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He had found the scent first. It had been at the borders, incredibly weak and fading. Despite this, the smell was unmistakable. A ripple of motion had followed the line of Gabriel’s spine, causing his dark tipped fur to rise. Even though the scent was so familiar, the fact it had come across the borders without invitation was infuriating. The last that Gabriel had seen of his brother was a coyote on the verge of death, staggering off into the wilderness where (God willing) he would find rest. Neither God nor his brother find it fit that things should go so easily. Ezekiel had told his father about finding the blackened coyote in the city, and how his eyes had looked. Even though his son had never seen the illness that had claimed Esper Hollow, the Aquila knew it had taken Samael.
With his nose low to the ground, Gabriel followed the haphazard trail. It took him further into the territory, where, to his displeasure, it found a companion. A mother, even. There was little surprise that Samael had sought her out. What was surprising was that their scents remained mingled, and led even deeper into the Waste. A low growl reverberated out of his chest. Even though Gabriel knew that Kaena loved all of her children dearly, he did not believe she would blind herself to the sickness coursing through Samael’s blood. With a huff, the hybrid made his way west quickly.
After a grand total of perhaps ten minutes, he rounded on her cave. The scent of his half-brother clung desperately to the others. Gabriel entered, but found that his mother’s den was empty. Frustrated by this fact, he stormed out. How long had she had him here? What damage had he managed to do, unsupervised? One maniac was enough. Hybrid, at least, he understood. Samael was a new, unfamiliar monster.
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mall-caps;">In Character
The silver-furred coyote made her way deeper into Inferni territory, unsuspecting of what waited for her by the caves. The coyote had not told Samael to stay with a clean conscious; she was well-aware that his presence here would cause friction. Still, it didn't matter to her. She wanted her children closer to her, it pained her to think so many of them were gone. Gabriel's scent wafted through the air, drawing the coyote closer. No better time than the present to face up to him for what she had done—maybe he wouldn't mind his younger brother so much? The hybrid woman did not wish to think about being forced to choose between family and clan, son and son—such a thing was simply abhorrent to her. Still, there was no avoiding Gabriel forever, and she would have to seek him out sooner or later and face facts.
The scent of the sea grew stronger as she drew closer to the caves, and though the sound of its waves crashing against the sand of the shores was a constant companion in her sleep, it meant she was drawing closer and closer to the caves, where Gabriel was, no doubt. A strange nervousness rose in her chest, and she took in a deep breath in an attempt to quell it, shutting her brilliant yellow-gold eye for just a moment as she entered the cave area. So it went that Gabriel was already waiting for her here, already seeking her atonement. She was quiet as she approached him: head down, ears half-flattened. She was quiet, regarding her gold-and-black son with her single eye, already reading the frustration and anger in his body. She simply looked at him, her face kept carefully flat and expressionless, her yellowed eye seeking the ground before his forepaws rather than his face.
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A flash of silver caught his eye, and Gabriel found his mother approaching. Her body language told him that she was aware she had done something wrong, but it was unnatural for him to see her in such a way. For one moment, he hesitated. That moment passed as the righteous fury came boiling up from his chest.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” He barked, advancing on the older woman. Even though Gabriel outweighed Kaena, he had no intention to strike her. That was something that he had never done.
“Samael is sick! He’s fucked in the head!” The tension coursed through his body. All along the line of Gabriel’s spine his fur was on end, and his entire body was displaying dominance—head and tail high, ears raised to a point. Despite this, he did not touch her. They were close enough he could feel her breath, but he did not move beyond that. Certainly, even if she did not understand that subtle slap, he would.
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[html] | mall-caps;">In Character
The silvery coyote was well aware it was only their blood relation that kept her physically safe and even considred among Inferni's own—certainly anyone else who would have admitted Samael to even pass through the territory with knowledge of his prior history might have been ejected from the clan. Even as he rounded on her, the hybrid did not allow her facial features to so much as twitch, instead keeping them absolutely blank. Her own anger boiled and seethed just beneath the surface, threatening to burst from her, but for the moment, Kaena was in control of herself.
The hybrid woman considered simply remaining quiet and allowing him to spill his fury, but she thought it unwise to ignore his question and fail to provide him with an answer. It was rather simple logic for the hybrid woman. Her voice was rather flat and monotonous as she spoke this, her gaze still focused earthward. "He is still my son." It was not as if Kaena could not bear to be separate from them, but it had pained her that Samael roamed the land alone, by himself—maybe that was more fitting for him, but she wanted him closer. Molochai had left her, Conway had never come back, Ahemait was long gone, Andre was dead, and the list marched onward—maybe she was just a goddamn collector, but she wanted those that she had left close.
For this instant the coyote leveled her gaze with Gabriel, lifting her head so that their noses were inches apart, her single searing eye and the dead one meeting his bright golden eye, half a mirror of her own. "And so are you," she said, speaking boldly but in truth—Inferni and Lykoi were often synonymous, but not always. Where the clan was concerned, he was the Aquila, unquestionably. Where the family was concerned, she was the matron, though there was no title designating her merit.
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At the corner of his mouth, there was a twitch. One that might have been a snarl, if not for the fact it suddenly hooked up, turning into a vicious smile. It was more mad then anything else; a challenging, dangerous smile. It belonged to his father, and turned his wolfish visage terrible. He exhaled a breath of laughter, but there was no heart in it. “Since when?” He hissed, lips pulling back, dark whiskers curling up towards his muzzle.
After all, she had not raised him. A dead woman had. She had done nothing more then give him life. Give him a home. Abandon him twice over. Resentment rose in his chest, something old and brittle, the ghost of the brother that had died before him. “You better fucking watch him,” he warned, voice dropping a dangerous octive. “If you don’t he’s going to end up just like Andre.”
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The silvery coyote peered at him with an almost quizzical look on her face, finding the laugh ridiculously inappropriate given the tension sizzling through the air. There was electric tingling from both of the hybrid creatures, fire burning behind their eyes. In anger there was a remarkable similarity between the two creatures, though by simply looking at them one could hardly tell they were as closely related as mother and son. Kaena was shades of warm gray and black, just the crimson on her muzzle keeping her from true monochrome. He was all gold, bigger in build and far more wolfish than Kaena herself.
The fire in her eye seemed to explode, and she could no longer keep the snarl from her face. Her teeth showed a sallow color against her coal lips, finding it too much for him to insinuate such a thing. "You came from me," she responded simply, the growl in her throat making her voice twice as throaty as usual. The hybrid woman would stake no claim to perfection, not even good motherhood—surely she could have done better, surely she could have kept herself from failing, time and time again. Still, here Gabriel was, proof that she had done something right, conveniently forgetting that most of Gabriel's growing had been done a long way away.
At the mention of Andre the coyote stiffened, her glittering eye narrowing to a slit. Her lips pressed firmly together, swallowing the growl that threatened to bubble up from her. She had no right; she had not been here to raise Andre, she had simply given him life and moved along. Still, it was blatantly clear the reference had upset her. The coyote remained quiet for a moment, composing herself until she could speak in whole syllables rather than broken, enraged fragments. "Samael is mine. He will do as I ask of him," the coyote said sharply, knowing she was speaking the truth. Sick in the head as he was, Samael was devoted to her, and he would heed her word.
"Unless that's what you dislike about him," the hybrid said, the petulant words flying from her muzzle before she could keep them where they belonged. She kicked herself inwardly and her face showed an inkling of regret behind her anger; such a thing was terrible to say and Gabriel hardly deserved that. Still, maybe there was some ring of truth to her statement, some lingering jealousy or even fright that Kaena had a minion completely of her own, though the hybrid woman hardly had any dreams of mutiny against her own child; she was complacent where she belonged.
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Like a supernova she went off, her face breaking as his refused to do. That grin was locked on his face, but it was not his smile—it belonged to a madman long dead, the one whom perhaps was more responsible for the gold that he wore. “You abandoned me,” he snapped, larger teeth flashing in the afternoon light. Twice over, a small voice reminded him. Both of his eyes were burning, liquid gold and full of the fury that God had granted him. “I owe you nothing beyond blood.”< Some archaic reference, one he could not remember. Honor thy mother, a different voice whispered, and was ignored.
She shut down. She told him what he knew in his heart. The tip of his tongue rose and pressed against the roof of his mouth. It needed to be held, so she could say her peace. He scoffed at the idea, a barking laugh breaking from his mouth. Gabriel feared nothing; least of all a sick boy. It was not fear that drove him to hate his brother, but the terrible things he had done. “And what happens when he acts on his own?” Gabriel spat. “When he goes out and kills someone because he thinks you want him to? I will not have another loose cannon start a fucking war.” His ex-mother-in-law had done such a thing. He did not doubt Samael was capable of such a thing.
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[html] | http://sleepyglow.net/rp/kae/kae_razor.jpg); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat;"> There were old wounds here, and one Kaena loathed to feel split open again. Still, the sensation came—long-dead scars spreading wide and exposing raw and rotten flesh beneath, all that had been left to putrefy and go completely sour within the hybrid woman. There had been enough pain in her life to satisfy several lifetimes' worth, and this was the last thing she needed. There was the nearly insatiable urge to stand to her feet and simply walk away, melting into the darkness to crawl into some slovenly hole and breathe her last. Maybe it was love, maybe it was duty that kept her where she was, but for a few wavering moments it was there, prominent and forefront among her whirling mad thoughts.
Her face had grown blank in the moments of his speech, though her body was still in predatory mode and his words registered clearly in her mind. "You left us. I know why," the coyote said, hesitant to break open worse wounds than the aforementioned. "But should I have chased you across the world like Eris, leaving six of your brothers and sisters with Ahren alone in Inferni? You know he went to have his crown," the coyote said darkly. It wasn't right either way, it was still fucked up and confused in her head—maybe if she had gone to find Gabriel he would never have left at all. Maybe then she could have returned to Ahren in Inferni and he would have stayed, and they would have been one big happy family. Likely, right?
Even in her head it sounded sappy and sour, a fantasy of completion the hybrid was beginning to realize she would never have. There were too many missed opportunities for her, too many mistakes, too many times it had been in her very hands and she'd dropped it so carelessly. "I fucked up, but least when I left you Inferni, you profited from it," she grumbled, her shoulders becoming rigid beneath their coal fur. She never should have left; Eris was an abomination and she did not deserve to exist, not only for her betrayal but for her very origin. She should have died the very night she emerged into the world, black and larger than her smaller coyote siblings, almost unmistakable to Kaena for what she truly was. "I'm sorry," she said, folding her ears back against her head, though the anger remained in fragments on her face, twisting across them every moment she stood there facing him.
Kaena's face could not decide between hurt and beyond angry; it wavered wildly between the two, her snarl shifting almost imperceptibly beneath her scars. Samael was hers, more hers than any of the others—he loved her best of all, more than any of the others, anyway. If she told him to stand still in one spot and not move, he would starve to death doing it, of this she was certain. "He is mine," she repeated, though with less ferocity this time. "He is my responsibility. He was raised inside of Inferni's borders, he knows the rules," she said, even then her logic seeming hollow. "I love him as much as I love you," the coyote added, her voice as calm as it had been in the last several minutes.
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She was furious. She was upset. She was like the ocean, each wave showing something different. Gabriel knew he was pushing her, and she pushed back. Should his mother have come after him? No. Did he want her to? Yes. He had cried himself to sleep, screaming for her. By the time he was found, he was shattered. He remembered those nights. He remembered everything from those early days. More recently, he found, his memories were growing hazy. Where had he gotten all the scars from? He barely remembered.
He didn’t care about what had been. He cared about what he saw now. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt,” he said slowly, as if explaining himself was difficult. The smile on his face had long since faded. Now there was only the hollow mask. “You watch him,” the hybrid warned, making a point not to mention what would happen if she did not. With that, he walked past her, refusing to look back. If she hadn’t understood him yet, she likely would not. Gabriel knew his mother well enough to know her love blinded her; a mistake he himself had made only once.
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[html]  The coyote woman was almost numbed now, her fighting emotions balancing each other out, though they washed over her in different patterns now, her face remained mostly calm, somewhat more controlled now. She had spoken her piece, and a half-living, half-dead face stared blankly forward, unable and unwilling to pick a side in any sense of that particular argument at this moment. She would not choose to let Samael wither and grow sicker with the coming winter, nor would she abandon Inferni (and Gabriel) again. It was as if the hybrid were being quartered; there were several strong instincts pulling her in several directions, splitting her into pieces.
The Aquila spoke, his voice slow and certain, sinister as a snake's. The hybrid did not fear his retribution; she had hit him once and that was enough, should he even attack the hybrid did not think she could defend herself. The instinct to obey him as her leader was powerful enough, but stronger than that, there was love—fragmented and hurt by their rocky relationship but ever-present within the hybrid nonetheless. He started to walk away, and her coal-black ears folded against her head, something like a whine sounding very softly in her throat, a puppy-call—a sound the coyote had not made in years. "Don't walk away from me," she said, and though there was the strong hint of command in her voice, there was pleading, too.
Hopping swiftly to her feet, the coyote took after him anyway, even if he did not turn to her, trotting just behind him and speaking lowly to his back. "Do you think I mean to hurt you?" she asked almost rhetorically, neither expecting nor requiring an answer. She walked in his footsteps exactly, stretching her shorter gait to match his own. If they had been walking in snow, there would be only a single set of tracks. "Never," she whispered, punctuating the prior statement and stopping in her tracks, watching and waiting for him to keep walking or turn and face her.
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He understood her instincts, even though he did not agree with them. In that same aspect, he believed that his instincts would prove true in time. If it came down to it, he would kill the boy without hesitation. Though Gabriel was not afraid of his brother, he was afraid of the sickness inside of him. This was not the first time he had seen it. Both ears turned back at that terrible noise, and it was enough to make him stop in his tracks. Something deep in his memory was triggered by that call, even though he suddenly and viciously hated it.
Distantly, he heard her feet. His eyes had gone hollow, focusing on the ground at his feet. Breathing had become a difficult task; his chest rose and fell as if it was strained. Gabriel did not lift his eyes to look at his mother. The chains around his neck felt heavy. Something under the ground was trembling. “Just watch him,” Gabriel repeated, thick fur shifting with each breath.
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[html] | http://sleepyglow.net/rp/kae/kae_razor.jpg); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat;"> <3 We could wrap this up and start new thread naow? :O
The closer they were, the better, right? The shattered pieces of Kaena's family had been flung far to the wind, and her grandchildren were the most recent generation to depart from their point of origin.The hybrid woman hardly knew half of them; she had only met Ezekiel, Jael, and Enigma once apiece, and she had never met Gabriel's daughter. Her own children were longer gone than that, whisked away swiftly by the call of the open world, their own families, even a driving need to separate themselves from the Lykoi matron and all of the Lykoi family itself. The silvery canine felt the need to desperately clutch what she had left to her, and never let it go—there was only so much time left on earth, after all.
At the golden hybrid's words, the silvery one offered only a sigh for a moment, heavy-hearted and slow. If her children could only see each other as she saw each of them—wonderful and worthy of all the love she could give of herself, maybe Gabriel would be happy his brother was going home. It was too difficult for the hybrid woman to recall that they each had different fathers, that the only thing they shared was their connection to the hybrid matron herself—the coyote hybrid had left behind a long trail half-siblings, none of her children with the same father. "Of course," she relented, halting some feet from him with her head low, ceasing at last. Though it certainly appeared there was more lurking on the coyote woman's mind, she did not voice her concerns, resolving to keep her brilliant yellow-gold eye glued to the dirt.
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