09-22-2009, 05:34 AM
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Sorry to hear that. D: My condolences to your friend. Please take your time, no worries. :] Everyone is busy around these times! And I r ramble. >_O Sorry. mall-caps;">In Character Some of the hybrids were forced to walk a thin line. When Kaena was younger, there were far fewer hybrid creatures in the world. Of the original Inferni creatures, she was the only one with a hint of anything other than coyote blood, and prior to that in the Darklands it had been the same. The creatures there were pureblood coyotes or pureblood wolves, and even as the second-in-command in that clan she had felt oddly out of place, she had seen some of them staring on occasion—whether it was on account of her scars or her dirty wolf blood she would never know. Her closest family and her ancestors had been hybrids, yes—but Kaena had not really known most of them too long, and by the time she hit adulthood they were all dead. She didn't count the Lykoi Pack, not really. Everyone there was long dead, any of her ancestors or close relatives, though if she looked hard enough she was certain she would see her own ghost reflected in their faces. Still, she did not know if their distant blood would have been enough to gain her instant access among them; if they had continued the breeding processes her great-great-grandmother had instilled in them, all traces of coyote would be gone from them. Life had gotten remarkably easier for those mixed-breed canines in recent years; perhaps it was their new human lifestyle or just evolution, but many kinds of canines were interbreeding now, creating many types of hybrids—some were like her, wolf and dog and coyote all rolled into one, and others were less generic—strange breeds of dog intermingling again with their distant wild cousins, exotic species of foreign canine like jackals and Ethiopian Wolves that had lived in zoos before the apocalypse hit. The world's blood was becoming less pure, and in Kaena's eyes it was a good, welcome shift. The less pure blood there was, the less reason the wolves would have to consider coyote borders unimportant, unworthy of the respect their own borders were given. There would be fewer lone wolves to hunt and kill her children. The mixed-breed canine introduced himself, and Kaena withdrew from her thoughts of a better world, perhaps the only ones she dared entertain. She was not generally an optimistic canine. Grimsley was a strange sort of name, and it didn't seem to really match the whimsical type he seemed to be—but she liked it. Grims sounded like a good nickname, but she dared not use it yet, lest she inadvertently offend him. The grizzled canine offered a bow of her head and a shake of her tail to indicate the pleasure was reciprocated, and listened as the canine spoke. "Nope. My son is our Aquila, and I am his sub-leader, believe that?" she said with a grin, hoping he would find amusement in the situation. It was an unusual situation to see—generally when children inherited posts from their parents, they usurped them by way of bloodshed or their parent passed on. In either case, the parent was unlikely to return and even less likely to regain a position as the child's subleader, so it was indeed a strange situation. Kaena and Gabriel made it work beautifully, however, as Kae truly believed she was too old to take up the leadership role again. Gabriel's energy and youth were what Inferni deserved, and meanwhile she could certainly still fill the familiar Centurion role. The hybrid woman shrugged at his question, one coal-dusted shoulder lifting. "Depends. A few of the wolves are really dangerous. And some of 'em probably assume whatever's got even a smidgen of coyote blood runs with us, and—well, Inferni doesn't have the best reputation around here." It did not mean he would be attacked on sight—though with Haku still around, it was almost a certainty should Grimsley encounter the Dahlian wolf—but many would regard him with wariness. "You'd do well to stay away from Dahlia de Mai," she added, thinking of Haku. He was dangerous to everybody, no matter their blood. |