mall-caps;">Out of Character
    For one person only, prz. [: Set in The Waste.


mall-caps;">In Character
The coyote hybrid was not intent on traveling too far from Inferni's land. She had only just crossed the border a few minutes ago, and she was picking her way along the coast of the Waste. The hybrid saw immediately why Inferni's borders ended where they did—though their strip of beach was similar, the sand here was of an even larger grain, and sharp, harsh rocks made up most of the ground. Softer paw pads would be slashed and sliced to ribbons on the rocks, but Kaena's legs had carried her the better part of ten thousand miles in just the last short few years. Her feet ate up the ground regardless of the terrain, and she was certainly well-seasoned.


    The waves here hit the beach harder than they did in Inferni's inlet, crashing hard against the rocky sand. The Lykoi did her best to avoid the water here; her single eye observed large boulders submerged beneath the sea, shadowy dark patches in the blue-green ocean. The wrong yank of a wave, and she could be dashed against the rocks by the careless ocean easily. Though the water's noise was comforting to her, the Lykoi began heading uphill, changing direction abruptly. She kept roughly the same distance between herself and the Inferni border, a distance of a few miles. The Lykoi knew she could cover it in minutes; though she had never been one for fast running, she was mostly legs and even her current Optime form had long strides.


    The rocky sand had begun to give way to hardy grass which scraped along her knees as she walked, ambling slowly and inspecting the territory. There didn't seem to be much here at all—she was glad. The area did not smell especially strongly of wolf, and that meant Inferni had few neighbors to this direction and thus little to worry about. She relaxed slightly, though her ears flicked this way and that way, constantly changing direction to pick up an approach from any direction. It would not be so strange to find an Inferni coyote here, but on these neutral lands, she was just as likely to encounter a wolf.


    The Lykoi elder had not yet met anyone outside of Inferni coyotes, and she wondered what the reaction from an outsider might be. She knew she already smelled strongly of Inferni, and her appearance made her undeniable as one of the coyote clan. It would do her good to meet an outsider, if only to gauge their opinion. The coyote headed between two rather large gray-green boulders, covered with moss. They cast a pleasant shadow between them, so she stopped for a moment, settling down to her rear with her back against one of the rocks. Most of her body was in dark, mid-afternoon shade, though her feet stuck out into the sun. They grew warm after a few minutes, and she pulled them in, her golden eye on the beach far below her.

mall-caps;">Out of Character
    OMG. When I wrote this, I totally wanted you to reply! Hahaha. I think Kae and Jaq will get along nicely. >:3



mall-caps;">In Character
    In a different life, Kaena might have been beautiful—but her mother had robbed her of that almost immediately, slashing just above her eyes with one jagged claw, immediately marking Kaena and her siblings for life. The scars had not grown any less noticeable, and Kaena had added to her extensive collection since then. The missing eye stuck out more sorely than the rest—at first, the wound seemed like it might heal. Her vision on that side was not totally gone at first, and for months following that incident the eye had not completely died. She had been able to see shapes and shadows, just the dimmest, fuzzy outlines of them. Eventually, that had faded, and the blue-gray tissue of her eye had withered and turned peachy-brown, a knotted mess of scar tissue where her eye had once been.


    She could just barely hear the ocean, but she could smell it clearly—the salt on the air filled her nose and she could almost taste it on the wind. It wasn't unpleasant to the ashen hybrid. Years of living on the coast had made Kaena partial to the salty air. She did not love the sea, however; rather respected and feared it. It had offered Inferni protection from the wolf packs of the area when they were a weaker clan, and she had always felt she'd owed the ocean something. It would take its share someday, she mused, lost in her thoughts. A deep sigh issued forth from her lungs, and she was yanked from her thoughts by the voice of another.


    The Lykoi had not heard his approach, and she was startled at his voice, flying to her feet with bared fangs. Her eyes fell on a strange creature she could not immediately identify, and the aggression died in her throat, overtaken by curiosity. He was not a wolf, and he was not a coyote. Was he a dog? His coloration and build were entirely different from either of the wild species, and though Kaena had met few of their cousin canines in her day, she was not so stupid as to completely misjudge the stranger and take him for a wolf. Unlike coyotes, she had no affinity for canis familiaris, but neither did she hold hostility toward them like she did wolves. Along with his exotic breed, the creature was unique in another way—his arm was missing, leaving only a knotty stump of scar tissue on his shoulder.


    "Well, aren't you a sneaky bastard," the hybrid said sharply, no longer hostile but mildly irritated with the canine. Her brilliant gold eye regarded him up and down, more intrigued now than she was angry with him for startling her. The Lykoi stood her ground, neither approaching the stranger nor backing away from him. Her arms were folded across her chest and the charcoal-dipped tip of her tail twitched every few moments, a clear display of agitation.

mall-caps;">Out of Character
    Hell yeah! I was looking for people to have threads with in the future and reading a bit about Jaq before I posted that, haha.


mall-caps;">In Character
    The hybrid animal carried himself magnificently and without fear—for all of her scars and bravado he was completely unfazed, staring her down with his dark, nearly-charcoal colored eyes. He even offered her a cocky smile, one that spread smartly over his jet lips. If he were a wolf, Kaena would have itched to swipe that smile right off of his pretty face—but he was not, and so instead his display only served to pique her curiosity further. What madness would make a creature that was one-armed and descended from domesticated canines so casual and careless in such a cruel world, faced with one such as herself?


    Looking at Kaena, it was easy to see she was not so different from the canine before her. She stood proudly, her head held defiantly high, her gaze unwavering. He answered her with thanks, and the Lykoi smirked at that, dipping her head mockingly at him as if to say "welcome." The canine lounged against one of the rocks, his copper fur reflecting the sunlight in brilliant patches of red-gold and orange, the colors of sunset stroked through his coat by an artist's brush. He spoke again, and it was Kaena's turn to let out a derisive laugh, snapping harshly into the air.


    "Hardly," she answered, shaking her head to emphasize the statement. "My blood only runs beneath six of Inferni's members' skin." The statement was flippant, but swollen with pride—the Lykoi was not ashamed in the least by her family as some of its members were, and the name alone evoked terror in the hearts of the masses. "I just thought I'd take a little stroll by the beach." It was true—her original intentions had only been to stroll the outer perimeter of Inferni and inspect the surrounding territories. She had wanted to encounter an outsider, too—and now she'd accomplished that objective.


   The Lykoi took his cue of relaxing and did so herself, letting her arms fall to her sides and leaning back against the rock, though she did not turn away from the stranger for a moment. Her newest scar showed clearly then, the jagged tear horizontally across her belly. It was almost a year old already, and it had healed beautifully, leaving a thin, bumpy ridge of raised, hairless flesh across the upper part of her stomach. She decided to introduce herself, hoping perhaps the stranger would exchange a name and an origin with her—he had correctly inferred her homeland. "Kaena Lykoi. I don't think I'd be wrong if I said you were a ways from home," she observed, smelling the foreign scent of many wolves on him.

mall-caps;">Out of Character
   Hahah. xD Jaq is great.


mall-caps;">In Character
    Inferni was not founded as a family clan; on the contrary, when Kaena and Zarah met that night on the beach, Kaena was the only living Lykoi she knew of. Her father was dead, her siblings were dead, and until Brennen came and told her otherwise, Kaena believed she had no extended family. She did not know them, and she would never—if she was going to make her way back to that false home, she would have many years ago. It had never really been home to her. That was here—that was Inferni.


    The coyote listened to him speak, trying to make sense of what he said. It sounded like he was an alpha, but he did not introduce himself as such, instead referring to himself as king—and the way he savored that word, pronouncing it slowly and tasting it on his tongue... Kaena could guess there was no other word for what he was other than King. Monarch, perhaps—ruler, lord, leader—they fell just short of what Jacquez was. Neither did he introduce his territory as a pack; Kaena was curious at that. She almost asked him, but he spoke at length, and by the time he was finished, she had forgotten her question, already wrapped up in thoughts of swamps. She recalled Swamp Sosye, a territory directly south of Inferni once they'd annexed half of Aremys territory, and how it had seemed so fitting to slink along the muddy, watery floor of the thick underbrush there.


    As he finished, the coyote considered for a moment a wolfish gesture of respect toward the reigning king, but Kaena refused to demean herself in such a way. "Honored," she said, and though one might have thought she was being sarcastic, her tone was genuine. Here was royalty, and she was a fool if she disrespected it. His dog nature made him no less of a king, just as her coyote nature had made her no less of a queen. She had no royal title to attach to her name any longer, though she could lay claim to the mother of the Aquila. That was a position of power in itself—though she held no power over Gabriel any longer, he was still her son, and he guided Inferni along a path similar to her own.


    The hybrid's gaze returned to Jaq as he began speaking. My, he was a talker. Kaena herself was not so fond of speech, especially not to strangers—she could recall whole periods of months and months where she wandered as a loner and had no friendly conversations. When he leaned in close to her, she did not flinch; if he had meant to attack, he would have already. She listened intently to the gruesome tale, never for a second guessing that it might be untrue—for all she had seen, there was little in the way of violence and survivalism that shock her. The will to live was powerful, and it had goaded creatures to greater feats than self-mutilation. Still, it was a good story, and Kaena almost thanked him for sharing it, though she changed her mind just before she opened her mouth. "Stronger, indeed," she said, eagle eye roving his body, clearly admiring his muscular frame.


    A silver finger traced the outline of her eye socket, feeling the leathery, ruined flesh just inside of it on her fingertip. "A wolf stole my eye from me. He popped it right out of my skull. The last thing I ever saw out of that eye were his teeth coming for me," the hybrid said, exaggerrating her own story, though nowhere to the extent Jaq had fabricated his. Kryptic hadn't actually popped her eye; he had just given it a grevious injury from which it had not recovered. She hadn't actually lost her eye until months after the fight. Her story may not have been as fantastic as his, but it was the truth—as true as Kaena would tell it.