07-30-2009, 11:23 PM
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| http://digital-bonsai.com/katew/rp/kae/kae_jaws.jpg); background-position:top center; background-repeat:no-repeat; background-position:fixed; padding-top:221px; padding-left:25px; padding-right:25px; padding-bottom:10px;"> The coyote woman was not so perplexed by this situation. She had been alive a long time and seen many things stranger than canines washing ashore; after all, many canines had opposable thumbs and they were quite capable of using boats to cross the oceans as the humans did. Maybe some of them were dumped overboard, either accidentally or with a malicious intent. There was a twitch and breath from the young coyote, so Kaena knew she was still alive. The breathing was faint and ragged, though, and the woman was not absolutely certain. She smelled the blood now, though she still could not differentiate that dark, wet mass on the coyote's forehead from the rest of her fur and she did not know how badly the young woman was hurt. There was slight noise and movement, and Kaena took a step back, lest the woman was still frightened from her unconsciousness. She didn't want to end up unnecessarily nailed on the face, especially when such a wound was preventable. The woman's solo golden eye watched as two brilliantly blue ones opened, more of a pale turquoise. The woman was a bit taken by those eyes, her own golden gaze meeting them unabashedly. The young adult had slight, tapering coyote features. A familiar slender muzzle, large ears. There didn't seem to be any hybrid blood in her whatsoever, though it was surely difficult to tell with her fur dampened and pressed down as it was. At first, the girl seemed to register Kaena as a friendly, but as her eyes roved over the elder's two-legged form, surprise and fear set in, those sky blue orbs widening. A tiny gasp escaped the woman's lips, along with a shocked question. "So am I. A luperci, a shape-changer," she added. The word flowed off of her tongue naturally, related to those ancient words her father had taught to her. Luperci, ortus, verto. If the girl didn't seem so frail, Kaena would have shifted to her halfling form to illustrate the point. The youth's gaze went downward, and Kaena cocked her head. It was possible that this woman had never met a shifter before. Kaena had heard of such things, isolated pockets of canines which had not been infected with the shifter trait, further separating themselves from their Ortus and Verto cousins. They were a separate species now, Kaena supposed, and if the luperci nonissi were able to withstand the test of time and keep themselves pure of the shifter infection, they would eventually bifurcate into different species entirely. "Kaena Lykoi. This is Inferni, a clan for coyotes," she stated, very simply. The woman seemed fresh to the world itself, and it seemed unlikely to Kaena that she even realized she stood on the clan's borders. No matter. She hadn't trespassed, and in her sorry state, even if she had, the silvery canid would have shown mercy. |