“Find something?” 

Frisk can hear it in Terrence’s voice — the long, round, smug syllables, the drawl of his amusement as he catches up to her and clocks the old drum caught around her foreleg.  She flattens her ears, reflexive by now, and shakes her leg again.  The hide of the drum is brittle by now, flaking and crippled by age; it tears apart like paper in water-dark strips.  

Something rattles in the body of the drum, wet and clogged.  Something stains the body of the drum, too — spreads dark across the thin, failing wood.  Drips down to bleed into the damp soil of the Moors.  The smell is sharp and metal.

Frisk yanks her hoof free.  The drum thumps when it hits the ground, all its resonance dulled to nothing. 

“Is it bleeding?” she demands of Terrence. 

“Maybe?”  His shrug is dismissive; he casts a bright eye across her, checking for harm, finding none.  “Sometimes things bleed.” 

“Yeah, like your face, maybe, but generally not drums.” 

“The Moor’s like that.  Did you wanna try to bang on it with a stick next, or what?” 

“No.  Thanks.  Let’s go.” 

She shoulders past Terrence; feels the glint of his smile at her back as she canters up the next long sloping rise towards drier land. 

Behind them, the drum spills thin, wet red across the marsh, leaking sluggishly into the scarred earth.