The hybrid woman was on her usual route along the borders—head down, moving quickly with the clipped trot of the coyote. It was already big news what had happened the other day in the clan; a few Dahlians had showed up on the western border thinking they were big vandals, knocking down skulls. Please. As if they were the first; as if they'd be the last. That was the good thing about decorating one's borders with skulls—frangible as they were, it was ridiculously easy to replace them once the coyotes caught the vandalous bastards.

A strange, low sound brought her attention; it sounded quite a lot like something falling. Her ears were still remarkably sharp for her age; she had suffered little in the way of decreased hearing, save for that which she'd encountered some years ago, thanks to Sal. The missing chunk of her right ear was virtually the only handicap to that particular sense, as was the missing right eye to her sight. Kaena had been one-eyed a long time, though, and she had many years to adjust to this strange perception of the world.

Her pace slowed to the investigative pace; the hybrid took her time, picking up a very strange scent. It was faintly decayed, though certainly still alive. As the hybrid continued on, she came to a very strange sight—some unknown, black-tailed coyote, beyond scarred and beaten, clutching one of the clan's skulls close to his body. Narrowing her yellow-gold eye and lifting one of her coal lips to expose one of the long, sallow fangs in her mouth, the hybrid growled softly. "What are you doing?" she asked, her tone clearly indicating her annoyance with this sight. She wasn't stupid enough to mistake the canine for a Dahlian wolf, no, but this strange sight was certainly not one the coyote had encountered before.

The coyote woman could have been intrigued by this strange sight, the patchwork coyote before her. It appeared he'd fallen, and someone had taken the time and effort to piece him back together again. The coyote woman did not wish to meet such a doctor or surgeon who could accomplish this feat; though certainly it was a miracle by canine standards of medicine, the simple-minded, marred creature it had created certainly left something to be desired. Kaena was no beautiful thing, this was certain, but even she found the other canine's stitching almost grotesque. The other coyote appeared to be a walking corpse and nothing more; his face was all skin and bones, his body seemed frail and on the razor edge of starvation. He seemed frangible, as if the slightest smack from her paw might shatter him to pieces again.

At the coyote's speech, the hybrid's growl again sounded, her lips pulling back further in frustration at the strange creature that had showed up on their borders. He must have had some vague form of common sense, else he could've ended up on Dahlia de Mai's borders, and at their present state of affairs with canis latrans in general, this patchwork creature would have been torn to bloody pieces already. She took a step forward and swiped a forepaw at him roughly, aiming to bat him on the head. The silver-furred Centurion was hardly afraid of him; he was practically a waif already, and she might have outweighed him by forty pounds. "You have to earn your skulls around here," she stated, speaking slower now, enunciating each word carefully. Maybe speaking to him like she would speak to a child would help him understand; these were not his to take. "Maybe if you can send a few wolf heads rolling, you can have one," she added. There wasn't much point in taking him in, as Kaena saw it—maybe if these weren't more desperate times she might have turned him away for the simple fact that he appeared to be rather useless; however, wartimes certainly called for different tactics, and Kaena knew some coyotes were good for dying.

"You do what I want? You can have it," she said, a little meanness entering her voice as she leaned a bit closer to him, her golden eye roving over him, settling on his tail. She still hadn't figured out that little piece of morbidity yet. "What's your name?"

The coyote woman had determined that this creature was not particularly bright. Intelligence and beauty both were not top on the list for this creature; there was a tingle of something like pity in the silver-furred coyote's chest. Maybe if he proved useful he wouldn't be sent into battle with the rest of them—Kaena certainly would never say Inferni was too big; thirty-five or forty coyotes couldn't be too many. They'd have to take over Drifter Bay, then. Inferni was not frangible; they would not be shattered like the skulls the Dahlian wolves had broken the other day. They were just symbols, after all, and if one of them required to keep this creature before her complacent, the hybrid woman figured she could oblige. After all, they'd be replacing plenty of them in no time at all. Dahlia de Mai would be gutted; Haku would crumble.

"Frankie, hm?" she asked, tilting her scarred head to the side, her expression changing from one of indifference to weirded out as the coyote seemed to spasm; it took her a moment to realize he was even scratching himself, so jerky and odd the movements. When he stopped, she continued speaking, still staring at him with that strange element of utter shock. "Well, uh. This is Inferni. I am Kaena," she said, leaving off the surname, which was a rare occurrence when she met new people. She didn't want to overload the poor thing's brain with information all at once, though. "Follow me, make yourself useful, you keep the skull," she said, gently tapping it with a paw, flipping it toward the other canine. Her golden eye leered at him, waiting for him to accept the offer. He seemed so damn eager to keep the skull, he might just do anything for it.