07-09-2009, 11:36 PM
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| http://digital-bonsai.com/katew/rp/kae/kae_disorder.jpg); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat;"> Previous to meeting Anselm, Kaena had attributed Inferni's survival after the apocalypse primarily to Gabriel; what the wolf had just told her contradicted that belief and forced the hybrid canine to rethink her knowledge of Inferni's history immediately following the fire. It did indeed seem Inferni owed much of its survival to this hybrid before her—and she was just beginning to understand it. She was grateful; thanks to this mixed-breed canine before her, she actually had a home to return to. Kaena wondered if it weren't for that, if it weren't for the presence of family—would she have come back? Surely, she would have explored these lands as a loner, investigating each grouping to see if any of her family lurked there... but she did not know for certain then if she would have stayed. The coyote was not surprised when Anselm spoke of the tensions between other packs, though Gabriel had seemed to refer to Dahlia de Mai's aggression as being almost completely blown over. He hadn't told her to avoid them, but neither had Gabe said to be unnecessarily friendly with them. "I'd pay real, real close attention to Phoenix Valley," she told him, her voice growing dark. Her fight with DaVinci had already put the Valley pack in poor standing with the Lykoi, and according to almost everyone else she'd spoken to, on the whole Inferni and Phoenix Valley were not the best of friends, though their disagreements hadn't escalated into anything violent aside from her own spat with DaVi. She knew almost all of the packs by name—Dahlia de Mai, Phoenix Valley, Crimson Dreams, and Cour des Miracles. There was one more, but it was far, far to the south and Kaena hadn't encountered a single member of its ranks. "I'm sure you've heard. I got into it with one of them the other day, way out on the beach. He remembered me from his childhood, from chasing him off of Inferni's lands." Her tone and word choice made it clear the youth was lucky his life hadn't ended on that day. Kaena had little patience for children who ignored the clear-cut rules of the world. Kaena had never been one for spying or surreptitious action, though she understood its necessity and valued it for its informative purposes. There was a slight shrug of her shoulder. "I'd say Cour des Miracles isn't anything of a threat," she said, recalling her meetings with it's king and a subordinate of the pack. Neither had been particularly nasty to her, though both had been treading close to Inferni's grounds. "Though I don't think you should ignore them in your casing of the lands," she added. She didn't know for sure, but she thought they might be seeking an ally. They were, after all, a very new pack. Anything official was up to Gabriel—Kaena personally would show no hostility to a Miracles animal, even if he was full-blooded wolf. Their king had been kind to her, and he had earned her respect. He was, after all, the descendant of domesticated animals and sans a limb—yet he managed to lead a pack. She hesitated to tell him of her meetings with the two Miracles wolves, but it did seem mildly suspicious that two of them would show up on the opposite side of their packlands so close to Inferni. They were a new group, and Kaena thought it was within their rights to scope out other packs just as Anselm was planning on doing. She hesitated to refer to them as a pack, just as she never called Inferni a pack. Cour des Miracles was led by a dog, and the only other member she had encountered was also a hybrid creature, not fully wolf. "I met two of 'em, on two separate occasions. They were over by us, in the unclaimed part of The Waste and on the Mountain. They weren't nasty," she commented, giving Anselm a sidelong look to see how he absorbed this knowledge. "They're a new group. Maybe they're looking for allies, even." Inferni didn't need to forge an alliance with anybody, no—but mutual, beneficial agreements between groups were never a bad thing, and Kaena knew it was worth investigating. |