07-19-2009, 05:50 AM
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[/html]set in Berwick~D. 571 words
edited to add: please don't archive this, i intend to finish it with eliza when she's back from hiatus ^^;
Sofia had pressed further west, exploring this area to the best of her ability. She wasn't too sure what exactly she was going to do with herself, now. There were coyotes in this land, which was fascinating, and sort of made her want to stick around and find out more about her father-of-blood's people. But.. the knowledge that at some point, who knew how long from this very moment, she would likely lose the power to walk pressed a sense of urgency against the base of her skull, forcing her to move to move to move while she still could, to take in the sights and scents and sounds and to live, to live ten, fifteen years of life in half as many months. She couldn't do it couldn't do it, and that knowledge was suffocating, oppressive, but she took deep, slow, sweet breaths of air and was able to calm herself until her mind flung itself back to the worn, folded pages in the pockets of her slacks. The cancer, in canines, often spread to the lungs. Sometime, soon, she might not even be able to breathe.
The weather was calm enough at the moment, settled into a steady drip of medium intensity. As the sky wasn't raging, it was a good enough time to press north, to visit the ocean of these parts. So she had, and unknowingly she had wandered into a graveyard. Goosebumps raced up and down her skin, and not at all from the cold. Picking up her pace, she jogged north, east, trying to get out of here, but she had wandered pretty deep into the graveyard, lost in thoughts, before she had noticed her surroundings. Even if she was slower, there was a benefit to being shifted; the cancer was currently only in her forelegs, so she could jog for longer, and even run at full speed for short bursts without hurting hurting hurting worse. Although it was only a matter of time before it metastasized to her back legs. It was inevitable, the papers in her pocket said, although sometimes amputating the infected area helped, but there was no way she was going to going to have anyone saw off both of her forelimbs. She was going to die either way, and she wanted to preserve her dignity as long as she could.
Finally, finally she had broken through. It appeared, though, that as she had done so she had accidentally crossed a pack border. She was a little worried about that - would she get into trouble? But she was just passing through. She couldn't go back the way she came, didn't want to face the graveyard, didn't want to imagine her own name etched into stone after stone after stone. She was on the outskirts of some town, now. There were a surprising amount of human settlements around here; there had only been a few, where Calypso and her had been staying. Thus, the sparse buildings had been highly valued, and only respected members of the loosely gathered, very humanized pack had been honored enough to live in them. Here, it seemed as if all the cities and towns were mostly abandoned. How weird.
Sofia headed eastward, intending to travel in that direction until either leaving the lands she was technically trespassing upon or until she felt safe enough to just head back south without fear of colliding once more with the graveyard.