you act like you just saw a ghost

Gabriel de le Poer · 01-08-2011, 11:15 AM

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This is for Sie. It is set in 1994, somewhere in Maine. SSWM: 564

It had been six years since the fall of man.

They still saw them, sometimes, lingering like monsters in the gloom of an apocalyptic world. Still heard gunshots, but now more sparingly—bullets had become as rare as they had. The dogs had realized they could not trust them early on. His father had warned against such things after watching them gun down smaller strays who knew only how to live with men. This was why they had turned to the wild, abandoning human places. There was only death with men.

His family had done well despite their domestic blood. Caliban’s father had often gone hunting with their master, and knew his way around the woods as well as any feral animal. Their mother, whose German breeding had been the only reason she had survived, was far more intuitive than her mate. Despite their presumed inability to live without men, the two had done quite well. The forests outside of their ancestral home had been claimed almost immediately, for there was no dispute that his father owned such land. When men had come to the house, they had hid. When the men had killed each other over the master’s prized items, they had hid. The dogs had no desire to defend a tomb.

Caliban’s litter was the first, and large at that. While both his parents were breeding dogs, they had never copulated together—the results were remarkable. Thick, strong beasts with the intelligence of a German Shepherd and the weight and girth of a Malamute. Dogs that almost looked wild themselves. They were stockier than wolves, by far, but his sable-shaded brother could almost pass for one. Caliban’s blonde coat was obviously domestic, as were his mis-matched eyes. One from each parent, as it was. Those eyes now surveyed the unfamiliar territory before him and knew why the de le Poer’s had hid in their forest for so long.

All around him a dying world rotted. Buildings had been torched and abused, abandoned even by those men who had clung to them so long. The men that had not fled had died, killed by wild beasts or by their own stupidity. Death-scent, a sweet rotting smell, belonged to these such places. But no man-scent. No, they were long gone. Six years had made them flee the smaller cities instinctively, leaving the wild the chance to claim it. Caliban stood above the town that had once worshiped the master whose name the dogs now took as a god and hated what he saw.

He had told his parents he wished to leave and they had not forbade it. His father sought to expand their bloodline as it stood, and having three males was two too many for his taste. His sisters would always be welcome, but they would be forced to bear children in order to survive. The de le Poer bloodline needed fresh blood, like it or not, and Caliban wished no part of the little forest that was his father’s own.

It took him an hour to get through the town, as small as it was, and past then was forest. He had never been so far from home, even in all his three years, and was pleased to think he was the first. Blonde fur a beacon against the summer light, he continued on his way without a destination in mind.

Kaena Lykoi · 01-10-2011, 05:41 AM

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Word Count → 768 :: Daeva Veneum, gray and black with brown eyes. Yee.

Daeva was too young to remember the humans, but her mother and father did. They were born directly in the aftermath of the virus, and they knew the humans as monsters and devils. Still, her mother's parents had been around long enough to tell stories of the times before man had turned on them. She had spent most of her life in the old warehouse, already worn and torn with signs of chaos and looting by the time the dogs had moved in. It was only rarely she left her small family there and ventured out -- the others took care of the scavenging and what little hunting they could do. It was mostly rats these days -- larger animals still did not venture into these once-urbanized areas. The dogs, however, did not know how to survive in the wilderness, and they were afraid to seek refuge elsewhere. They were not Luperci or they did not know how to shift, and they were terribly frightened of the two-legged man-canines. Those were as scary as the rare human. Daeva had never seen either beast herself, nor any of her brothers -- sometimes she thought they were stories, sometimes not.

Daeva once knew the words for what her parents were, but having little notion of breed and other things that had been important in the time of humans, she had forgotten their meaning and eventually even the words themselves. Her parents had ceased to speak them, forgetting or burying the legacy passed to them by their parents. She herself was the result of too many mixed lines to pull any single idea of her heritage -- her face had a sighthound's sharpness, but she was built rather like a wolf herself, albeit impossibly short and small. Her coat was middling length, too short and useless in truly cold weather to mirror a wolf's. Her coloring was the crowning difference between Daeva and a wolf -- she was all pale blue-gray, dashed along her back with a darker shade of charcoal that also made up the streaked, blurry mask of her face. Tufts of white accented her chest and the tip of her tail. Her ears stood mostly erect, although the tips of them fell forward. Most of her brothers had fully erected ears and longer noses -- they could hear and track worlds better than Daeva, but it was never made an issue between them.

Competition was irrelevant in their harsh world -- despite the gloomiest of surroundings, Daeva and her family had something of a happy home. They were a tightly-knit group and fully supportive of one another. On the rare occasion they found a dog in the midst of the city, they took them in for at least a night. Few stayed very long, but a few had remained long enough to insure their blood had not begun to go stale. The scarcity of resources was forever present and looming in their mind, but so was the threat of breeding one another, too. One of her uncles had gone mad, and Daeva did not like to think of him. Her father had been too weak to kill him, and instead opted to cast him out -- still, he did not stop Daeva's brothers when they pursued the uncle. There was at least that small comfort to Daeva. It had been a long time, though, and the dog had recovered, for the most part. Were it not for the warmth and happiness of her family, she might have fared worse.

Daeva had only intended to stray a little way away from the warehouse, but she had found herself in an unfamiliar place and no idea how to get home after too long. An hour of wandering had gotten her nowhere, and the pale gray dog felt she was walking the same three or four blocks in circles. Regret filled her, and she whined softly, lamenting whatever foolish decision had brought her outside of her quiet and tucked away home. A strange smell filled her nose suddenly, and the dog's brown eyes lit up. This was someone new -- whether friendly or enemy, Daeva did not stop to think. Eagerness at meeting a stranger had filled her, and in an instant she'd forgotten being lost in the first place. Some of this enthusiasm faded as she realized she was leaving the vicinity of the city by tailing his scent, but optimism drove her forth after the stranger's scent. Her long snout was pressed nearly to the ground and she huffed air in greedily, trying to keep trail of the scent.

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