01-23-2008, 07:24 PM
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Ahhh, I'm sorry this took so long! I'll be faster from now on. Bemused, he looked away from her again. So much for being hostile, eh? "You too, Naniko." Pretty name. Vaguely Japanese, though his second and more likely guess was some sort of Native American language. Cherokee, perhaps? He minded himself this time, staying silent while she spoke, absorbing her every word. So he had been right... coyotes had attacked. He'd never been very afraid of them, but he'd seen the gruesome masterpieces on the southern beach. Wolf skulls impaled on poles — perfect ivory canvases, promptly painted in blood. That wasn't Nature's doing... wolves had been the ones to kill coyotes, once upon a time, and they'd never built such grim graves for the fallen. The morbid curiosity present in everyone made him wonder how and why the tables had turned. He'd save that question for another time. And Syemv! Had he not been so fond of his current vagabond lifestyle, he'd have joined. Maybe they wouldn't have even gotten in the way of his exploring. They'd been explorers themselves. Well, too late now. He quieted his instincts that longed for a pack, closing his lonely blue eyes nearly all the way to hide it. That sort of arrangement would only bring him down, nevermind that he'd been perfectly content with it in his younger days, and a quick rank-climber to boot. He might even have been a Beta once... it was so long ago that he couldn't even remember, and both realizations were, together, almost enough to embarass him. Physe, Iskata... unfamiliar names, but he didn't let that get in the way of his understanding. If nothing else, he was a good listener. "Sorry about your father, madame." Ignoring the salt-and-peppering of his speech with sundry French phrases, he'd never been quite able to grasp where that phrasing had come from — he hadn't been the virus that had killed him. Even so, it was polite, and it hurt to lose a parent. Right? He didn't even know if his were alive, still the leaders of the pack, still secure in their tiny niche of the world, still overbearing pains-in-the-ass... but he assumed it all held true to this day, because his family was unusually long-lived. Had he escaped? He could only hope. If he'd never have to see one of his relatives again, it'd be too soon. (Even his half-sisters and his nieces, no matter how fond he'd been of them, or as fond as he could have gotten of his family.) Sighing half-heartedly and softly enough for Naniko not to hear, he looked up again, in time to see the city much closer than it had been. Talk really did take your mind off of things. Haha... Lysander. Where a moment ago it had delighted him, now it had near enough power to make him sick — but he refrained from correcting his "mistake", even though he was charming enough to pass it off as the name of an uncle or brother he'd been thinking about. (He'd never had a brother.) "No... I can't claim to be from around here." One truth to make up for the lie. "I don't think I can claim to be from anywhere." He grinned after he said it, disguising its bitter sweetness. Again! He had to stop thinking of such brittle things. |