Read Only. :> These threads are stiiiiill awkward. Also, this is forward-dated to very early morning, November 8th, 2010. (1940)

The sable-shaded canine had never sought her mother before. For all she had done within the clan in an attempt to better her name, this was one thing she could not bear to do—not until now, anyway. Perhaps it had been fear, however subconscious, keeping her away. Certainly, there was no overt fright in Eris for the frail old coyote that was her mother; in the Equites's high opinion of herself, she could have ousted the scarred woman from the Centurion's position, had she wanted it. Not only was this gross underestimation of Kaena, it was gross overestimation of herself; of course, Eris did not pause for a moment to think of that.

Things had changed, and they had changed rapidly; the coal-colored woman now had her trump card, something that she knew the one-eyed coyote would not be able to resist. Whatever she had done to prove herself in Inferni before this was prepatory work. This would be the cement to bind her to Inferni in Kaena's eyes, and Eris knew this with gleeful certainty. For her arrogance and occasional ignorance, Eris was not a stupid canine; a rudimentary, animalistic cleverness had begun to manifest in her. Things were no longer handed off to her on request, and her life no longer had any of the gold plating it had once possesed in Eterne. She had been forced to change, and, perhaps in the first true coyote act of her life, the sable-shaded female had begun to adapt. This adaptation was her best yet.

The silver-shaded coyote had returned to her cave after spending her birthday in isolation, keeping to the upper reaches of Halcyon Mountain and waiting until the sun had been down at least an hour before setting back on a return trek. The significance of the prior day had not escaped her, and unless someone else remembered the date, the silver-shaded coyote was the only one. She liked it that way—no one else needed know she had passed her eleventh birthday, and she was reaching into the extremeties of age now, having likely outlasted the majority of her generation. Her mind was quiet, kept purposefully silent and devoid of thought lest those surrounding age and elderliness and aging surround her. Some part of her knew she ought to abandon her post and take an elder's rank; she was not much use to Gabriel anymore, and as he would be an old man before long, too, he deserved a far more youthful and fit subleader.

She had begun to settle down into her cave, shifting her blankets about on her bed, intending to smoke a little bit of her joint and collapse to an early sleep. Her Optime form was her usual choice in the cave; sleeping in her Lupus form lately simply made for a painful morning shift, wracked with pains and aches. At least in her dexterous form she could smoke and alleviate her pain quickly. A rustle near the door caught the coyote woman's attention, and her head snapped around quickly, peering at the shadow standing at the entrance to her cave. With the dim glow of a single candle, the one-eyed coyote could not make out the form standing in the doorway. The Optime canine, however, did not wait for an invitation.

The sable-shaded woman walked confidently into the cave, her long-clawed hand placed on the upper edge of her stomach. It was beginning to protrude, the slight curve and bulge of motherhood growing quickly and clearly on the coal-coated woman. Her chartreuse-shaded eyes glowed, purposefully broadcasting the gloating, glowering burn the hybrid felt in her chest. So this was what victory felt like. The coyote hybrid had no doubt Kaena would tell her now. Failure had not so much as crossed Eris's mind; instead, the woman believed she had learned enough about Kaena since coming here those many weeks ago. She had not paid rapt attention, but it hadn't taken superb powers of detection to learn that Kaena was fond of family.

“They'll be born here, in Inferni, with your surname.” The sable-shaded woman did not intend to keep this promise if she could help it; although it would not be the end of the world if her children were born into this coyote clan, she did not want to stay here, and moving them in the weeks after their birth would be difficult to impossible. They certainly would not carry her mother's surname. This she knew adamantly, and though if they did happen to be born here they might go by the Lykoi guise for some time, this would not be a permanent label for them. There was no harm in Kaena thinking this, of course.

Shock registered on the one-eyed canine's face. It was a rare emotion that was clearly discernible through the knotted mess of scar tissue that made up her face. The Centurion did not need the woman's condition explained to her; she had been a mother enough times over to see it for herself the moment the other canine walked in, seeming to be all smug pride at first. As Kaena studied the sable-shaded woman's face closely, though, she noticed something else entirely: pride. This struck her on roughly the same level of surprise as Eris's initial grand entrance, and her goldenrod eye narrowed in suspicion.

Kaena could not help but fall once again to shock at the woman's next words. Confusion registered on her face, and she wondered if Halo had smacked her around in the head again. That incident was probably known across the clan by now, but Kaena did not dare mention it. Despite her surprise, the silvery hybrid wondered if this was a genuine moment from the sable-shaded woman, and she looked over her for a long moment, silent and staring. “Who?” she asked, ever wary of her daughter. The silver-shaded coyote knew the blood that ran in her veins, and she would not allow herself to fall victim to it again.

The wolfish canine's face fell upon her mother's question, her ears turning backward and her head lowering a few imperceptible notches. Luckily, disappointment was not something she needed to falsify; she had not expected a continued battle from the old coyote. It was her next words, her next actions that required fabrication. Slowly, the sable-shaded hybrid sank to the low rocks that lined the side of her mother's cave, wrapping her tail around her thigh and highing her stomach. She did not look at the one-eyed woman, and instead directed her gaze to the entrance of the cave, her chartreuse eyes burning a hate she could not possibly hope to conceal. To think she had come all this way hoping for love, hoping for some kind of acceptance—the only moment of kindness any of these coyotes had shown her was her elder brother, and only after she had her face half beaten in.

“I don't know. There were a few,” the woman said, her voice cracking mid-sentence. The tears that came forth from the sable canine's eyes were real; in a moment the woman was feeling a crushing despair. Not even offering her children to Inferni and the Lykoi was enough to redeem her in this austere, ancient woman's opinion. “Mama... I thought you'd be proud of me. I thought you'd love me,” the Equites said, whimpering to the end of her sentence. Though she wanted more than anything to storm away from this cave and that awful woman and never look back, there was still something locked inside of that coyote's fucking head, and Eris needed it. If she could have torn it out of the old woman's brain, she would have. “Why do you hate me?” she asked, momentarily inflamed, momentarily inclined to scramble across the cave and tear chunks from Kaena until she told.

The silver-shaded woman remained where she was even as the other canine showed distress and yowled her questions; the one-eyed coyote heard a stirring from the room to the side, and she turned, finding Itachi's purple eyes intently focused on the strange woman in his home. “Go back to sleep, Itachi. Sorry if we woke you,” the hybrid murmured, standing to usher the boy back into the alcove of her cave where he stayed. It had been unused for some time after Vieira, and Kaena was glad to have Itachi there, though she had to move the jawbone again, placing it on the back end of her shelf, still as out of sight as possible. Maybe someday she would end up burning it.

After insuring Itachi was back in his alcove, the hybrid moved to Eris, who stared in disgust at her. “I love my family,” the hybrid confessed, settling to the rock next to Eris, her gray hand moving to the sable canine's shoulder. “I don't hate you.” As much as Eris may have needed it, Kaena could not bring herself to profess love for her just yet. There was still that lurking, nagging suspicion within her. Denying hate, on the other hand, was easy. Slowly wrapping that arm around Eris to pull her closer, the hybrid sighed heavily, exhaling through her nose and clutching her forehead for a moment. “I am deathly afraid of your father.”

Eris nearly pulled away when Kaena sat down, and she had some difficulty in suppressing a shudder as the Centurion seemed to only want to get closer, first placing a hand on her shoulder and then turning to her in a half-embrace, denying the hate Eris so clearly saw in her. Everything in the Equites strained to shove her mother away and run, and it took every ounce of self-control she possessed to remain sitting still. Her other family members' children were welcomed with open arms into this clan, allowed to sleep with the matriarch herself. Her own children would be subjected to a lifetime of doubt and persecution here, no less because they would be wolves, all of them—Larkspur was not a sliver of a percent coyote, and Eris herself was no more than a quarter wolf.

The scarred Centurion's next sentence, however, changed everything in an instant. Eris nearly failed to keep her joy concealed; so successful was her ploy that the old woman had brought up the subject herself! If it had been the correct moment, Eris would have gloated and yowled to the skies of her victory. Instead, she took in a breath, steadying herself in what she hoped appeared to be an attempt to regain composure. She even lifted her hands to wipe her tears away, turning her yellow-green eyes to her mother. “Why won't you tell me about him?” she asked, wanting the answer more than anything she had ever known in life.

The silver-shaded coyote did not remove her arm from Eris's shoulders; instead, the coyote woman only clutched her closer. As Eris turned to look at her, the coyote's free hand brushed the woman's hair from her face, tucking it back behind her smallish sable ears. They were not wolf's ears, but they were damn close. There were slight hints of coyote here and there with Eris, but she was the most wolfish of all the children Kaena had bore to wolves. Perhaps that was Salvaged's last cruel joke, that his last offspring, born to his greatest enemy and his killer, the very woman who had first baptized him into sin, was to look more like a wolf than any sort of coyote. The hybrid's face had shifted concern to simple gloom, and she shook her head slowly, back and forth.

“He was a monster.”

From here, Kaena tells Eris about Salvaged Eternity and how they first met, what happened with Zulifer and what happened later with Kerberos; she also, of course, tells Eris about Fatin and what happened with her, though she omits the fact that they loved each other, too. Kae finishes with the circumstances of Salvaged's death, the rape and murder that had resulted in Eris being born alongside Laruku's children. Eris pretty much abruptly leaves right afterward, feigning that everything's way too much to take in, and immediately leaves, secretively changing her name to “Eris Eternity,” a fact she will conceal until she has left Inferni. Kaena is left in her cave with the sinking sensation that she's just done something pretty wrong.