Ribbon.

Lucky was inside of him again, and thin slivers of light were slipping in between the cracks of the curtains drawn around their cage. Sodre shifted, and whined, and got fingers tightened around his hips for his trouble. He immediately went slack again and tried to refocus. Don't think about it. Not the light, not the rising day, not the Sand standing just outside who might be able to see everything soon…Lucky flinched, and tensed, and came inside of him; shortly after, he was asleep again. Sodre waited, counting long minutes as the dim dawn swelled and flushed and grew suddenly brighter around the cage, before reaching down between he and Lucky's slick bodies to help complete their separation. Lucky stirred, but did not wake.

Outside, rustling indicated that some of the Sand were waking. Sodre tensed, helplessly - there was nothing to be done about their exposure. They were nature, incarnate - the burning definition, the manifestation of what the moon had ordered. To have the curtains drawn back and the Sand find him, prone, with Lucky still inside of him, was nothing in the grandness of her approbation.

So what did it matter, anyway, if the Sand saw them mate? Well, Sodre thought, turning over on his opposite side under the blankets to look at Lucky in the mostly-darkness, this is private. Lucky is mine only mine, and our mating is not for simple eyes. The Layer cast a tender eye over his mate; sleeping, his wolfe looked peaceful - there was no hint of the heat evident in his expression, no intimation of the savagery that was to come. It was only in the sheen of his skin, in the tenseness of his muscles, and in the faint scent which Sodre's sensitive half-Layer nose could detect, that there lay some indication of the young wolfe's state. Lucky trembled, and winced and opened his eyes.

The Sand left them blessedly alone until late morning.

+++

Later in the day, when the sun was well risen, Iwwi poked his head nervously through the curtain of the captives' cage. With some caution and reverence, he peered in at Sodre. The Layer was awake, covered modestly with a blanket and crouching in the middle of the cage. Iwwi grinned.
"Tsst!" he hissed; Sodre jerked his head up. Iwwi peered nervously over at the unconscious wolfe and licked his lips. "Soo-roo OK? OK from mating?"
Sodre nodded and went silently over to the opening in the cage cover.
"Yeah. I'm OK." he furrowed a tired brow. "I guess Lucca told you."
Iwwi nodded.
"Want come out?"
Sodre checked nervously over his shoulder, hesitant to leave his mate but needing badly to answer nature's call.
"Yes. Come out."
Iwwi glanced distrustfully at the sleeping human.
"Him come out?"
Sodre shook his head rapidly.
"No. He stays."
Iwwi, looking relieved, began to reach for the cage's lock. Sodre glanced over his shoulder one more time, then amended,
"But we'll have to be quick."

+++

By the time Sodre had washed and relieved himself, almost ten minutes had passed. Anxious, but not wanting to reveal too much about why, he rushed Iwwi through his motions and back towards the camp. Iwwi allowed himself to be hurried, but only on the condition that Sodre answered all of his incessant questions.
"So mating OK? Mating not hurt? Heat gone?"
Sodre sighed.
"Yes, mating OK. No, heat's not gone. And no, mating didn't hurt."
Iwwi made a surprised, then a skeptical sound.
"You not half-Sand. Mating hurt you."
Sodre cast an irritated, confused look at Iwwi and walked faster.
"That doesn't make any sense, Iwwi. Why would mating hurt me just because I'm not a half-Sand?"
Iwwi shrugged and lazily shifted his grip on his weapon. They were growing complacent, Sodre recognized, seeing this. If there was a time for escape, it would be soon. Perhaps if Lucky could get his wits about him…
"Mating no hurt half-Sand. We special. Papas say special."
Sodre rolled his eyes. The unshakeable faith that these kids had in whatever their Sand fathers had told them was becoming a bore.
"Yes, very special." Sodre agreed distractedly.
"We like papas, so we not hurt." Iwwi said, proudly. Sodre shook his head and ran a hand over his wet curls.
"I don't know what that means, Iwwi."
Iwwi sighed a long-suffering sigh, then stopped abruptly.
"Look." he said, then shifted his weapon to his opposite hand, held out his bare right arm, and concentrated. Slowly, before Sodre's very eyes, the extended arm shimmered, grew faint, and then seemed to shiver with energy. Sodre had to blink away the confused feeling of watching it, and when he looked again, the arm was…there, but not there. Rather than a solid article, it had become particulate, almost insubstantial…as it if were built of grains of sand. Iwwi smirked proudly.
"See? Like Sand." He shook the arm and it returned to its original state; much more easily, Sodre noted, than it had left it. It was eerie, seeing it, although he'd always heard the rumors. The things that fade into nothing - dispel like sand in the wind...
"So we get mated, not get hurt." Iwwi continued, disrupting Sodre's thoughts. "Not even if mate very big. If hurt, we go sand."
Sodre, who had already begun back towards camp, halted his progress to stare at Iwwi.
"Your fathers told you that?" he asked, his voice filling with some mixture of irritation and disbelief and comprehension and annoyance and sorrow - the potent amalgam of realization. In the lacy shadow of the tree canopy, Sodre looked into the golden eyes of the little half-Sand who had become his sometime-friend, sometime-keeper and sometime-enemy, and felt nothing but the raw realization of what was going to happen to him.
"Your fathers?" he repeated.
Iwwi, not understanding, but clearly sensing the change in Sodre's demeanor, became suddenly recalcitrant and wouldn't answer; he kicked at the ground instead.
"Iwwi?" Sodre persisted, and the half-Sand grunted - an affirmative. So it was true.
Sodre thought of his own father, and had a longing to be home with him, and with his mother, and Lucky's parents, too, in their big den in the valley where One Eye and Old One would bring back fat birds to make their dinner. The half-Sand had none of that, had never known it. And he never would, if this plan - their supposed mission - went through.
Iwwi was scratching at his clothes again, a sign of feral discomfort.
Sodre gentled his tone and pulled back from the half-Sand's space, accommodating him as one might a skittish animal.
"Why would your fathers tell you that, Iwwi? About mating?"
The half-Sand glanced nervously up the path, then cast about as if expecting to find the answer in the trees. His brow furrowed.
"Because….because be safe." he decided, finally. "So be safe. In case."
Sodre tilted his head to one side, innocently.
"In case what?"
Iwwi shrugged, and it was clear he felt truly uneasy now. He kept shifting his grip on his weapon, moving his weight from one foot to the other.
"Need go back. Check on human."
"Tell me about in case." Sodre pressed. "What might happen?"
Iwwi flushed and began to walk a little, haltingly. He frowned as if struggling for an answer, then shook his head.
"No know."
Sodre followed him, persisting.
"Do you think you might get mated?"
Iwwi stiffened, but the flinch lasted only a second before it was gone and his faith in his father was restored.
"No. We little. And we half-Sand. No need mates. No get mated."
Sodre felt a pang of desperate, unwilling pity for these half-grown monsters who had stomped and shot their way across he and Lucky's peaceful life. They didn't know. They really didn't know.
"And," Iwwi added, his brow furrowing again, "we half-Sand." he glanced sideways at Sodre to see if he'd understood; the Layer hadn't. "Half-Sand…" Iwwi cast about for a word. "…lonely."
"Lonely?"
Iwwi frowned and chuffed out a frustrated breath.
"Alone. Nobody want." the halfer hesitated, looking even younger than usual. "Sand good. Half-Sand, half-good. Nobody want half-Sand."
Sodre stopped walking.
"Iwwi." he said, and his voice was so gentle now that the half-Sand slowed his pace and looked back over his shoulder and gave a questioning grunt.
"They're going to mate you." Sodre said, simply, wanting to avoid confusion if he could. "The men who we're going to see."
Iwwi's eyes widened, then slitted and disappeared beneath a fringe of hair as he dipped his head.
"No." he said, mostly to himself.
"Yes."
"Papas say - "
"Papas lied, Iwwi."
Iwwi went still and said nothing. Sodre stepped forward, reached out a hand to him.
"Listen, don't go to the Louts. If you go - "
"Have to go!" Iwwi burst out, nervously, his fingers clasping and unclasping his gun. "Papas say important. Have to go!"
Sodre shook his head.
"No." he said, "You don't. If you go, you'll get mated. And you don't want that. Not to a Lout. They're dangerous, and they're ugly, and they're vicious, and they're - "
Iwwi made an odd sound, and shuddered and shimmered and Sodre jerked backwards, away from the spectacle. Iwwi made the sound again - this time directed at him - and black eyes shimmered in an odd face as the illusion of humanity shivered and warped under the weight of the Sand, showing through.
"WE NOT GET MATED!" Iwwi screamed at Sodre, loud and swift enough to frighten the little Layer.
Sodre put his hands up in a placatory gesture.
"OK. OK. But, Iwwi, if that's not what's going to happen to you, then why would your fathers send you on this mission, alone? Have they ever sent you anywhere, alone, before?"
Iwwi hesitated.
"We bigger now. Too small before."
"Why would they tell you what to do about mating?"
"Because if - because if not safe."
"Then if it's not safe," Sodre said, slowly, "Why would they only arm three of you?"
Iwwi's eyes widened.
"No know." he said, quietly.

+++++