There was a dread in his chest, an insatiable ache that warned him something was coming. Nothing in the immediate future, right within his grasp; it was not his aging bones that creaked at the first sign of rain, nor the tattered skin and torn muscles of his arm that throbbed with an undying pain at each shift of weather, at each twist and turn of the body. He'd known that feeling before, that sense of something looming, but he was not a creature of fate. His hand held no grasp of it, no control over such a thing, nor did he desire it. The brute simply existed amongst it all, and whatever within his chest he dreaded would come and go, like so many faces he'd come to forget.
A scent on the breeze brought the scarred man back to the present, and just like that he twisted his neck, single green eye sent gazing at whatever had come his way. She blended in with the cold, white winter like a creature of snow; for a long while he simply watched her, puzzled, considering her presence. No, she was no ghost. Jefferson could not believe in such things. There was a physical form to her—and still the Patriarch watched, unconsciously mesmerized. What about her was so startling? And in the air was the scent she carried, a peculiar one, one he knew. But why? He knew no pure white wolves, none other than Cercelee and his long-dead grandmother, and the stranger just yards away was neither of these. Was she? Was she a stranger at all? He knew that smell, images of Geneva and Pripyat flashing before his vision. A familial scent. Familial, familiar. Her eyes, a coaxing blue. He knew them, he knew that color. He knew that calming gaze. Why?
Stiff, the cyclops pushed himself to his feet at turned, the frigid ocean breeze brushing at his thick winter pelt, stinging salt in his the countless bald spots his scars provided, tossing ice in his eye. He did not falter, raising his head eye, frowning his scars and glowing eye. Who was this ghost, this forgotten puzzle piece?
His bad leg lifted in the air, he stood three-legged before her, undaunted eye piercing into hers. "Who are you?" he demanded, voice barking over the whipping wind. He wanted to know. He wasn't sure why, but he needed to know who she was.
.jeffers-d04 .ooc {font-style:italic; }
.jeffers-d04 p {padding:2px 20px; margin:0px; text-indent:35px;}
.jeffers-d04 b {color:#77321A; letter-spacing:-.2px; }
.jeffers-d04 {background-color:#FBF4B4; background-image:url(http://sleepyglow.net/souls/gifts/2010dec/jeffers.png); background-position:bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:2px solid #000000; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size:12px; color:#6F6B49; letter-spacing:.4px; word-spacing:.3px; line-height:16px; width:450px; text-align:justify; padding:10px 0px 105px 0px; }
.jeffers-d04-border {width:454px; border:1px solid #FFFFFF; margin:0 auto;}
</style>[/html]