07-27-2009, 04:05 AM
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| http://digital-bonsai.com/katew/rp/kae/kae_disorder.jpg); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat;"> D'aww. Thanks. <3 Well, now it's Sofia's prodding into death that has got Kae interested.  Surely there were nasty bones in the coyote's body, but just as certainly, there were good ones. There was no particular pattern or order to Kaena's life; she varied wildly between the soft, caring Lykoi matron and the vicious, malevolent being of rumor and legend. Both were equally true, and both were equally combative within her, among other things. It seemed Kaena was a creature of schisms; there were many massive, irreparable conflicts within her. Wolf and coyote, mother and killer, saint and demon. The grizzled woman had long learned to ignore both and live in the moment. Each of the jagged marks crossing the silvery woman's body had meaning and story behind it, some more complicated than others. The torn mark across her shoulder was from her eldest son, the wolfish child of Zulifer Yfel who perhaps still roamed the earth. He was nearly an old man himself now at six years old, and the grizzled canine again wondered how she of all creatures might have survived so long. It was impossible, improbable—why would she, destructive and malicious above all else, survive longer than more virtuous, even-tempered canines? It was nonsensical. The wanderer's answer pleased the Veritas in an unexpected way. It showed tolerance in the younger woman, a virtue Kaena did not often have the patience for. There was open-mindedness in the statement, and that forced-neutral look on her face faded into something akin to comfort. Her solo eye regarded the younger canine for a moment, and she listened and grinned, knowing even through her current friendliness that things between herself and the mottled gray loner before her could be quite different just given a tweak of the circumstance. Those teeth showed again, and she spoke, a ring of authenticity in her voice. "Good answer." It was a real compliment, a nod to the mixed breed and her open-mindedness The young woman's next words brought a quiet laugh from the woman, and she wondered how the hybrid did not find her frightening. Perhaps she was one of the rare few who also viewed her scars as they were intended: the marks of warfare and survival. Or, that perspective's lesser companion, the view that scars were visual aids to some combative or heartbreaking tale. There was always the possibility that Sofia brought something else entirely; that is, the ability to look beyond the scars and marks of the past to the creature beneath. "We're not so bad, but I wouldn't recommend crossing us," the hybrid said. It was surely not a warning; her relaxed posture and her quiet voice were completely non-threatening. "But that makes us like everyone else," the hybrid asserted quickly. For sure, no living thing liked to be screwed with, and defensiveness was just that, a mechanism intended for survival. The woman's next words surprised the coyote, and they brought an unprecedented stillness to her features as she gazed toward the scenery, that fiery eye growing dim as she looked to the clouded window. She had heard many theories and many things, but she had no definitive answer for Sofia. Thankfully, that was not what the hybrid wanted. Her voice was smaller and more hesitant than she would have liked, revealing more vulnerability and insecurity about her rising age than Kaena had ever previously admitted. "Some of us think you can be reborn, maybe in your own children or their children, or someone else's children entirely," she said, shrugging a shoulder to show it was not a core belief of her own. Reincarnation made little sense to the grizzled hybrid; she did not understand, then, why she could not recall the past lives of her own. A contemplative sigh escaped the elder woman's mouth, her eye seeking the dripping corners of the room, the candle's flame, anything but that peculiar jade gaze. Finally, her damaged eye and her whole one fell on Sofia again, and she was speaking from her own heart. "I think we live on in others, in their blood and memory. Some of us disappear, and others remain as ghosts," she said, thinking of Ahren and Lillith again with that same tingle of envy in her spine. Would she be so lucky? The veteran coyote wondered who she would choose to haunt, if so. Would it be one of her children? "I don't know for sure." There was the faintest hint of fear across her scarred features, buried beneath the enforced calm. She would never in a million years admitted to Sofia that she was afraid of dying, though the younger hybrid might have guessed on her own by now. |