The hybrid was not used to hunting in her Optime form. She was clumsy and uncoordinated, and already heavy with child, it did not make her task any easier. Still, the sable-shaded woman did her best, eventually managing to cuff a rabbit with the bumbling assistance of Molcaxitl. The tawny woman was hardly trained in hunting, but she had at least managed to scare rabbits in Eris's general direction. After three tries, they had only one bunny, its summer coat half-shed and still clinging and clumping in bits to its back and hindquarters. The coyote woman held it by the ears and neck in one hand, the back legs in the other. It needed to be alive, and there was no sense of it twisting and fighting until it snapped its own neck.

She walked back to her home in the ruins with Molca in silence. When they had passed the entryway, the woman turned toward her slave, holding the rabbit out. “If you let it go, we will cut you open instead,” she threatened as the slave's shaking hands reached out to take the rabbit. The Auxiliary's chartreuse gaze burned in the slave-girl a moment, watching as the rabbit attempted to buck and fight her grasp. The tawny coyote held it steady, however; she was at least experienced in slaughtering prey captured for her, and this was a task she could handle for the moment. “Bind it.” Her command was rough, and Molca set to stringing the rabbit's legs with rope of dried intestines.

The coal-hued woman set to work preparing their spread, lovingly setting the bone dagger out on a piece of rabbit's hide. The grass inside of her home was thin, and parts of it were bare where she'd pulled up weed and especially long patches, but the dirt was firm enough, and a rich shade of black. It would grow again soon enough. Beside the dagger, she set an especially large chunk of amethyst. Whether or not she took stock in the old ideals of Anathema, the Nyx canine had told her these stones might increase spirituality. When Molca had performed her task, she murmured Eris's name quietly, and the woman turned, finding the rabbit expertly tied. It trembled, but no longer thrashed -- it could not. The woman nodded, and dismissed the slave with a wave of her hand. Slaves were unworthy of witnessing magic. “Send Salvia to me,” she told the slave.

The coyote moved toward the chest where she kept her belongings. The only one she had at the moment was small, a hole rotted into its bottom. It served its purpose, however, and she pulled the skull-mask from its place lovingly, setting it on the ground beside her as she reached in for the fox-fur cloak. These were things she adored, things Larkspur had given her. The hybrid stared at them a long moment before she draped the cloak about her shoulders, tying the dried paws together. The skull-crown she set upon her head gingerly, the sharp teeth sitting against her flesh. Smiling faintly, the woman whirled around, the cape swirling after her movement. It was warm, and it would be warmer still when the fire burned, but warmth and fever were good for magic.

Word Count :: 372

The scent of the rabbit's fear seemed to permeate Eris's small dwelling between the ruined piles of rock. They jutted angrily up from the ground, but weather had worn and broken them down. Gaps now opened in the rock and between them, chinks where the coast's wind would whistle. Still, she could smell the rabbit's anguish, leaking droplets of yellow staining its pallid underfur. The woman peered at it with indifference, wondering if it knew the purpose it would serve. There was little magic to be found in these stupid sorts of creatures, true enough, but she did not intend to start Salvia off by cutting open another canine in front of her. These small steps would do. They would serve to awaken her spirit in the very same way that Eris's had been awakened in Eterne.

Soft rustling outside of her ruins drew the elder woman's attention, and she turned her head slowly to face Salvia, her smile glittering beneath the cold, dead one of the bear. She had taken her Optime form, and the hybrid woman greeted her with the nuzzle, needing to bend only a little to reach each of her daughter's cheeks. Eris wondered faintly if she would be as tall and stately as her father; surely the girl's height would exceed her own. The coyote had been filtered from Salvia neatly, Eris thought, and she smiled, beckoning her daughter to sit.

The Queen did so herself with some small stiffness, her stomach's roundness peeking out beneath the tied paws of the fox. The rabbit had been placed at the foot of the stone that served as the coal woman's alter, but she made no move for it or the bone dagger, but instead smiled at Salvia eagerly. Now, the woman reached for her daughter's hands, clutching after them. “Your soul will burn like fire tonight, my dear,” the woman said, her thumbs running over her the tawny backs of Salvia's hands. “It will burn and hurt and change you, but for the better. You won't fear it.” she elder woman said. She would not lie to Salvia; the truth would serve to prepare her.

Word Count :: 319

There was only momentary hesitation from the green-eyed girl, barely so much to be called such. She spoke confidently, and the elder canine smiled beneath the bear-skull, tilting her head forward slowly and gently. There were no more words to be spoken. Eris was not one for incantations, certainly not prayer. The world they reached for was not one governed by words and letters and language. Afterward, she would guide her daughter, interpreting whatever it was Salvia would see tonight, but Eris would not taint these visuals beforehand.

The sable-hued woman leaned toward the fire where the wood and kindling had been gathered together, striking the match against stone to light it. Molca's skill in retrieving things from the dead city had come in handy more times than Eris could count, but her thoughts were far from the slave as the flames leaped upward, devouring the drier grass and underbrush and moving for the wood quickly. Smoke billowed steadily upward to the night sky, but the light from her small firepit would be obscured by the walls of the ruins. They would be invisible in the night -- for now, anyway.

The fire burning merrily, the hybrid turned back to the rabbit, her attentions on the remainder of preparation rather than Salvia. Still, her chartreuse gaze glanced every now and again to the younger canine, both curious and regarding her with a small amount of suspicion. Though the hybrid wished for nothing more than the success of her Eternity daughter, she knew she would not be the one to judge it. The rabbit on the altar, still twitching and shuddering, the sable hybrid now brought forth the dagger presenting it to Salvia with both hands. It was pale white and stark against the shadow of her fur, its gleaming size and shape unmistakable for anything but what it was -- the thick femur of an adult Optime.

(504)

The knotted and knobby thing was faintly cool to the touch. The coal-hued woman did not fool herself into thinking this relic was more sacred than the Eternian knife she carried, but she could hardly deny its power. The shadow himself had touched this one in more ways than one -- he had given life to this bone, and he had taken it in the end, too. It was, in truth, all she had of him. It was not him, however -- only a small piece of the dead shadow.

Salvia took the pale thing carefully. The woman who had given her life for this tool had been older than Salvia was now. Eris did not remember her so well -- pale fur and light eyes, she thought. It was Haku she remembered, the liver-brown man with his eyes of the bluest skies. There had been no summer day joy in that gaze, though. Only deep shadows lurked there, promising to turn each day to ash and ruin as it arrived.

The sable woman watched mutely as the earthen-toned canine took the rabbit, care evaporating from Salvia's motions she arced the jagged bone toward the living flesh. The death-shriek seemed to resonate between the decayed walls of her home, but Eris did not so much as flinch; her yellow-green eyes burned feverish hope toward the younger woman and the rest of her remained still and silent as the stone surrounding them.

There was no disappointment in Eris to accompany Salvia's. The hybrid concealed a faint smile, dipping her head forward slowly. The skull slid forward, stopping with a jerk as it came to the end of the straps holding it secure. She reached past the altar and the dead rabbit, her fingers seeking a particular cubbyhole in the rock. She drew two tiny buttons from the dark hole, both long withered and dried.

Don't fret, the woman crooned softly, pressing one of the feather-light mushrooms into Salvia's palm. They were darkened and nearly black with age, but a thick blue sheen was still apparent on them, evidence of the magic lurking within this plant-flesh. Sometimes we all need help to awaken our souls, she added, knowing even she was not above these plant magics. She licked her own into her mouth as the younger woman swallowed her own seed of knowledge. For Eris, this would lend just an edge of the other realm's shade to this one -- her tolerance was higher.

The rabbit would not go to waste, either -- she stuck her fingers in the still-warm flesh and pulled them away bloody red. These fingers she put to Salvia's shoulder, smearing a long red stripe in her fur. This the hybrid did again and again, her movements slow and purposeful, until she was aware that the fire was moving beyond the perimeter of its pit, dancing on long and spindly legs of brilliant flame. She breathed in sharply, her chartreuse gaze shifting to Salvia.

(437)

The girl herself had begun to change, the shadows flickering across her face shifting and melting with the movement of the fire. Eris watched this with fascination; though she was the elder of the pair and should have been the wise mentor, she could not help this fascination from creeping across her face in a dazed and distant smile that lingered long after it was appropriate to do so. It matched the bear's grin, though the one Eris bore was far more life-like, still fiery and alive.

Salvia's eyes were gone, the nuclear green reduced to a ring of flame around wide pits of shadow. Awareness dawned slowly across the younger woman's face, an awareness Eris could no more rescind than she could her own motherhood. Salvia had taken the gift, and there was no returning it now. Her perspective would be forever altered -- one could not look at the world through those spirit's eyes and retain an outlook of normalcy. Eris had experienced it herself in that lifeless desert so far to the south.

Her fingers had painted stripes across her daughter's flesh all on their own, with little interference from the coal-hued woman herself. Now, her fingers and Salvia's stripes were crusted dry, indicating some passage of time since she had begun painting. This was not curious to the woman, who knew mortal time was meaningless in the other world. Her breath came sharply all the same when she looked to Salvia.

Now, the girl's eyes were whole again with fire, but lacking any darkness whatsoever -- brilliant green, brighter and truer than Salvia and Eris's eyes, had taken over the entirety of the younger woman's gaze. Eris jerked at the sight of those eyes, intimately familiar and strange all at once. She had seen them a hundred thousand times before, and she would see them innumerable times to come, but they were no less startling, no less disconcerting. She knew who they belonged to, and she could call him by name now.

Her voice was nothing more than a cracked and indeterminate whisper, however, drowned by the tawny woman's shriek. To Eris's ears, however, the shriek was a bellow, the voice of a man. The figure was no longer her daughter, but her namesake, the one who had bequeathed the timberwolf's appearance to Salvia. The coal hybrid looked at him, elation and sorrow overwhelming all half-logical, drug-addled thought from her mind. She reached out to touch him, fingers shaking and trembling with more than just the mushroom's effects.

(304)

Though she had seen him more times than she could count, the sable-shaded hybrid did not know him. He was a ghost and a stranger, more an enigma than her mother ever was. Unknown as the man was, there was no fear within the coal-hued woman. He could not harm her flesh and blood body, and her spirit was too strong for even that particular ghost to penetrate. There was no sense of malignancy in him, either -- the dark woman did not think this shade of him wished her ill, though there was no smile and no friendliness on that face. It flickered now and again, the vision shifting and whirling in time with the thud and rhythm of the world around her. Everything had become part of a single, all-encompassing beat -- the fire, her heart, the heart of Salvia, buried somewhere in that illusion of her father.

Her fingers lingered on empty air, and the illusion and Salvia both were gone in an instant, whirling on her heels and vanishing. Her footsteps pounded in time with Eris's heart, but the sound of them disappeared quickly, and the coal-dark wolf was left alone with her dying fire and the eviscerated rabbit. Quiet as the world had become, Eris listened nonetheless and heard the voices, the faint whispers of the other world. Her eyes drew halfway to closing, and she could see them there, the faint and muddled shadows dashing about the periphery of her vision. Some rushed after her daughter, others remained clustered about Eris herself, but the sable woman did nothing but tuck away her cloak and mask to their proper place, returning to sit before the dying embers of the fire. Whatever Salvia faced, she faced it alone tonight -- Eris's presence would do nothing but harm.