08-15-2009, 03:15 AM
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mall-caps;">In Character In truth, the hybrid woman had six litters of children. The first two were hardly developed enough to be viable, though the grizzled canine had felt the pain of their birth just as certainly as she had years later with Maeryn and Kerberos, and again with Gabriel and his ilk, and twice more after that. The hybrid woman faintly wondered if her childrearing years were through; though she might have avowed to herself that pregnancy and the toils of motherhood were behind her, the silvery female could hardly deny her innate love of puppies. But she was old now—the hybrid woman truly believed the years of her own children were behind her. She needed only to devote her time to her children's children now. The hybrid woman thought of her own skills, and shrugged one shoulder slowly, the suggestion rolling from her tongue quite easily. "If you ever desire to bear a mark—of your own design—another coyote taught me the art of applying them to the skin," she suggested. Though she realized the white wolf was already well-aware of the idea that the chaos star was the marking specific to the Lykoi family, the coyote could not help but stress it again. It was in her protective nature, and she was almost sorry she'd laced her words with that spiked clause. "Or almost any other favor," she added quickly, eager to repay the wolf. By Kaena's figuring, there was a debt owed here somewhere—Naniko could have easily kept her herbs for herself, and she could have very easily kept the information about obtaining more to herself. Though the elder coyote did not peg Naniko for a vengeful creature, debts were not good things to carry regardless of where they were owed. The silvery canine smiled. She knew sadly little of the D'Angelo's history within Chimera, nothing of the burned child or its dead siblings. Her daughter Corona would have—she had lived in Chimera with Ahren for some time. "I only knew Misery a short time, but I do know that she was the widow of Chimera's first king, Damian de le Poer. Ahren's father," she explained, lest the history lesson extend beyond Naniko's prior knowledge. "I think she bore his children, but I do not know if any survived, or if they remain here still." This link was tenuous at best; the hybrid could recall little of the detail between herself and Naniko's ancestor, but they had touched briefly on the subject of family, just as Kaena was doing now with the pallid female before her. The monochrome coyote contemplated this for a moment. Hollow Nothing's final link to this world had been broken, it seemed—though his grandchildren through this snowy canine surely roamed the earth still, they would have no knowledge of their greatest ancestor. Even Naniko—she was young enough to have met Hollow, but something in Kaena believed that the woman had never met him. There had been no outward reaction at the man's name, and when Hollow Nothing had been among the living, just the whisper of his name was enough to send some cowering in fear. "Ahren did not grace me with a good-bye when he left Chimera," the coyote said, though there was not a hint of sourness in her voice. He had come all the way back to visit, hadn't he? He had thought to grace her with his presence on the border what seemed like eons ago in a secret meeting, a private thing no one but the silvery hybrid knew now. The other half of that meeting was dead and buried. "But he did come back, eventually. I was not here to see him, and they say he's dead now," the hybrid said, a somber look creeping over her features. It was quickly washed away, a forced laugh coming from the coyote's russet-splashed muzzle, though it sounded no more awkward than her usual laugh, which was admittedly rather ungainly coming from such a scarred, beaten creature. "You'd do well to stay on Inferni's good side, then," she said with a grin, though it was an obvious joke. Naniko had nothing to fear from Inferni, so long as Kaena had her say. |