She was born into madness, a great dark blanket wrapped around a volatile mind that could only squeeze closer and closer as the days dripped into years and death.
In her youth, she had known sanity as a contemptuous friend, one who flitted in and out of her life like a wild butterfly. It was something she could never really tame and harness for herself, only revel in the experience when it allowed her the dubious luxury. But more often than not it slipped away, leaving her trapped in vulnerability and madness's cruel grasp, twisting a delicate mind into something so much darker, so much crueler.
The woman knew she was evil. It was really only a matter of time before everyone else accepted that reality as well.
On her two legs the woman ran, bounding across the uneven lands of an unfamiliar forest as she tried to escape from the dark cloud that curled tighter across her mind. Visions of children, sable and gold and covered in crimson, blocked her footsteps and she ran through them as they burst apart at her feet in an explosion of color and death. Over and over she watched her children die at her feet and the dark Queen was unable to do anything, as she hadn't been able to do anything before.
She drew in air as she tried to feel alive again and tried to feel something besides this all consuming terror that seemed to possess her every motion. Golden eyes darted around in her own private panic as she moved through the dark night, canvasing terrain she'd never seen before as she tried to acquaint herself with these strange, bi-pedal lands. Linquilea, in the small recesses of her heart where the madness hadn't crept yet, missed the life she had before, when she was a simple girl who lived on four legs and nothing more.
But that life had been stolen from her by a pale boy who thought he should rule the world, a boy so consumed with his owl selfish jealousy that he could not see the beauty in new life, and instead ripped its throat and left it on the ground to die. Two children, innocent and beautiful, were food for the Earth far before their time, and their murderer lived somewhere in these lands.
She hadn't realized it until she stumbled across the intoxicating scent, but Linquilea soon stood before an injured doe. The leg was broken and the creature struggled valiantly to get away, but it collapsed in the face of a natural, dark predator. A weak thing, disgusting - it dishonored her presence. How dare it. Lips curled into a feral snarl as the creature crouched, sprung, and sunk her teeth into the flesh. The animal's screams turned into groans turned into a death rattle, and Linquilea found herself enormously unsatisfied. With a howl of rage she flung the useless beast away from her and golden eyes wheeled for a more satisfying target for her madness.
but our hearts will need us to be steady and strong
so we can stand and face the fire
burning higher and higher
Word Count → 582 :: This shall be interesting!
Wayne McCoy had found his attitude shifting these days, and not particularly for the better. While his promotion had given him no other responsibilities other than the privilege of accepting members into the pack, the season had brought additional stress. He was anxious about the mares and the time that they would foal, anxious about the construction projects going up, anxious about spending time with the woman he loved. He wanted to be ready for the next step of their relationship, to finally ask her properly to be his mate, but the few times they were together always seemed the wrong time.
All of these factors made for a very grouchy cowboy, and he had found himself growing short-tempered and mean toward some of his pack mates when they crossed him. Ever since finally accepting his place in the pack months ago, he hadn’t wanted to be seen as the distant southerner, the mutt who cared for horses more than canines. He’d wanted to be a part of Casa, but now all he wanted to do was leave it all behind.
He took Fern out to ride; the chestnut mare was gentle and sweet as ever. She seemed to understand his mood and went tentatively, offering little noises here and there to soothe him like she’d soothe her colt. He rode bareback, enjoying the connection with the horse rather than guiding her through twists and tugs of the reins. He’d always been old-fashioned about that, using the skills his parents taught him, but it was just as relaxing using his legs to guide her through the woodlands, his callused hands knotted in her flaxen mane.
The large mare navigated clumsily around some of the tighter corners, but they found an old game track to trot along. The sounds of birds in the trees and the scent of prey made the wolf within him feel at ease. He recognized the spring as a time of bounty, safe after the famine of winter. Almost centaur in his grace, he adjusted to the movements of the horse stepping down slopes and jumping over a dead tree. They splashed through a stream with a little reluctance on the horse’s part, but finally he patted her neck and just let her walk on her own, traveling where she wanted to.
Fern, of course, adjusted course only to attack the leaves for which she had been named, nibbling greedily at them. As she browsed, he smirked and turned his head to look at their surroundings. His hat shifted with the prick of his half-flopped ears when he heard footsteps—slow, now fast, now frantic, crashing through the undergrowth. The mare heard them as well, and pulled back with a nervous nicker.
It wasn’t long before the cries of some dying animal confirmed that the sound had been a hunt, but still the faintly-timber-streaked yellowy-grey fur refused to lay flat on his spine. He squeezed his heels into Fern’s flanks and led her up a slope in the direction of the sounds. He wanted to make sure the predator was another luperci as opposed to a mountain cat or bear; he’d have to hightail it back home in that case.
A howl made the horse pull up short once they reached the crest of a long slope; below, a black beast whirled around with bloodstained teeth. Her golden eyes flew to them, and Wayne’s right hand curled tightly in the horse’s mane as he stared back at her, expressionless.
The metallic sweetness of blood permeated her mouth, but it did not bring her any sort of calm - instead, the woman's heart beat ever faster, reminding her that life still lived in these lands. There was nothing she resented more than life that did not deserve to exist. She had stolen a life just a moment ago, but it wasn't a live that was particularly worth living - what good was it to be a lower class of animal, designed for nothing but the consumption of others? If anything, Lea had done the doe a favor by ending its pathetic life. And so here she was, enormously unsatisfied and desperate to sink her teeth into something significantly more worthwhile.
Her golden eyes had landed on a brute atop a horse, and her lips lifted in a disgusted, dangerous snarl. She walked forward with her head and tail held high, ears perked forward and golden eyes narrowing until they were almost slits. A deep growl threw itself from her throat as Linquilea's delicate nares tested the air, acquainting herself with whatever creature this was. He smelled of a pack she could not identify, but he immediately disgusted her. This blonde animal thought himself above his true nature, and he rejected himself by sitting on a horse instead of eating it as it should be eaten. Lea moved forward until she was looking directly up at the blonde brute, and she growled again.
The fuck are you doing? Lea snarled. You're sitting on my dinner - get off unless you want to die with it. Her heart beat slightly faster as her muscles rippled beneath the midnight fur that covered her entire body. She wanted this boy off the horse. She wanted this horse dead, and then she would kill the boy, reminding him of his place in the world. He was not above the animal kingdom.
but our hearts will need us to be steady and strong
so we can stand and face the fire
burning higher and higher
Word Count → 374 :: I don't give a fig about length. <3 Also, should probably M tag this, haha.
Wayne was not a fighter, or at least he hadn’t been until he’d crushed the throat of the raider who’d dare to hurt Dixie-May. It did not take much for him to flash back to that night, his teeth puncturing the fool’s windpipe, crunching it with a hollow sound, the metallic taste of blood hot and heavy in his mouth. His shoulder throbbed at the thought each time from where it’d been struck by the blunt bat, but he had managed to distance himself enough from that kill that it didn’t bother him. He had done what was needed to defend Casa di Cavalieri and its herd and his woman, and he would kill a hundred men if he needed to.
It was that memory, that and some of the darkness that’d crept into him as of late, that kept him from wheeling the horse around at the madness in the wolf woman’s eyes and fleeing from the scene of the deer’s death. It would have been safer to do so, but he only held the other’s gaze as she stepped forward, steps stiff and threatening and dominant. Her bared, bloodstained teeth were warning enough.
She snarled an accusation at him, and his ears flattened as he wondered what this crazed bitch meant—but then she finished, and his hands clenched in the mane of the mare. Fern’s ears flicked back as the whites of her eyes showed, and she took a step backwards. Her rider drew himself up, however, sitting tall on the large horse, and growled down at the black wolf, a dark lip curled to bare a single fang unyellowed by age.
“Like hell I will,” Wayne McCoy replied, his voice level despite the rumbling in his throat and the violence etched in his stony face. All of the anger he had felt lately rolled out of him, the dam breaking at last. “Eat your fuckin’ deer, woman, an’ we’ll leave each other alone.” Even with nasty words exiting his now-clenched jaw, he knew better than to threaten with true violence. He wanted her to take her dirty eyes off his horse, sweet Fern who hadn’t hurt anyone and only trusted the luperci she met, and he wanted to go home.
Word Count :: 302 Sorry for the delay, love. School is trying to kick my rear end into next week.
Madness, she'd found, was like honey. It was sweet and thick and slow, tasty in its longevity and unspoiled existence. Her mind was trapped, as if suspended in amber for posterity to find and examine, but the woman took no notice of it. Instead she let herself revel in its luxurious toxins, allowing the ever empowering aromas to permeate her thoughts and actions, taking control of the massive midnight-cloaked body that spoke of power and elegance and cruelty rolled into one shape. She was a strange sort of creature, the type that you moved across the street for yet still craned to see as she moved by, her aristocratic nose stuck dangerously in the air if she did not decide to strike you down where you stood.
"I don't think you quite understand me," the woman hissed, her words curled around sickly sweet venom as they dropped languidly from her bloody lips. She drew closer to this animal, noting its skittish fear and reinforcing her belief that the thing this blonde dog sat upon was nothing more than food and a source of the blood she blindly craved. But his smell was more intoxicating than that of the four-legged beast, and Linquilea tilted her golden head to get a better look at the strangely attired male. He wore clothes, something she found deplorable, and he'd lifted his lip to her. Her hackles bristled and her snarl deepened, a guttural and primal noise slipping from her angry jaws. Linquilea lunged suddenly, snapping her teeth around the horse's leg, but she did not do as much damage as she'd intended - the creature was only cut, though she was sure it would react negatively.
"Get off the horse, boy," Linquilea purred, her dangerous tones deepening to something less harsh, but equally dark.
so go ahead and act tough, like you’re john wayne’s son
but things can change fast; i can kick your ass
Wayne had never met someone mad before. He thought ponderously and logically, and madness only came to him where his beloved was concerned. He had demonstrated as much, murdering that raider after seeing her white form crumpled on the ground. Even then, it was madness with a pointed reason behind it, madness driven to protect rather than to harm. As far as he could see, however, this woman had no reason for her demeanor, for her requests. He knew that some wolves preferred eating horses to riding them, but none that he had ever met would dare have an attitude while he was there.
The black luperci crept closer, and the man pulled back lightly on the reins; Fern had no reason to disobey the command to back up. Her hooves moved shakily however, and her lungs were like a bellows; he could feel the shift of her body between his legs.
“I don’t understand you,” Wayne confirmed calmly, although his brown gaze remained hard, and he was anything but calm at the moment. When the snarl ripped from her throat suddenly, he tried to react, but Fern was screaming and rearing back. Blood wept from small cuts on her leg, and her hoarse cry struck him with terror. A lame horse was a dead horse, he’d known from a young age—when they’d had to kill the poor piebald gelding with the broken leg. His father hadn’t made him watch, but he’d explained the situation thoroughly, and his gentle drawl echoed through his mind now.
The woman was speaking, her tone almost sweet, but Wayne wasn’t hearing her at all—not understanding, nothing. The stench of fear was thick in his nostrils, fear and sweat and blood, and he realized that he couldn’t face this crazy bitch. As much as he wanted to leap down there, knock her to the ground, break her jaw and see what demands trickled out of her mouth then…
Fern stepped backwards hurriedly, and the Labrador realized belatedly that she was obedient to a fault, waiting for a command, too scared to act for herself. He growled and wrenched her head around, obtesting her to run. A horse could outrun a two-legged wolf easily; their lives depended on this fact.
377
Same here! Anyway, we can continue and have them actually fight if you think Wayne would survive/get away again without only superficial injuries. xD I think that had been my intention, but I realize that it proobbably wouldn't work out without the boy gettin' his ass whooped by Crazylea. >_>
