you can't make dirt clean
#1
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Word Count :: 320

Things should have been perfect for Harlowe in Anathema, but the sad truth was that they were far from that. The pale-furred youth felt utterly ignored and rejected by his mother all over again. She had not made time for him, she had not seen to his settling in. He was surrounded by family and utterly miserable, and worst of all, Scorpius simply would not cease following him around. The dark-furred little imbecile was irritating Harlowe to no end, and so the chocolate-tipped Zepar had escaped the packlands, running as fast as his long and limber legs would allow. At thirteen months, Harlowe was finished growing, and he had become a rather tall Luperci, though unimpressive due to his wiry and stick-thin frame. There were no muscles to back up the imposing size of the D'Angelo boy; still, it was speed he needed to get away from Scoripus for at least a few hours.


When he stopped running, the Anathema wolf realized he had reached the beach. The ocean's waves hummed repetitively in the air, and the smell of salt and cold was thick on the air. This area was familiar to him, and Harlowe could not at first place this familiarity. The quietness of the afternoon indicated the coming of snow, but Harlowe was blind to these signs of the weather, rather unlike a wolf of his age should have been. As the first flakes drifted downward from the clouds, the youth realized he was quite near to Phoenix Valley. This unclaimed strip of beach was all that separated his current home from his former pack and the place where he had done those awful things. He froze and began to back up, slowly -- his olive-colored eyes peered toward the place from whence he had come, and he found no good memories there. There should have been, but the bad ones were too overwhelming for Harlowe to stifle.

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#2
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Element had decided to stay at the beach today. It was still very chilly weather, but his winter coat had finally grown in, leaving him with a plush coat to protect him. And the beach was usually warm, as it had plenty of sun-heated rocks to lay on and be hot - and Element was right. In fact, Element was sitting on one right now, staring out into the open ocean.

Then he noticed something coming - or rather, someone. This someone looked rather distraught. Element looked up and saw that fine, powdery snowflakes were falling, and wondered if that person was distraught because it was snowing, but immediately expelled that thought. Cats hated water, but dogs had no reason to dislike it. Putting his eyes on the boy again, Element saw that he was young - and was slowly backing away from the area behind him, eyes wide.

Element looked behind him. There was a pack in that area, he knew - it was called Bird Hill, or something like that. Looking back to the young man, Element decided to make his presence known - and perhaps offer help for this distressed person. "Hello," he said. "Are you alright?"

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#3
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Word Count :: 360 8D

Harlowe did not know if his siblings were still within the confines of the Valley -- Caprica had disappeared before he left, and he did not see either of his sisters too often. Rio was the last one he had seen -- since that moment he had not been able to face any of his sisters. He feared his reaction, and he feared Rio's reaction more than anything. He had contemplated the aftermath of these actions many times over, and the pale-furred boy could not foresee anything good coming of what had happened. He had hurt her, he knew this -- and he would never tell his mother. She would not understand, and it would only serve to further separate them.


The chocolate-hued boy did not feel the cold -- he possessed a rather thick coat, though it was smooth and the fur lay nearly flat against his skin, adding to his sleek and skinny appearance. For the thickness of his fur, it lent him nothing where size was concerned. The dark-tipped male was engrossed with his own thoughts and his own head, as usual, so he did not see or hear the other creature until it spoke to him. Whirling about, expecting to find another canine, Harlowe was rather perplexed to view a stark black cat, brilliant green-hued eyes intelligently studying the Zepar.


“Yes,” he said flatly. There was indifference in the boy, as always -- it was for this reason, perhaps, that Harlowe was not so terrible a liar as one might think. He did not generally see any need to lie, but where his own feelings and thoughts were concerned, he was particularly protective. The memories of Rio and Phoenix Valley were especially valuable, especially insidious were they to escape his head -- he would not share these so easily. “You're a cat,” he observed intelligently, pondering why this smaller creature was so comfortable around a canine such as himself. The chocolate-tipped wolf had not known any cats at all -- just from pictures and the occasional glimpse of wildcat -- but this did not look like any wildcat. He had certainly never spoken to one before.

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#4
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wc: 218 D: short post sorry

Element pondered the tone in which the pup said that he was okay. In fact, he just said 'yes'. But he didn't seem fine, and Element was no fool; he could scent the distress and anger from his breath and hair. But he didn't push the subject, as it wasn't his business, anyway; but he did know that there was something wrong with the puppy that he did not want to say.

Element nodded in the wolf pup's mention that he was a cat. "I am," he responded, wrapping his tail around his paws and licking his chest briefly. "And you're a wolf," he responded, looking at the puppy's rounded head and snout. It wasn't as long as a coyote's, which Element had thought he was at first - but he looked closer and saw the had shape, the ear size, and realized that the largeness wasn't that of a coyote, but that of a puppy. He smiled at the youngster, thinking of how he himself was older than that of which he conversed. He didn't mind, however, no - it was intruiging to see what people thought inside their minds, whether they were big or small. And he did love talking to puppies.

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#5
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Word Count → 285 :: Mreh, no problem! I know Harlowe can be difficult to reply to; he's such a scintillating conversationalist. x_x He is such fun for me, though. D:

The chocolate-tipped youth did not encounter many cats -- he had seen only a few felines in the wilderness, and only at a distance. Immediately upon realizing a wolf was in the vicinity, the cats had run off -- many times, they had been cougars and bobcats. In any case, those cats were much larger and more intimidating in appearance than this small sable thing, and yet those cats had wished only to avoid him. He found this a curiosity, and so he studied the feline with a renewed interest even as the cat responded with nonchalance and the utter coolness conveyable only by one of the feline persuasion. “Never met a cat that wanted to talk to me before,” he remarked. “You like wolves, then,” he inferred, figuring the fact that the feline hadn't yet taken off to be quite a good sign.


“I'm Harlowe,” he said, finding it strange but appropriate to introduce himself to a cat. His earlier distress about his current proximity to Phoenix Valley forgotten, the youth settled down to the ground and made himself quite comfortable. He wrapped his tail around his leg and peered toward the sable-shaded creature, still quite enamored with the idea that he was having a conversation with a cat. It was an oddity, and certainly more interesting than talking to wolves. Element hadn't even said anything truly intriguing yet, and Harlowe found himself wanting to continue the conversation. Such a desire for social contact had never been experienced before by Harlowe, who found the feeling awkward, to say the least. He did not know how to interact properly, and so his desire to do so was shriveled and weakened by his lack of know-how.

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#6
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no worries! Element himself spends a lot of time in his head :3 awww, maybe him and harlowe could be friendies! wc: 298

Element cupped his ears towards the young wolf as he stated that Element liked wolves. "I've found that they're not so bad as my kind think," he said sagely. Over his years, he'd gotten over his own premonition that all wolves and canines in general were evil. Perhaps the one that had killed Flower, his loved Flower, was evil, yes - but that didn't mean all were evil any more than all cats loved reading and literature or that all snails liked being stuck on kitten's noses, which had happened to Element as a small kitten. He had learned that canines could be good or bad, beneficial and malevolent - all at the same time, even. It had taken a while for him to learn this, but now he was open-minded - better than he had been a while ago. Yes, he supposed he 'liked' wolves.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Harlowe," he said conversationally. He looked about, past to the ocean and out to the sky, wanting to continue the conversation with this little young wolf. "The sea is so wide," he said, his eyes trained on the blue expanse that widened out before them - the Atlantic. It was just an inane comment - he hadn't intended to go much with it, so he turned back to the youngster. "Do you come here much?" he asked. He had to admit that he himself did not - he had come here after learning that there was an ocean here; he didn't particularly like the closeness to the Bird Hill pack, but he was confident that they wouldn't seek him out here, since he wasn't trespassing - and he could outclimb most canines.

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#7
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Word Count → 461 :: That would be so fitting, Harlowe's only frand being a cat... >___>

Harlowe did not often think to formulate opinions on things that were largely unfamiliar to him. This was not due to open-mindedness, however; instead, the boy simply did not consider or put much thought toward things outside the scope of his very narrow interests. He liked books and he liked reading; he also liked scrawling his own thoughts. Outside of this and his family, there was not very much Harlowe cared deeply for. He found the subjects in his books interesting, of course, but there was the occasional difficulty in understanding their themes. They were, after all, aimed at humans.


“I didn't think your kind disliked mine,” he said, sounding surprised rather than offended. He thought cats were just shy and awkward, much like himself -- the thought that they disliked wolves and thus avoided them had been ruled out by the boy, who had seen another canine in Anathema with a feline companion. That he would be proven wrong by another feline was unexpected. “You, too,” he said, rather simply. This was, for once in Harlowe's life, a genuine and unprompted sentiment, not brought about by thoughts of his mother and manners but of genuine interest in the other party in the conversation.


“Have you looked at a map?” he asked, uncertain if cats did such things. Not all Luperci did, but cats were another matter entirely -- utterly foreign to the boy, he would not assume either way about the sable-shaded feline. “There is so much ocean,” he added, uncertain of how to even begin to convey the amount of ocean to land there was in the wide world. He did not truly understand the human measurement words, the words like mile and inch and even pound, and his best analogy would be a confusing mess, so the boy opted not to try instead, hoping the feline had glanced at one of those old human sheets of paper once or twice in his lifetime.


“No. I used to live there, and I don't anymore,” he answered, pointing toward Phoenix Valley half-heartedly. He didn't think it was dangerous telling Element things like that, and many people knew he used to live in Phoenix Valley -- his aunt Pontiac and Naniko both had resided there with him, as had his siblings. He thought it a sufficient enough answer; that he had left in the first place indicated something wrong with the place, and thus he hoped Element would assume it was only natural he would want to avoid a place he found so distasteful as to leave. In truth, the pale-furred boy feared retribution from his mother, from someone -- he knew he and Rio both had a lot of family, and he wondered if she had told any of them.

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