[html]  ooc: Private for Anselm, if possible.
The rain was really starting to come down now, and he jumped with each lightning strike and clap of thunder. He hated this--the storms, the rain...getting wet. But he'd decided that he was going to leave Shadowed Sun for good today, and Sirius never went back on things that he'd already decided upon doing. His irrational fear of thunderstorms was put on the back burner as he travelled closer to the borderline, dark green eyes blinking as raindrops hit his nose and bounced back at them.
The golden hybrid had gotten a little bigger over the two months that he'd been out of the den, out of Twilight Vale, but not by very much. He and his brother had been born prematurely, so he would always be quite a bit smaller than normal wolves or coyotes. A particularly loud hit of thunder made him start and the fear took over, his legs acting of their own accord. He could see the treeline up ahead. But as he got closer the smells got stronger, even with the rain--the scent of the coyotes--and he stopped in his tracks, sliding to a halt. He wanted so badly to enter the treeline and get out of the rain, but he didn't know what would happen to him if he went inside without asking permission first. So instead he sat down in the grass, shivering.
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 The water rolled off of his back in sheets, and through half-open eyes he watched the storm progress. Every time a drop struck one of his large triangular ears he'd give them a half-hearted flick--every five minutes or so he'd shake his large head from side to side quickly to get the water out of his face. Well, this weather was fantastic. Snorting some of the water out of his nose, he rose to his feet and began to lope about the borders. The weather had reduced visibility significantly and scanning from this distance was probably ineffective.
Before too long, he happened upon a rather familiar pup--the one he'd pulled out of the bay. With a scowl that was not necessarily unkind, he trotted over to the huddled up form, shaking his head and tsking. "You've sure got a knack for picking days to travel," he stated. "Someone ought to teach you to read the sky." He'd picked up a few things over the years. "What are you doing out here, anyway?" he asked. |
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[html] ooc: And Squirk was totally already approved, if that's alright with you too 
"You's got a knack for findin' me" He retorted, frowning. Sirius couldn't keep frowning for very long even though he had wanted to, his tail flicking back and forth where he sat. He'd been very worried that the coyote he ran into would be one that he didn't know, and one that might mistrust him. Not that Anselm would trust him...no, he wouldn't assume that. But at least he would be recognized, and not attacked outright. Even though he was a bit smaller, Sirius did share a few wolfish features...and at this point in his life he could be mistaken for either one of the two species that he was comprised of. He looked up at the sky. All it'd been doing lately was raining, it seemed. It was a wonder that everything wasn't flooded. All the lakes and rivers and things. "I figger'd it'd be rainin' all day long so I's might as well start comin over now" He tried to explain. "I don't fit in there in Shadowed Sun...with Pilot. Everyone there is all into their books and they has skills that they is trying to get better at...stupid things. They all is a bunch of wolves that don't understand anything. I camed here to ask to stay. For good. When I was littler I thought that it was a good idea to stay with Pilot...but now that I is bigger I can see that it was not a good choice. I belongs here, with you and the rest of my kind" There. He'd made his pitch. His legs were still shaking a little bit, shivers running down his back and through the rest of his body, but he tried to stand strong. He heard a small chattering sound back behind himself and he looked over his shoulder. "Oh!" Sirius looked back to Anselm. "Squirk has to live here too. He is...I don't know what he is. Sometimes he is invisible...sometimes I can see him, sometimes others can see him." The ghost squirrel approached quietly from behind the pup, sitting next to him. "He is a good friend of mine" Sirius said, nodding.
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Anselm simply grinned at the pup's response--it was an observation that tickled some part of him. Anselm loved being on top of things, and anybody that knew him well enough would be able to see it. As Sirius continued the grin faded, and Anselm took a seat. The "stupid things" comment made a brow raise sceptically--Anselm loved learning things. Knowledge was power, pure and simple. It could be applied to manipulate and control as easily as it could be to evade and defend. Still, who was he to argue with Sirius? Everyone was capable of making their own decisions, and the young hybrid seemed like he'd really made his mind up on this one.
"I don't care if you stay here--on one condition. You must go see Pilot and inform him of your choice. I don't want Shadowed Sun to come knocking down our door looking for you, since Inferni has enough on its plate right now." This was stated firmly--he meant every word of it. So long as Sirius' old pack knew that this was a voluntary decision, things would probably be fine. "I can even go with you, if you want," he added, although even saying it caused a knot to form in his stomach. He really didn't want to get too involved, but at least this way he'd know for sure that it happened.
He blinked as Sirius introduced his oddly named companion. Anselm's blood red eyes glanced around, although he could see nothing but debris on the forest floor. Something that was occasionally invisible made no sense, and he stared long and hard at the child. Was he going into hypothermia? Or just losing it? Well, Inferni sure had a knack for attracting the nut jobs. He said nothing more; incidents like these were to be brushed under the rug and ignored. |
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"Hold on" He said to Squirk, beginning to follow Anselm into the cover of the forest. He'd never been here before, but the lands looked impressive...even in the dark. Maybe it was just that everything was new. Even the smells--he'd never been around so many new scents at once. Sirius turned his head as he smelled something new, but he fought off the urge to go off and investigate. If he was in any of the other packs that would be all right to do, but not here. He was still in a conversation, too...so leaving it would be rude.
"Dad said you guys wouldn't hurt them. Or Twilight Vale. They're the only packs that I knows of...so I doesn't care about the others. I doesn't know the story behind everything...but I doesn't need to know. You all wouldn't be fighting without a real good reason." Pilot had said that he was too little to know. Sirius figured that as long as he was careful, and avoided wolves (like he already did,) he would be all right. "I can stay inside Inferni until it's over...would that be okay? How much longer until it's over?" He could handle staying inside the territory for that long, definitely.
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Sirius was shit outta luck if he thought that Anselm would forget; the wolf had the memory of an elephant. Anselm seldom forgot names and he never forgot faces, and he managed to pick up on even the most trivial of things and hold onto them. This was a matter of grave importance for him, and "I guess so" didn't quite satisfy him. "You need to," he repeated firmly, before the pup started babbling at his imaginary friend.
This kind of behaviour was perplexing and he never knew what to do about it. In his experience, telling someone something didn't exist when they were convinced it did accomplished little, if anything at all. Maybe there'd be some kind of friction--he decided it was best to just sort of play along when he absolutely could not ignore it. Still, the vacant look in his eyes betrayed his doubts. Sometimes he was convinced the whole damn planet was going to hell in a hand basket, and this sort of stuff was just "evidence." "Sure," he agreed, glad to change the subject. He rose to his feet again and started moving for cover.
But then... "You do know how much trouble Inferni's in right now, right? You're kind of throwing yourself into the middle of an inferno by coming here." Did a sense of belonging mean as much to Sirius as it did to Anselm? Did he really want to trade peace and tranquillity for war? |
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[html] ooc: Awww man. I went to edit my last post and nab the coding, went into another window...then came back in here and kept going. I accidentally edited the last one x_x
"Hold on" He said to Squirk, beginning to follow Anselm into the cover of the forest. He'd never been here before, but the lands looked impressive...even in the dark. Maybe it was just that everything was new. Even the smells--he'd never been around so many new scents at once. Sirius turned his head as he smelled something new, but he fought off the urge to go off and investigate. If he was in any of the other packs that would be all right to do, but not here. He was still in a conversation, too...so leaving it would be rude.
"Dad said you guys wouldn't hurt them. Or Twilight Vale. They're the only packs that I knows of...so I doesn't care about the others. I doesn't know the story behind everything...but I doesn't need to know. You all wouldn't be fighting without a real good reason." Pilot had said that he was too little to know. Sirius figured that as long as he was careful, and avoided wolves (like he already did,) he would be all right. "I can stay inside Inferni until it's over...would that be okay? How much longer until it's over?" He could handle staying inside the territory for that long, definitely.
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He kept his jaw clamped shut; he wasn't sure how much of what Sirius said was a fantasy or not. Right now, they were already locking horns with Dahlia de Mai. Obviously, taking on any new enemies on such a large scale would be disastrous, so the other packs were moderately safe. Still, there was something he saw in Gabriel sometimes that almost disturbed him. Essentially, the hybrid's loyalties seemed to be to Inferni and Inferni alone. Alliances, cease fires, neutrality--these things would go flying out the window the instant a drop of Inferni's blood was shed, and he knew it.
Either way, Sirius seemed to be missing the point. "It doesn't matter if you don't care about the other packs; the other packs that care about Inferni will now care about you. Anyway, if you stay deep enough inside the territory you should be fine. There's a lot of caves in the centre of the land, too, so you can always hide in them if you need to, plus that's where most of the dens are.. including mine. As for how much longer... I'm not sure. I'm hoping things are over with soon. Both sides have hostages now, and I can only imagine that trading them back would be better for everyone involved." Within a week, maybe? If it were up to him, it would've happened already. |
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He didn't really understand the war at all, about rape and murder and all of that stuff, and definitely didn't know the real danger of it all. Sirius was used to going off and doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. Usually he didn't get into any trouble...at least, he hadn't lately. He had fallen through a window in the human city once, and there was the time that Anselm had found him along the shoreline to think about, though. But no fights or anything like that.
He took what Anselm said and stored it aside for later thought. He would most likely run away from a wolf if it tried to harm him, rather than fighting it...especially if it was a lot bigger than he was. Most things were bigger than him. "What's a host...that word you said?" He inquired. "Is it like a hostess?" What was the problem with both of them having hostesses?
"You all live inside caves? I's had a den before and lived in a house once, but never in a cave"
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"A hostage. A prisoner of war. They kidnapped the leader's daughter, so we captured a girl of theirs about her age. They'll get her back when we get back Talitha." Sirius needed to understand more about how the world worked if he planned on living in Inferni. Puppies here weren't spared--they were killed simply because they were easy targets, or they were taken away if they were deemed "valuable" enough. Hopefully they'd have enough sense not to give Talitha any permanent damage--they'd practically be signing their own death warrant.
As for the dens, he shrugged. He adjusted his path slightly so that they might go there right away--then Sirius would be able to stake out a permanent shelter. "Yeah, the caves are a little more spacious, which is nice. I can stand in mine fully shifted and walk around a bit, so it's not too crowded." Digging a den out big enough for a full grown wolf was a lot of work by itself, and creating enough space for a werewolf was even more of a hassle. Why not find a den that the earth had already carved out for them?
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"Oh." He said, a bit sadly. He hoped that they would return her, so that Inferni could return the girl they had here, too. Sirius wondered how they were keeping her here--how they were able to make her stay inside the lands. He'd never heard of such a thing before, someone forcing someone else to stay. But that was just a part of the war. He had felt as if he were caught in between the world of wolves and coyotes...but was ready to accept this part of himself. Over time he would learn more about the way things worked between coyotes and wolves, why they acted the way that they did toward each other.
"Thank you for letting me come inside and stay here. When I's gets bigger I can protect the others with you" He planned on becoming a secret agent. Naniko had shown him pictures of one and read him a story about a secret agent before when he'd been younger, and he really liked the idea.
When they approached the denning area the four-month-old fell back a little. "Where will I stay?" Where would he sleep tonight, and then all of the other nights?
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The golden male nodded; Inferni would always welcome whatever help they could get. At the very least, Sirius seemed to be catching on to the atrocities of war--the beta really didn't want to be responsible for misleading innocent puppies and indirectly signing their death warrants. There were still a slew of other issues to address--Pilot, hunting skills, etc.--but those could wait until morning. None of the other children in Inferni were orphans, and their parents presumably took care of food and whatnot for them. Anselm realised that by accepting Sirius, he'd probably be responsible for keeping him well fed. Well, whatever.
As they came upon the den sites the youngster asked him where to stay. He paused in his tracks and looked back at Sirius, puzzled. "You can stay pretty much where ever you want, as long as the den isn't already claimed by someone else," he said. To him, this seemed obvious--did Sirius want him to tell him where to go? It seemed a little strange to the wolf, who was accustomed to clan members doing whatever the hell they wanted. The caves were all of varying sizes and configurations; some had multiple chambers, some were simpler, some faced downhill, and some faced uphill. "I'd suggest finding one that not a lot of rain will get into, mostly." |
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"'kay" He said, nodding. He'd find someplace to sleep tonight, then explore the territory a bit in the morning. The only thing that he was really good at catching was grasshoppers, and now that it was beginning to get a little colder he didn't see them as much. What would he do in the winter time when they all died? He had heard stories about how fluffy pieces of frozen water fell down from the sky...and about how all of the flowers and grasses died, but he wasn't sure if he believed it yet. He'd just have to wait and see.
Squirk seemed content with one of the shallower caves that were standing next to, and Sirius watched him enter it and stake out a part of it for himself. "This one for now. I'll see you's in the morning maybe?"
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His ears flicked as Sirius asked him about the morning--as if he planned that far ahead. Shrugging, he offered a non-committal "Maybe" in response. Anselm wasn't sure if he'd be going to bed immediately or if he'd be doing more rounds. In the case of the latter, he probably wouldn't be getting to sleep for some time. Then who knew when he would wake up? "I'll definitely catch you around, though. If you need anything give a holler. We'll need to touch base with Pilot yet, too."
With that, he nodded shortly to the hybrid and headed off into the dark. His mind wasn't made up yet on what he wanted to do, but he knew he'd figure it out soon enough. |
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