old school table and everything :3

The world outside was a strange place. It seemed at times vacant, like a wasteland expanding before her forever; there were only miles of endless, empty forest—devoid in some cases of canine life and as clearly marked as Inferni's borders at home. She had been this way before; she was certain of it. This was the right path, and the calling in her heart grew stronger with each passing day of travel. The strange wound on her ankle plagued her at night, aching and throbbing as if Astaroth had just sunk his teeth in there. Maybe it was a curse; maybe the witch doctors had been right. It did not feel anything like arthritis, which Kaena was already accustomed to, especially in the colder months. She did not move as well as she used to; she lacked the youthful spring to her step. The hybrid had been walking many miles, saving one last reserve of energy for the home stretch—it was coming. She was not so far now. The call of home was strong in the coyote woman's bones, yet she felt she reassured herself of her proximity every day.

Winter's end was nigh; it seemed the whole world would melt all around her. Water soaked through everything and drenched it, dripping from the leaves to the moist earth below. The light, barely-there winters of the southland were nothing compared to what Kaena had experienced in the earlier winters of her life; their blizzards were meek and mild things compared to the wicked snowstorms that tore through her homeland. By this, of course, she meant Inferni; the silver-furred coyote had never truly considered her birthland home. That place was filled only with bad memories and relatives who might kill her for the simple fact of her hybrid blood, never bothering to ascertain her surname or even not caring if they did happen to ask. There was nothing there for her.

It was not too long ago that Kaena had considered that there was nothing left for her in Inferni anymore—she had no doubt that Gabriel held plenipotentiary rule over the clan. They did not need her anymore. She was nothing but a dried husk of her former self, a curse over her leg and a veil over former self, separating the weak and cowardly thing that she was now from the grand creature she'd once been. Or had she? The hybrid woman could hardly tell anymore; there was little of her old arrogance and swagger left in her step. She had run away and taken the coward's way out, and now she was returning home to face the music. The silver-furred coyote longed for family, but she did not wish to endure Gabriel's wrath, should he hold anger towards her for leaving in the first place. She was not looking forward to this.

Head down, always moving, the hybrid woman continued on this way for what seemed like forever; almost everything she passed was not worthy of note. There were scattered packs here and there, and she avoided their borders as if the canines inside held some kind of highly infectious plague. She did not desire their attention or companionship or anything from them; she did not need to rest. She could not until she returned home, and so it was night and day that she moved, halting only to sleep and eat, the latter of which she slacked on. Her weight had dropped since leaving the warmth of Malai Ratree; the canines of that place had done well to introduce her to exotic delicacies of cooked flesh, but now there was only what she caught for herself.

A scent entered her nose, one that caused her to freeze mid-step, inhaling deeper from the chilly air to catch that smell again. It was too familiar; there was no mistaking it, and yet... how? Here, in this desolation, far from anything either of them knew, they'd managed to find each other once more? Was it a joke of the gods or fate or whatever invisible hand pulled the strings that guided them that they'd meet again here? The hybrid did not know if it was a hallucination or the truth that she smelled, but she had to find out, and she went, haphazardly zigzagging through the trees until she saw him, a one-eyed ghost of his former self, aged beyond his years. There had always been a gap, but now, looking at him and reflecting on herself, it did not seem so great. She did not know what words to say to him; all she could think of was the last time she'd seen him. It could have been decades ago.

--

Perhaps better than anything else, the hybrid woman understood the use of blood as a salve. It had been her favorite medicine in her youth—when nothing else would quiet the rage fuming just below the surface, the life of another did just fine. It would seem the only way the young woman could offset the imbalance in her was to kill. Death and blood were two things Kaena was intimately familiar with; she had awakened to the truth of the world by blood, watching her family slaughter each other and inflict their spare rage on her as Delphine, Kairo, and Sabryne had done. The coyote woman was old now, but her first family, the one that she had buried before her first year, still featured prominently on her thoughts sometimes; were it not for them she would certainly have turned out different in the end. She had them to thank or curse for who she was, and anymore she did not know which it was.

It would seem as she had grown stronger (mentally, anyway), more stable, Ahren had lost some of his strength—there was a glint to his reddened eye that had not existed there before, some deep-seeded thing that spoke volumes of hurt and hate at once. The other was a marker for all that he had suffered through; it was now as dead and unseeing as the empty socket in her own skull. Still, with the useless eye and the almost ragged quality of him, the hybrid could not help but see the echoes of his former self there, the sharp, bright young thing she'd ensnared in a church one evening, drunk off of wine and blinded by lust. Those moments in the abandoned and ramshackle house of worship had been plenipotentiary of desire. Later moments were warmth and happiness—Kaena had often considered her life, and in the brief moments with Ahren, when he'd lived with her in Inferni and they'd raised their children together, all bouncing eight of them, she thought maybe she'd glimpsed true happiness. Of course, it was doomed to brevity with all other such moments of her life—now she stood alone; there was no one at her back and no one to her side, only the man who appeared years beyond his age standing before her.

They were both quiet; the silver-furred coyote could hear their last words swirling around one another. Those good-byes were supposed to have been permanent; Kaena could have laughed aloud with the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. For all the wide world, they had passed within scenting distance of one another, and here they stood once more. She realized he must have passed through 'Souls on his way to wherever he was going at the very least, and it made her immensely sad—they'd missed each other then, and now as she headed toward home he ran away from it. She would not ask him what had driven him away, whether it was for fear of the answer he could give or simple indifference. All that mattered was now, and this fleeting chance—if she lost this one, she would never have another.

Something flickered across his face, a ghost of the youth she'd once known. He had never quite been without sin, but there was worlds more innocent to the younger Ahren that she had once known. At least here she could not blame herself for creating a monster; this was no Salvaged Eternity that she had shaped and molded. His words brought something like a smile to her face, though it seemed almost ragged—her teeth were shades yellower since the last time he'd seen them, her fur grayer in some places and whiter in others, and in a moment she appeared exactly her age. "Almost," she responded quietly. The scar across her belly was still a fresh and angry pink, reminding her of just how close she'd come. Her golden eye never left his bloody red one for a moment. She feared if she broke her gaze with him he might disappear, fading away into the background of forest like any other hallucination she'd dreamed up. "I thought you would not come back," she said, though there was no accusation to that tone. She had the horrible sinking feeling she should have never let go in the first place. She should have fought harder to keep him and hold him to her. She had not broken her promise—she had never so much as whispered of their meeting on the beach, of his brief return home. Unless he had spoken of it, only they knew.