How the Day Sounds

Gabriel de le Poer · 01-18-2010, 09:36 AM

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Word Count: 600

In Character

There were a thousand doors for her to break down, and a thousand more barriers to each one. Gabriel locked his memories away to protect himself, because he no longer trusted his own mind. The last time he had broken down completely had been catastrophic. A haunting woman’s beckoning, the demanding voices, and the silence that had come only when he had taken the hammer and nail and driven it through his palm. Gabriel’s own scream had been the only thing that had brought him back to the world, brought him down to earth where the reality of the throbbing pain and his blood against the ground had been the only thing to make him sane again. He had felt something shatter, and something in him break. Gabriel was not whole, and he did not know when he ever would be.

Anu was here, though, and her presence alone helped to fill those spaces—even if it was with the moon’s soft, silent, and stolen light. It would fade when she left him, but for now he was content to be with her, and to chase that light as if he was truly chasing moonlight. A tail wag, a burst of speed, and he chased after her without the true desperation of a hunt, or any real pursuit. His war wounds would not allow for such a thing, but the game was a fickle one, and it made him glad to play. This went on for a few moments, until his shoulder finally objected to the point that he stopped his pursuit, and instead followed after her slowly. She never felt out of step with him, reading the way his body moved and the way his face spoke. They didn’t need to speak to one another during this time, for there was no justification in idle banter when they had their blood and their flesh and the fire and moonlight.

It took them perhaps twenty minutes or half an hour before the pair came close enough to where the wolf packs began that the scents were in the air. Occasionally, a howl would sound somewhere in the distance, and Gabriel would always lift his head to identify the area from which it originated. He was satisfied none were close enough for concern, and always would find himself drawn back to Anu’s face, and her soft smile and moonstone eyes would settle any worry that rose in his chest. He wanted to go further, to ensure her safe arrival at her home, but Gabriel was all too aware that the stigma Inferni bore was his cross to carry, and he would not expect to make it back to the Waste anytime soon if he went that far. Nor would he ask her for shelter, unwilling to bring any reparations down for associating her pack with his scent, his clan, or his name. So after an hour, with the afternoon sun rising high above them and slowly beginning his turn towards the west, Gabriel watched her go on alone, and found that despite the brightness of the day, the world seemed to darken, just a little, as she left.

Gabriel’s eyes hardened, and he clenched his jaw, turning away from the world of the southern packs and making the solitary trek back towards the safety of Inferni’s soil. It would take a few hours, now. He felt drained, and now wanted nothing more then to get back to his own den and sleep for as long as time would allow. Somewhere, deep in his subconscious, he suddenly ached not to sleep alone.

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