The little flame had survived three days.

The Mountain had been unforgiving, howling with its wind and furious teeth of frost. Rimon did not expect you to make it through the night, like all of the other unfortunate souls who lose their trail, or are foolish enough to believe they could brave the freezing, unexplored tundra valleys and the frozen crevasses that are his home. Which one was the little flame, he wondered?

You were human and on some level, he harbored a hatred for you that would have shamed the man he once was. There also was something about you, something he could not see, but felt. Visible, perhaps, in the way the Mountain had yet to claim you like all the others. Despite the hours stretching long and horribly frigorific, blistering winds biting at your snow-chilled cheeks you held a stubborn grip to life that stirred within his ancient bones.

Life burned in those chilling veins, keeping you alive while he watched from a distance your futile attempt to impede the inevitable. Death came to all those on this Mountain, a fact he knew all too well. Echoes of a life long stolen from him, and what he's seen with his own eyes. This human, like all others, would succumb.

After the second morning he found that you were still clinging to life, he had stopped calling you 'human' in his mind. Little Flame replaced it, and fascination filled him in a way he had not felt in lifetimes. Long ago the charm of human visitors wore off to a bitter resentment. It was them that try to destroy his Mountain. Taking away the trees and the life of the very nature that has stood a guardian of them for centuries.

It would be a mercy to kill you. He could do it while you slept, make it as peaceful as he could. How long could one survive off of dwindling frost-berries and bark? There was no hunting for his little flame. You would not know where to look like him. You wouldn't understand where the frore offered and where it stole.

He wondered, would you starve or yield to the frozen wind first when your energy finally left you?

Rimon waited. He was good at that. He's spent eons in the silence, standing amongst the frosted fauna, hiding amongst the trees as still as the Mountain itself. His black fur camouflaged by the thick snow that would cling to his steamy pelage.

Standing at 10 feet, Rimon was a wall of furred sinewy muscles. Splintering over his impervious flesh was a coat of thick, coarse black fur. Monstrous in appearance, with deep set, dark eyes that flashed yellow or amber under certain lights. A broad, relatively flat nose with flared nostrils, resembling a cross between a gorilla and a Himalayan Bear. His face was sparse of hair, with dark, blueish-gray leather-like skin, wind-burnt around his eyes and mouth. Broad, massively powerful shoulders and a deep, barrel-shaped chest to house his large lungs to process thin mountain air at extreme elevations. Exceptionally long arms that reach down past its knees, ending in large, powerful hands with thick, claw-like nails capable of scaling sheer ice walls and turning over heavy boulders.

A force of nature and the supernatural beyond, he should cast you aside as he has all the others. And yet, he could not force himself to do so. It was your eyes, he's sure of it. Even from the distance he kept from the fear his form would terrify you, he saw them. The light within them. The little flame, and in seeing it he knew he had lost a fundamental part of himself that he needed to brave his solitude.

He waited. For what, he wasn't entirely sure. There was a chance other humans would come along. Rare, but he had seen it happen before. Surely, someone in the world missed this little flame. He couldn't be the only one left to watch it extinguish.

No one came. Three days was impressive for you to live, and plenty of time for the Yeti to realize... no one would come. A heavy weight settled into his stomach, hearing the whistle between the trees. It was a warning. A storm was on the horizon, one that promised doom and demolish. He judged it would be here by nightfall, and with it, the little flame would go out.

You would be terrified of him. You would take one look at him and scream, he knows it. Would you face death sooner than his protection?

It was a heavy thought on his mind as he came down the steep incline you've made your small, frigid nest. It was a good idea to use the stony wall itself to cut the worst of the wind. He sees your fire, burned down to cinders and flickering against the rising winds. He sees the small crevice you've wedged yourself into with all your belongings that did little to fight the nip.

Three days, he thought with a heave of breath through his nostrils, streaming out like two thick plumes of exhaust. You've fought. Let me shelter your ember.

There you were, frozen half to death, trembling still. Good, he wasn't too late. If you were still trembling, you were still alive. Still fighting. He crept closer and froze at the faint noise that chattered between your teeth, breaking something in his heart he thought long dead. He was aghast to frighten you with the very essence of himself but saw no other choice.

Lifting you into his powerful limbs, he gazed down at your shaking form with his dark alpine eyes, almost tender in their glow. In comparison, you felt like a limp, lifeless doe in his arms. "Hold onto your spark," He whispered in a voice turned raspy from disuse, sounding like snow sliding off too-heavy tree tops. "And I will be your sentinel."

He felt an unfamiliar sensation in his heart when your head turned, thumping your frozen cheek against the heat of his chest-fur and tightened his jaw with purpose. He would bring you back to his cave. He would warm you, he would feed you... and then he would suffer your terror.

The blizzard outside hadn't abated; if anything, the mountain seemed determined to scream itself hoarse. Ice rattled against the high stone entrance like thrown gravel, but inside Rimon’s sanctuary, the world was reduced to the warm, amber glow of the geothermal hearth and the soft smell of damp moss and cedar.

You sat huddled deep within the nest of heavy furs, still shaken by the sheer scale of the storm. Even with the ancient beast’s furnace-like body heat radiating from a few feet away, the claustrophobia of being trapped at the edge of the world—and the sheer, terrifying size of your savior—weighed heavy on your chest.

Rimon noticed.

He sat on his haunches, his ten-foot frame bent slightly to avoid the low ceiling of the recess. His deep-set amber eyes tracked the small, anxious movements of your hands, the way your gaze kept darting toward the howling white abyss beyond the pine-hidden entrance.

A low, raspy sigh rumbled in his chest, sounding like snow heavy on pine branches. He reached out with one broad hand, lifting a small earthen dish filled with rendered fat and dried moss, setting a tiny, controlled flame alight against the smooth slate wall.

"The storm is loud," Rimon murmured softly, his gravelly voice low enough that it didn't echo. "It seeks to make the world feel vast and cold. But within these stones, the noise is all that reach you."

He shifted his colossal form, placing himself between you and the wall. The warm light cast his massive, dark silhouette high onto the smooth stone face.

Then, the terrifying mountain spirit did something entirely unexpected.

Rimon lifted his hands—hands with thick, claw-tipped fingers capable of scaling sheer ice and turning over massive boulders. With agonizingly deliberate grace, he folded his long fingers, bending his knuckles into precise, angular shapes against the light.

On the cavern wall, the harsh shadow of a monster transformed.

A shadow-hare flickered into existence on the stone. With subtle, fluid twitches of his massive wrists, the ears perked up, wiggling against the warm light. The shadow-hare took two quick, hopping steps across the slate, nibbling at an imaginary patch of mountain moss.

Rimon watched your face out of the corner of his amber eyes, his heavy, gorilla-like brow softening completely.

"In the old spring," Rimon rumbled gently, his voice carrying the rhythmic, sage-like cadence of a storyteller, "before the ice claimed the high ridges, the valley hare was the first to brave the melting drifts. Small. Fragile. Yet it outran the avalanche."

With a flick of his wrists, the hare vanished. He shifted his long, furred arms, interlocking his thick fingers. The shadow morphed effortlessly into a soaring mountain eagle, its dark wings beating slowly and rhythmically across the rock face, riding the thermal currents of the cave's heat.

"The wind thinks it owns the sky," he continued softly, the shadow-eagle sweeping down toward the hearth before rising again. "But the eagle merely borrows its breath to reach the sun."

He adjusted his clawed thumbs, and the eagle transformed once more—this time into a heavy, lumbering snow-bear, shaking its head and stomping its dark paws against the stone, exaggerated and slow, causing a small, quiet puff of steam to escape Rimon's nostrils in amused rhythm.

The contrast was staggering. Here was an ancient, divine entity—a creature of brutal myth who could crush a man without a second thought—using hands the size of shield-bosses to construct fragile, flickering light-animals just to pull a smile from your lips.

Rimon rested his arms, letting the shadows settle. He turned his heavy head toward you, his dark face solemn, yet his amber eyes glowing with a quiet, worshipful tenderness.

"Your spark is small, Little Flame," he whispered, extending one massive, warm hand flat on the furs beside you, offering it like a giant, protective shelter. "But while I stand sentinel, no storm shall put it out. Do not fear the dark outside."

The cold didn’t just bite; it hunted.

You had barely made it a quarter-mile down the sheer, ice-caked ridge before the gale tore through your clothes, threatening to rip the breath straight out of your lungs. Every step away from the geothermal warmth of the sanctuary felt like walking back into an open grave. But you had tried anyway—taking advantage of the quiet hour when Rimon had slipped out into the fog to gather wood.

You hadn’t even heard him coming.

One second you were slipping over a patch of black ice, and the next, a wall of dense, jet-black fur and scorching heat cut off the wind entirely. Massive, clawed hands—broad enough to crush a man's skull without trying—haul you off your feet before you can hit the frozen stone. He didn't drop you. He tucked you against his massive, ten-foot frame like a stray ember, ignoring your gasps as he turned straight back toward the peak, his stride effortless against the killing slope.

Back inside the cave, the temperature spikes immediately. Steam rises off his thick pelage as he hauls you straight to the nest of cedar and furs, tossing his load of timber aside with a heavy crash that echoes off the stone walls.

Before you can scramble up, Rimon looms over you. His colossal frame blots out the flickering geothermal light, broad shoulders casting a shadow that feels entirely inescapable. His deep-set eyes burn with a low, dangerous amber intensity—an ancient beast provoked, yet entirely tethered by a desperate, possessive need.

"Frenzied foolishness," Rimon rumbles, his voice vibrating through the cavern floor like a localized tremor. He drops down onto all fours, pinning you beneath the overwhelming weight of his presence without ever putting his full physical mass on your fragile frame. Plumes of hot, furnace-like steam roll from his flared nostrils, washing over your cold skin. "You run from the only hearth on this peak straight into the mountain's jaws."

He reaches out, a single massive, dark-skinned hand sliding around your waist with surprising, agonizing tenderness, pulling your hips flush against his groin as he settles between your legs. The heat radiating off him is suffocating, intoxicating—a violent contrast to the frost outside.

"Did you think your people were waiting below?" His raspy tone dips low, rich with a heavy, protective lie designed to seal your world within these four stone walls. "The valley below has succumbed to the white death, Little Flame. The ice has swallowed their timber roofs whole. There is nothing left down there for you but silent graves. Your kind is fragile. They broke."

His heavy, gorilla-like brow ridge lowers, amber eyes tracking the rise and fall of your chest. The surge of adrenaline from tracking you down—from the sheer terror of almost losing his only spark—has stirred something primitive and ravenous in his ancient chest. His large, claw-tipped fingers trace up your ribs, pushing your damp clothes aside to feel the frantic flutter of your heart against his palm.

"You belong to the mountain now," he murmurs, his gravelly voice dropping to a low, possessive growl that shakes your very core. "You belong to me. But I see the wild panic in your pulse. You still look at the frost as if it offers life... as if you wish to flee my shadow."

Rimon shifts closer, his massive, furred thighs trapping yours beneath him, blocking out every line of sight until your entire universe consists only of his dark, leather-like skin, his amber gaze, and the intense heat beating off his chest. He dips his heavy head down, his dark, wind-burnt lips brushing against the sensitive curve of your throat, inhaling the sharp, sweet scent of your fear and warmth.

"If my stone sanctuary is not enough to hold your heart," he growls softly against your skin, his broad chest thumping heavily against yours, "then let me give you a reason to stay. Tell me, Little Flame... must I consume you completely until you forget the world below ever existed?"

(~ <3 ~)