Misery in the Mirror
#1
OOC: Word Count: 1001. Sorry for the long wait, and the length. X_x Busy trying to get geared and ready for school! Smile Set in Arachnea's Revenge.

IC:
A reflection stared back at her, weirdly pale and sickly-looking. Saraqael was not ill, however. She simply looked strange, like a ghost. It did not help that she was the color of freshly fallen snow, or that her face was made superbly mysterious by a covering of black that circled her eyes and drowned her mouth, casting the most expressive organs of her visage into indistinguishable shadows. It made her face look hollow and sullen always. The were eyes embedded in the coal, set like gem stones in an obsidian face mask, were just as jarring as well for they were two toned. The left had stolen its color from the softness of lilacs and had the pupil slimming effect of “husky blue.” The right was the precise color of the shining teal basin she glared into – not strange, simply pretty and average looking, perhaps the only one of all her features.

If she were to categorize her image as a style of artwork, it would have been “stick figure.” Her arms and legs were like slim tubes of flesh with bones so insignificant that the skin and muscle barely had anything to mold to, making them almost featureless. Fur helped to blur the knobs of her elbows to nothingness. The twiggy legs that grew from her trunk were much the same. It was her face and midsection that gave her away, the former too angular to have been properly represented by a circle with triangles on top, the latter ruined by the single curve of rib cage to hip. Fortunate genetics directed her few fat deposits right there, leaving her with at least a little something she could call “lady like.” In the interest of examining it further, she turned and twisted, watching as her curve shifted in the light, observing which angles made it look the most enticing, the most lovely. Some shadows made it look deeper and the lack of them made her look plain. A sigh, a whisper of exhaled air denoting her hopelessness and irritation, left in a gossamer poof. She tired of her Optime form and the vain notions it put in her head. It was harder now being a member of Inferni with so many gorgeous girls walking around, flaunting their figures without meaning to. She tired of it, always admiring and never being admired back. Giving a last look to her colored hair and whippy bodice, Saraqael willed herself to change.

Shifting, she had come to know, was like learning to move every muscle in your body, even the ones controlling the tip of your nose, those that allowed you to flex your back without movement. She could tense and untense everything. As she accessed it, the change started as a tingle, a hint of hotness in her joints. Soon it caught on fire. It burned as everything changed, bones sucking back into themselves with audible crunches and cracks. Her limbs shortened considerably but changed drastically, their hinges repositioning, forcing her to fall forward into the snow. Jagged claws gripped the white. She watched as her hands mangled themselves back into paws, saw as she lost a joint from every finger, her thumb visibly sliding up to form a useless, dangling dewclaw. Saraqael's cropped mane mostly disappeared into her pores, leaving an afterthought of blue and green at the tips of her white scruff. The coyote looked ragged and wild in Secui, a wiry muscled beast, and though in size she was less imposing than before, she was factually more dangerous. In this form, her paws retained the largeness of Optime, her back an unnatural broadness (still slim compared to other Secui canines), and her legs some length. She could have stopped there, but it felt wrong, unnatural, and so she let the change slide past the halfway point. Physically, it was akin having stopped a peg in a notch temporarily but deciding to lower it to the next one. She shrunk after that. The twinge of color faded completely as her pelt made its final shortening, leaving pure, pale pearl in its place. Her feet turned to neat, compact points at the ends of her slender limbs that still ground inward and became toothpick thin. Sprouting from her coccyx, small tail bones linked by a casing of little muscles and skin became smaller, giving her tail the illusion of flowing up into her spine. Throughout the process her face had not changed except in size. Other things, like organs, she tried not to think about. Their transition was made in the form of gurgles and a vague sense of movement.

Saraqael looked at herself now, transformed. She was still thin but sleeker, almost foxy in appearance. Her ears and pointed face made everything look long. The shape of her eyes offered no assistance, for they were slanted and sharp, ovals whose wide roundness in the middle was pretty but whose corners came down to points in both directions. She looked suspicious, cunning, curious – a vixen in the shape of a coyote. “Breakable” was an appropriate word. A wolf could have picked her up as a months old cub and carried her off. Instead of being cared for, she likely would have been devoured as a savory snack.

Lowering her sharp snout to the still surface of the water, she brushed away ice that clutched to the edges of the earth. It floated away, crumbled and shattered, then melted until the jagged teeth wore to smoothness. Her tongue extended, a pink stairway to the glassy pool and she lapped water contentedly, feeling somehow better now that she did not have to deal with the vulnerabilities of her tallest form. The Lupus's pink nose accidentally dipped too low and received a deserved cold shock for her clumsiness, forcing her to pull her head away in surprise. Laughter bubbled inside of her little bird chest, exiting as a chortling, cheery sound, echoing back at her off the flat basin.
#2
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I am so sorry for the wait! I'm also very rusty, so I apologize if this post is terrible, haha. (Also: I know wolves in reality will commonly kill coyotes who intrude on their territory, but in this context, it was meant to be suggestive of conflicts with Inferni and their effect on the surrounding areas.)


★ ★ ★


If there was anything Jäger was not, it was unnoticeable. He was big-boned, with a pelt shaggy under the influence of winter. His legs, the color of moist, well-fed earth, rose like dying trees beneath a brown and suffocated industrial sky. His face, the color of sun-bleached skeletons with dying coals for eyes, radiated out from the dusty taupes and oil browns of his fur, a pallid mask set against the black forest around him. The effect was eerie -- if it weren't for the stark white snow providing a canvas against which the dark curves and angles of his body could be seen, it would look as if there were a disembodied head floating through the woods.


He kept his velvety, triangular ears primed to catch any sound: instinct poked holes in the heavy, soggy papier-mâché of his existential angst; he knew it would be unwise to leave himself vulnerable to ambush in this unfamiliar new place. His bushy tail left a strange trail among the footprints in the snow behind him, similar to the bristles of a brush carving their presence into a lady's powder. There was new snowfall drifting gently down through the boughs of the trees to cover what had come before, so the artful path posed little danger. Though he was attentive, few sounds could be heard, only the occasional tweet of a tiny bird, or the claws of mice scurrying around on top of the snow. It was as a great cathedral made of trees, and it was peaceful.


The air shifted slightly, and he caught the scent of a coyote. His fur bristled, then flattened -- he was not a warlike wolf, nor one experienced with fights, but he had faith in his capability to defend himself, if it came to that. Miles away, where he had hailed from, interspecies disputes were uncommon. Along the way, he had seen wolf packs chase coyotes down steep hills with the intent to kill in their every step, and so his awareness was sharpened. There must have been a reason for that behavior that he was as yet unaware of. Jäger padded quietly forward, and when his sight fell upon the coyote, oddly marked like himself and apparently caught up in a fit of vanity, he only watched her silently, a ghost among the trees.

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