they say that things just cannot grow

Alaine Winters · 02-10-2011, 12:21 AM

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table © Erin
ooc: syn = alaine finds a small puppy on the mountains. dated FEB 9. 8+

The icy fist of the storm had loosened its grip on Nova Scotia, revealing a land ravaged by the forces of nature. However, in her isolate cave in the cliffs by the ocean, Alaine was not phased by this strange and awesome occurrence.

She knew, within, that the pack probably required her right now. As the lead, and only, healer of the eclectic Cour des Miracles luperci, her duty had always been first and foremost to them. But now, there were others that required her most intimate and unwavering attention - Others, whose lives were so fragile and precious yet that not even the most driven of servants would return to her old dwelling, down in the center of the packlands.

Alaine's children were in the world, and they were the world. She slept in small snatches, unwilling to save eyes unless when they next opened, it would be on the realisation that the two warm, fuzzy bodies curled up against her were only the figmented tortures of a past dream. Having shifted into her primal, fourlegged form, the collie spent most of her time caring for the two wriggling forms that were so desperately dependant on her, for all things. She did not leave them, not even to the recesses of sleep, for the entirety of a day after their birth, nor even the day after that. However, on the third day, hunger pains gnawed at the woman's insides, and her milk grew less and less.

Knowing that she would have to leave them, if only to check her snares and make a quick feast of whatever unwilling prey had stumbled to their fate in the primitive but adaptable traps, the woman rose early on the morning of the second waning moon, February 9th.

The day was crisp, and cool. She procrastinated well into the afternoon, fussing over the small blind figures that mewed pathetically to each nudge of her cold pink nose. Finally, satisfied that the blankets she had arranged into a nest and buried the small pups under would keep them sufficiently warm until her speedy return, Alaine left the small cave and stepped out into the bleary sunshine.

The instant that the cave was behind her, the female experienced an anxious need to return. Knowing it only to be her utter loathing at leaving her children, if only for minutes, she resolved to move swiftly. A cream blur amongst the flurries of melting white snow, the collie darted from rock to tree, seeking out the first of her snares, which held only the remnants of some small marsupial who had evidently been scavenged. It was at her next trap-site that this most quiet of days became something more extraordinary.

There was a small figure in the snare. It was not moving, but even from a distance, Alaine knew that the thing was alive - Occasionally, a trembling breath would shiver through small ribcage, and the long chain that slithered across the frosted ground like an iron snake would rattle ominously.

It was a whelp, and the chain that bound her throat and dragged alongside had become tangled in the snare. Beside the pup were the remnants of a mouse; clearly, she had been drawn by the small creature trapped in the wire, and appeared to have gummed it to death, whilst becoming trapped herself. Unwilling to change into her slower, twolegged form, Alaine instinctively pulled at the wire with her much larger, sharper ivory teeth, finally succeeding in mauling the feeble trap to pieces and freeing the body of the little girl.

She was unconscious. Alaine thought of Elenore, the little girl she had recently lost, and in the mother's grieving mind a sickly transformation occurred - This child was now her child. She claimed it, against the wild weather and the harsh land which sought to take this little life from her. This child was HERS. She barked her defiance loudly to the cold and quiet world, and on receiving no challenge, scooped to grasp the fluffy ruff in her maw.

Carrying the little treasure carefully in that manner, Alaine stopped only to check her third snare and to wolf down the stringy hare that had been trapped there. Her body needed the sustenance, especially if it was required to provide milk for three pups.

She returned to the cave before sunset, and set about snuggling the strange pup in with her own two jelly-bean children. With much careful gnawing, she managed to remove the chain from the little girl's neck, and with it the strange little chip that had been attached. On the chip, bizarre runes that Alaine recognised as human writing but could not read spelt out a single name: Odette.

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