07-24-2009, 05:06 AM
[html]
| http://digital-bonsai.com/katew/rp/kae/kae_disorder.jpg); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat;"> There was no fear in the Lykoi woman as she stood her ground, peering into the darkness of the ruins. Certainly, she had been choked and stifled by fear plenty of times in her long life and the emotion was not unknown to the gray hybrid. Fearless creatures were stupid and reckless and they did not survive the test of life; her presence before the devil in the cabin was evidence enough that she was neither reckless or stupid, at least not anymore. Thinking back to those days of black rage and blind hatred, the coyote hybrid would have thought again how lucky she was to have survived the turbulence of her adolescence, but there was no clear thought in the hybrid's head. A mind-reader would have heard only the gentlest hum from her brain, the singing electric of a creature moving on pure instinct. She could not yet smell him; there was only that soggy, rotten smell of ancient wood and the earthy scent as the soil around them became fertile and moist with the storm. The growl had put her into simple defensive mode; there was no plan of attack here. If she had wanted badly, she might have trapped him there, his sanctuary becoming his deathbed. She would have cut him and made him bleed, and waited with him to watch him die in the morning. But Kaena was only a long sprint from the Inferni borders, and if he died here, there would be no question as to the culprits. Perhaps that kept her firmly planted where she was, waiting and watching him for a moment. If he hadn't spoken, she would have melted in the woods, slinking off to watch him from afar until he turned around and left. The question rattled her, and that glowing eye narrowed in suspicion, regarding the plasma-blue gaze after a moment. Her scarred features released little, save the twisting of the flesh of her muzzle as her teeth bared now and again, flashing dulled, deadly yellow to accompany her single, glaring eye. "Maybe," she said, shrugging a shoulder indifferently. That yellow eye searched for something, anything—and the snarl disappeared for a moment, guessing this was perhaps Jael's other family, the one that had donated his snowy coat and half his wolf features. Maybe—she couldn't see any of his features, and even if she could, it might not have mattered. If they were distant enough relatives, they would have looked like night and day. The idea that they could be half-siblings hadn't occurred to Kaena; she assumed they were uncle and nephew or cousins, something of that nature. The idea that they actually shared a mother was simply lost on the grizzled coyote matron, though she knew Colibri Soul had been raped by Vitium and she could have easily had previous or following litters of children. "Some coyote blood run in your family?" she said, the tease apparent in her tone. Again those pearly fangs showed, but this time it was a cheshire cat's grin accompanying that solitary golden eye. Even so, the right answer from the chocolate wolf would lean the coyote in the right direction. A possibility was already brewing in her mind even as she finally scented Dahlia de Mai on his coat. That set her guard up even further, but still, the possibility of trading information of this wolf occurred to the Lykoi woman. If he was on the wolf side of Jael's family, he could help solve the mystery of that Skylar wolf who had paraded so goddamn proudly over Inferni's soil. Normally, she wouldn't have given a shit about her or who she claimed to be related to—at first, the girl had claimed distant relation to some Voltaire Cavil, a coyote who'd been with Inferni when she'd first taken the Aquila position. That kind of relationship was laughable, but then she'd gone on to name Jael's mother and claim to also be of her body, naturally making her a half-sibling to Jael. That kind of a lie was not tolerable to the Lykoi woman, and she would have sought to cut out the wolf's tongue if it turned out to be false. |