tell them that she's not sacred
#1
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Today the weather decided to give them a break. Snake was happy—it had been raining like a bastard for the weeks after the war had finished, and he didn't have anywhere to take shelter in. Well, sometimes he managed to force himself to dwell in a cavern for a while, but he hated that even more than sitting out in the rain most of the time. He had fought once to get out of a subterranean place, and it went against his core to go back there. Sometimes he did manage to get to the porch of the Mansion to wait out the storm as well, but he didn't want to go inside. He was not terribly social, and there was always someone in there that felt the need to make some kind of conversation. Though Snake was not quite as backwards as he had been a few months ago, he still had a long way to go.


Regardless, he came to the new center of the territory today. It used to be the caves, now renamed the Grimwell Caverns, but since the shifting of the borders it was this place. So far, he rather liked it. It was quiet, sans the breeze that bent the spring grasses before him like an ocean. He could smell the scent of prey in the air, smaller things like rabbits and the like that had returned to the surface after the death of winter. He was currently uninterested; Snake was still in Optime form after sleeping in the mountains last night, and he didn't want to waste the energy to get into a more swifter four-legged form. And besides, he was more thirsty than hungry anyway.


This brought him to the rushing of a river to the east, the river that they had named River Acheron. It was swift-moving and clean—more than enough to make the man not second-guess its safety to drink. He had with him an empty bottle (which had probably at one point stored whiskey or vodka or rum, or something like that) and it was that he filled with some of the river water. He sighed, settling onto his haunches with his feet resting in the shallows of the cool water. He sipped pensively from the bottle, his olive eyes vaguely observing the area to the east. He could see the forest not too far away, shrouded in the heat of the afternoon. But it was quiet and it was dry, and that was more than Snake could ask for on such an afternoon.

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#2
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Word Count :: 470


The sable-furred Lykoi hardly minded the rain. In the desert, there had not been very much rain at all—sometimes during the winter, there would be great storms that lasted for days, soaking the earth with moisture—but beyond that, the Eterne area saw little precipitation. Eris had never experienced a cold winter—she had been raised in the desert, the land of perpetual sunshine. She had never seen snow herself prior to making the journey northwards—she had only seen it once or twice on her way to this very place, even, and it had only lingered on the ground a day or two, whisked quickly away by warmth. Eris had never seen deep cold and true winter in her life.


Eris was not as interested in her surroundings as some. She had never lived in a true house before, but it was the most similar analogy to the cave-homes she had dwelled in in Eterne. Unlike the Grimwell caverns where most of the clan dwelled, the caves in her old lands had not been natural. Men had once carved them into the red rock, and the Luperci had continued the task almost a decade after humanity's demise. The caves were far older than the last living human, however—they'd been created centuries before the virus had even begun to be conceived. Still, she could not remain pent up in her room for too long, and the sable-furred coyote was quick to slip out of the garage, heading down the loft stairs from the passageway on the second floor and out into the sunlight.


The earth was still vaguely damp from the week's rain; some of the grass was still patchy with clinging drops of water. It was not so early that there should still be dew on the ground—after all, the sable-furred hybrid rarely rose before noon. Today her wandering brought her to the center of the territory, as natural as the rest of it—the smell of water and the sound of it running drew the coyote woman's attention, and the Optime woman picked up a strange scent, not recognizing it at first. Eris was a rather social creature, though, and she would seek this one out—her packmates could teach her things, and there was always the chance this was some distant family member she had yet to meet.


The tawny-furred man was seated in a rather relaxed pose, a clear bottle in his hands, filled with some kind of clear liquid. Interest flared in the chartreuse-colored eyes of the woman, and she approached boldly, looking over the unfamiliar canine. She stopped several feet away, neither smiling nor frowning, peering at him with interest. “What do you have there?” she asked, mistaking it for liquor. She was never averse to a swig of good liquor.

Table by Jimjamz!!!
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#3
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He noticed her approaching from some way off because of the moors' level ground. She was coming right at him, meaning generally that it was her intention from the start to come and speak. His olive eyes watched her carefully, with a hooded quality of a reptile, as he occasionally sipped from the water in the bottle. She was a coyote, though perhaps barely—she had Inferni's scent so he had to assume that she was enough of their species to be allowed in by Gabriel or Kaena. That dark coat color was certainly not common amongst them, though the yellow-green of her eyes seemed vaguely familiar in the catalogue of everyone that he had met over the months. As she drew nearer he noticed the glinting piercings of her ears, the break in the dark fur on her shoulder where he could see some kind of scarring. And, as all of these observances ticked off in his brain like lines of code in a computer, he couldn't help but add on that she was attractive, in form and features. But at this moment that was merely a bullet in a list of thoughts.


Snake tracked her line of sight, noting that it—and her comment—were based on the bottle that he held in his hands. He looked at it, sloshing the water inside before looking back and replying, "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it's just water. If I had any liquor, I'd share." He'd had a nice stash of alcohol back at his old den, but unfortunately they had been destroyed when the fire had taken the southern lands. Sooner or later he would have to go back to the city and look for more, but that would require motivating to venture out of Inferni—something that Snake would not do until his injured side was fully healed. As it was now, he still had a bandage wrapped around his lower torso, though the injury was well on its way to healing.


Conversations were not really his thing, but he knew that it would eventually roll around to introductions, so why not take the initiative? "I'm Snake," he said in his usual low, rough tone. From what he could guess about her scent, she was relatively new here—perhaps having come in after the end of the war. That would explain why he hadn't noticed her around; the blond coyote was surprisingly antisocial, and it became even worse when he was recovering from some kind of injury.

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#4
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For the present generation of the Lykoi, Eris's fur color was indeed an anomaly—her mother and her siblings were generally gray or goldish in color, or some mix of the two. Black was not common to any of them, and Eris was alone in her numerous maternal half-siblings with that distinction. However, sable-coloration was not completely unknown in the Tirones's maternal heritage—her grandfather, Andre, had possessed a sable coat, as had her half-uncle Kairo. She had yet to learn of these two from Kaena, and perhaps she never would learn of the latter.


“More fun if it was alcohol, but no big,” the coyote commented softly. There was no great disappointment in the shadowy female, and she rolled her shoulders in a shrug, drawing closer to the taupe-furred man, settling to her knees beside him at his introduction, figuring that was good enough of an invitation. “Eris,” she said, truncating her surname. It meant nothing to her, so why would she advertise herself as a Lykoi? She did not know what it meant to be one, and her mother had refused to teach her thus far—the scarred woman had been practically unreachable to the sable-furred woman in the past few weeks. “Been here long?” she asked, curious to hear his story.

Table by Jimjamz!!!
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#5
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More fun? He supposed so. He usually just drank because it was a little more exciting than water, but he never really drank far past a buzz. It took a lot to get him to that point anyway—Snake had been drinking liquor as often as water since he was a kid, so his tolerance was pretty high for someone his age. Getting drunk was something that was generally against his principles, much like mind-altering drugs. Snake felt as though he should be ready to fight at all times, meaning that he should be in a proper state. Being drunk or high would definitely compromise that, therefore lowering his worth. Or at least that was what he thought.


She drew closer at his introduction, settling down on the banks of the river next to him before giving him her own name. "Nice to meet you, Eris," he said automatically, without thinking—pleasantries like that were programmed into him, it would seem. It definitely didn't seem out of the ordinary to him, though, her not giving a surname. Snake personally didn't have one—well, one that he chose to hold. He could have his pick of three, but he had decided against it. Who needed a secondary name, anyway? It wasn't like any of his family were around to speak about. He pondered this as he redirected his gaze to his hands. After a moment he looked back to Eris, offering her the bottle. It wasn't alcohol, but it was something to drink on a warm spring day.


He replied to her question shortly after she asked it, not requiring much of a consideration, "For... seven months now, I think." He paused, somewhat in awe of how long it had been. It didn't seem like that long. What a transformation he had undergone, morphing from an underfed teenager to the scarred warrior that sat here now. "And you are new here." It wasn't a question; he could tell by her scent. "Have any particular reason for coming to Inferni?"

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#6
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436


Fighting was not something that ranked high on Eris's list of things she was interested in—she did not always leap to violence like most of her other family. She much preferred to keep her inflicting of pain to those she knew were below her, those who were definitely unable to fight against her will. The slaves had been perfect for that purpose, and Eris had been raised from six months onward accepting and approving of slavery. Now, though, it would seem she had entered a place where it was generally unacceptable—though by the looks of Vieira's nosering, she was still very much a slave. That had been at least something to smile about, though the tawny-furred woman was never meant to survive the trek northwards. She should have died on her way here, as Eris was certain that Kaena was dead, and the whole reason for the golden-eyed woman's journey was the pursuit of a ghost. That had been the great joke, though now the sable-furred woman had to face the reality of Vieira's survival. It mattered little to her, either way—the slave was no longer her possession, the slave was no longer her problem.


A faint smile flashed on the woman's shadowy features, and she dipped her head to him, indicating the same sentiment back toward him. “That's a while. Anything interesting in the time you've been here?” the sable woman asked. Maybe there were some clues to her past that had come to the surface more recently, and in any case it was a good idea to secure the clan's history—not that the sable-furred woman was particularly interested in it. She did not care for the coyote clan to the extent that her mother and her elder half-brother did—they were the leadership, and the clan's survival rested on their shoulders. “Thank you,” the hybrid murmured, taking the bottle and sipping from the cold water. She assumed it had come from the river, of course, as it was still chilly to the temperature, beads of water running down its sides. There was a slight nod to indicate his correctness regarding her new status to the clan, and a frown at his question. Her chartreuse gaze wandered for a moment, hesitant to delve into the entire reason for her arrival here. “Family. Guess which one,” she said, her voice at once tinged with brightness and bitterness, sarcasm at the size of her family. What Eris actually knew of the Lykoi could fit on a pinhead, but the sable-furred coyote knew there were many of them, more than she could probably imagine.

Table thanks to Vieira!
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#7
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Fighting had never really been an option for him. If he had decided against it, he would have been dead a long time ago—before he had even gotten old enough to assume a biped form, probably. It had been difficult to imagine other childhoods where survival was not earned, where instead one was given luxuries like safety and affection. Snake had been starved of those things, but his brutal upbringing had made him tough. He was well-prepared to survive in the world, but he was terribly ill-prepared for the social aspects. This was much why he avoided conversations like this, though there was nothing he could do about it now. Eris had sought him out, and he was too polite to leave. And besides—if one gained skill in fighting by training, he would probably grow more comfortable with being social by sitting through meetings like this.


She mirrored his comment with a dip of her head, and he replied to her inquiry swiftly enough, "On the bigger scale of things, a war. It is over now, though." Over officially, though Snake knew the threat that Haku posed on the entire region was not over. And besides, he still had trouble trusting wolves. He trusted a few, but otherwise was too tempered by the bigotry that seemed to run rampant around here. If there was one redeeming quality about New Haven, at least no one discriminated upon you because you were not a wolf. If anything, you were thought of as very useful due to being different.


Eris accepted the bottle from him and he watched her drink, unsure of where to look otherwise in such a situation. She nodded, meaning that she was rather new to Inferni, and ultimately her response to his question was not surprising. "Oh. Lykoi, right?" It was either that or de le Poer, but seeing as though they were generally together anyway and Lykoi were more numerous, he went with that one. "I know several of them." Actually, sometimes it felt as though he was the odd one out of a family clan. Such seclusion did not bother him—he usually welcomed it. It was a little odd sometimes, though.

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#8
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307



Luxury had defined her adolescence after arriving in Eterne. Astaroth had taken care of her well enough, true, but he had never provided for her as his family did eventually. Though the trip between the place where her supposed father and Eterne had not been very kindly, as Eris had still been young, it was blessedly short, and she arrived in the place where she was supposed to only a month after the dark-furred coyote's death at her mother's hand. Up until just recently, that short trek had defined the hardest moments of her life. The trip from Eterne all the way back to Inferni had been difficult, and she knew she was likely to have perished without the assistance of her cat.


“Sorry I missed that,” the sable-furred woman said breezily, though there was no true disappointment in her voice. She would have been next to useless in war, this she knew—the best she might have been able to accomplish was to cast some kind of hex or curse over Inferni's enemies—of course, the sable-furred hybrid couldn't possibly know it, but she would have had a certain conflict of interest between Inferni's enemies and her own lovers. Not that Haku was particularly important, true—but she had not been able to raise a fang to him during their last meeting. She hadn't wanted to.


“You guessed it,” the woman said, that hint of bitterness still lingering on her tongue. Water would do nothing to wash it away; indeed, the heartiest and strongest tipple would do nothing for that. “Who do you know?” she asked, split between interest and boredom where her family was concerned. As far as Eris knew, only one of them held the answer to the question she wanted so badly to know—only her mother really mattered in the grand scheme.

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#9
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The look that Snake gave the woman when she expressed her supposed disappointment at missing the war was definitely a strange one—as if what she had just said was little more than nonsense. While he accepted that violence and armed conflict was inevitable and sometimes necessary in life, he would never incite it personally. His ultimate goal when he woke up every morning was to survive to the next day, and fighting in wars usually was a big obstacle in that. He did not miss the lackluster tone in her voice, meaning that she might not be totally genuine in her words, but it was still enough to give him pause. This blond coyote's values were very strange—in one place he thought that any form of self-imposed mutilation was akin to the darkest of crimes, as it was committed against one's own body. It was understandable for him, who valued his own life directly as the utility of his own body to fight. Others would find such a sentiment odd, but it was how he had been raised. The reason why his soul had been asleep for such a long time—Patriot had convinced him that his body was all that mattered, and that mind and spirit and heart were throw-away.


This concept was changing, slowly and not without difficulty. Regardless he managed to hit the mark when it came to her family, though he could definitely hear the harsh tone to her words. That was puzzling; why would she have come here for family if she regarded them in such a way? He did not ask, worrying that it was a sore subject, but his quizzical expression spoke for him. As for who he knew with the Lykoi name, he looked to the river as he tried to think of all of them. "Kaena Lykoi, the Centurion. And Vieira, a woman named Corona, and... a boy, his name was something like Mkhai." He wasn't sure if he got that last one right, but he didn't really care. There were also the de le Poers who he was sure were related in some way, but he assumed she would know something of them anyway. "How are you related to them?"

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#10
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WHINEY BRAT


The body, of course, possessed some importance to the sable-furred woman—she, of all canines, knew what secrets and treaures were buried in the chest cavities and torsos of all living things. These pulsing, breathing, bleeding things were terribly important—they were the primary source of her power, where she fed from. There was no vampiric blood-drinking for Eris, though of course she would have engaged in such a thing simply for its own sake—the liver and the heart, the entrails and the most important organs locked away beneath layers of flesh and muscle—these were more important than something like blood. How much blood could one lose before dying? Quite a lot—and Eris could attest to that through personal experience, of course. Lose one's liver or heart, and it was an entirely different story—even just a little nick was sometimes enough to stagger the heart entirely.


The sable-coyote slid the bottle back toward her tawny compatriot, listening to him rattle off names. Her shadowed muzzle wrinkled at the final name, her head tilting to the side. “Kaena's my mother. I think Corona's my sister, and I have not a clue in hell who Mkhai is,” the sable coyote said, punctuating her statement with a harsh laugh, none too dissimilar from her mother's rare expression of humor, though certainly it lacked the raspy, aged quality the Centurion had. “I probably only know a quarter of my family. Kaena won't even tell me who my real father is,” she said off-handedly, her muzzle pointed away from Snake as she feigned disinterest, her chartreuse gaze sliding back to peer at him sideways, watching him for any hint of interest, knowledge—anything.

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#11
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Snake's views on the body were a little bit more metaphorical—in his mind, a person was made of two things, their body (or physical shell in the world) and the soul (which usually consisted of the mind, heart, and spirit of someone). It was also in his mind that the body was a very poor representation of someone, as it was something that one had no control over usually. That was how Snake had lost himself for several months, allowing his body to live out his life while his soul slept as deeply as death. But now that he was beginning to find himself again, it was very awkward considering his age.


Digressions aside, he accepted the bottle that she handed back, looking at it quietly as she replied to the list that he had provided her with. He might've guessed that Kaena was her mother, and the other relations didn't really matter he supposed. The man did notice that she left out Vieira, though he attributed that to her position in the pack. She was a slave, if he remembered correctly—something that Snake did not really look down on. He had never found such things before now, and he didn't really see the problem with it. The coyote was taken good care of, as far as he could tell, and she was so fragile that the world outside would break her if she was set free. He flicked his ear at her harsh humor towards the end of the statements, sipping from the water as she continued to speak of Kaena again, and the confusion of her father. Snake was quiet for a moment, realizing that, in this, they were somewhat alike. "My mother did not tell me about my true father for a while," he confided. Family information was not usually something that he gave up without someone specifically asking, but this slight similarity of theirs wasn't something for him to ignore. "I assumed it was someone for months, and only when we managed to run into my actual father while traveling did she tell me."


Needless to say this caused some confusion in the adolescent Snake. Whenever he did think of his father, there was always a mixed image of Patriot and Laurel—two complete opposites if ever there were. Patriot had been a charismatic, domineering tyrant while Laurel had been a peaceful musician and gypsy. And perhaps it didn't matter who had contributed to Snake genetically—it was clear to see that he took more after Patriot in the end.

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#12
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331



Eris was split between figuring her family didn't matter a lick and finding them a necessary evil. Her whole reason for even being here... well. Eris had thought a lot about that, and she had come to the astute conclusion that she didn't fucking have one. She had nowhere else to go, and she had considered Inferni and her mother and the Lykoi legends rather meaningless and useless—that maternal heritage had mattered little while she was in Eterne, while she was with her supposed family—they had all turned out to be fakes, of course, and in the end the only other woman in the house had been gentle enough to release her.


An unladylike snort echoed from her muzzle at the man's story, though it was not in derision—she was simply rather surprised at how similar their stories were, on the surface, anyway. “First I thought it was Laruku, like Rachias and Arkham and Andrezej—'cause they were my littermates, you know? But I was always different from them somehow,” she said, forward and resting one arm on her knee, twisting the fur there furiously with her fingers as she continued to speak. “So when Astaroth came and took me away, and he said he was my daddy, I believed him. I got to his home and his whole family adopted me—and one day I say Kaena was a hybrid, part coyote, you know?” she continued, resentment rising in her tone as she spoke. “And all of a sudden they're not my family anymore, Astaroth can't be my daddy 'cause he's a coyote and I'm—I'm—” she stopped, taking in a breath, her fingers still working the fur on her leg around, pulling at it hard enought to tear a few hairs out.


“I don't even fucking know,” she concluded, anger and disappointment clearly plastered across her sable features. Her silver-studded ears were twisted backwards in anger, almost buried in the poofy mess of her cropped-short mane.

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#13
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His question about her reason for being here was ill-founded—Snake hadn't known why he had come here either, at first. When he had run away from his parents he had nowhere to go, so he followed his mother's stories of a place where they had once lived. It was merely chance that he had come across Inferni's borders first, and more so that he had been accepted into the coyote clan and allowed to live there and become who he was now. Usually the reasons why were not as important—the end was the only justification.


Snake returned his olive-colored gaze to her when she gave little more than a snort to his own words—it was not something that he was offended by, as he could sense her tone in the action. And he tried his hardest to keep up with her as she spoke, but his own mind usually moved a slower pace. Not to mention that the names and the concepts that she threw out there were things that he had not heard of—Laruku, Rachias, Arkham, Andrezej, Astaroth, stuff about being wolves, hybrids, coyotes. Eventually he accepted that his understanding was not very important, and what was was the conflict that she must feel. He could see it as she nervously store at the fur along her knee, and hear it in her tone. And as he watched this motion something gave a painful twinge in the back of his mind. Without any conscious thought his hand shot out, catching hers from doing any more damage. As said, any destructive act toward oneself—even one so trivial—was something that Snake couldn't bear to see occur. After pausing to make sure that whatever impulse causing this left the dark-furred woman, he let go and returned to how he was.


"I'm sorry," he said, universally, not bothering to narrow it down to any specific happening or action. "Sometimes, though, it doesn't matter. In my experience, who your parents are only go so far. Family, it's only a contribution—it controls nothing." He said this on the presumption that she was having some type of identity crisis in relation to her parents. It was strange to him, as he put very little stock in blood family to begin with, but Snake didn't mind attempting to empathize... even though it was usually a failure.

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#14
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389



It shouldn't have mattered, but all the sable-furred woman had known in her entire life was meaningless. It was all lies and fabrications, fed to her by her mother, Astaroth, Eterne, god—she could not conjure from within herself the strength to see her own past, and it was as clouded and vague a mystery to her as ever, no matter how she had tried. Maybe that was what had irritated her so much—she could have gone somewhere else, she could have sought a hospitable and simple pack in the middle of nowhere, but if she had sought such an existence, those questions would have burned in her all the same, unanswered as ever.


His hand caught hers, and there was a tremor of recognition in her mind, just a split instant of a flashback in her mind: a dimly lit room, the only light in it filtered through heavy and thick curtains over the sole window, bare aside from that single adornment and a chair directly across her. She had just enough room on her restraints to lay down, but they could of course be shortened to keep her standing, and try as she might, she had not been able to squirm free of those. A tremble ran through her, but she didn't move, of course—there was no point in moving away, as she could not get away. There was nowhere to run. His hand withdrew and the moment was over, leaving the sable-furred hybrid quaking where she stood, clearly disturbed by the touch. The memory had faded, however, and the sable-furred woman could not figure out why it had frozen her so. His words snapped this trance, and she blinked her wide chartreuse eyes at him in confusion.


“Yeah,” she said, and her voice cracked. “It's all just... really, really confusing,” she said quietly. Why was she sharing herself with this stranger? She did not know him—but the story had been trembling on her lips since she had left Eterne, and with no one but Itzcitla to share it with... maybe she had simply leapt at the first opportunity. She sighed heavily, and leaned her chin down against her arm, her eyes wavering away from him and to the ground in front of her. “It'd be nice not to care,” the hybrid added sullenly.

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#15
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His own view on life was nearly as fatalistic—death had never been a fear, rather sometimes a comfort as it was a close friend of any soldier. He had always assumed that he was generally meaningless in this world, a world made for creatures that felt and worried and feared and melted. Snake was always the same, impassive and stoic, and it was that mechanical exterior that generally made him set apart from everyone else. He did not mind—his exile was comforting. Nevertheless, it was all the more surprising when some made him feel as though he was something more. He had made friends, friends who actually cared if he lived or died, and friends that knew him more than he probably knew himself. It was confusing, perhaps just as confusing as what Eris was dealing with. Then again, everything was relative based on the person, so he could not say.


And yet Snake could sense her grow still as he grabbed her hand—it accomplished what he had set out to do, which was to stop what she had been doing, but there was something unsettling in it as well. As he returned his hand to the neck of the bottle, she began to quake like an autumn leaf, blinking like an owl. He could not guess what it had meant to her, and he probably did not want to. Feeling simultaneously awkward and guilty, he sloshed the water in the bottle before taking another sip. The water was nearly out, even though it wasn't as though he couldn't get a refill.


He nodded, still trying to understand, though he could not reply to her quiet reiteration. He silently wondered if she was this open to everyone she met, or if she had merely been searching for someone to speak with. It made some sense that she would pick him, he who was not directly involved in any of the family of Inferni. Regardless, he frowned at her last statement, looking at her with some sharpness. "Do not say that," he said, a steely edge to his voice. "Sometimes it is better to suffer, I think, because it has the possibility of change. But you cannot change nothing. It seems safe at times, and maybe it is, but it is its own curse."


Snake, more closely likened to a machine than a man most of the time, knew what he was talking about in this circumstance.

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#16
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i loves an alex Big Grin


Eris had never been truly close to death, and so she was unfamiliar with it. Perhaps the closest she had come was a moment entirely unknown to her, faded from memory entirely. These were the earliest moments of her life, when her one-eyed mother had looked on her four children and saw that one was larger, darker than the rest—the earliest signs of Salvaged Eternity, signs that would only strengthen as Eris grew older. Those early moments were the ones when Kaena had contemplated ending the child's life, staring at the intensely different child, wondering if it would be better to simply snap her neck.


Eris did not know this, however, and perhaps the closest she'd been since was during the journey here, when hunger and exhaustion had made her lean and thin. Were it not for Itzcitla, surely she would have perished. Her chartreuse eyes drew back to Snake again, and a thin and tired smile drew across her sable-furred muzzle, just barely reflected in her now-dulled chartreuse eyes. “Even so, it's good to forget for a little while,” she said, motioning to the bottle of water, thinking of her initial hope for it. She was not much of a drinker, but the desire to do so seized her now and again regardless. It did not occur to Eris how immature and whiny she must have sounded, but she felt better than she had initially—maybe she had only needed to vent once, and Snake had been the unlucky receptacle for her anger and confusion.

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#17
I loooooove Sie~

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Hers was the life that a young Snake had not even believed possible. His childhood had been plagued with pain and the present chance of death—the adults of his life, namely Patriot, had encouraged it. Snake's constant nemesis had been his own brother, Foxhound. Every simple thing was necessary to fight over: food, water, places to sleep, chances to go outside, favor in the eye of the boss. Snake had the winning edge over the easily-upset Foxhound, practically up until the day when his brother shifted to his two-legged form first and used a knife to give Snake the wound he wore across his ribs. That had been the first time Snake had seen death looming close enough to touch; it had been the image of Patriot watching as he bled out, calling for medics once he believed Snake had been tempered by the experience.


In truth, he had been. Patriot's training had certainly made an impeccable soldier, though Snake had to deal with the side-effects now. Regardless, her words made him redirect his olive gaze to the nonalcoholic beverage that he had in his claws. Though he usually drank booze as a beverage (and not to get drunk), he could understand what she meant. "I do wish I had some to give, but unfortunately all that I scavenged from Halifax got caught in the fire." Snake honestly didn't mind hearing about other folk's issues (generally made him feel a little better, honestly), especially since it seemed to happen more than he would expect.


He fell silent, once more coming up blank on what else to say, and not having the conversation skills enough to find another topic.

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#18
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The shadow-furred woman had consumed no liquor nor any other substances which lend to forgetfulness, and yet some of the weight bearing down on her was gone. She did not feel quite so desperate anymore—perhaps she had simply needed to share that story with someone. The sandy-furred man spoke again, and the woman looked over to him, her chartreuse eyes studying him. She hardly knew anything about him; what he had shared here had been minimal, at least in comparison to all of the things Eris had told him. The sable-furred woman wasn't particularly difficult to read to begin with, anyway—her emotions were plain and they bubbled to the surface often. Anyone with half an eye for empathy could discern her emotions, burned brightly into her features as clearly as if they'd been branded there.


The sable-furred woman shrugged her shoulders. “If that's all you lost, you're lucky. What happened?” she asked. “War?” she added, recalling that he had mentioned this occurrence during their very conversation. Kaena had also mentioned a war, but Eris hadn't really been listening. She was too busy watching that single eye, trying to read the answers in its solar gold. When that hadn't worked, she'd asked outright, and it had only earned her a slammed door and isolation.

Table by Jimjamz!!!
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#19
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Snake was not very good at discerning emotion—not at all. It was probably because his own were so subdued (to the point of not being present at most points in time). He could see some things in Eris, though, for he thought that they weren't that complicated. Distress was something that he understood, even though distress coming from family was something that he did not. Snake had separated himself from his own when he had turned ten months old, and though his father had paid a visit to him once, that had only seemed to further the rift rather than bridge it. No, he could never fully understand or offer sympathy, but he could understand her distress in the very least.


"I am not lucky," he growled, setting the mostly empty bottle down on the bank next to him. He clasped his hands together, frowning. "My den was in the landfill to the south, and it was destroyed when the southern areas were set on fire. I believe that I am the only one to suffer that." Now he felt somewhat embarrassed—he hadn't wanted to incite a pity party for his sudden homelessness, especially since it wasn't that big a deal. He had liked his den, sure, but he'd probably find another one. Not one that he'd like as much as the old one, but he'd find one eventually. "Yes, we were warring with the wolf pack to our southwest—Dahlia de Mai. Their old leader wronged Kaena, and so we sought to drive him out." He paused, looking at the swift current of the river before concluding, "We burned him out, but his fires got to Inferni as well. We do not war with Dahlia now, though Haku Soul is still alive and his more temperate son now leads the wolf pack."


Snake was always ready for a fight or a war, but nothing was more displeasing than seeing the makings of another conflict off in the distance and not being able to do anything. He may be a lot of things, but one of those was a good soldier. He was meant to take orders and fight—not give advice or take initiative.

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#20
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SIEFAIL FOR SHORT POST FLSKGSKDJGKS.


The tawny-furred man spoke of his home and losing it, and the sable-shaded hybrid listened, one ear pricked upwards. She did not usually find sympathy within herself, but a vague tingle of it ran through her, and she frowned at his words. “Mmm. And I take it if you established a den, you didn't just show up here last week, either,” the sable-furred woman surmised, rolling her head toward him and giving him a rather peculiar look, lifting her brows. Why hadn't his clan stepped in to help him yet, if they had lost so little? Maybe in the end blood was more important than it seemed at first. Her gaze did not move from him as he continued to speak; clear interest showed on her coal-hued face as the pale coyote spoke of her mother, and an even more interesting subject. Haku Soul, was it? She hadn't know his name proper until that very moment; Larkspur had mentioned only his first name. “What'd he do to my mother?” she asked earnestly, hoping this appeared to be in the nature of a concerned daughter rather than a curious bystander, especially one more interested in the other party.


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