Dating this in my post log as happening on 10Apr2011.
Word Count → 8+

One long, fragile finger rubbed at the corner of a crimson eye while she moved across Inferni's lands. Paint of the most basic colors stained russet fur. She'd locked herself away in her den with the bones of a hallucination, spending lost hours decorating a masterpiece. For a while she'd forgotten how much she loved the feel of a brush in her hand, of paint on her paw pads, the smell of colors on the wind. The fumes had been getting to her, clearly. Damaging as it was, it was better than her normal vice of strong liquids in shiny glass bottles. It brought about a beautiful end. What she had fused back together now sported designs of the most magnificent colors. Inferni lacked art. She hoped to rectify it.

The only reason for leaving her home had been a lack of red paint. The mansion was sure to have something similar to the color she desired; she knew she wasn't the only artist lounging around the clan, since she'd met her sketching cousin and dealt with the explosive German. Somewhere, she knew there was paint. She found herself going upstairs without an hesitation, making that turn to the right in search of a room she hadn't entered for months. It reeked of the familiar male. Ende. The death room. Cotl Ulrich's.

She didn't bother to knock; why would she? If he grew angry, she could always twist her hair about a finger and bat her eyelashes. Cotl's bedroom was the most likely place to find the red that she so desperately needed. To her surprise, and partial relief, he wasn't there. Massacre eyes scanned the surroundings; it wasn't her place to just ransack his personal items, but she was on a mission. Russet hands pulled draws from furniture, rifling through belongings that were of no use to her. Minutes passed, belongings tossed willy nilly across the floor, until she came across what she needed. In the drawer of his bedside table, with his tattoo gun, were inks. And one was just the shade she wanted. Stealing from Cotl didn't seem wrong. The man had already told her how vile he was in one simple statement: his soul was incapable of being saved. Losing his red ink was penance. Or that was what she could claim.

Finished with her task, she started out once more, not bothering to put his things away. Passing his nephew's skull, she halted. A can of something sat beside it. Though she couldn't read the label, she could tell what it was. Something involving air and paint, as proved by the traces of paint on the nozzle. With a glance about the room, as if to check for wandering eyes, she reached to grab the spraypaint as well. It wasn't red. She simply wanted it. With her stolen treasures in tow, she exited the Ende, closing the door ever so carefully. Ghost-like actions were all she hoped to achieve. Cotl couldn't ruin her work just yet.

Fleeing the mansion was not as difficult as it might have seemed; she was ignored, for the most part, which was her preferred position in the clan. Dealing with others was bothersome. They were rude, or naive, or ignorant. Nothing was worth her attention except for her art and her beautiful wolfdog hiding away in the mountains. Of course, then there was Ezekiel. Was he worth the love she gave him? The thought made her pause, glancing toward the caverns while her mind passed over his home. He was always so close, but she had done nothing to reach out to him after their argument.

A shake of her head pulled her back to the task at hand. She needed to return to her project with red medium intact, and before the rightful owner could take it back. Excursions into Halifax were not on her agenda. Finishing the natural sculpture was all that mattered. As long legs carried the misshapen body of the Lykoi princess back toward her home, her eyes caught the sight of something else. Someone new, someone she had let into her home after brief inquiry. Talitha was not interested in friends, lacking in capabilities for simpatico social ties, but she knew little of the seemingly bland woman who had brought her son to Inferni. The dog creature she found physically distasteful.

The sight of her clan member caused her path to turn, a beeline made toward the other female easily. "Wasted time is never gained back." Her words were blunt, but not accusatory. She didn't care what the woman did. It wasn't Talitha's rank that suffered idle hands. Without asking, she sat on the dead earth nearby. Crimson eyes focused upon the face of the coydog with subtle curiosity; emotion still managed to flow freely through the windows of her soul. Her arms relinquished hold of the red ink and spraypaint, letting them rest upon the ground between her knees. "There are always borders to be patrolled; the skulls can't seem to keep out the lowly on their own."

Talitha rubbed the edge of her jaw with a tense, bony hand. "Dwelling on the past is a useless way to spend time." On the wind, she'd heard what past this dog had gotten herself into; it wasn't hard to learn the facts, and the air around the woman still smelled of her dark-furred friend. Perhaps she hadn't stopped just to see a new member; perhaps her purpose was much more grave than anything another could imagine. Her head tilted as the younger female asked if she was painting something. "That is generally what paint and ink is for."

Dark eyes turned toward the sky, then toward the caverns, and then back to the face of the female before her. "Inferni is treating you well, I assume. You are still here, after all." If she didn't like the clan, Talitha would feel it stupid to stay; they didn't need Luperci who worked against them, and she would be the first to cast out a transgressor. The Lykoi tapped her fingers against the blue scarf work about her neck, settled over the tarnished silver necklace. "Making friends?" Did she really care? Not at all, but it was common courtesy to ask such a thing, and she would have offered that courtesy to any she came into contact with.

300+

She turned her head to the side ever so slightly as she studied the spraypaint can; she couldn't read, but she liked to look at the shapes of the letters. It was certainly better than actually listening to the doggish female before her. Bits and pieces of what she said came to the older female's black-rimmed ears, but little actually stuck. Instead of giving a verbal reply, she merely nodded her head. It wasn't until Io asked a question that Talitha spoke once more. "Bones." A skeleton, made from the rotting corpse of an Andrezej-look-a-like. When it was finished, she would have a beautiful wired sculpture, different from the skulls found along the borders. What had once been innocent art had transformed into macabre representations of the clan itself.

Allowing one long leg to extend slightly, she leaned backwards to rest her weight against padded hands. The flattest expression crossed her features, and even her eyes looked dead behind it all. "The men around here don't like dogs." Perhaps it was a lie, as her father had proved his own loins yearned for a whore with domesticated blood, but she assumed he was the exception and not the rule. Casual words continued to flow, without aggression or distaste, but pressured by a tone that claimed such things were clear facts. "You might believe that he and you have something truly special, but you would be wrong. Revan likes a special sort, and it is something you could never hope to be." The princess remembered how excited the Rajanikant male had been when she gave her surname, and how he had been so worried for her when the fiasco in the forest had occurred. Why he had taken comfort in such a disgusting creature like Io was beyond the mind of the hybrid. Need was satisfied in the closest thing. Her own had caused her to fall into the arms of various outsiders, so she could understand the necessity. Perhaps she would have to rectify the problem some other day; it had been so long since she'd called upon her younger friend, though she still slept with the doll he'd given her.

"At least you haven't disillusioned yourself."

Those were the only words she could give in response to the female's flat acceptance. Talitha had had enough of dogs ruining her world; perhaps her family was full of wolf blood, but she hadn't truly seen the destructive properties of dogs until the knowledge of Alaine Winters and the bastard brats sired by her father. Where wolves were once the ultimate enemy, they came so close to the home wrecking domesticated canids that she could see no difference. Neither were accepted in her clan. Why should she branch out to love them as kin? They would never be of Inferni.

The conversation moved back to her skeleton, and it seemed the younger woman was interested in something the Historian had to say. Talitha's nose wrinkled at the offer; she was sure this doggish female had nothing she would want to work with. "I have a full skeleton. I don't need any more, and I would only work with the bones of dogs and wolves." The statement was firm, and allowed a glimpse into the life of the morbid creature known as Talitha Lykoi. Her world of contradictions began and ended with wolves, dead wolves and living, and she found herself unable to separate them from herself.

Slender fingers raised up the crimson ink to study it, wondering how it would look on the porous bones. She'd only ever used paint to decorate. Cotl's trade of tattooing skin seemed entirely unique, and the medium provided for the pieces of art was equally strange to her. "Eventually, it will sit on the border, like our skulls. Of course, it will be much more interesting than any skull."

She didn't believe the doggish female was as disillusioned as she believed herself to be, but she offered no extra comment on it. The conversation was over, and she would talk to Revan in the future about his mistakes made in the past. There was nothing left to say to a loose lover when the man could be complained to instead. As she studied the ink, listening to the words of the new Tirones, Talitha's ears twitched. She agreed: rabbits would not have been useful to their borders, as the rabbit was prey expected to be killed. Wolves, large ones, were a true prize. Their craniums showed the strength that the force known as Inferni offered against the rest of the world. As Io gave her opinion about no other better methods, however, the Lykoi turned her crimson eyes back to the female before her.

"I can think of a better method."

In her childhood, though she couldn't remember the circumstances, there had been a fire. She could still smell the ash on the wind that came from the northeast, and in her dreams she could see the orange glow. Fire killed everything. Fire purified the land they once lived in, the land she had been born in. "Burning them would keep more away from us than even our borders." It was morbid, it was cruel, but she would not be against living cremation of the canis lupus monsters within the land around them. Maybe it wasn't a plausible end to burn the packs to the south and east, but they could burn the trespassers to send a message. Hell awaited them anyways.

It seemed the doggish creature shared similar insight to her older packmate, and it managed to please Talitha in some small way. Crimson eyes continued to wander over nothing of true importance as her mind twisted over words and ideas. She needed to do something big. She needed to do something she enjoyed. She needed to make a marking on Inferni that would not soon be forgotten by future generations. As Io spoke of funeral pyres, the Lykoi contemplated canvases for a brilliant masterpiece. She would have her way and color Inferni red. She was a Lykoi, a de le Poer, and the daughter of the powerful Aquila. In terms of her home, she was invincible. Offering art to the rest wouldn't hurt anyone. The mansion. That would be her target.

The woman asked how long the coyote had worked on the decoration for the border, and Talitha had to think back to the morning she had awoken with the corpse in the entrance of her den. In truth, she did not keep track of time. "Lots of days. I'm not sure how many." Weeks weren't unknown to her, but they were harder to keep track of than seasons and days. Hours and minutes were impossible. "Long enough to have bones. He started as a normal dead wolf. Everything had to rot. I have no tools capable of scraping his muscle from the final product." Even death was seen in artistic eyes. The Andrezej of her nightmares had been transformed from a beast to a beauty. The smell hadn't been so wonderful.

I think this happened after the pack meeting, but I'm too lazy to check.

She stared with the blankest expression rarely seen on the face of the maturing Lykoi. An offer of knives, and an explanation of their use on elk. Talitha scoffed. "Blades damage the bones." Her sculpture had a surface that was lacking imperfection, at least in the red eyes of the princess. The flesh had rotted away to perfection, and in its wake were the off-white building blocks of the Luperci form. "Art takes patience." She turned her face away to shake the can of spraypaint near her ear. How did she know if it was filled? It had been in Cotl's room, out in the open, but that could mean it was useless to him as well; she was unsure of what to look for in the strange medium, and it was the same with the ink. If she hadn't run out of red paint, she wouldn't have needed to steal from her clanmate.

A heavy sigh passed forth into the air from cream jaws. "Have you looked at the new territory yet." She didn't expect that the woman had, but it was conversation that Talitha herself was particularly interested in. Inferni, and subsequently their world, ruled the mind of the dark woman. She hadn't gone exploring. She didn't need to. She wasn't a scout, or a border-guard, and it was unimportant if she went to find new places. It also helped that she would eventually be able to pick the mind of Ezekiel, and therefore would never need to see the territories on her own. But the woman before her was not so lucky. Talitha did not accept laziness amongst her peers, though she could do little in regards to the membership of those she found unworthy.

She dipped her fingers into the ink as she listened to the response given by the doggish female. "My brother cooks." He'd been trying to teach her, but it seemed practical skills were not so easy for the dark princess to learn. Reading, cooking, hunting — hunting had been the only activity that made its mark on the Lykoi woman. Thanks to her brother's teachings, she could now hunt with some proficiency. To hear that the new female was a cook subtly intrigued Talitha, but she knew that she would stick to Ezekiel's rough food. He was the only one who could make her eat, anyways.

Their conversation turned to the new territory, and the Lykoi laughed as Io explained her purpose for exploration. It wasn't a laugh of amusement, but rather a laugh of uncomfortable distaste. "My brother marked the borders himself; are you saying he's incapable of doing his job properly?" Oh woe if she was, for Talitha would not stand to hear her brother called incompetent. Crimson eyes hardened, expressing her outrage at the possibility. Ezekiel was far more intelligent than any other she had met inside of the skulled borders. "We are Inferni. They know not to come here — everyone does. We kill trespassers." It was true. They had killed for less than trespassing, such as the rape of one of their own. It stood to reason that a lone wolf wandering their home would be removed by force if they did not comply.

Her tension didn't ease at the words that next left the mouth of the doggish female, and instead she found herself further outraged. Yes, Talitha de le Poer would rather see a wolf on a burning day than frolicking freely through the flowers, but she held respect for those ranked above her. More specifically, her father. Hateful crimson eyes fell upon the red-and-white woman. Oh, hateful indeed.

"My father is a wolf. He is not an idiot, and neither is my family."

Where this surge of family pride came from, she was unsure. Perhaps in her new found freedom amongst the name 'de le Poer', she had realized her love for the blood that flowed through her; Gabriel, at least, would always have his daughter's defense. And oh, would she defend him. Now bitter and irate, she snapped her responses at the woman before her. "I don't follow him around. Why would I pay attention to his ingredients. Ask him yourself; Ezekiel seems to like stupid women." Not only a jab at the thing before her, but at the collie dog along the sea and the unknown creatures Gabriel had mentioned upon the golden prince's return. Her body rose from the ground, arms cradling her new prizes found in Cotl's room. She didn't have time for fools.

Last post from Talitha, most likely.

Talitha de le Poer was a fickle, unpredictable creature who based her opinions of people upon the black-and-white of the words they spoke. She didn't forgive. She didn't forget. And as she listened to the doggish woman who was upon the ground beneath her, she formed an opinion that may not have been entirely correct. Crimson eyes fell upon the shape of what she saw to be a waste, a waste of both God's careful touch and Inferni's precious resources, but it was not her place to put out those who tried to show their abilities. It was not her place to limit her home.

She apologized for offenses, explained her reasoning, and none of it punctured the thick hate that coursed through the mind of the russet woman. Her voice remained cold as she spoke of her brother. Her eyes remained dark as Io responded. Her hands clutched her treasures from Cotl's bedroom. "I have things to do." Her body turned away, tail swishing to the side as her eyes closed. "Don't become lazy. You won't like the consequences." Her legs started in the direction of her home with the words, reminding the new clan member that sloth did not lead to the most tasteful rewards.