candleburn

[Lockeheed]

For Akumu and her Hezekiah. Mature for language!

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"Oh Seles." He murmured into the mouth of the bottle, peering down the glass to watch the brown, brackish liquid as it sloshed around. But he wasn't really seeing it. Instead he saw her again, like so many mornings past; it was difficult to forget her face in the morning, hair tussled in the sheets and across the pillow, eyes heavy with sleep, but bright with recognition and love. She would whisper soft laments of love and adoration for the life he had given them, and to him for his own insurmountable love for her. His hand squeezed the neck of the bottle, and he drew it down from his mouth to rest on his knee, a dark frown etched across his lips. Locke was at a loss. Nothing here was familiar but the faintest whispers of war on the wind. He didn't know the cause, nor the catalyst, but the truth was spreading like wild fire across Nova Scotia. The whole idea of being caught in the throws of war again was endearing to the lonely man. He hoped the intoxication of the frenzy and the blood would keep his mind off her, maybe permanently.


Problem was, he had no idea how to get involved. For all they knew, he was just some drunken dead beat, waving his outstretched hands towards them for a free meal.


Rising to his feet, he reached for the lid and twisted it back on, before stuffing the small bottle in his coat. He was on the outskirts of Inferni, in the neutral territory between Dahlia de Mai and the coyote clan (but much closer to the first, rather than the latter). From his place at the edge of the tree line, he could see the rows of wolf skulls perched on pikes that marked the borders of the clan. Locke gazed at them across the snow, suddenly wondering if this was madness, or merely liquid courage fueling his furious desire to poke the sleeping beast, so to speak. He started off across the snow to the display, with the snow crunching underfoot as he went. He swept his large ears forward, aligning his nose with one of the wolf skulls as if peering at himself in a mirror. The former garrista reached out and placed his hand on the forehead of the bleached bone, running his palm across it and admiring the work of the coyotes. "You dumb sonuvabitch, prolly could'a avoided this fate if you let sleeping dragons lie, eh." He intoned with a wild grin. "Just like the bastards back home; couldn't tell a coyote from their own fuckin' mother." He began to laugh; a hearty sound that surged up from his stomach, and rolled across the snowy fields like a balmy summer breeze.

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