I know promises fade away

Vesper · 03-17-2012, 11:33 AM

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sing, sing unto me the pleasure and pain

reveal to me the reasons my love's not in vain

Word Count → 560 :: It's all gooood. At least it was purposeful whereas my length is mostly fluff. xD

Age had always been a tricky concept for the coywolf. She was young, very young in the grand scheme of things, little more than two years old. Perhaps it was non-luperci aging or just her mentality or even all the things she thought she’d seen, because she felt much older than that, old enough to stand as almost equal to the white-furred woman before her. But she had a nagging feeling that the moment Tayui answered that equality would drop into nothingness, and that she’d be able to tell a hell of a lot more than Vesper could dream of.

She grinned at the woman’s reply, about to agree with sincerity, but then the arctic wolf began. Her smile faded away into a frown of concentration as her large ears swiveled forward to listen.

The story of the fire was one that she’d heard from Myrika, but it was interesting to hear the history from someone who had actually lived it, to hear about the old territory that was nothing but a burned wasteland now. Her features shifted ever so slightly—curiosity at the name of Salvaged Eternity, a slow smile of thoughtfulness at the idea of adopting pups she would never bear, sharp sadness when the woman spoke of her mate’s death—and as the tale of Tayui grew longer, so did it grow darker.

The sincere but detached sympathy of one who understood pain but had never experienced it do that degree was all she could offer the woman, other than the appropriate thoughts and responses. A dead warrior before the fall of a pack, a thorn in her mind reminding her of blind Halo, and the name Hybrid Holocaust that brought to her mind the smiling faces of two young scouts.

And the tale of Haku Soul, Noir, Eris—it all finally came out into the open, and Vesper shook her head slowly, but she understood. She understood vengeance and her own struggle against it, the logical grounding that kept her from running across the continent to find her murdering father. She understood that it was not like that for Tayui, rather a sharp kick at a wound that already ached, the last straw after years of watching destruction come in its many shapes.

“Tayui,” the coywolf murmured, and hesitated as she realized she had no idea what to say. But she tried. “I forgive you; I understand.” She stood and stepped closer, not sure if the silent comfort of a body to lean on would help. “It wasn’t your fault the slave died, anyway. If we wanted to blame it on a Sequoian, it would be my fault for not moving fast enough. But it’s really Eris’ fault—and Salsola, Salsola still needs to fall. It might have been out of personal hate that it all started, but you opened my eyes to something that’s a real danger. You opened a lot of eyes. I don’t feel used at all.”

She pressed her muzzle against a snowy shoulder, her eyes half-lidded before they lifted to see her mangled ear, the scars across her striped head. She crushed the sympathetic and pointless apology on the tip of her tongue. Normally, this was where she would be telling her own story in turn—but it was so little to say, so insignificant compared to what Tayui had revealed.

vesper lupus by me; table code from the Mentors!

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