O~o Weird.
Daemon didn't really notice the other wolf passing by, too caught up in his memories of the fire--though, really, if he paid a bit more attention and panicked a bit less, it was not so bad as all that. It burned, yes; it hurt, yes. But it didn't burn as much as the fire, and it didn't hurt more than an ache or a sting--more than sunlight on sunburn, really. It was the memory that incapacitated him, and he had no way of leaving it behind, anymore than he could gain his old life back. He knew, without that memory, that he would be the man he used to be.
He saw a vague figure above him, and choked slightly, the shape not fitting in with his memory. Nor did the frantic whispers; he'd heard his parents shouting, and his siblings crying and screaming, but no one had been in the room with him. He opened his mouth, attempting to ask who the stranger was with a mouth that no longer spoke, and instead let out a half-whimpering sound, confused but slowly calming down. This didn't fit; he wasn't in the fire. He was...in the sun.
The slap and the following words snapped him out of it completely, and he looked up through the blood and the tears, still shaking slightly but more in control of himself than he had been before. He reached out shakily and grasped for his cloak, making soft grumbling sounds in his throat. He used the edge of a bandage to wipe the blood from his face, holding it there to stem the flow and huddling under his heavy cloak, ashamed of himself.
He lifted the edge of the hood enough to look at the packmate he'd scared, and tried to convey with his eyes how sorry he was--though in truth he wasn't very effective at that, either. He pulled the cloak tight around himself and hunched together again, burying his face in his knees and becoming a formless black lump as he tried to make himself stop shaking. Even the memory was enough to scare him; he knew better than to come out in the sun. He wondered what Fion had been thinking, letting him stay out here on his own, before he stopped wondering about everything, and tried simply to feel.
Image courtesy of Watchsmart@Flickr; table by the Mentors!
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