son, you got strychnine in your blood

Ithiel de le Poer · 02-25-2012, 04:19 AM

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Ithiel is by me!

The world was winter-bared, but Ithiel thought this valley might be particularly lush and beautiful come spring and summer. Inferni's territory was not so well-forested as this valley seemed. The marshes and rolling plains of the Waste were primarily without woods -- here and there, stunted individual trees and scraggly copses of them hunkered against the plains wind. The coyotes carved their harsh existence out in a hard place, to be sure.

Ithiel would not have traded Inferni's lands for these or any other, however. The Waste reminded him of the desert in Scintilla. It was not so harsh as those sandy plains, but neither was it a land of excessive comforts. Inferni therefore produced stronger children, youths raised in the coyote clan becoming the next year's hardened warriors. He had no young warriors of his own -- there were no children of his within the clan's ranks. The dust-colored man yearned for the day he sent his own son to training and saw him to the adult ranks. A son required a woman, however, and Ithiel did not have any plans for a lady as of yet.

Bairre snorted suddenly, and Ithiel stiffened in his saddle. The dust-colored coyote saw nothing, but before long, the sound greeted his ears, a bird-like screetch that caused him to sit bold upright in his seat, growing tall and straight as one of his arrows. The birds fluttering upward were reacting, not the source of the noise, and so Ithiel ignored them. The ashen hybrid stared hard, his carnelian-hued eyes seeking the noise's source point. His chocolate-colored ears swiveled on his head, first one direction and then the other.

Finally, he saw her, a rust-hued woman with highlights of mahogany and even tawny-gold streaked through her fur. At such distance, Ithiel could not determine her heritage -- coyote or wolf? He pondered this as he held the stallion Bairre in his place, murmuring wordless soothing to the quine. The dusky coyote dismounted, grasping the reins and leading the horse forward. A strange way to call your greeting, he said, the comment delivered with impeccable dryness. As always, Ithiel was adamantine of face, his countenance revealing nothing. It was smooth and hard as a stone churned for decades in the ocean, all its telling features worn away to nothing.

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