[html] Out in the thick bulk of the tall grasses that made up part of Inferni, Hezekiah stood out. The paling summer grass provided a nice contrast to his woodsy, earthy makeup, though from a far enough distance it was possible that he could have blended in. He didn’t think himself particularly visible when he had wandered out there to think and since he had gotten there, he had taken a seat in the tall-grassed prairie. As the almost only stationary point in a sea of light green, he lazily watched the grounds from there to the distant mountains wave. He had no idea where he was in relation to where home was. Home had no northern mountains. North had been the coast, just like the east and south. The west had been the vast, unexplored world. Raw and untamed, probably prime ground that wolves and coyotes disputed over.
And even as unpleasant as it was, he felt a little bit homesick.
But it wasn’t so bad that he wanted to go back. He had been in Inferni a little bit over a week and most of that had been spent healing. He wasn’t really so apt to get up and run out and meet the others that were there just yet; some combination of shyness and social awkwardness had already shone through when he had hoped it would have gone away. But he had acquainted himself with Kaena and Gabriel, then Mason, and Anselm. He liked the first three well enough even though he didn’t know them all that way and the latter he wasn’t so sure he was liked by. But all in all, he was feeling better. He had a firmer grip on reality and for once experienced what it was like to have strength come back to him.
Though not healed entirely, the gash at his side no longer felt as tender as it had days ago, his head and ribs along the left side no longer ached. Eleven days he had been in Inferni and he had seen neither hide nor hair of anyone he had ever known all of his life — something which made him wonder if any of them had cared about him at all. Were they looking for him? There was no way for him to tell, though he was inclined to believe that none of them would simply because he didn’t believe his father cared. If he didn’t care, then the others had probably only acted to care simply because someone else didn’t.
They had a word for that. Obligation. Well now he wasn’t anyone’s obligation.
That was nice. [/html]
[html] The coyote woman was often given to wandering, though these days she mostly kept to Inferni's territory. She had to be here; it was her responsibility now, though the weight of the clan did not fall on her shoulders as heavily as it did Gabriel's. He bore the brunt of the clan's heaviness, he was the head and heart and strong spine that held them all together, and she was his support. She preferred it this way, it felt right this way. Again the notion that all was circular crept into her head; she had ended up right back where she started, and it was a good, familiar feeling to be here.
The hybrid woman was finally intimately comfortable with the coyote's territory. She had been here since early June, the hot beginnings of a summer that had fizzled out and rained through most of July and August. Though it did not seem like such a long time, the hybrid woman realized it was nearly October now, and October meant her fifth month back among Inferni's ranks. October also inched her closer to her birthday, when she would be a decade old. That thought struck her, and she stopped in her tracks, pondering the realization. Ten years was a long time, and she did not know of any canines as old as she was, certainly not older. She had never met anyone who had survived so long in all her life, and here she was, ten years old and still stalking the earth.
Snorting, she shook the thoughts from her head and inhaled sharply, scenting a familiar canine on the breeze. She hadn't hardly seen Hezekiah since finding him on the borders, and she'd wondered after him for the past few days, though recent business had kept her refreshingly occupied. There was no sense of boredom to be had when one was head assistant in keeping after the clan. Now was a good time; there was nothing to occupy her time other than to catch up with clanmembers and see if they'd recovered any of their lost head thus far. Picking up the pace, she headed forward. He was difficult to spot for some time, but as the hybrid came closer she saw his head, extended above the edge of the waving grass.
Again, she remarked at his deep tan coat, the darker browns that were rarer among their golden and red coyotes. Even she was an anomaly with her grey, most of them seemed to run toward the fiery end of the coyote spectrum. Still, their coats made little difference in the big picture, since they were both coyotes. Well, Kaena was not really a coyote, was she? No, she was a hybrid—but she had lived as a coyote for most of her life, and she considered herself a coyote, and that was good enough for her. Hezekiah did not have to consider himself anything, he simply was a coyote and that was all there was to it. Still, defection was possible no matter how pureblood someone was; Zuli had proven that to her.
Smiling at the younger creature, the coyote nodded her head in greeting, choosing to settle down some feet away from him, her body turned in the same direction but angled at him slightly, her head still turned toward him, curiously looking over him. His signs of injury had decreased, but the most grievious of his wounds had been to his head, and it was not so obvious to tell when such injuries were cured. "How are you feeling?" she inquired, falling silent thereafter. Their surroundings were serene, and the coyote hoped she was not shattering his tranquility by intruding.
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I presumed that Kaena bandaged him up, so I hope that's okay. XD If not, kick me!
[html] For all his worth (which may not have been very much at all), Hezekiah tended to stay out of the way. It was a conditioned response for him not to be underfoot, not to persist in asking too many questions but rather figure things out for himself, and although perhaps his seeming lack of social behaviour seemed like a conditioned response, it was only partially that way. He was unknowingly more true to his species than those around him; he was very much a solitary creature. Being apart of pack or clan was somewhat out of his element, although he had belonged to what probably seemed like the scant makings of one. Before Inferni, he had spent the majority of his time in the company of his father and if not him, then generally anyone nearby he was familiar enough with and who didn’t think that he was esurient for attention, food, or otherwise. What time wasn’t spent in the company of others, he naturally spent alone and in turn, had become self-sufficient.
Which had surprisingly come in handy, when he ended up having to fend for himself and teach himself to be clever where the shortcomings of a parent came in. Maybe that was partially way he had lasted as long as he had, having been at it far longer than he should have been at that age. While being nearly a year old may have classified him as something like an adult, Hezekiah was far from being beyond the guidance and attention of an elder. He still had a lot to learn and much more to prove in order to be any real contribution anywhere. But despite his solitary nature, it didn’t bother him when he picked up on the sounds of someone else approaching, nor did it make him wary because the steps were far too gentle to have been someone unfamiliar with where they were. He glanced over his shoulder, eyes scanning over the tall tips of the grass for a moment until he had found Kaena’s silvery form parting through the grass with ease.
It was with a faint smile and a steady wave of his bushy tail that he greeted her, not deterred in the slightest by her appearance now that he could clearly see it and just as she studied him, he studied her and was innately curious of her story, though he abandoned the thought in favour to answer her question. “Better… much better.” Her help he was more than grateful for, this he could not deny from his tone. “My head doesn’t hurt any more and my side still does, but at least it’s healing. Doesn’t hurt too much to move about now.” And once it did heal, he would be happy to do away with the bandaging, considering how well it stood out from the woodsy colour of his coat. But at least this far into Inferni’s territory, he didn’t have to worry about feeling like a walking target. [/html]
[html] Definitely cool.  You can say she used some odd herbs on him, too. They're like, willow bark or something like that. XD Naniko gave 'em to her.
The Centurion was quite glad to see Hezekiah was adjusting to the clan life, though she still wondered just what had upset his psyche so intensely as to cause him to lose an entire part of his memory. The idea that it could be physical injury had occurred to Kaena, but she was far more familiar with blackouts due to her emotional instability than anything else. When that black thing welled up from some dark and rotten part of her soul, she lost consciousness, though her body moved mechanically and that shadow of herself pushed the buttons and pulled the levers.
Kaena breathed in deeply, and the chilled autumn air expanded in her lungs. It was still early for fall, but there were blessed days such as this one where the breeze just hinted at the coming season. Hezekiah responded, and the scarred hybrid offered him a smile, quite glad to hear good news. He hadn't commented on his mental state, and the monochrome woman thought it best not to inquire too deeply into a sensitive area. It was certainly unsettling to have holes in ones head, as she knew quite well from experience.
The one-eyed coyote nodded. "Injury's a bitch," she commented dryly, though the statement was punctuated with a short chuckle. This was another area in which Kaena had some obvious experience. "Are you liking it here...? Sometimes I think being a half-breed makes it easier to be in a clan," the coyote said, folding her sable ears back. This was a subject the silvery canine generally tended to avoid, though if she brought it up it was quite fine to discuss. Calling her out on it, or gods forbid insulting her for it was a different story entirely, one that generally elicited a less-than-positive response from the silver canine.
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Awesome, thanks!
[html] Up until he had come to in the region near to Inferni, Hezekiah had never really had bad injures. Scrape here, a cut there, a patch of fur gone from a rough-housing game gone a little too long; all of those things had been the worst of anything to begin with. It wasn’t to say he hadn’t taken a few hits out of aggression, but they had never been anything like the healing gash at his side and they had never ached like his head had to the point where the ringing did anything but stopped. Where he hadn’t been blessed with strength, Hezekiah made up for it by being a burgeoning shoot in a frost covered field. He had his endurance and it seemed like he had a stronger will and reason to survive than he realised. Surely there had been plenty of unfortunate souls out there.
But it was the topic that Kaena breached next that gave him mixed feelings. He was surprised by the question and her following comment and yet a moment later he understood where she was drawing that from. In a clan that made it clear that wolves were unfavourable, there were plenty of hybrids and he was not ignorant to the mixed heritage found behind Inferni’s pike-lined borders. Mason had been the only other coyote he had met so far and Anselm had looked incredibly wolfish, if not mostly. Gabriel, what he remembered of him through that haze was that he was like Kaena, where their heritage was muddied enough that they leaned in multiple directions; some features distinctly drawn from one background and builds from another.
“Yeah, I am,” Hezekiah said, much more decisively than the safety of memory he did cling to. “It’s better than where I was. I stay out of the way, so I’m not in anyone’s hair or anything like that… and everyone I’ve met so far seems all right.” He had made a friend out Mason and although he was still a little wary of Anselm, he understood that the crimson-eyed hybrid was trust-worthy. He had been kind enough to impart knowledge to Hezekiah that had not been forgotten. Other than that and excluding Inferni’s leader and his present company, he found that there were not much differences between where he had come from. It was homely and quiet and the real difference in the two was who made them up.
And to put a numerical value on things, Inferni was a lot smaller than anything Hezekiah was used to and it was much more compact, but despite that, he didn’t feel claustrophobic or a need to hide away because they were still spread out enough. It didn’t impede or otherwise both what had long been ingrained into him. “I mean, I still don’t know what happened to me or how I ended up… here—” at which point he gestured vaguely, not really sure what to make of the peninsula where he was “—but I don’t think anyone is missing me that much. I was kind of an… afterthought, I guess. I didn’t want to be there any more anyway,” and it only seemed right to divulge that kind of information to Kaena. He felt more comfortable in her presence than any other; he felt no fear of an adverse response or action in doing so. She had been nothing but kind to him so far. [/html]
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mall-caps;">In Character
Maybe it was their hybrid blood which allowed them to flourish so; yet if that was true, if the wolf could be credited with their survival and success, why had the packs floundered? Certainly, if half wolf blood meant that they stuck together, then by extending that thesis, the full-breed wolves ought to have stuck together twice as well. Kaena was puzzled, and she often gave thought to that burning question, mulling over in her head why the scraggly coyotes would survive the trip over the mountain, while their social cousins' bonds shattered into a thousand pieces, dozens of them scattering to the wind with hardly a care for their former friendships and pack loyalties.
The silver canine smiled as the brownish canine spoke his piece, expressing his liking for the clan and calling himself a member of it. She was surprised as he mentioned staying out of the way, wondering if perhaps he simply did not know what to do with himself or his time just yet. He had not been here so long, and a lot of that time was spent recovering. Perhaps he was still just acquiring his clan legs; some simply took to the life slower than others. It was nothing to concern her, though the hybrid woman wished to help him settle as best she could, both because she liked his quiet, reserved presence and because it was her duty to do so. "It's good to hear that," the coyote said with a slow nod. "You shouldn't worry about getting in anyone's way, though. You're as much a member as anybody else, and hey—you outrank a couple of 'em, even," the hybrid said, grinning. True, Inferni was tiny and Hezekiah was smack in the middle of things, but in recent weeks several new faces had emerged, and Hezekiah was just an inch above the rest of them. Still, that was something.
The Discens continued, elaborating further and answering the question she had not asked. It was disheartening to hear his head hadn't completely returned to him, but recovery was a long and slow process, and maybe that part of Hezekiah's memory would never return to him. Still, it was nothing to fret over if he was happier here than where he'd been. "Then it's good that you ended up here instead of staying there," she said, rather simply. "Better company here, anyway," she said, half-joking as she grinned over at him. "Maybe it's better you don't remember what happened, anyway—less for you to worry about," she proposed, cocking her monochrome head to the side as she spoke, wondering if that was pressing too far. She was glad she could not recall some of the things she'd done.
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Lame post is lame. D:
[html] Inferni had seemed to be for the most part a convivial place, if only in unconventional ways. When common activities fell along the lines of finding skulls and putting them up on pikes and making sure the wolves didn’t come knocking at their door, they were very much like nothing he had ever been involved with before. But Kaena’s words were a little bit reassuring to him, as was the fact that he understood that he was very much apart of them now, according to her. He knew that she accepted him, Mason accepted him, and for the most part he felt like Anselm had too. Gabriel’s opinion fell in there somewhere, but much more along the wayside because his recollection of the doggish-looking hybrid was fuzzy and he hadn’t encountered him since.
Regardless of that factor, old habits would be the hardest to break. He supposed that once he figured out what exactly his little niche was, or something he could do at least moderately well, then things would be better. And Kaena was right — being there was better. He shrugged at the notion that maybe there would be less to worry about; time would have to tell. “I just hope that I can find some way to be helpful,” he said after a slight pause, setting his gaze on the ground between them. “I really don’t have any skills. I mean, I can fend for myself and everything pretty well, but I’ve never really found myself anywhere that I could be useful,” or anywhere that he wasn’t told to stay out of the way, for that matter. But he figured that much was probably obvious. [/html]
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The coyote woman was rather familiar with awkwardness in social situations; she was still rather intimidated by large groups, and she liked her isolated time. But family had forced her to be more social, and she had learned to extend that beyond her own blood. Despite this, Kaena had known her own place in the scheme of the clan for some time, and it hadn't occurred to her that perhaps others would find it difficult to discern their exact duties. She tilted her head to the side, considering his words. There was something almost endearing about the coyote male feeling out his place in the world.
She considered the coyotes' ranks. Most of them were geared toward wartime; there were at least two dedicated to the ways of the warrior, and three different types of scouts. Others required more delicate specialty—certainly the coyotes would not want a Capsarii with no medical experience. There was the Imperium, but again—that required a general-skills type who was at least familiar with the different ranks. The coyote gave him a thoughtful look, shrugging her shoulders slightly. He was still young, and there was time yet in his life to learn such things.
"What do you like to do?" she asked rather suddenly, thinking his hobbies might help her determine where he would fit best among the Imperium ranks, where he could be of most use to the clan. Though it was not pleasing that he was troubled by his lack of a proper place, it was quite good that he wished to seek out knowledge on how to better himself. "Skills can be learned, but we'd need a starting point," she added, thinking it might help to elaborate a little bit more to him rather than just demanding his hobbies. The hybrid woman wasn't the best at communication, no—but she was getting somewhat better as she aged.
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[html] Awkward situations were the story of his life. It could have been hinged on his history that his mere existence in itself was an awkward situation. So it was no real surprise that he found himself fumbling over simple questions. “Well,” he said, letting out a breath, “I used to like to explore. I don’t do that so much any more, at least not here.” Not when going outside of Inferni raised the risk that things could go awry. “I’ve pretty much just been watching others since I’ve been here.” Mason and his fishing, Anselm and his skull gathering and pike making. Both things had been interesting and while the fishing part wasn’t entirely new to Hezekiah, Anselm’s tasks had been.
“What kinds of things do people here do?” he decided to ask as a change of face, hoping that perhaps something would jump out at him and sound like something he could do. If not that, then he was confident that Kaena would be more than helpful. She had already done so much for him, so he believed there wasn’t much more he could do to in return other than learn. Surely doing that would better his opinion of where it was that he belonged in Inferni. [/html]
[html] | http://sleepyglow.net/rp/kae/kae_razor.jpg); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat;"> The silvery hybrid and her tan compatriot were one in the same in that regard. They were not social animals by design, it seemed. Maybe that was just the way they were created, or their coyote blood—either way, neither seemed absolutely comfortable with others at all times. Kaena was a sad old thing for being a decade old and still unable to relate to others, still with such paradoxical flaws in her personality and logic. She was a wolf in part, she had loved many wolves and befriended others, and still she proclaimed to hate them simply for what they were, in response for a few bad eggs hating and hurting her for what she was.
One could hardly blame her; it was not as if Kaena Lykoi was given a solid foundation on which to build her life. From the beginning, there was only suffering and hurt for the silvery canine, and it was only rather recently that she had realized her place in the world and found the stability she so desired. It was here in Inferni; since returning her spirit had come back, since shaking the injury-curse from her leg where Astaroth had sank his teeth and whispered his last words. Homecoming was the best cure of them all, it seemed. For her complacency and her newfound attitude, the coyote woman was still unpredictable, still mad at heart—the beast lurking somewhere in her soul might rise at any second. She figured her family and her clan were safe, though. He had only risen in the most dire of circumstances in recent years, when her life was in clear danger.
Hezekiah professed to enjoy exploring and watching, two skills for which they had exact ranks, as was his luck. She smiled, and cocked her head to catch his question. "The Vigiles are the watchmen of the clan, and Anselm holds the Caelum, or head scout, position," the hybrid said. It was unlikely any had sat down and gone over the whole system with him. "If you're interested in becoming a Vigiles, I'd talk to Anselm. He knows the area like you wouldn't believe, and I'm sure he'd like having someone to assist him," the hybrid said with a grin. "From what others have told me, if Gabriel hadn't hooked up with him as soon as Inferni crossed the mountain, we might have gone the other way as the packs—kaput," the hybrid explained, taking for granted Hezekiah knew that Inferni was a second incarnation.
The hybrid shrugged her shoulders and continued, feeling as if she was talking a bit much. He'd asked, though, and she was required to answer him—and of course, she wanted to. "We need a Scorpius, a hunter. And if you wished to become our Veritas, I can fill you in on just about everything in our history. I've been here since the beginning—off and on," she said, the idea of training a Veritas to replace her keen on her mind. If someone could only write their history down, she would not be so fearful of it dying with her. "The Imaginifier keeps our image... if you have an artistic slant," she said, considering for a second before grinning and nudging his good shoulder with an extended silver hand. "I could teach you a few tricks if you'd like being a warrior." Hezekiah didn't seem like he liked to fight, but there was always the possibility. The hybrid looked at him quizzically, finishing out and hoping she had sparked his imagination some.
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Oh, pretty table!
[html] And this was where familiarity washed back to him a little bit; their ranks were nothing more than roles. He had never known any different, although every system had it's bottom rungs and those were of course, what he also knew the best. The creatures who were either jacks of all trades or had no skills and no means of getting better at any of them. The young, the old, the sick, whatever; that was where they always ended up. And then there was those who had more or less the pride that they prided themselves on, the skill that gave them a place within their home. They were the suppliers, the gatherers, the hunters, he knew them all too well. As it were, it seemed like Inferni had plenty of pieces and parts rather than an entire whole and somewhere in the middle of that, he understood that something had happened to make it all change.
But all that Kaena listed appealed to him one way or another, from the skills that he already had a natural inclination for to the ones that more or less came second nature to them. He smiled loosely when she nudged him, thinking briefly about what the exact duty entailed for the Imaginifier — no doubt in his mind it had something to do with a few of the decorative skulls at the border — but there was the more pressing issue of Inferni having come over the mountain that loomed through the cool haze to their north. “I suppose it couldn't hurt me to learn a little bit of everything,” he thought aloud for a moment, “but if the wolves are as much of a problem as they seem to be, it might be a good idea for me to learn to defend myself better.”
It had been stressed to him over and over that sometimes, those wolves managed to make it pretty far into Inferni. The last thing Hezekiah wanted was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had been especially good at staying close to the heart of the territory, where the chances of invasion seemed to be pretty slim, but today had been the exception. He supposed that today was just like the day he had been dealt the bad hand that had thrust him to this particular region, only instead of waking up somewhere he didn't recognise, he realised he could just not wake up at all. Letting a brief pause fall between them, Hezekiah drew his eyes to the northern horizon, choosing then to query about where Inferni had come from.
“So it was those mountains, over there, that you all came over? Why?” [/html]
[html] | <333! I love purple. XD And electric green. I need to make a table with these colors, but rarely do they work well together. >___>
mall-caps;">In Character
The silver woman considered the tawny coyote with an approving nod. That was a good approach—they had a rank for that, even. The Imperium was the jack-of-all-trades, the coyote who ought to have explained to Hezekiah what she had just explained to him. Sadly, they had no one to fill that rank—she tilted her head and leveled an eye at him. "We have a rank for someone who knows a bit of everything," she suggested, grinning at him.
Kaena also approved and agreed with the notion that he ought to learn to defend himself—it was a useful skill, to say the least. The hybrid woman had been in too many scuffles and fights to count, and she had learned many painful lessons through them, clearly evident in her scarred face. "If you'd ever like to spar, you need only ask. I meet up with Anselm to do the same, we've taught each other a few tricks," the coyote suggested, smiling. She would make sure to give him some pointers beforehand, and make it clear that teeth and claws were not allowed. Anselm and Kaena were becoming good friends, and their semi-regular matches had been good for Kaena. It was showing in her physical state, which was certainly improved since she had wandered back over the border, a bedraggled and travel-worn ghost of herself.
Hesitant, the coyote collected her thoughts for a moment. She had not been present for the fire or the migration, and she truthfully knew little about the first year of this Inferni's life. "There were other wolf packs and the first Inferni over there, but there was a fire and everyone fled south, here. There's nothing over there but ash and burned dirt, anymore. I've seen it," the coyote said, her voice tinged with a strange sadness. She would not live to see Inferni's old beach return to any sort of splendor; the coyote woman would be dead and buried herself by the time lush green came to those lands again—if ever. "I wasn't here when it burned, but when I came back, I went there first, obviously," the coyote said, her shoulders straightening as she composed herself.
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I should try to put you together a table with those colours because usually I can make them cooperate. XD
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“Maybe once I heal up a bit more, we could do that,” Hezekiah suggested with a small smile. He easily imagined that Kaena knew a few things about fighting; her appearance obviously reflected that and most importantly, she was still alive. Even Anselm seemed to be an able-bodied fighter in his own right and Hezekiah knew first hand that he had intimidation on his side. Either way, he would certainly be eager to learn from whoever would teach him something, because those skills were more than just important, they were key to survival.
As Kaena launched into a brief retelling of what had become of the Inferni that lived on the other side of the mountain, Hezekiah tuned in to the scant injection of sadness to her tone and features. The fire was months before his time and while it was no doubt something that had been seen for miles in all directions, he couldn't recall if he had ever heard anything about it until now. The feeling of losing a home in its entirety to something that could ravage it that easily wasn't something he could fathom, but he frowned all the same. “Did the wolves start the fire?” Was that perhaps one of the reasons why they hated each other so?
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[html]  Oh yes. FIERRR. -burns self- X_X
"Of course. I'm not going anywhere, so take your time healing up," the hybrid said with a grin, her scarred muzzle showing amusement in her little joke. She wasn't a very good clown; there was a time when most of her "jokes" were punctuated with blood. Kaena prided herself on her knowledge of Inferni; indeed, it had been her Immunes duty as the Veritas to know all of it, and she believed she had filled in the holes relatively well enough in her time gone. Gabriel hadn't told her what had happened in the first Inferni months before the fire, but the coyote woman could piece together everything since the fire and their abrupt move. The Dahlian war had occurred because of someone being found dead on their borders, and the coyotes had been swift to react, hadn't they? After that, there was the trouble with Phoenix Valley, which she had arrived in the middle of. Things had been quiet the last few months, and this was something Kaena was rather glad to see.
The hybrid shrugged as his question, not knowing the answer. Gabriel might have known—she had gathered that much from when he told her of the fire itself—but he wasn't telling her, and if he was not telling his own mother, no one would ever know. "Might have been. I don't know for sure. Don't think anybody does, really." The silvery hybrid didn't want to speculate on what Gabriel might or might not have known. "Sometimes things like that just happen, I guess," she said, remembering again the Californian wildfire Gabriel had told her about. The hybrid woman had not ventured that far south on the west coast; she had seen the shores of Oregon and the Pacific Ocean, but the hybrid had not realized she was so close to where Gabriel had been. Maybe if she had, she would have sought the place out.
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I need to start us that other thread, grahhhh. *puts it on her to do list before she forgets again*
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The notion that things could just happen like that did not surprise him, but it did concern him. If the wolves were responsible of such a thing, maybe they would do it again. But then again, fire was something that Hezekiah had a healthy fear of — he understood what good it provided, but he also understood what it could do and as he had just learnt, what destruction it could cause. Either way, it seemed as though that fire had been nothing more than an abeyance to Inferni’s ability to stick together as a clan. He was fortunate enough to have not been in existence when it had happened.
“Were the wolves as dangerous on the other side of the mountain as they are here?” he queried, though he felt maybe the answer was obvious. The competition between the two canine cousins wasn’t brand new by any rate and needed not to be spoken of in great detail. Any coyote with more than two brain cells to rub together knew by instinct alone that wolves were a possible threat. They were, in some cases, bigger and stronger; coyotes were meant to be the smaller, more flighty of the bunch. It was no wonder Inferni had stayed standing as long as it had, given the concentration of hybrids it contained.
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[html] | http://digital-bonsai.com/katew/rp/kae/kae_bloody.jpg); background-position:top center; background-repeat:no-repeat; background-position:fixed; padding-top:230px; padding-left:15px; padding-right:15px; padding-bottom:10px;"> Noooo worries. I have way too many threads at the moment as it is. XD Not that that's ever stopped me from adding JUST ONE MOAR. -_- (Okay, it has, but then like, 7/10 times I'll take the thread anyway XD)
The leaden-furred hybrid often reflected on the old lands with an air of wistfulness; there were places there that she would never see again, places that no one would ever see again, and she would miss them. A thought occurred to her suddenly; Zulifer's grave had been on Thunder Island, which was separate from the mainland—was it possible that the fire had spared that tiny shred of rock, leaving her first love's bones to rest in peace? It was an intriguing idea, and Kaena was sorry she hadn't seen it before she'd departed south.
Considering the coyote's question, Kaena arched the brow over her good eye, the other sinking over her missing eye, giving her face a rather comical look for a moment as she churned over that. Haku Soul was just as deadly on this side of the mountain range as Salvaged had been on the other, though Kaena did not feel responsible for the Dahlian beta as she had with Salvaged. She had created the monster in Salvaged; Haku's demons had nothing to do with Kaena. It was her duty to put Salvaged to rest, and she had fulfilled that end of it.
"Yes. My worst enemy belonged to Inferni's closest neighbor. My children Ikatha and Baneesh died for no reason in wolf jaws just outside of Inferni borders. I almost my daughter, Ahemait, to another wolf's hatred for us," the coyote said, a snarl bubbling on her muzzle at the painful memories sailing back to her. It was ancient history for coyotes and wolves to kill each others' children, and Kaena would not hesitate to retaliate if that was the case. What she wouldn't give to tear any of those wolves' spawn from them, to rend and rip their flesh and blood like they had hers—those were her invisible scars, still raw and infected, pulsating beneath the surface of the silvery hybrid. "We had a pack settle right next to us. Took a little chunk of our territory and everything," the hybrid said, wrinkling her russet muzzle. "I guess... maybe our leader gave it to 'em," she conceded, shaking her cloud-furred head. "But that never sat right with me, when I took over Inferni again, we chased 'em out," the coyote said, pride creeping into her voice. She'd launched into a history lesson inadvertently, and she shrugged her shoulders, glancing at Hezekiah, her expression wordlessly asking if that answered his question well enough.
OOC End: Kae and Hezekiah kept talking for a little while, and then the thread inexplicably ended! XD
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thanks to james for the header image[/html]
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