in the slipping of the sun

Tlantli Kimaris · 01-22-2012, 10:32 AM

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This can count for both your second Curandero challenge (participate in a pack ritual) -- if Imhotep participates in Zacatapayoli with Tlantli, anyway. Zacatapayoli is a ritual/punishment. Additionally, it can count for thread prompt #2, if they end up discussing their beliefs with one another. c: Yay for Marie points!

Also whoa, tl;dr -- Tlantli is standing outside of her home in the Borgata Colotl, wrapping her arms with thorny vines.

Tlantli is by Alaine!

It was as if she had been under the cover of night these last few months. Since inducing her miscarriage, life had become bleak and dull. In truth, the tawny hybrid had scarely wished to live it anymore. She had come close to the end once or twice over these long weeks. Her family had rejected her, stripping her of rank. Her very sister -- the dark woman who proclaimed herself Auxiliary and dared presumed she spoke to the gods -- had betrayed her.

Tlantli's lip curled and exposed a razor-edged tooth, her pale yellow ears folding back into the haphazard clump of coffee-colored hair upon her head. Although the golden woman had allowed her hair to grow to ridiculous lengths in her quiet months, she had shorn it short again, using her own hand and her own knife. Although she appeared thinner than she had, the tawny woman was not altogether unkempt and disheveled. She had lost little of the shine and spark that had first cast her into The Crone's position -- or, at least, if she had lost it over those long months, it had returned to her at long last.

Over the most recent weeks, there was a stirring within her again. It was not the stirring of children; she knew that feeling well enough, and she wanted it no more than she had before. It was a rising of purpose. She had lost hers, abandoned it with the trip northward, in truth. Tlantli should have fought harder to stay in Eterne. The yellowish woman wrapped her cloak around herself, shivering against the wretched cold of these northlands. As much as she loved Salsola -- or had loved it, more truthfully, since the place had lost some of its shine to her -- the tawny woman knew her truer purpose now, and it lay to the far south, those desert lands she'd walked away from at so young an age.

Tlantli understood Metetzili had acted as he needed to act. She was least safe of her siblings, though Miqui and Imacai might easily have been forced to terrible fates, themselves. Tlantli, however, was a woman, and as a woman, she was to wield the power of her family's lineage, regardless of her brothers' birthrights. She felt this strongly within her bones, and her rumination over the idea had only made it gleam brighter in her mind's eye. The sun of the Kimaris family would rise again, and she would usher it across the sky.

Red-hued eyes turned toward the heavens, and the coyote looked through her crumbling window to the afternoon sky. It was too difficult to see the sun here, too difficult to soak in his rays and bask in his glory. The skies were overcast far more often than they were clear, obscuring the woman's view of the heavens and the beautiful sol. If she went south again, she could pass through the desert, and the sun would beat hot enough to set fire to her fur.

The flaxen coyote stood, stretching her limber and athletic body. Her fingertips brushed the roof of her tower, and the woman inhaled the damp, stony scent of her personal abode. None had stepped foot within this place since her miscarriage, and the sparse few who had seen her dwelling previous to this event scarcely would have recognized it. The walls were scratched with claw-marks and stained with blood; a pile of small mammal's bones occupied the floor next to her dresser. Natheless, it was hers, mess and all.

She slid toward the dresser and slid out the left drawer, rustling through the furs and pelts tucked within to feel Nagual's body. It was cool, but not dangerously so. The snake would hibernate through the rest of the winter, not stirring even to eat. A small, flat dish of water was all he required, and Tlantli's eyes passed over this shallow wooden bowl and saw the water level had dropped some since she'd last checked on him. This was possibly due to evaporation rather than the stirring of her cold-blooded companion, but it was no matter. He was fine, and the winter's cold could not reach him while bundled into those pelts. On especially cold nights, Tlantli lit a fire and brought down her firepit stones to keep him from freezing. Beyond this, the snake required no care whatsoever in the winter months, a boon for which Tlantli was glad. She was not certain she could have kept him in good health if he was fully active through the fall.

She closed the drawer as slowly and carefully as she'd opened it, and moved to the exit of her tower, slipping beneath the heavy pelt draped over the entryway. The cold air bit into her flesh through her thin coyote's fur, but Tlantli donned no clothing. The flaxen canine walked along the outside of her circular tower, stopping beside a suitable bush. She grasped at the long, thin vines and pulled, unmindful of the pain as the thorns bit into her palms. Pain was the point, after all, and if she would balk at its foreplay, she should reap none of its rewards. Tlantli, having secured a suitable length of thorny vine, proceeded to wrap the length of it around her arm.

It was not so tight that the thorns immediately caused her to bleed, but she had secured the ends of it, and in due time, the thorns would cut and slice through the flesh of her arms -- a petty price to pay for the appearance of pure loyalty, Tlantli thought. Those who saw this ritual would mistake her for one pure of heart, when in truth, the cold center of it had turned as lethal as the venom in Nagual's fangs. She flexed her arm, and the thorns obediently followed, digging into her flesh. Finding the knot of vine secure, the woman moved to wrap her opposing arm in the same manner.

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