Fenrir glances up to the night sky. The stars call out to her, begging for her to return home in a way she cannot explain. They twinkle, almost tauntingly, their freedom urging her to earn the same.

It’s been weeks since she was captured. She’s walked miles behind the vulture caravan, muzzled and shackled. Chains dangle off her limbs, the collar around her neck locking her anthro pelt away. Restrained to her feral form, the thick leather around her maw preventing her from speaking to the other enslaved moonsingers.

She glares at a vulture walking by. The one who orchestrated her capture. He gives her a predatory grin, then stops in front of her and crouches to her level. “This is where your kind belongs, you know.” He says, pushing her jaw into the dirt with his talons. “Beneath the talons of a greater, older species.”

Oh what she would give to bite those talons off right now. To deprive a catharion of their legs is to cripple them in a way not even a mangled wing can do; social exile. They may still exist in the same space as other vultures, even nobility, but none are to look upon them. To see a catharion’s legless form is a great dishonor.

One Fenrir would die to have. Dishonor isn’t what she cares about right now, she got that when she was captured. She would give anything to kill two birds with one stone.

He smirks and stands back up, moving his talon off of her skull. “You could earn your freedom, you know.” He says suddenly. “A moonsinger like you is much more useful in warpaint than in chains. I’ll give you a night to think about it.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She can feel the eyes of the other moonsingers on her. They know it’s true. Their bodies are worn from abuse, muscles intentionally left to weaken so they can’t fight back until they’re broken.

Fenrir stares fire into the back of the vulture’s head as he walks away. She will not be broken.

Another moonsinger slave comes to sit beside her. Although unmuzzled and unchained, he does not speak to her. In the desert, there is nowhere for him to go, nor anyone to call for help. They know he isn’t brave enough to flee, as in the daylight he wears blinders. He has no idea where he is, and is nothing more than a watchdog.

Broken, she thinks of him as he lays his head on her shoulder, but unchained. It makes her angry. That being broken in would come with more freedoms than whatever she should call herself now. She isn’t sure she is unbroken anymore.

The world around her spins, and a vulture man approaches her to feed her. “I… know this sucks for you,” He says, loosening the tight leather wrapped around her jaw enough to allow a spoon through. “But I hope the water I stole for you can help make it a little better,” His voice is barely audible even to her sensitive ears, but it gets through.

The bowl has no food in it, only water that she hasn’t had in days. She tilts her head back to drink in a way her body in its current form was not made to do, but she knows if she chokes and alerts the other vultures, she will get them killed or punished severely.

He smiles in a way that she finds strangely comforting, quelling the raging fire in her belly enough to allow her some rest. He whispers a gentle apology as he tightens the muzzle back up, but with a little room left inside. As she lays her head down, in the back of her mind lies that offer from the first catharion. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad?