317
Set at the borders! I would prefer anyone who knows about Gabriel or Rikka - ESPECIALLY the second Dahlia-Inferni war.
She was nervous. Oh so nervous. Her mother had told her about the family, the clan. Rikka had told her about Inferni and the woman had also warned her daughter of the skulls at the border. But to see them truly there before her set her heart thudding in her chest much faster than she liked. Rose clung to the leather strap of her bag, pressing it against her chest as something of a comfort object. Though her hands did not shake, she felt as though she were trembling standing outside of the line of skulls. Swallowing hard, she let the bag slip out of her hands, the baskets - large one and small ones- clacked together as they settled against the tree.
A wolf skull, she had said, to warn them away. Rose knew that she had more wolf blood than coyote, and these skulls were meant for people like her. Even though her frame was lanky and narrow, like a coyote, the shape of her muzzle was broader, her ears shorter. But her mother's colors and father's natural lankiness - which her mother claimed came all from him, despite her own heritage's tendencies of narrowness - made her seem more of a coyote, smaller as she was. Perhaps she could pretend to be more coyote than she was, just so her relatives would feel less inclined to dislike her for her wolf past.
Swallowing, the woman sat herself down before the border of skulls. Legs crossed underneath her rear, tucked under her tail. Rose was setting herself down as not a threat. Well, that and it was much more calming to sit in meditation in the grass, even if the skulls of dead wolves were decorating the borders of her mother's old home. She was gathering her courage to call out to the family she did not know and that did not know her.
Images credited to 427 & ramviswanathan.
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