Leaving them unattended in the same room had been a terrible mistake.
Capricorn realized her error too late; it came to her only in shrieking cries and a sharp snap of pain that felt like her mind was being pulled apart. She stumbled, dropping the book in her hand to grip the sides of her head.
"Move!" Captain's voice felt distant even where he had come suddenly to stand at her side, but his presence gave her the clarity she needed to sprint out of the library after the screams and hisses winding through the house. A clump of fur lay in the hall, a spattering of blood not too far after that. For <********> sake, they were fast. Too fast. By the time she was outside on the dunes there was sand flying every direction.
It was honestly her worst nightmare. Rook had been a problem child from day one, and Frenzyheart more so after they had all returned from the war, but together... they did not get along. Neither possessed the social graces to leave the other alone and with each week that had crept by the tension slowly built and built until finally it snapped. The two elders thrashed in the sand, Rook kicking furiously with unintelligible hissing and Frenzyheart attempting to seize her by the throat with his jaw, snarling and snapping. They were far too large for Capricorn to intervene without risking her own safety, but each blow that landed sent another lancing shock of pain through her head.
Perhaps she had split her soul a few too many times.
"Enough!"
Rook moved first, writhing out of the other's grip and backing away from the deep gouges they had cut in the sand. Her spines bristled, chest heaving in barely contained rage. "He needs a leasssh!" she bellowed, "He iss nothing but a wild beassst!" Her tail lashed back and forth, smoke pooling around her feet as her anger roiled within.
"And you're not? Look at yourself! This stops today." Frenzyheart finally turned his attention to her, dark eyes wide with a feral sort of gleam. His fight or flight response was still fighting for supremacy as adrenalin coursed through his thin frame. Capricorn could see the high-strung tension, could practically feel him teetering on the edge of a total meltdown. He had nothing to ground him, nothing he could understand on a simpler level beyond words that had long since lost their meaning. A cut over his left eye was slowly oozing blood down his face.
He huffed and puffed a moment more, catching Capricorn's scent on the sea breeze before he finally began to let his guard down. Every few moments he cast a wary look in Rook's direction as if waiting for the moment where she chose to attack again. Finally he let out a grunt and laid back onto the sand, soaking up the warmth and letting it calm him as best it could. He couldn't understand the words themselves, only the tone and the body language. It was something they had struggled to help him with, only to lose what little progress when he had been ripped into the Inbetween.
What could they fix?
"You," Capricorn started, nodding in Rook's direction, "Are going to help me sort this out." The demon let out a wailing howl at this, rolling her head back dramatically and swiping a paw through the sand.
"What musssst I do? Perhapssss you will sstop nagging me, then?"
"Captain was a nightmare when he was younger," she continued, stepping slowly closer to Frenzyheart. Capricorn crouched alongside him, carefully patting his bony shoulder and smoothing the ruffled fur. "After he became a father he mellowed out a bit. Less of an a**. Frenzyheart has done well with little ones in the past..." She trailed off and looked up to see Rook's horrified expression. There was no holding back the toothy grin she gave in return. In the back of her mind she could feel the demon's fury raging beneath the surface, although she was far too mortified to act on it.
"If it works... then I'll stop nagging you."
