06-25-2009, 03:20 AM
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mall-caps;">Out of Character Hahah. xD Jaq is great. mall-caps;">In Character Inferni was not founded as a family clan; on the contrary, when Kaena and Zarah met that night on the beach, Kaena was the only living Lykoi she knew of. Her father was dead, her siblings were dead, and until Brennen came and told her otherwise, Kaena believed she had no extended family. She did not know them, and she would never—if she was going to make her way back to that false home, she would have many years ago. It had never really been home to her. That was here—that was Inferni. The coyote listened to him speak, trying to make sense of what he said. It sounded like he was an alpha, but he did not introduce himself as such, instead referring to himself as king—and the way he savored that word, pronouncing it slowly and tasting it on his tongue... Kaena could guess there was no other word for what he was other than King. Monarch, perhaps—ruler, lord, leader—they fell just short of what Jacquez was. Neither did he introduce his territory as a pack; Kaena was curious at that. She almost asked him, but he spoke at length, and by the time he was finished, she had forgotten her question, already wrapped up in thoughts of swamps. She recalled Swamp Sosye, a territory directly south of Inferni once they'd annexed half of Aremys territory, and how it had seemed so fitting to slink along the muddy, watery floor of the thick underbrush there. As he finished, the coyote considered for a moment a wolfish gesture of respect toward the reigning king, but Kaena refused to demean herself in such a way. "Honored," she said, and though one might have thought she was being sarcastic, her tone was genuine. Here was royalty, and she was a fool if she disrespected it. His dog nature made him no less of a king, just as her coyote nature had made her no less of a queen. She had no royal title to attach to her name any longer, though she could lay claim to the mother of the Aquila. That was a position of power in itself—though she held no power over Gabriel any longer, he was still her son, and he guided Inferni along a path similar to her own. The hybrid's gaze returned to Jaq as he began speaking. My, he was a talker. Kaena herself was not so fond of speech, especially not to strangers—she could recall whole periods of months and months where she wandered as a loner and had no friendly conversations. When he leaned in close to her, she did not flinch; if he had meant to attack, he would have already. She listened intently to the gruesome tale, never for a second guessing that it might be untrue—for all she had seen, there was little in the way of violence and survivalism that shock her. The will to live was powerful, and it had goaded creatures to greater feats than self-mutilation. Still, it was a good story, and Kaena almost thanked him for sharing it, though she changed her mind just before she opened her mouth. "Stronger, indeed," she said, eagle eye roving his body, clearly admiring his muscular frame. A silver finger traced the outline of her eye socket, feeling the leathery, ruined flesh just inside of it on her fingertip. "A wolf stole my eye from me. He popped it right out of my skull. The last thing I ever saw out of that eye were his teeth coming for me," the hybrid said, exaggerrating her own story, though nowhere to the extent Jaq had fabricated his. Kryptic hadn't actually popped her eye; he had just given it a grevious injury from which it had not recovered. She hadn't actually lost her eye until months after the fight. Her story may not have been as fantastic as his, but it was the truth—as true as Kaena would tell it. |