06-23-2009, 07:53 AM
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Out of Character Slight powerplay with the grabbing and such, hope it's okay. If not plz kick me and I will edit this post. :o In Character The coyote had misunderstood him, then—Samael was alive? Her ears almost perked at that; if she had misunderstood him about Sam, perhaps then Andre was still breathing somewhere. That was a stupid hope, and as soon as the thought entered her mind she cursed it. She listened to him, and then nodded, too shocked to say anything at that moment. It made sense, then, that Samael would be presumed dead—if the disease had claimed an entire pack, one Lykoi child would make no difference. But stranger things had happened, as her presence before Gabriel in that very moment might attest. The coyote herself did not speak, soaking in the loss of the prince of fear quietly. Either way, alive or dead, he wasn't here, and his absence was another hole in her heart. Ahren? The name startled the coyote, and she looked at Gabriel hard for a moment, wondering if she had even heard the name correctly. Again she remembered him on the beach, and that sense that she had missed out hit her. He was dead, too, if Samael had been taken by disease, and there was no coming back from that. Ahren had come back and she'd missed him, just like she'd missed the childhood of Rachias, Andre, Arkham, and Eris. She wondered momentarily if he'd come looking for her at all—part of Kaena loved Ahren still for what he had given her in her children, and that part hurt like hell at that moment. She didn't know what to say to him. His father was mentioned so lightly, in passing—just another piece of history to regurgitate to her. The ash-colored hybrid frowned. Gabriel kept walking a moment, the both of them silent and Kaena lagging behind. He stopped, and she walked until she caught up with him, facing him but not looking at him, instead focused on the horizon, looking over the dull jade green fields, patchy and spotted with broad swaths of yellow, all of it waving gently in the wind. There was more silence between them, and then Gabriel spoke. The words jarred the Lykoi, and her eye turned on him in an instant, away from the distance and memories and into his face, blazing fire ignited behind that single hawk's eye. Accusations died on her tongue, and for a brief moment she might have hit him, perhaps in a role reversal like she had so long ago on the beach when Samael was young and well. She didn't dare to now. In an instant the anger faded, replaced by an immense sadness, a vast sense of loss overcoming the coyote as she did something inexplicable; she reached forward with both arms and pressed herself close to Gabriel. She clutched him for a long moment, holding him tightly and pressing her head into his neck. Her single eye squeezed shut tightly, and when it opened again there were tears there, filming over it and spilling down the side of her face, wetting her fur. She had not cried in a long time, and these tears were not solely for Andrezej. They were for Samael, for Ahren, for her children, whom she'd surely never know as well now that she'd come and gone while they were still so young. The Lykoi held her son for a long moment, inhaling his scent deeply and holding onto it, shaking sighs rattling her body as she grew number, her pain subsiding enough for her to speak. He had done it for a reason. She knew that much—Gabriel was not a mindless killer, and he certainly did not hate his blood enough to kill for that reason alone. "Why?" |