some girls wander by mistake
#1
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Dated for 6th March. Fort Cumberland.


The sun was already halfway risen, and as always, she found the lack of trees disturbing. There were buildings around, at least, however worn and dirty and falling apart they were. There were treacherous dips in the hills and trenches lined with jagged stone, and it was clear that the humans of days passed had intended the place a fortress. On four dainty feet, Cassandra made her way carefully towards the fort proper, her grey cloak wrapped around her shoulders and trailing some distance behind her. It was not the best way to go about it, and she didn't have as many options now that her horse was gone.


Here and there, there were still patches of stubborn snow on the ground. Grey grass and bits of white matched her well, but the snow reflected the sun back into her eyes if she looked at it from the wrong angle. She scowled to herself; spring could not come soon enough.


The nearest building was small, as was her preference, with a single entrance and windows that were too small and too high to see through -- they were only there to let in light. The particular area was not too saturated with the recent scents of specific others, though the overall area, ever since she'd come around the mountain, was clearly populated. There were wolves and coyotes and dogs and mutts of all kinds for miles, for days' walks -- the wilderness was becoming rarer as their kind continued to multiply. She had been surrounded for days already.

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#2
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(447) pain meds make me write weiiird. ;-;



It had been chance that brought him away from the borders, and chance that found the moose. Spring drew near and with it came mothers casting out their young; it was an instinctive pattern and one that allowed for them to forget about the children from the season before. Ezekiel imagined this was what happened with his own mother—that she had followed the pattern and become a stranger to him, as his own father now became. Memories, like ghosts, faded. He needed to live only in the moment, for his world was made up of a path he himself constructed; there were plans, ideas, motions. He had manipulated his world with the finesse of a man he himself did not wish to be.

Instinct had led him to follow the wounded animal. It was a bull-calf, less than a year old. The Secui form gave him more weight, resembling his father and all the wolves that came before. A slashing bite had further wounded the animal, and then once more, instinct. Fleeing north, Ezekiel trailed for miles. This was a day-long chase, one that went unresolved until nightfall. Then the calf finally fell to exhaustion. Ezekiel took it by the throat and smothered it with jaws made for slashing and tearing.

He shifted and began work almost as soon as the kill was made. After burying the massive heart Ezekiel feasted on the prime organs and flesh, though he was careful not to gorge himself. Others would smell and come soon enough, and his work would need to happen quickly. Without a knife, he used his claws and teeth to pierce and tear the hide, ripping it by brute strength in places where it would not tear. The skin was peeled away and bundled, and for the next day he feasted and fended off the kill, working with the pelt when he managed to sever the head and brains.

By the third day he was satisfied and took several cuts of meat, perhaps twenty pounds, and bundled this into the tanned hide. It was a crude job but served his purpose, and what was left of the moose would feed others. A wolverine had come the night before and Ezekiel took this, as he always did, as a sign to leave—he would not fight a wolverine unarmed.

His trail carried him south, moving at a steady clip, dissuaded only by the sight of the building. While he was not a man that favored such places, he found himself looking upon a white coyote wearing a cloak; an odd thing for a four legged shape. Ears high, he stilled, unabashed by his shape or his nakedness.

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#3
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If by weird you mean awesome. :|


She smelled blood. It was not fresh, but nor was it very old; it came to her with a shift of the wind. She looked up to see the blonde man standing on the horizon, on a small nub of a hill amongst rolling crests and falls. Other scents came with that of meat -- the confidence of a hunter after a successful kill, and a home with many other coyotes, or hybrids, perhaps. He was not familiar, no, not by appearance and not by scent, but the impressions of places he'd been and others he'd been around... Cassandra had already known that she was near, but this was the surest sign of yet.


A creature from a child's fairy tale. But at that particular moment, she found that she was more interested in the meat he carried than the clan he was from and the way its history was connected to her own. The night's travel had only put open plains and lifeless hills in her path, and so she had not eaten since the previous morning. The stranger had certainly had his fill already. "Is it a long way home for you?" she asked plainly. The albino woman did not shift to match his form, but she turned to face him and took a few careful steps towards the hill.

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#4
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lawl no. wait till I get my better meds after my mri. LOLOLOL.



There was a peculiar familiarity that hung around the air, one that made him think of the others he had known that bore her unusual markings. He had seen two in his lifetime, loved one, and now hated them both. How wrongly he had misjudged those, as he had others, and now he regarded her with the stark indifference of a man that had seen too much of the world. She seemed to know him; at least in a way, he reasoned. The smell of the coastline betrayed him, as did the smell of ash and honeysuckle (though the latter did not cling to him during the winter).

Ezekiel neared her and tried to catch her scent. It was hard to do above the wind, and it carried something strange with it…something he had only smelt once before. Almost instantly he regarded her in another light, studying for the signs that surely were there despite her pale fur and unusual skin. The sharpness of her face and size of her build were clues, but they were not enough.

It was then that he spotted a glimmer of metal around her throat and the five-pointed flower. Any doubts left him. A faint and thin smile crossed his face. “Not half so far as I imagine it is for you,” he said, and slowed his approach.

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#5
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It's gonna be even more awesome then!


Time and distance were fickle things. Days passed quickly, or slowly, or sometimes, seemingly not at all. The sun and the moon rose and fell, but they were cycles that meant nothing when counted in single digits. As the moon cycles through its phases though, and as the seasons changed, the indication of passing time became clearer, and the days numbering in the hundreds were proof that it had been a long while since. And the miles she'd walked only rose in count as well. Over mountains she'd gone, through forests and passing by lakes, beaches, houses, corpses, figurative and literal. The miles numbered more than the days, but together they were a chasm, or many chasms: heavy trenches separating the only points of her life that were worth remembering, or worth forgetting.


There were many chasms between herself and home, or none at all.


"You'd be right," she said. "If I had a home any longer." Cassandra was not sure how to read the other's hint of a smile. The scent of the coast, of the sea, of blood, and of victory, was very different from her own. She smelled of pine, dirty snow, and mountain air, all wrapped up with a sprig of old spearmint. But everything faded quickly enough, and the backdrops around her had been changing too frequently for any one thing to cling too closely. A wanderer and a vagrant was what her scent described her as. And he was certainly settled. As individuals, they stood in very different places, but she wondered how closely they sat on the family tree, if her mother's family was as large and sprawling as it had always been described to her.


"Do you normally hunt so away from Inferni? That's where you're from, right?"

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#6
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no meds yet. just wait kiri. it will be 6am poetry all over again.



In many ways, he understood what it was that stood behind her. Once, Ezekiel had traveled thousands of miles from his home. It had been a lonely journey chasing a ghost, and he had spent it in isolation. He had been social, but there were few friendly faces in the northlands. Dogs and wolves saw his smaller frame as weakness and tested this, and more often than not the boy had fled. He had clung to old-growth forests and abandoned lands, hunting when he could, scavenging when he could not. If he had not found the community in the highlands he would have likely died that cruel winter.

Yet between then and between now he could not remember much, but there was so much space and time that he should be forgiven. The endless cycle of life was muddled with why but he had begun to find that how was an easier thing to answer and to receive. Red ears fanned high, a pointed crown, and he took her in for what she resembled. A ghost; a washed out vision, starved of light and food, of the sister he even yet molded into something new and unfamiliar.

“I am,” he answered easily. “And not normally, no. Opportunity showed itself,” the coyote went on, and looked her over once more. “Do you have time to share a meal?” Or would she run off like her father?


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#7
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I would be okay with this. Will Cassie and Zeke be as poetic as their granddaddies?! (Feel free to powerplay them sitting down inside or something.)


The nearness of the end was unsettling in many ways. She had been chasing after maybes for too long. In the early days, she dreamt about finding them. In the early nights, she thought about what she might find. There had been so many possibilities, and she had forgotten them all. With time and distance, the journey itself became her purpose, and the destination became merely a word, a thought, and vague definition she did not dwell on anymore. She had to go, and she had to look; it was all she had and all she knew, but when she found it? What did the dog do when it finally caught its tail? (Let go, and chase it again.)


The stranger did not fit her children's tales, but she had not expected him to, at least not immediately. The child's fears reconciled with the adult's mistrust, and Cassandra was sure the suspicion showed plainly on her. Still, she shrugged and nodded. "Yes, but do you mind if we go inside?" There were a few clouds, but the sun was bright and glaring when they shifted, and the albino woman found them unpleasant and distracting. She started back towards the little stone building, a guard tower of sorts, and shifted as she went, standing tall on two feet by the time she got to the entrance.

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#8
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this is an awful post. D: I will make it up to you



The endless chase was a thing that he, of all people, understood. Talitha had been his quest as another woman was this stranger’s, but it was likely that she would find closure as he never would. His sister had returned long enough to deposit a child that, like his mother, vanished not long after. Sa’adat had followed, turning Enkiel into an even worse recluse then before. Unsure of the way of these things, Ezekiel said nothing. Now, too, he had a far more interesting adventure ahead of him. True to his fashion, the golden coyote played his cards close to the chest—he did not want to spook this rare beast.

Ezekiel followed her with easy steps, giving the albino a fair distance. She reached the building before him, rising tall like her sister. There was familiarity in her even now, but she was different from Myrika, more cautious. A moon to the sun. The mass of animal hide and meat was lowered to the ground, where Ezekiel crouched hesitantly. “Do you like your food cooked?” He asked, looking at her directly. While he didn’t have his usual supplies, heated meat was sometimes more favorable. It wouldn’t be hard for him to gather wood and even herbs to season the food if she so desired. Anything to get her to stay, just long enough to see what her intentions were.

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#9
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Well, this is awful as well, so there!


She had no desire to ever see or meet her mother anymore. It had been half-hearted from the start, and more for her father's sake than anything else, and the bitterness had been left to fester over the years. If Rachias had not left such a gaping wound in their family, then perhaps they would have been content to remain where they were, and perhaps she would not have now spent more of her life wandering than not. Cassandra did not know that she was looking for a person anymore. She was confident that her father and sister were out there, maybe even nearby, now, but they were as strange and fairy tale as anything else. Time and distance changed people, changed relationships, and she knew that even if they had not, she had changed. And the pallid woman was sure she would disappoint them somehow.


The lonely stone tower did not have much on the inside. There were flat-surfaced rocks stacked along half the interior perimeter, and a steep, winding staircase met the ground opposite the entrance. Stray rocks here and there in the middle of the room suggested that the stairs probably weren't safe to venture up. Cassandra seated herself against the wall and felt vaguely claustrophobic. Forests were definitely still her favorite place to be. Shelter and openness all at once, imagine that.


"No," she told the golden stranger. "Raw is fine. Faster, easier, and the way we were meant to eat it, hm?" Humans had cooked because their stomachs were weak; that was all. Wolves cooked because it was a novelty, maybe, but she had never had a taste for it and found it a little pretentious.

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#10
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this was not a good make-up post ;-;



In some way he could understand her need and desire to chase a ghost, and how it waned with each passing day. Once, Ezekiel had killed for his sister. Now he could not bear the thought of seeing her, even to the point of hiding the gifts she had made, of seeing a painted face of what had been once and would never be again. Yet he could not bring himself to burn the damn things. He could not imagine facing the guilt of destroying something she had put so much effort and love into.

While he lived in a cave, the ruins of mankind were equally unnerving to Ezekiel. If she had expressed discomfort he would have echoed the thought and they might have gone on. Instead he remained cautiously bottled up, and mirrored her position. The hide was placed near him and from this a length of meat, clearly ripped by claws and teeth, was produced. He held it out to her. “I rarely do,” he commented idly. “Never with red meat. Fire works wonders for the taste of duck though,” the Aquila added, smiling faintly. He enjoyed the taste of seared fat and ate it often, though the amount of calories he took in rarely outnumbered the amount burnt by his endless duties.

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#11
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There had been many compromises, though over time, there accumulate enough difficulties that even the best workarounds were discomforting in one way or another. Her physical sensitivities had been compounded since she'd last seen her family, and for the moment, the feeling of the walls and ceiling closing in on her was more managable than the idea of her eyes burning out of her skull. Vampire, they had accused, and she had hissed that maybe they were right. And so she'd take her blood raw.


With only the slightest bit of hesitation, she accepted the meat, then paused to consider the stranger's smile. It seemed sincere enough. Many things did. "Never bothered much with duck," Cassandra admitted with a small shrug. "Never figured dealing with all the feathers was worth it. But moose! Moose was not something she dined on frequently either, though not out of avoidance like with waterfowl. She lifted the meat to her jaws, unceremoniously tore off a strip, chewed quickly, and swallowed. The blood stained her fur easily.


"You seem to have an idea of who I am," she said, looking back to him as she licked her lips. "What made you think so?"

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