Word Count :: 793 akpdlffkwfkawopfopwfpowif2f23. first three four paragraphs are irrelevant. tl;dr - kaena is old. HI I RAMBLE AT YOU .___. apparently there is kae left in me yet, given an interesting enough premise for a thread. sorry plz don't kill me.
There was no need for the old woman to walk the borders any longer. She had been usurped by the vitality of youth for months now, and yet the monochromatic coyote could not keep from looping the borders, her leisurely pace clearest evidence that she had been removed from duty. There was no requirement for the Causarius to make her perimeter sweeps; she might have spent the rest of her days lounging on the D'Neville porch, and no one would have so much as lifted a brow at her. Perhaps if Gabriel still led them, he might have told his mother to stand down. The borders were no place for an old woman, and the scarred hybrid should have known that best of all. Gabriel was no longer their Aquila, however -- it was his son, her grandson, who now governed the coyotes. He had more pressing issues than how an old woman occupied her time.
Kaena found herself less and less desirous of social contact. There were those in Inferni she did not even recognize these days, virtual strangers occupying the land between the skulls. As little as the sable-backed coyote knew and trusted them, there was no fear within her. Death was coming, eventually, and she could stop him no more than anyone else. Whether he came in the form of an attacking wolf or a sleepy shut-down, it mattered little. Either way, Kaena could not stand in his way and cling to life any longer than anyone else. It was less boldness, as it had been in Kaena's youth, than it was simple tiredness. She was not tired of life yet, of course, but she had, at least, recognized the futility in evading death.
Fearful of the end or not, the grizzled female displayed clear outward signs of her true age. She would be thirteen this year, and gray had just begun to overtake the russet splashed across her muzzle. Her colors were lighter, fading -- her skin seemed looser, her bones sharper. Her pace was slow, free of any pressing need to be anywhere. Her remaining golden-yellow eye, however, had not lost any fire or shadow. It still shone with all the life left in the old woman, the decade of life she had taken in glinting fiercely there.
She had come to terms with her age, her loss of strength, her loss of rank and power -- or, at least as well as she would. There was still bitterness clinging to the back of her throat, burning for all that she had lost and all that had been taken, but it was no longer quite so overpowering as when it had been when she had first stepped down. The lie had become the scarred woman's reality, of course -- she was not able to swallow that Gabriel had come to her and asked her to vacate the Centurion rank. In her own mind, she had come to him, and her perception of reality would not be challenged. He had given her that, at least.
The call was not one she recognized. The one-eyed coyote was not pressed forward by any sense of duty. She might have continued her walk, her hollow and false impersonation of duty, and passed on by without so much as a pause. It was the tone of the call that drew the steely woman toward the sound. It was uncertain, a question possessing none of the demand she had come to expect from the brash youth so often seeking refuge within Inferni's borders. She lifted pale gray paws toward the source of the sound, the scent of the stranger pulled away from her by the breeze. Nevertheless, as she drew nearer, she could smell something strange -- withered, perhaps even beginning to rot, but still sharp and strangely fresh. Beneath it, another scent -- obscured by the plant, the sable-tinged woman did not recognize it.
Even faced with the man, the hybrid woman did not recognize him instantaneously. Cloth draped over him and obscured his face, the face of a stranger. As recognition dawned, even Kaena could not stifle a gasp, soft as it was. Words evaporated from her mind as quickly as they appeared, and the old woman could only fold her ears half-mast, yellowed eye staring with a mixture of disbelief and uncertainty, as if she was not absolutely certain it was him. There was no mistaking her own flesh and blood, though, and the silver-tinged woman was faced with an overwhelming rush of guilt and sadness. She had walked away from him, and as contented as she had become in her age, it was a decision she did not think she would have to face again.
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