M - if you walk away, i'll walk away

Harlowe D'Angelo · 03-04-2011, 12:30 AM

[html]

WARNING This thread contains: strong violence starting with the 2nd post. Reader discretion is advised.

Date: 20 Feb (backdated)

Setting: The Dampwoods, between Dawn's Breath and Musquodjrgiejg Valley.

Time: Dusk

Character Form: Optime

Word Count → 558 :: 8D

It was not supposed to happen like this.

Everything was wrong, horribly wrong -- he was supposed to have come home to Mother to find love, acceptance, and all the attention and doting he had received as a small child. Harlowe and Mother, together again. Instead, he found he had a new half-brother, far younger and far more irritating than he could have thought possible. Scorpius, however, was no longer an issue -- the boy had not followed Harlowe once since the fire, and Harlowe was infinitely glad for this. He did not think he could have withstood one more second of the dark-furred boy after him like a shadow. Scorpius aside, however, nothing else had improved -- contrary to Harlowe's thoughts, that with Scorpius confined and injured, he had not received one more iota of his mother's attention.

There was a peculiar gauntness to the male that had not existed before -- while he had been kept after and fed quite well as a youth, allowing his flesh to fill out, he had no such luxuries as an adult. No one would feed him, and so he subsisted on the rats and other small creatures he could find, as well as carrion and whatever other scraps he could procure from the kills of other canines. This diet did not afford him proper nutrition, of course, and so the lanky male had begun to starve. Each rib stuck out of his fur plainly, and his dull jade eyes had acquired a peculiar hollowness, one wrought of not only his immense hunger but also the madness that had truly taken hold on the young male.

There was little socialization for Harlowe anymore -- he did not think he had entertained a single conversation since the fire, and while he was quite happy that way, it wasn't doing his fragile psyche any favors. Left to his own hyper-intelligence and vivid memory, the pallid youth had nothing but his own increasingly mad thoughts to entertain himself. Harlowe roamed outside of Anathema at will now, barely seeking the space he had claimed as his own, ignoring -- for perhaps the first time -- the written word entirely. Neither a book nor pencil had been clutched in the Zepar's hands since he had first come to Anathema, making the whole production of moving from Dahlia de Mai to this pack rather useless.

The old scent of death caught the youth's nose, and he followed it eagerly, trampling through the snow with carefree indifference. He did not feel the cold as it bit and snapped at his fur, chewing through to the skin beneath. His coat was not particularly thick or well-kept; the boy simply ignored whatever coldness and tingling occurred within his body. Food was more important than that, and he would not find any food in the relative warmth of the Anathema caves. The chocolate-tipped wolf stopped, circling around on a patch of snow before dropping to his knees and pawing at the snow madly, drawing the frozen corpse of the raccoon from the snow. Though it had been dead a week or two, the snow had preserved it relatively well, and after briefly smelling, Harlowe set to devouring, finding it safe to eat. Scavenging hardly bothered him -- the gnawing, ever-present hunger had long erased whatever shame he might have felt.

Login




Remember me Lost Password?