of the low-cut stumps and resting your chin in your palm. You tried to hide the amused tick of your lips behind your fingers. “I hadn’t thought that would be possible. What’s lower than a base zero?”

“Negative numbers exist,” he sneered and sat cross-legged in the grass across from you to devour his plundered meal.

You hummed and rifled around in your pockets. You unearthed another wrapped treat and passed it his way.

“Thank you for cleaning up,” you said.

He scoffed and took a too-large chomp out of his food, eyes averted towards the ground. “Whatever.”

The Lion followed you around the rest of the day—always at a distance, and always with a perpetual cloud of scathing comments settled about him like a swarm of buzzing bees. You just hummed through the streams of pessimistic angst and continued your chores. Mostly he just watched you toil away. Occasionally you’d toss him a berry from a bush you were replanting, or share some bites of the granola you’d tucked into one of your pockets. He accepted each treat with an upturned nose and absolute indignity. But he ate each and every morsel, and you noticed him go back to swipe another berry when he thought you weren’t looking.

He still outright refused to apologize, so you took your dinners alone. But he did help you move some thorny branches, and didn’t even complain too much when Penelope the Chicken made herself a nice bed in his lap. You brought him one of your spare blankets—a big, old, fluffy thing that you’d once hoped would be a bit magical, as you’d spun it together from some enchanted wool. It was not, which was disappointing. But it was still warm and pretty, so that was fine.

The Lion scoffed at it, but you just left the folded-up mess of soft fluff by his side with a pointed pat-pat-pat before returning to your own cozy bed for the night.

When the sun rose the next day, you woke to a familiar, scraggly, redhead at your door. Ace smiled at you through a layer of grime thicker than the shirt on his back, and you immediately herded him out towards the backyard to dunk him in the pond.

“What did you even do?” you asked, upending another bucket of water over his head. “You look like someone tied you to the back of a horse and dragged you the entire way here.”

He shivered petulantly. “I didn’t do anything! I swear! And nothing happened!”

Splash went the next bucket.

“Nothing I didn’t deserve,” he corrected, and you handed him a towel as a reward for his vague attempt at honesty.

Eventually Ace managed to weasel his way out of the frigid pond and into a fresh set of clothes. He sighed, content, and set about lounging in the sun like a fat, lazy, tom cat. Which, speaking of lazy, lounging, cats…

You glanced around your little farm, but your new Lion companion wasn’t anywhere to be found. Huh. How strange. You retreated back into your home to collect some of your leftovers before returning to your friend. You carefully balanced one of the boxes atop the fence as you went, just in case the Lion did come around looking for a snack.

You handed the other to Ace, and his mouth nearly started watering at the sight.

“No Deuce this time?” you asked, peering back out towards the dirt road—half expecting to see the warrior sprawled out in a ditch or something just a few paces down the path.

“Nah,” Ace sighed, kicking up his feet and letting out a heaving sigh that sounded like it weighed more than the thick, traveler’s, pack usually strapped across his shoulders. “He stopped back in town to drop off a letter for his mom.”

Ace moved to dig into the food in earnest, and you lit up at his enthusiasm.

“This is from that Stag,” you beamed, and his face went a bit pale. “Remember? The one we could barely fit through the shed door even when we got all six of its antlers off? I finally got around to cooking it.”

“That Hunter brought this?” he asked, looking more and more uncomfortable by the second.

“I mean, who else could kill a White Moor Stag?” you laughed, and Ace’s expression was shifting into something that looked a bit too close to sea-sickness for someone sitting in a soft patch of grass in the heart of a landlocked prefecture.

You reached forward to pluck up a bit of one of the juicier steaks between your fingers and shoved it firmly into his mouth. The indignant spluttering that followed rapidly melted into near moaning, and whatever hesitance was brewing in that empty skull of his dissipated in the face of such a pure, culinary, masterpiece.

You leaned forward eagerly when he began to shovel the stuff into his mouth like a dying man inhaling his last meal. “How’s it taste? I tried using rinds this time in my marinade instead of just the orange pulp, and also tried whole ginger slices rather than the ground up kind, and—"

“Yeah, yeah,” Ace waved you off around a mouthful of half-chewed meat. “Food magic, and fancy things, and whatever. Can’t you just let me enjoy this stupid, terrifying, meal in peace—”

A clawed hand slammed down over the top of the makeshift lunch box with an echoing ­­thwack, and the redhead lurched backwards with a startled squawk.

“If you’re not going to bother listening, you don’t deserve to eat it,” the Lion huffed, snatching the portion for himself and gracefully folding his unfairly lithe limbs to plop down at your side.

“You’re one to talk,” you blinked, taken aback at his sudden appearance. And blatant hypocrisy. Like. Come on, dude.

He was close—far closer than he was normally willing to get to you and your human cooties. Practically slotted up against you from hip to shoulder. His tail curled up and around your wrist and you could feel the tip of it twitching irritably against the soft skin at the heart of your palm. That aloof, emerald, glower of his was fixed on Ace with just a touch too much ire to really be considered indifferent, and his ears were pressed down into stiff, flat, lines atop his head. You blinked again, wide eyed and a bit confused. Huh. Maybe he just wasn’t a fan of strangers.

“When have I ever interrupted one of your ridiculous tangents?” the Lion snipped at you, pointedly popping the thickest, juiciest, slice of the bunch into his mouth. It shredded like tissue paper between his canines and Ace audibly gulped.

“You make faces at me,” you argued petulantly, and immediately felt like a toddler.

“But I always listen,” he shot back, equally as bitchy. And also… surprisingly earnest. Even if he was being as miserable about that sincerity as he was about everything else.

His green eyes flicked down to meet yours for a moment—two, three, four—before swiveling back towards Ace and narrowing all over again. And yeah, you’d assumed that the Lion had looked irritated with you plenty of times before, but the sneer he was giving Ace was all sorts of unpleasant. Rivaled only perhaps by that open, spiteful, hatred when he’d turned to bear his fangs at the metal spike trap twining around his legs and keeping him trapped in that pit.

His lip twitched up, almost like a snarl, before he continued, “Even an herbivore like you deserves that at least.”

Then the Lion reached around you to snatch the checkered tea towel wrapping from its place discarded at your friend’s feet, jostling you ridiculously all the while and practically bullying you into his lap with his flailing elbows in the process. He idly wiped the mess of sauces and drippings from his fingers before tossing the fabric back into the dirt—this time at his feet. You rolled your eyes at the petty theatrics and shot Ace one of your patented ‘man, what a day, am I right?’ looks, that he responded to with an expression that looked more like someone had just punched him in the nuts and threatened to wear his skin as a suit than it did any sort of real life, rational, human, emotion.   

The Lion’s arm tightened from its place at your waist—where he’d lazily left it after that initial reach around. You settled back against him with a good natured, if exasperated, huff. At least he was warm. And honestly a much nicer seat than the damp ground.

“Uhm—” Ace choked. Cleared his throat. Tried again. Choked harder. “Who—Who’s this?”

“Oh,” you hummed, pensive. “Actually. That’s a very good question. I don’t really know.”

The Lion Man practically groaned into your neck. Ace looked like he wanted to put your head through a wall.

“This entire time,” the Lion hissed. You could feel the imprint of his canines bumping up against your skin as he grit his teeth. “You didn’t even know who I was?”

“No?” you frowned, confused. And then, rightfully indignant, “It’s not like you ever introduced yourself!”

He pulled himself back with a sigh that sounded like it was the only thing standing in between a gruesome murder and whatever fragile sanity he’d managed to wrangle together. He straightened—posture going rigid and regal. The claws at your waist flexed into the breezy fabric of your shirt and his tail tightened along your arm.

“I am Leona Kingscholar,” he declared, proud. “Second Son of the Sunset Savannas. Heir to the King's Roar.”

Ace started choking all over again, and let out what sounded vaguely like a strangled ‘holy fucking shit.’ You waited a moment, shifting through the catalogue of names and places in your head before drawing a complete blank. So you simply nodded as best as you could while squashed up so close against him and offered your own name politely in return.

Ace gawked at you. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

You frowned. “What are you talking about? I was just being polite!”

“This is—He’s—!” your redheaded friend just barely managed to splutter out past his obvious terror. “Leona Kingscholar is a Warlord. He’s an ancient terror—He’s—He’s a General, and a monster, and the fucking Changeling Prince whose family rules over this entire goddamn continent, you absolute fucking halfwit!”

Your brain seemed to evacuate the premises all at once, and you were left gaping like a fish out of water. Mouth opening and closing as if of its own devices. Just. Not a thought passing behind those wide, horrified, eyes of yours. Eventually you managed to tilt your gaze up and up until the back of your head thunked against your guest’s shoulder. You stared at him in outright consternation and he simply arched a handsome brow, entirely unimpressed by your apparently lackluster deductive reasoning.

“…is that all true?” you asked haltingly. He rolled his eyes at you.

“More or less.”

“… and you’ve been sleeping in my chicken coop.”

Leona snorted. “I have.”

You turned back to Ace, a creeping sort of dread slithering through your gut and clawing up your spine.

“Oh no,” you said. With feeling.

“Oh fucking no indeed,” he wailed, and dropped his head into his hands.

.

.

.

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[dilatorywriting]

Monster Mayhem: Lion's Pride [PART 1]

Gender Neutral Reader x Leona Kingscholar Word Count: 3.8k

Summary: You fall into a hole. There is something in the hole. Something with teeth, and claws, and a garbage attitude to boot. Today is not your day.

[PART 1] [PART 2] [PART 3]

Let it be known, that of all the ways you could have died in your miserable and unlucky life, falling into a pit trap had not been on the list. Or, well, if it was, it hadn’t even managed to crack the top ten. And that was what was making this whole ‘sudden demise’ thing feel really pathetic.

On top it also being an uncovered pit trap. No subterfuge or class to speak of. Just a big ol’ hole in the ground that you had waltzed straight into. Ace would keel over dead laughing if he ever found out.

It was a pretty nice trap all things considered. The walls were dug into some strange sort of stone rather than just packed earth, and rings of fresh talismans curled along its sides like hundreds of ugly finger paintings. Certainly something so impressive had not been built to catch some lowly, little, idiot such as yourself. But you were here now, so that was your captor’s problem.

You were wandering aimlessly around your new prison when you stepped on something weird, and long, and thin. You paused, brow furrowing in confusion, and glanced down at whatever had found itself wedged under your heel. And, hey. That was odd. It sort of looked like a—

There was a horrible, screeching, snarl, and you wheeled back in hysterical panic as an honest-to-god lion lunged from the shadows—jerking its tail out from beneath your boot and swatting at you with its absolutely massive claws that could definitely take your eyes out. And half of your face. And probably your brain too. You fell backwards on your ass in an ungraceful heap and immediately scurried back towards the opposite wall as fast as you could. You were one-hundred-percent ready for the lion to just follow you into your little corner and murder you dead, but instead, it just stood its ground—growling, and spitting, and whipping its tail back and forth like a rattlesnake.

The thing was absolutely massive—bigger than you thought a lion was supposed to be, at least. Weren’t they just, I don’t know, like the cat equivalent of wolves? Because you’d seen plenty of wolves before on the road, and they’d never been so… looming, in themselves. And size aside, the beast was just weird looking. With thick, ash-brown, fur cut through with strange, almost geometrical, whorls of black. Now, you didn’t know much about lions (they weren’t exactly native to your little, forested, corner of the continent, after all), but weren’t they supposed to be regal? Or something? With lush, red, manes and tan hides that glowed majestically under the sun’s light? Not some… scraggly looking monstrosity with too-large canines and limbs stained in black like it’d taken a hike through a field of ash.

Its eyes were the strangest part of all of it—a sharp, emerald, green that cut through the gloom of the pit with all the efficiency of a dagger. One of them was bisected with a thin scar that ran crookedly from brow-to-jaw. They were eyes that spoke of an intelligence that no animal ought to possess, let alone one that was perfectly capable of mauling you to death without the aid of functional brain cells.  

You continued your silent inspection of your new nemesis, and when your gaze hesitantly fell to its hind legs, you jolted in surprise.

Iron shackles.

Or, more specifically and horribly, a spike trap. A grim, metal, contraption that would snap into its victim like a vice, and then unfurl row upon row of jagged barbs—tangling them up like an unfortunate bug caught within the web of some really fucked up, sociopathic, spider.

You winced in sympathy, out of habitual concern for your fellow down-and-trodden if nothing else. The lion, with all its eerie intelligence, seemed to notice the pity flickering across your expression and put every single one of its too-sharp teeth on display. As if to say ‘how dare you?’  You held up your hands in surrender, hoping it looked placating and not threatening, and smooshed yourself even harder up against the wall.

After a few more moments of grumbly glaring, the beast dropped back down to the ground with a pissy huff and closed its eyes. Clearly, you weren’t worth the trouble—which was perfectly fine with you.

You gave yourself the rest of the evening to just lie around like a sad little slug and lick your wounds. Falling all that way had hurt, okay? And while the adrenaline rush of ‘oh shit, I’m going to be lunch’ had helped push away some of that initial pain, now that it was fading you could feel every twinge in your ribs, all the bruises climbing your back and the cuts littering your hands.

When the sun rose once more over the mouth of your prison, you stretched as best you could and prepared to make your escape.

Scaling the slippery, stone, walls had proved to be an instant failure. The rope in your pack wasn’t long enough to reach the top, and you smacked yourself in the face with the thing more times than you would like to admit. Trying to find grippy-bits to just crawl your way up the side like a bug hadn’t worked either. The first talisman you touched didn’t spark or bite at your fingers, but it had been seared into the stone with some sort of magic that made it slide like oil beneath your palms. And you’d plummeted back to the bottom with a lackluster thump. The lion had made some kind of huffing noise from its place in the corner, like it was laughing at you. And you fought the insane urge to flip off a creature that could just eat your entire hand in retaliation.

Next you rifled around in your pack, hoping for a miracle. You were pretty decent at throwing together little bits and bobs to create a cheap but generally functional solution. Like the time you’d rigged Deuce’s bow to spit stink bombs as it shot through the air, or when you’d managed to scrounge together a decent fishing-line trap out of Ace’s shoelaces to lure out a rogue pixie that had been cannibalizing your vegetable garden. But you’d only been heading into town for your monthly grocery trip, so the most you had on you were genuinely practical things. An emergency medical kit, a dagger, lock picks, some rations that lived at the bottom of your bag no matter where you went. Nothing nonsensical, and therefore nothing useful.

Your stomach gurgled irritably, and, well, maybe you had something useful after all.

You fished out some neatly wrapped bits of cured meats, and cheeses, and bread. You made yourself a tasty, little, sandwich, and hey? You know what? How many other Hole Prisoners could claim to have such phenomenal catering? Probably not many. You’d take that win, at least.

You were just about to take your first bite when your eyes guiltily swung towards the lion curled up and sleeping at the opposite end of your makeshift cell. It hadn’t even flicked its ears your way when you’d started to loudly rustle around in your bag. And it certainly hadn’t sniffed at the air or anything else dramatic like that when you’d unearthed your packed lunch. Which was… didn’t animals usually go nuts for tasty treats like this? The foxes that snuck around behind your cottage would scream like banshees if you didn’t toss them your leftovers. Even the bunnies that lived in the hole in the wall by your cellar had some food aggression issues.

You tore off a chunk of your sandwich and palmed it nervously.

Maybe if you fed it, it wouldn’t eat you quite so quickly.

You cautiously pushed the stack of toasty breads, and meats, and home-made cheese, towards the beast with the toe of your boot. When it didn’t move, you scooched the offering a smidge further, until it was nudging up against a paw.

The Lion lifted its great, dark, head to bare its teeth at you with a lazy twitch of the lip. You scuttled back as quick as you could, and once you were a fair distance away, it stopped glaring at you long enough to observe whatever you’d just shoved at it.

It nosed at the food with a level of apathy you didn’t think was even possible, before reaching out with a heavy, black, foot, to smoosh it ungratefully into the dirt.

“Hey!” you gasped, genuinely offended. Because you were just trying to be a polite cellmate, okay! Was that really so terrible?!

With a sharp little twist of its paw that looked far too dexterous for something its size, it speared through the meat with one of its curling claws, and raised that from the dejected pile of mush. It popped the chunk of cured ham into its mouth with a satisfied little grumble, and you felt your completely rational and not at all ridiculous discontentment ease. It lifted its head a little higher and its tail swished—not in the whipping, angry, way it had been the other day when you’d squashed it, but the gentle twitch of something closer to a cat lazing about contentedly in a windowsill. The lion kept looking at you then, with those too-cognizant eyes. You pulled another bit of meat from your sandwich and tossed it over. It caught it easily in its massive jaws with that same, contented, rumbling.

“I made that,” you beamed. Because you had. And it had taken you ages to balance out the perfect spice-salt-sugar combination for a proper cure.

The lion looked entirely unimpressed.

You sighed and sat back against the wall with a string of irritable mutterings. The lion made another one of those huffing noises, like it had earlier when you swore the thing was snickering at you. And then it closed its glowing, emerald, eyes and slipped back into its seemingly never-ending nap.

The rest of the afternoon and evening passed in relative peace. Despite its lackluster (read: fucking rude) response to your earlier offering, come dinner time, you still slid the beast a makeshift plate stacked high with meat. It ate the food without complaint, which was better than outright scoffing at you, you supposed. You started to hum some nonsense under your breath, just for something to do, and the lion made a noise like you were physically torturing it. So instead you shifted to folding and refolding the scrap bits of parchment paper from your wrapped rations into ugly, veritably unidentifiable, origami shapes. This was apparently deemed acceptable, as the lion just sighed and rolled over to make itself comfortable for the night. Irritably, you flicked one of the little flowers you’d made at its dumb face. But it shot wide and landed somewhere off by its paws. The beast didn’t even bother to twitch its ear at you.  

The next morning came with little fanfare, and you stared longingly up at the warm light of the dawn.

Your eyes once more roved across the spiraling talismans dripping from the walls, and the great, iron, trap that certainly wouldn’t have belonged to any ordinary sort of hunter.

“You’re not a real lion, are you?” you asked, and the thing had the nerve to roll its eyes at you. You bristled and again had to tamp down the urge to do something very, very, stupid, and which would no doubt end in your immediate disembowelment. “Yes, yes. Laugh it up. I only mean that because—I mean, you can understand me, can’t you?”

Another long, slow, eye roll. Like it was making damn well sure you could see.

It was a lot harder to bite down your anxious ticks and ramblings when you knew you were speaking to something that could maybe speak back, rather than just a wild animal trapped at the bottom of a hole (there was a very good reason you lived in a quaint little cottage in the middle of fucking nowhere), but you grit your teeth and soldiered on.

“Alright then. Fine. I just wanted to say then. Well. I mean—I could… You know.”

When you held out the lockpicks from your bag, the beast’s eyes lit with genuine interest for the first time in this entire nightmare situation, and a teeny bit of your nerves eased.

You gestured to the spike trap entangling its legs and the lion turned to sneer at the mess of sharp ends with a genuinely bone chilling snarl.

“I can probably get that off—unlock the mechanisms, I mean,” you explained. “But you have to, you know—” You made a theatrical imitation of gnashing teeth over the meat of your forearm, “—not eat me.”

The Lion sat up on its haunches and its tail twitched restlessly at its side. After a long moment where you were genuinely concerned that the thing would rather eventually justbleed out and die in its trap rather than let you touch it, the lion raised its head and perked its ears in an imperious sort of way. And then it dipped its chin—a nod.

You scooched forward cautiously, pausing every few feet or so to make sure the thing wasn’t going to change its mind and maul you. The Lion just huffed at you, and shifted to give you better access to the horrible agglomeration of cold metal twisted around its limbs. You reached out carefully, the picks a light, familiar, weight in your hands. It was certainly a complicated looking contraption, but you’d yet to encounter something you weren’t able to break with enough force of will and sheer, dumb, luck. So you grit your teeth and got to work.

After a few minutes of poking, the first spiral of jagged spikes loosed with a rusty groan and the lion noticeably perked up—like it was shocked you’d managed anything at all. You decided very resolutely that you weren’t going to allow yourself to be offended by the implied emotions on the face of an animal, and continued your work. Your tongue poked out of the corner of your mouth as you focused, intent, and slowly—steadily—the barbed monstrosity gave way beneath your gentle fiddling. Every now and again, one of the spikes would ease itself from the lion’s hide, and you had to fight the urge to fuss over the oozing, painful, wounds that were exposed. You were almost there, you reminded yourself feverishly. Just a little more, and—

The last of the iron fell away with an echoing clatter, and immediately the lion reared up with a roar. But instead of lunging at you and your very accessible throat like you feared, it crouched back on its battered hind limbs and craned its head towards the open hole above your heads, and the blue, sunny, sky beyond. A swirl of strange, sandy, magic began to seep from the beast’s mane. The green of its eyes glowed hot and bright amidst the outpour of arcane energy, like the sole light in a storm. And then its fur was fading, its limbs cracking and groaning as they folded in on themselves into something more contained—more bipedal. The strange, geometric, patterns along its coat rippled like living things. They expanded and contracted as the creature did, before eventually settling into some new pattern that you hadn’t seen before.

And there, standing before you now, was a man. Tall, and lithe, and tan. With a head full of thick, dark, hair that looked startling like the mane that had just poofed from existence—except now it was twisted through with braids, and precious gems, and the occasional patchwork of beads and leather. The inky shapes settled themselves along his biceps, curling into the skin contentedly as if they’d lived there all along. There was still a pair of tufted, feline, ears atop his head, and a long, thin, tail whipping back and forth at his rear. His teeth were still much too sharp, and those eyes of his much too feral. He observed his clawed limbs with distaste, letting out a sigh that seemed to rattle his bones.

“Of course it’s still fucked,” he grumbled. His voice was deeper than you were expecting—smoother, too. Like it was meant to belong to someone regal and powerful, someone doling out orders and ruling nations. Not a sad, little, half-man-half-lion trapped at the bottom of a pit with an ever sadder, littler, human.

After a minute or two of what was clearly some very displeased inner reflection, he raised his hands over his head. A pale, dusty, magic swirled along his fingers, not dissimilar to the stuff that had coiled out from his furs. You watched in awe as one by one, the talismans began to burn away—disintegrated into nothing.

Once he had finished utterly decimating what had once been a nearly foolproof trap, he turned and looked down at you for a long, tense, moment with an expression that you couldn’t quite place.

And then he was leaping out of the hole with all the grace of a hurricane—tearing through stone and dousing you in waves of dust and debris as he went. His claws tore into the sides of his prison like it was made of paper, leaving deep, jagged, gashes in their wake. Some of the wall seemed to melt beneath his attacks—collapsing into a thin, sandy, mess beneath the weight of his irritation. With one, final, swipe that shook the pit from base to rim, he leapt out of the dug-in prison cell entirely and vanished from your line of sight. Lo, the Angry Lion Man was free at least. And you? Well—

“Hey!” you shouted after him, enraged. “Thanks for nothing, asshole!”

And so, despite all your hardships and good deeds, you were still stuck at the bottom of a fucking hole.

You stomped around for a bit, kicking at rocks and ranting at nothing. Once you’d tired yourself out enough to think a bit more rationally, you sat back and took stock of your continuing predicament. With the talismans burnt out, you might be able to try climbing out again without slipping down in the messy remnants of gooey, protective, spells. And actually, the guy had destroyed quite a bit of the stone in his rampage. There were enough tall heaps of fresh rubble that you’d probably have plenty of leverage to try and use your rope again.

So you went around collecting all your little scraps of paper, your meager personal items, and any bits of fabric that had been scraped off in the initial tumble. With traps as intricate and expensive as this, it was better not to leave behind any traces of one’s presence. Just in case the owner of said trap tried to go sniffing around for his lost quarry.

The rope ended up being a resounding success, and you hauled yourself out of the pit with a surprising amount of ease.

Once you were out, you breathed in the clean, crisp, air and looked around. Absolutely no sign of Mister Lion-Shifter to speak of. Or, well, there was a clear trail of dusty destruction leading towards the forest, so you would assume he’d run off somewhere in that direction. But you were well and truly alone again.

You shook your fist at the tree line for good measure, before turning around and starting the miserable trek back home.

.

.

Everything was as it had been when you left. Your chickens were quite happy to see you, happier yet obviously to be fed. You greeted the various other woodland residents that had taken to living out of your ramshackle little home (the foxes in particular were quite happy to nibble on the remaining scraps of bread and cheese in your bag). Your garden looked a little munched on, but nothing too terrible. All and all, things were… fine. It was honestly a bit underwhelming.

Later that afternoon when you were dumping out your bag to give it a good clean and restock, a dozen little, horrible, paper creations fluttered down to your kitchen table. You decided you would keep them, ugly as they were, as a kind of trophy for making it out of the Hole in one piece. Look at me, world. I—nothing more than a humble idiot—managed to survive in a Pit Trap alongside some sort of Skin Changing, lion, man. Who only almost mauled me twice. And here are the paper blobs to prove it.

Except—huh. That was a bit strange. You’d made a nice little flower too, hadn’t you? The one that you had tried (and failed) to shoot into the lion’s face. It had been the only piece that looked even halfway like it was supposed to. You’d checked every bit of the hole pretty thoroughly before you’d escaped, so certainly you would have scooped it up. After a moment of silent fretting, you shrugged and deposited the others into a nice, glass, jar. It had probably just been buried beneath the rubble or something.

.

.

Something had spooked your birds. You frowned out the window and into the rain. It was a gloomy, grey, day, and normally all your little farm friends would hunker down in their wooden huts to avoid the drizzle. But you could hear the geese honking and the chickens squawking in that indignant way of theirs as they flapped around and made a general nuisance of themselves.

There was a hard knock at your front door—a heavy, sharp, rap-tap-tap against the aged frame that sounded entirely unfriendly. You snuck a glance through the little, round, porthole and nearly doubled over in shock. You yanked the door open before you could think better of it, and there on your front porch, looking half-drowned and wholly grouchy, was the Lion Man.

His emerald gaze settled on you like a tangible thing that you could feel digging along your shoulders. His lips quirked up into a loose smirk that was entirely feline in its smug satisfaction and unfairly attractive. Especially considering he looked like someone had dunked him in a lake. His round, tufted, ears flicked irritably beneath each drop of rain.

Your brain whirled into overdrive, coughing up wave after wave of scenarios—each more outlandish than the next. Maybe he had come to eat you, to get rid of any witnesses. Or maybe this was the start of some epic quest, like you’d managed to save some Skin Changer Prince or something and were now due to be swept up in some wildly entertaining political drama. Or maybe he had come to thank you finally, after abandoning you so outright. To grovel and apologize for leaving the person who had so selflessly rescued him.

“Well, herbivore?” he huffed instead, crossing his arms irritably over his chest and rolling his eyes at you in a way that was far too familiar. “Aren’t you going to invite me in? It’s wet out here.”

You smiled—perfectly, utterly, serene. And slammed the door in his face.

.

.

.

TAG LIST [CLOSED]

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[dilatorywriting]

Hey bro? Here me out. Naga jamil. He's just a slithery boi

I LOVE nagas. And it fits him too damn perfect.

So far, I’m thinking Skin Changer!Leona, Octomer!Azul (but More Fucked UpTM), Naga!Jamil, and Siren!Vil

[dilatorywriting]

Anon, please take care not to misinform others about different cultures. The way the other anon was using the term Skin Walker in the context of Leona I'm guessing has no correlation or connection to the Navajo mythology or any such First Nation myths. Even if they were specifically using the myths, the mythology of those stories only applies to those who are part of the relevant nation groups and not to those outside them.

It is more like Tolkien's skin changer where they “freely walk in the skin of other men” and not in relation to the Navajo mythology.

That was the hope! In terms of using the Skin Changer attributes! I did do a fair bit of research on both, because I knew what I wanted him to be/his abilities but wasn't sure which term would fit best. And the Skin Walker information I was able to find didn't really match, so Tolkien's Skin Changers (like Beorn) was the aim. But yes. Thank you -- I'm glad that came across. That was also where a bit of my confusion/perplexion at that ask was stemming from, because they are very different things

[dilatorywriting]

Behold! The one best writer in the whole fandom!!!! Your writing is so good I'm in tears!

Here is a meme for a queen like you, please accept this peasant's humble offer 🫴:

And I thought you would choose wherelion! Leona but Skin Changer! Leona is good too 👀👀👀. Can't wait to see who's next on Monster Mayhem!

Our fandom be small, but it is mighty 💚

And I was very tempted on a Were-Lion for Leona, but I feel like if anyone would be a 'Were' anything, it would be Jack. (Also, Skinchangers I feel have some Fae connotation to them, and I would LOVE to be able to incorporate all their stupid hierarchal bullshit and rules into something with Leona because it would drive him fucking bonkers lol). But yes!! I am super excited to start the new ones! I do want to write an epilogue thingy/part 5 for Malleus, but which comes out first will depend on my ability to get over my ingrained secondhand embarrassment of writing, uh, Mature ContentTM (edit: to clarify, I'm not personally uncomfy with any of it, just raised very very Catholic lol)