put on your best dress.
#1
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Thread Information
Date: 02 March

Setting: The Dampwoods, Musquodoboit Valley.

Time: Late afternoon.

Character Form: Optime.
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Pampered and treated exceptionally well throughout her youth, Eris was used to everything being provided for her. Her Kimaris uncles had provided all the food she needed, and with the markets, there was not even a need to hunt. Those that chose to in Eterne generally did so for the sheer sport of it, though of course, unlike some humans, they still consumed what they caught. Ritualistic hunting was not uncommon, either, though as it was not sanctioned by the Atotozli, it was not overabundant. Despite this upbringing, the sable-shaded woman was presented, for the first time in her life, with some responsibility. She had children now, and she had to provide for them. It was not as if Larkspur did a poor job of this -- on the contrary, the father of her children provided for them all with ease. However, the sable-shaded woman was not a fool, and she realized that in Larkspur's absence she would be utterly dependent on the pack to provide for her as well as her children.


It was for this reason, as well as her own feelings of inadequacy, that had spurred her to begin working to better herself. Strangely enough, some weeks after her conversation with Tayui, a brown wolf had showed up in Anathema bearing the name Sirius -- his mother, Dierdre, would have been some kind of cousin or niece to Eris. Thus, they were related. It was on this fact that Eris had struck up a conversation with him, and now, nearly two months later, they had become far closer friends. Sirius had begun assisting Eris with some of her skills, especially that of hunting. She was now capable of taking down the occasional rabbit, though she was still a fumbling, clumsy fool for the most part. Though she hated the way Sirius laughed at her, she tolerated it amazingly well. At least he did not share how inept she really was with everyone else, or so she thought. Either he was quiet about it or the rest of the pack was simply too nice to mock her for it.


She kept most of her practicing far away from the prying eyes of the pack. The sable-shaded hybrid still feared their derision, of course, as she did not wish to be known as the useless fool who could not even secure a meal for herself. Today, the hybrid had spent most of the day chasing the fleet-footed rabbits in her Lupus form, unable to catch more than two -- one was old and had some kind of injury to its rear leg, while the second seemed to be suffering from some kind of eye injury. Sirius had taught her how to skin them and how to cure their small pelts, which were mostly useless except as trinkets, far too small to be of any warming use to a Luperci. The coyote hybrid had discovered what had seemed to be a small village at the bottom of the sloping mountain, nestled in between higher land. There were a few ruined houses here and there, though some still seemed to be standing. A twisted tree here and there told of a flood some time earlier, and the hybrid was not surprised by this. In the spring, she would avoid this lowlands area.


For the moment, however, the cold was certainly strong enough to hold the snow in place and keep it from melting to nothingness. The coal-hued woman trotted toward a half-standing shack. One of the walls was entirely ruined, exposing the innards of the tiny building to all the elements. It was far too wet to consider building a fire, but the sable-shaded woman found a relatively dry corner of the shed, clearing it of some debris before settling down with the two rabbit corpses, laying the first across her lap while she sat the second at her side. They were both winter-thin and, as always, winter thin. There was little sustenance in them, but Eris did not care -- she was hungry and she had worked hard at this all goddamn day. It was more progress than she had made in months.

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#2
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The forest bothered him, but the search for prey removed him from the wide-open plains and wasteland at times, remembering survival and remembering sustenance. Self-preservation, when recalled, was a powerful driving force. His pet could only do so much. The past few days had removed him from the waste, drawing him into the trees.

Earlier, he’d snatched up some mice from beneath the snow, but that could hardly be considered a meal. A sparrow had fallen victim to his jaws, but that was barely a snack—nothing more than fluff and feather-light bone. Slipping from the interior of a ruined house—another handful of mice quickly swallowed as he rooted through crumbling architecture—he passed around the edge of a decaying shack. The wall was missing, and he glanced within, unable to avoid detecting the she-wolf as she set about preparing the rabbits.

The last time that he’d seen her she’d been an infant.

She was a stranger to him now.

He said nothing.


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#3
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Word Count → 310 :: -touch-

Meager as her kill was, the coal-shaded woman was proud of it. Nearly four years old, it was the first time she had ever killed anything for her own sustenance. Sacrificial rituals in Eterne did not count -- the prey or canine was brought out already quite well tied down, beaten, or drugged into submission. Hunting was a different beast entirely, and as Eris bumbled through her learning, the hybrid was realizing the difficulties and more nuanced aspects of it, things Sirius could not teach her. She still had yet to hunt large game in a pack setting, and it remained to be seen whether Eris would end up any use at that.


The nearby sounds of movement, the sounds of someone within another of the ruined buildings throwing and moving things around within it. She did not pause in her meal, tearing a piece of meat and swallowing it thoughtfully, her ears pricked to the sounds there. They were rather near to Anathema, so the idea of encountering a packmate lingered on the hybrid woman's mind. She did not wish to be seen as she was hunting, but now with prey in hand and stomach, she would be more willing to meet them. As the stranger rounded the corner, however, the hybrid did not smell her own pack on him. She did not recognize him, her yellow-green eyes stopping at coyote.


There was a moment of hesitation from the sable hybrid, who equivocated mentally as to what to say. She recognized the red star burned into him, but she did not smell Inferni on the man. Her ears folded halfway, her yellowish eyes regarding him as she spoke. “Another relative of mine?” she asked, presuming him to be a cousin rather than a half-sibling. His thin frame made him appear far younger than he was to the sable-shaded Tuyul.

hold us at the center while the spiral unwinds
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#4
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Her words stopped him in his tracks. His sleek head swiveled around, focusing completely on the jet-black luperci within the crumbling building. Blood-red eyes narrowed, searching her features for some source of familiarity. He didn’t even see a chaos star branded into her flesh. “Who are you?” he asked, his clawed paws balanced precariously on some scattering of rubble from the collapsed wall. He couldn’t place her.

The child—the infant that he’d laid eyes on no more than a handful of times so long ago—was dead and gone to him now. Eris Lykoi had become irrelevant. Once, she’d invoked hatred and jealousy—not even on a personal level, but on a symbolic one, as she’d stolen his mother’s affection away, and then her physical being when she’d left to chase her errant daughter across the desert.


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#5
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lol this thread will not go as well as i planned?

The canine before very appeared very-nearly corpse-like, as if he had been dead of starvation some time ago and buried, only to be cruelly pulled from the earth once more. There were bloodied eyes, brilliantly red, but they were deep-set into his skull, burning some strange fire that frightened and aroused her interest at once. The dark woman hesitated, her own eyes narrowing as she squinted and peered closely at the figure before her, too scrawny to be even called thin, everything about him drawn to a razor-sharp edge.


Though she had little doubt he was alive, there was a reek of death about him anyway, a gentle and clinging film of a scent, barely there. It was not something he had killed, nor was it the scent of a corpse itself, but his scent itself that smelled faintly of death. Or was that a smell? The coyote hesitated at this, unable to identify this as a feeling, a scent, a notion, or simply an imagined quality, and as quickly as she contemplated, breaking concentration, it was gone -- not so much dissipated as disappeared, leaving her to contemplate the reality of its existence in the first place.


“Eris,” she answered, her voice softer and shakier than she would have liked it to sound. She had lost whatever indifference she had upon first sighting him, instead, the appearance of that shadow, that apparition or hallucination or whatever it had been, had swayed her confidence. There was no shrinking back from the hybrid, however -- instead, there was faint fascination mixed in with that hesitant look fixed upon her face.


hold us at the center while the spiral unwinds
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#6
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He’d have liked to have snapped her neck the first time he’d seen her, so many years prior. That entire litter—he’d wanted to slit their throats and drain their blood into the soil, but Kaena would not have approved of such an action. They’d stolen away her love, and Samael had been left to smolder in the background, hating them and hating everything that they represented to him. He and his siblings had been perfection—there was no need for her to have replaced them. Resentment, anger, hatred—he was close to no one within his own family. His own offspring hated him, not that he even kept track of them.

The name was spoken, seemingly striking him across the face like a physical blow. He didn’t reel from the impact or even shift from where he stood, but something in his demeanor changed. Memories came flooding back. He slunk in across the collapsed wall, drawing nearer, flaring his nostrils to take in her scent, mingled with the scent of rot and mildew from the decaying building. His bones creaked, threatening a shift, threatening to force him into another body due to the subtle emotion seeping through his veins, though he held it off with some effort.

What was she doing here?

His brain wracked memory, searching for what Kaena had said about her when she’d returned. “You left Mother to die,” he finally said, his voice low—spoken in a sickening tone, as though his throat and lungs were truly decaying.


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#7
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Word Count → 411 :: derp

That apparition had not returned -- whatever it had been, it was gone and she could not have summoned it back with all the strength in her body. Her yellow-green eyes burned toward him, still fiercely curious. It was enough to override whatever good sense and fear she had, for she did not think to protect herself so or so much as suspect him of malice. She had not paid attention to the lore and stories of her family; she was indifferent to the Lykoi legacy, and from it she wished to derive one thing. She had this one small thing now, the knowledge of her paternal heritage, and this was all she had required from any of them. Then again, the thought had not occurred to her that one of them might be touched by some other power beyond their own.


He recognized her, it seemed -- there was mirrored interest in his sudden movement and shift forward, and he spoke, revealing himself to be a sibling. He was older than her, of course -- no matter how far removed she was from the rest of her family, Eris thought her littermates would have been instantly recognizable to her. It may or may not have been the truth, but it was what she earnestly believed. The woman did know that one of her brothers was dead; Kaena had shared this with her upon Eris's first arrival to Inferni. There was that small grace, but other, more important knowledge had been delayed. He was too small and coyote-like to be one of Gabriel's siblings, and too young to be that mythical eldest brother, the one she scarcely remembered to count among her family.


She did know him, but she did not speak his name; instead, she responded slowly, her brilliant eyes refusing to drop. “I thought she was already dead,” the coyote said. She would not defend herself further, and it was the truth -- there had been too much blood and cleaved flesh for the youngster to tell where Astaroth really ended and Kaena began. Sure, she knew her mother wasn't dead as in ceasing to breathe when she left, but at the time and even now, she had not known what she could have done other than sit and watch the scarred old woman die. She had not felt obligated or inclined, and so she had taken her leave. It was ridiculously simple and reduced in her own mind.

hold us at the center while the spiral unwinds
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#8
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“Liar,” he said, simply. Had she cared about the woman that’d followed her halfway across the earth, risking her life for her own, she’d have at least made sure that she was truly dead before leaving her there to die, alone in the wilderness. She’d have given her corpse a proper burial. Samael would have, anyway. Anything less repulsed him. Eris had never cared, and the pain she’d caused their mother in turn brought him pain.

His eyes were narrowed in their hollowed, shadowed sockets. Kaena was the deciding factor when it came to acknowledging their blood. “She left us to go chasing after you, and you don’t even care,” he continued, unable to contain the venom lacing his words. Perhaps he could still snap her fragile little neck. Unconsciously, he took a few more slow, slinking steps closer.


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