It was there. It was getting bigger...It was there. It was getting bigger. Expanding on the inside, reaching out, like a precious flower that waited far too long to be caressed by the Sun. It had already spread its limbs, reminiscent of wire coils, rough and powerful, ready for a deadly embrace of a python.
Something would snap soon. August finally saw it.
It was one thing watching Arthur growing restless with each passing day, and it was a completely different one to be able to feel it himself. The impression of impending greatness hovering above and within. Scary, and beautiful, and oh so very ancient.
Arthur described it as a rough, undefined tingling at the back of his scull. It spread, as he said, from there, travelling his skin all the way down the spine, making short human hair stand on end.
To the wolves he still appeared a paragon of serenity, which helped them disregard odd muffled sensations they got from the World. August, however, knew better than that.
“It is the fourth night you cannot sleep,” he said placing his palm on Arthur’s nape as he approached his friend sitting alone and completely motionless, like a statue, on the balcony.
“So it is,” the bear answered, sounding very tired and contemplative. “I cannot get it off my back, both… literally and figuratively speaking.”
Arthur and August huffed in unison.
“I see.”
It was hard to tell what exactly the vampire meant by that, but everything Arthur needed to apprehend he already knew for sure.
August understood.
It was not rare for them to share a moment of silence filled with these special kinds of familiarity and awareness, but without officious meaningfulness that could easily overload their razor-sharp senses.
“Vincent is restless too,” Arthur stretched his back, still looking over the roofs of half-sleeping city. “He’s not an old wolf, but he’s the most powerful pack leader I have around, may be that’s why…”
“You worry that he won’t hold the awareness of his pack in proper place, am I right?”
The bear sighed.
“In all honesty, I don’t know. I don’t like anyone knowing, or rather… feeling this way. At least, the way I feel it. I wouldn’t mind sharing, but…”
August just nodded. He kept silent, ushering his companion to continue.
“It is as if the core structure of our world is being broken down to the basics and getting ready to be re-assembled. But why or how - that is something I cannot yet tell.”
He finally looked directly at the vampire.
“I am afraid,” Arthur said slowly, not comfortable with the concept of fear. The ancient spirit in him regressed to a lesser creature, if only for a moment. This, being the clear sign of upcoming changes, only added to the trepidation that settled deep within him these days.
As August’s hands closed around relatively small human form of the werebear, there was a glimpse of a thought on how this said frame could oh so easily break every single living being populating the city. Arthur wouldn’t do it, of course. Definitely not to him, and not to Lucius. There were ties that bound much stronger than concepts of socially accepted constructs that mortals seemed to like so much.
Such a simple and ordinary gesture as an embrace gave Arthur a much needed sense of imaginary safety, cutting off all the residual signals the World was so insistent on imposing on him. He wondered once again whether there were many of those who felt the same and if they had their own way to survive this inescapable expectation of changes.
His own coping mechanism, setting everything right with a mere presence and word and touch, wasn’t half bad at all.