Jupiter

Vesper · 10-26-2011, 07:44 PM

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Vesper

I said, I cannot follow the river

of her myth; but I can

follow her sweet desert song

like a stream through the fiery hills.

Word Count → 664 :: Warning -- this post sucks; I wrote it really quickly and probably missed something and the timeline's all awkward. >>

Ophelia described her namesake, and Vesper cocked her ears forward in disbelief. The name Ophelia itself was pretty, but to be aware that it meant insanity and subsequent death… She gave her head a quick shake and smirked faintly. “Your parents couldn’t have named you after a storybook hero or something?” she pointed out, more amused than criticizing. She didn’t like it when wolves read too much into words, and that included names. She barely gave a thought to her own namesake, the evening star and the deities associated with it.

An eager smile danced across the luperci’s features as she suggested that she teach the coywolf how to read. While the smile was countered instantly by a skeptic frown, Vesper held her tongue and watched her as she disappeared, presumably to dig for something. She returned with a book, dusty and filled with pages like almost-brittle leaves, stating that this was Hamlet. She proceeded to set the book down on the ground, and Vesper walked up to it.

“I don’t think I could ever learn,” the small hybrid mumbled when she nosed the cover open, squinting at the resulting cloud of dust. Her nose skimmed across the faded ink of the tiny, intricate symbols. “That’s…a lot to look at,” she stated, referring to the letters. She understood the concept of a symbol representing a meaning, but to see so many pressed so close together was making her head spin. With a slight wince, she stepped away again.

Ophelia laughed at her comment at rudeness, saying that most wolves were worse. Despite herself, the hybrid echoed her laughter. “I feel bad for you, then,” she teased. She supposed there were tons of idiots out in the world, though it did make her feel a little better to know Ophelia liked her enough. Then again, Ophelia seemed like she would coo at a rattlesnake that slithered into her home. The happiness and trust she exhibited was perplexing, but Vesper didn’t want to go into it yet. She instead smiled and watched the girl sit down; it might have appeared like perfect posture to another luperci, but it was odd and stiff to the four-legged one.

“Maybe you shouldn’t say less, but—say less at a time? Spread out your words? It makes conversation last longer.” Vesper smirked slightly, tail tapping the ground. Her easygoing expression disappeared, however, as Ophelia burst out about her being a threat, her words exaggerated in a way that Vesper couldn’t tell was playful or sarcastic. Regardless, she bristled, and a statement flew from her lips before she could amend it.

“I’ve killed before.”

Sky blue eyes blinked, and Vesper shut her mouth, regretting her words. She lowered her ears and looked away immediately. She wanted to be treated with some respect, but she didn’t really want to be seen so much as a threat that Ophelia would be afraid of her. “I—never mind.” She wasn’t a murderer, she wanted to cry out, but she didn’t know if Ophelia would take her seriously in the first place.

She focused on the food and water provided to her, instead. With a grateful wag of her tail, she lapped from the bowl and licked her lips. The bottled water tasted differently than the streams she usually drank at, but she couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or not. She chewed more happily on the jerky and pricked her ears at Ophelia’s questions.

Laughing at the foreign words she’d blurted, Vesper nodded. “I wouldn’t have guessed. How far away is Honduras?” She left a polite pause for the answer—hoping it wouldn’t turn into a speech—and answered the question asked her before Ophelia could go into the history of Honduras’ founding and how many generations of her family had lived there.

“I’m from north—a ways above Nova Scotia, though not anywhere insanely far away. I lived mostly in the wilderness—or what you luperci would consider wilderness, at least.”

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