Vanished

Warning: Contains talk of physical abuse

The room fell silent as Claws shook from head to toe with raged frustration. Pepper, a mere twig next to the muscular husks of Claws and Onora, shrunk behind Onora till her bushy hair nearly swallowed him. She sighed and gave him a pitiful look.

“Ya gave him the knives, ya?”

Pepper swallowed and scratched nervously at the scars over his missing right eye, “Y-yeah.”

“Then that’s it then.”

“Wha-? That’s it?! C’mon now!” An incredulous voice boomed from the small gathering, and a large portly plant, with impossibly greasy vines for hair, made his way to the front. He shoved a few people aside to get there. “We don’t get nuthin’ more than that?! This is BAYA we’re talkin’ bout! She don’t jus’ make to disappear!”

Claws turned on the plant with a glare, “I already told you, Birr! THAT’S ALL WE FOUND!”

“So ya jus’ gave up?!”

The two began bickering while Onora sighed and played absentmindedly with her hair. The rest of the guild shrunk back, letting the two argue for what felt like ages. And Tora?

“Well, did YOU want his shitty knives?” Claws snarled.

“No one wants his stupid fuckin’ knives!” Birr spat back. “We want answers, ya fuck!”

“Where is he anyway?” Onora offered casually.

They stopped and looked back in unison to Tora’s usual corner near the back of the room.

Tora was gone.

He’d left shortly after Claws first started shouting, climbing his way out the back window with whatever he could grab unnoticed on his way out. A few pocketed coins from Needles and Sheridan, a vial of poison off Blaine, a loaf of bread off one of the worktables and he was gone. He was done mourning, or rather he didn’t have time to. Claws’ angry cries had snapped Tora back to reality, and reality didn’t look good. Baya didn’t go anywhere without her daggers. If there was any clearer a sign she wasn’t coming back, it was the fact that they now stood in Tora’s hands instead of hers. She wasn’t coming back, and that meant Tora had to leave. Now.

He made his way back to his pod home back on the Weeping Isle, hoping it’d be awhile before his guild realized he was gone. Not that he could stay there long, he had to pack what he could run with and go.

While he scrambled about the pod, shovelling clothes and trinkets into a leather

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