She knew now that many had survived the vast fire that had rampaged across the lands, but she hadn't meant to find that out. She'd been quite content to sit quietly in her small section of gloomy dark woodlands and be alone, but once she'd started finding traces of her old life she set to venturing out of her dark home a little more often just to see what the rest of this whole new world was like. The trails had taken her back and forth from the edge of the mountain to the sea, but there was no place else she felt like settling down in other than her gloom filled forest, but today it seemed she had found one close enough to that woods to be worth a visit.
Her ivory paws trekked across the damp decaying earth as she wandered farther and farther into the untamed old lands. Her nose was filled with smells that were familiar and yet not and here and there she could catch scents that she thought she'd known once upon a time. She shook her head and washed the scent away with a new wave of the musky decay of seasons upon seasons of fallen leaves, limbs and death. Sighing slightly she lifted her head to gaze at the trees above, so familiar yet so different. Things really did have to change now, there was no choice.
Moving down the deer trail she'd taken to following she heard the sound of running water in the distance and knew sooner or later she'd run into it, or close enough. Within a few minutes she was proven right as the sight of the bubbling brook crossed her path around a turn in the bend. Quietly she slipped down to the water's edge and stared down into the cool calm pool that gathered in the mists of the woods, her thoughts trailing across her mind as her reflection stared back at her looking just as cool and distant as she felt.
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Slow as hell. -_-
Time had always been a funny thing, but he felt like he had lost all concept of it now. Every day was the same as the last and he confined himself to the small bit of forest he had found himself in, rather unwilling, for whatever reason, to explore the new lands beyond it. The former members of Clouded Tears were safe and rebuilding well enough on their own -- he had heard their cries in the distance, calling to one another. His daughter was safe with Inferni being the only group to properly re-establish themselves in this foreign land. His sons were missing, but they had always been distant to him. No one needed him here (they never had) and he was left purposeless in the lonely forest. Time didn't matter there.
It was okay though. He couldn't remember much of his last few weeks in the land of mist and fog, but he imagined that they hadn't been much different -- he had been useless a good long while now and it was better that everyone else had moved on without him. The tattered and tired hybrid lay by the brook, dozing in the mid-morning sun, not thinking, not remembering, not anything. Half-asleep and inattentive, he failed to hear the footsteps of his approaching cousin and did not look up even at the sound of splashing as she entered the water. Everything he had ever known was so far away; he didn't really expect to see anyone ever again. They had all moved on.
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ooc- Tis fine, fits my time schedule.  love the table.. I like seeing tables with the characters in it.. I've been tempted to do one for Isk...
IC-- She hadn't meant to get her paws wet but there was nothing she could do about it now. Looking at the mud that clung to her forelegs she lifted one paw up and flicked the mud off as she watched her reflection slowly disappear in the murky cloud that overtook the clear water before her. Taking a moment to get most of the muck off her other paw she moved back a few feet from the edge of the stream and suddenly halted. Raising her eyes up from the view of the stream she caught sight of a figure basking on the stream bank about the same time that his scent hit her. Laruku! The words had been out of her maw before she could stop herself. How in the world she hadn't caught his scent the moment she entered the area she didn't know, but that didn't matter now.
She was slightly surprised at the sudden relief that had coursed through her veins at seeming the tattered tawny figure laying there on the bank. She wasn't for sure if he was alive to begin with, but after a second she caught sight of his ribcage rising and falling. Quietly she moved off the bank and walked towards him, calling out again, softly this time. 'Ruku... A name she hadn't called him in forever, the last time she'd gotten an ear tattered and shredded for it. She shouldn't be surprised if the same result happened again, but that didn't stop her still.
Moving forward another step she felt her breath catch in her throat as she studied him, her eyes troubled at the sight of her cousin and one time leader. He looked so.. pitiful, almost like all the children and strays she'd taken in over the years. She wanted to say something, speak outloud about it.. but she knew she probably looked the same, her heart was beaten and broken, she probably looked the way she felt too... atleast, she felt that was how she looked.
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Umbra made this table. :3 Yaah.
Even though the call had been sudden and the volume and proximity of it louder and closer than anything he would have expected, the hybrid's immediate reaction was only lackluster at best. He lifted his head from his forelegs and swiveled his shredded ears forward to hear the woman's voice more clearly when she spoke again. Iskata, he acknowledged simply, blinking emotionlessly at her as she neared. So she was still around, after all. He wondered if she had found any of her missing children. He wondered if the ones that had still been around when she'd gone were still around now. He wondered if any of them had died in the fire, if Phoenix had, and what had happened to that family now. The thoughts and questions were there, but he didn't vocalize any of them. He never felt like there was a point in words anymore. Despite the questions, he didn't have anything to say.
She looked worse for wear, but the hybrid supposed that could be said of anyone who'd just climbed over a goddamn mountain to escape a freak fire that had come out of no where. He probably looked worse. He probably looked dead. And his hollow red eyes stared blankly at his cousin for several more moments before finally resigning to, Did you ever find them? He didn't remember already how he knew anyone had gone missing. Maybe Phoenix had come and told him. Maybe he'd stolen them away himself and killed them when no one was looking. Either was just as likely as the other and there were so many holes in his memory, he didn't even bother with it anymore. It didn't matter.
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Ilikeit. XD Ruku is too sad now! 
They seemed to sit there and stare at eachother for an eternity, having nothing to really say while they breathed in and out, still surviving. She took in the whole picture bit by bit, from his blank empty eyes to the total lack of everything about him. It was like she was speaking to his mother, who was nothing but a ghost, except Laruku was living and breathing, except that seemed to be about all he was good for now. She whined slightly as she moved forward, stopping to rest short of where he lay still. She sat back on her haunches before readjusting herself to lay down as well, quietly studying him a moment more before she finally spoke up. "Laruku.. you look like shit." she said bluntly. She knew she probably looked about the same, but she'd got the words out first. There was no ill feeling in her words, just the truth, as pathetic as the truth was.
The last words that he'd spoken left her feeling hollow as she looked away towards the stream for a moment. Finally she admitted quietly to him that she had in fact found her wayward offspring. "Yes. I.. never knew Magdalena had survived..." She said the words quietly as she studied her paws. She didn't know why she felt so weird admitting it. She felt that if she'd known that her daughter had survived maybe she never would have lost control, but she knew that hadn't been the only factor. She couldn't change things now, and she was glad that her daughter was alive.. but it made everything that happened in the past seem so strange, even sitting beside her cousin seemed wrong... only because the last few times they'd met she either had attacked him, or nearly had. Now.. it was like they were trash piled up on the bank after a flood had resided.
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He's always been sad. xD
He could have laughed. Instead, there was a faint smile that pulled at the corners of his lips, and even that was more than he had given in a good long while. Really though, there was so much to laugh at. It was just how the world worked, wasn't it? People came, people went, people died, and people lived, survived, drew breath after breath because it wasn't yet their dying breath. Laruku had everything in the world to laugh at, but he was scared to anymore because the laugh belonged to someone else. He had almost been okay at some point; it had been right before the monster's grand debut, and it was probably why the monster had been born in the first place. He wasn't meant to be okay, and really, now? He was okay with that too.
Yeah, he agreed simply with his ghost smile. At least that hasn't changed, right? Because everything else surely had. The tattered hybrid was homeless now for the first time since he'd come home and only because home didn't exist anymore. Nothing did anymore. Names stirred his handicapped memory and he pulled words and thoughts out of a black hole, not really comprehending anything he was saying until they were already out. Magdalena came back to Clouded Tears briefly but disappeared again pretty soon after that. DaVinci left soon after that to find her. Phoenix thought he'd taken one of his litter with him, but I don't really think he did. Laruku shrugged his scarred shoulders and went back to looking at the creek. Find any of them? he asked again.
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He's Sad-duhr? Which makes him sound retarded...
She couldn't help it but she returned that stupid ghostly smile to Laruku when he gave it. All distant and hollow as it might be, atleast it was a smile. She wasn't sure what she thought of the strange cousin anymore, he'd been there so long there wasn't any reason to think on it. Good ol' reliable Laruku would man the packlands while everyone ran off looking for their dreams. He'd live the shallow halflife while everyone else was the life of the party, atleast that's what it seemed like nowadays. When he agreed with her she shrugged at the words, thinking about how he had always been there. Finally she spoke up, "Yeah.. but there's worse things I guess..." she said truthfully. There was a lot worse, she couldn't think of any right now, but she knew there were....
She watched as Laruku went back to stream gazing as she went on. He'd told her about Magdalena, she wished she'd asked the last time they'd met, but she hadn't. She couldn't blame Laruku for what he didn't know, and she wasn't about to anyways. She nodded, obviously to herself since Laruku was busy gazing at the beauties a reflection in the water held. Finally she spoke, her voice a little bitter at hearing what Phoenix had said to Laruku. "My mate was wrong. He never could believe there was anything good in DaVinci. Firefly followed DaVinci when he came to tell her goodbye. I did find them. I fould them all.. They sailed off across the sea just because they wanted to see where it would take them. They'll come home.. um..back though....."
She stumbled over the last words because she'd realized too late that there was no home left to go back to.
She sighed and shook her head before looking back to the remains of her cousin before her. "Have you.. found anyplace for yourself yet?..." she asked after a moment of silence, remembering a discussion they'd had so long ago. Quietly she let the last words fall, "You're free now.." free from everything that had been laid upon his shoulders, free from their old pack, their family, their own past lifes.
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Laruku had never really been able to grapple well with change, and it was a good and easy theory as to why he was so lifeless and empty now. But he felt like he had been rather useless for long before the fire, and it was just more obvious now because he had absolutely nothing to pretend to be doing. No pack to pretend to run, no one to pretend to take care of. It was hard to lie when there was no one to lie to but yourself, and no matter how hard you tried there, deep down, deep, deep down, you always knew the truth.
He nodded at his cousin's words. So they were fine. Somehow, people who left were always fine -- they found other places to be, other people to see. Life went on. Sometimes they came back, for whatever reason. And sometimes, they didn't. And for the people and places they'd left behind; well, life went on there too. Time didn't stop for anyone. The hybrid didn't look back at the other when the question was posed, but he wasn't really looking at the water either. He wasn't looking at anything at all. His mind just wasn't there.
Where is there to be? he wondered, half to Iskata, half to himself. He didn't remember the last time he'd spoken with his cousin or what they had talked about then. He didn't remember if he had ever had grand ambitions as to what he would do should he ever find an excuse to leave Clouded Tears or if it had just dwindled away to nothing. He didn't even remember the nights he used to dream about running away like so many others, disappearing into the night with. Where are you? What did slaves do when the shackles were finally shed? What did caged birds do when they found themselves an open sky, but they've forgotten how to fly?
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Crap, I never realized you replied, sorry!
She watched him for a while longer as he seemed lost in his own world, she shook her head sadly as those pitiful confused words were uttered. She hadn't realized how he'd been forced into his life so much after her mother had died. Groomed to be the next big thing, and yet he hadn't wanted to be. She looked off in the distance as she wondered if her mother had wanted to see Kiriska in her wayward son. "I don't know...you've been out there before..." She said softly, she didn't have answers for him.. she wished that he didn't seem so fragile though, it was like the softest breeze could blow him away.
She stopped wondering about his current state for a moment as she turned back in time to where she was so tempted to run off into the distance and make something of herself. What a failure that had been she thought as she sighed and looked back to him. She moved closer to him until she was resting right beside her cousin, gazing down into the water at his reflection while she pondered the question he'd given her. At last she answered honestly. "I'm.. wherever I want to be, If I don't like where I am I can move on...." She knew that she wouldn't go far because of her children, but she wasn't held to any packlands right now and there was no demand for her to be something she wasn't or do everything in the interest of the pack. She was more relaxed in her own skin than she'd been for a long while..
Shaking her head as she cleared out the thoughts of herself she reverted back to the first question. She smirked at him before she answered, swishing her tail to sway him across the nose as she chuckled at her own memories. "You could go looking for burnt out cabins..." as she said the words she turned her gaze away from him innocently, flicking her tail back and forth as she hummed softly. "Someone once sent me looking for ruins once.. I think it did me good.." She never told him that she had gone looking for that cabin so long ago and had realized why he'd suggested it. She turned to peer at him out of the corner of her eye as she smiled a crooked little smile. She had been fighting forever to run off from their birthlands, and Laruku had oddly enough given her the courage to find out what was beyond their world. She wondered if he ever knew that.
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If they existed already for their kind, Laruku might have been put in some sort of nursing home. He would turn four in a few months, but while that wasn't very old at all considering the Luperci lifespan, he carried those few years like anvils, awful weights that crushed him to the ground. His memory was scattered and recollections came in random bursts. Rarely could he remember exactly what he'd done the day before, or what he'd said, or who he'd seen. His mind was tired, and he didn't want to think. Whether the problems were perpetuated by his lack of want of it was up to debate, but it really was just a vicious cycle of allowing himself to degrade and fall apart into nothing. Tattered and torn, he was past his prime. Now, he was just a stray waiting for a pound to pick him up and put him down.
The hybrid absorbed his cousin's words but took his time meandering through the slipstream of thoughts that floated almost unwillingly in the back of his head. Out there? Out where? He had been less than four months old when Acid had led him away from home and less than four months old when he'd abandoned him. Those memories had stopped being important to him years ago, and he'd started to lose the details of the mountain slopes and pastures long before the monster had sprung from his skull. Teimines, the cabin he'd burned, and all of the bitterness he'd felt for his continuous abandonment... Those feelings were gone. They were so far away now that they might not have existed at all. There was nothing he wanted to salvage there.
I've got nothing to be looking for out there, he told Iskata, There's nothing there for me. Truly, there was nothing for him where he lied. The pack and the territories had been the last real obligations and attachments he'd had. Gabriel had raised his children, and now they were near-grown anyway. There was nothing else. There's no difference between here and 'out there.' The finality of it all was easy to accept.
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*Wants to hug the pitiful grannyman 'ruku now*
She grew still as he spoke up, she knew he'd always had so much on his shoulders and everything always made him so touchy, but she didn't realize how bad he'd fallen apart without anything to hold onto. When those words floated by so random on the breeze she turned to face him, no cheerful attitude to try and lift his spirits, just the honest truth in her voice, "That's where you're wrong..." she said softly as she studied him. So many times she'd tried to show him that she was there if he ever needed someone, though she knew he'd probably rather talk to an adder than her, she could only keep trying. .
She tilted her head off in the direction of their ruined world as she spoke on, "There may be nothing for you 'out there'.. if that's what you believe, but here is nothing like 'out there'..." She paused for a moment as she felt her heart go out to her cousin, so long ago he'd seemed to start crumbling around the edges and now.. it was like he'd been left in ruins along with their old world. She shook her head sadly as she tried to show him that there was something here for him. "Oh Laruku... what did life do to you.." she said softly.
The girl with the moonshine pelt sat beside her cousin, both of them had suffered through so much, different and yet the same but she couldn't understand why he couldn't find something to cling to, something to live for when there was so much out there.. even the stupidist thing was worth something if it mattered to you. She turned back to him as she said firmly, "You've got family here..." she looked down at him, so dejected and empty. She wished that there was something he wanted in this world, something worthwhile to him, but she couldn't make him want.. she couldn't make him need anything. All she could do was let him know. "I'm here.. even if you don't want me.." she said as she gazed down at her paws.
She was ashamed for all the times she'd just walked past him when he'd seemed to no care about anything, how she'd never said a thing or asked how he was. She wished that he hadn't been so bristled, so distant from them all. He never wanted them to care, atleast that was how he always seemed and she'd backed away and let him have his space, of course that was after he'd given her reason to back away, her ear the tattered proof of her own folly at thinking he could or would want to be worried about. "I'm still here for you." she said softly, almost wistful as she finally raised her eyes up to look at him.
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Laruku was probably wrong about a lot of things, but knowing that didn't stop him from forcing whatever beliefs were easiest onto himself. The truth was whatever you wanted it to be, and he wanted it to be simple. So it was: there was nothing out there, just as there was nothing here, or anywhere. Where he was and wasn't didn't matter anymore now that he wasn't formally a part of anything. Belief was cheap. He didn't need to invest much there anymore. Everywhere's the same, he insisted quietly, though there was no real argument in his voice. There are forests and valleys and mountains and cities. There are wolves and coyotes, dogs. And shit happens everywhere. It's all the same. It was probably why he'd stopped fantasizing about running away after a while. There was no where to go that was better. Even Whitecastle was probably, to some extent or another, a pretty little lie.
What had life done to him indeed? Or rather, what had he done with his life? Murphy's Law applied was all. Bad luck. Bad faith. Bad blood. Who was there to blame anymore? Himself? Everyone else who'd contributed something to his misery, whether on purpose or not? Did it matter? Briefly, the hybrid considered telling Iskata everything. He could tell her about the demon in his head and all of the awful things he'd done. He could tell her about Ire's murder and about the thick scars across his throat. He could tell her about why he should have died that morning. But what good would telling her anything do in the end? By now, Laruku knew his cousin well enough to know that nothing would deter her attention from him, so what was the point? Telling her anything would only perpetuate the pity and the concern and the whatever else she was smothering him with now. It was thick in the air, heavy.
He could spare her all the gory details. She had enough to worry about. They don't need me, the lone wolf continued on instead, speaking of his family. Everyone can take care of themselves. Laruku did not meet Iskata's eyes. They don't need me, he repeated, They never did. Red eyes continued to gaze forward at nothing. There's nothing you can do for me. And that's okay. You don't need to worry about me. It was a wasted effort. And he didn't deserve it anyway.
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She sat beside him watching the ripples of the water as she flicked pebbles into the stream. Short little bursts before the current absorbed them and they were swallowed up, just like their lives. She stopped her steady feed of pebbles into the water as Laruku spoke up, she could feel a bit of annoyance grow inside her as he kept pulling on the existence of nothing. There was a pause of silence that was broken by the call of a mocking bird before she turned to gaze at him. "Do you want to be forgotten? Do you want to be alone and lonely? You know that's not the way it's suppose to be, why do you fight so hard to fade away?" Her words were soft spoken but there was a flash of anger in her eyes. She didn't want to give up on him, she didn't want to know another life had faded into the mists never to be seen again. She wanted him here in the flesh and blood, she wanted to see him with life in his veins again and she didn't know how to find that man anymore.
Shaking her head at his words she sighed, "Yes, we can all take care of ourselves..." the words were nothing, the truth but so bland. Trying to meet her cousin's eyes seemed impossible, finally she just burst out. "Laruku look at me!" she could feel her heart pounding in her chest as she stared at the male, a crease of worry on her brow as her heart slowed. "It's not that there's nothing I can do for you.. you're just too selfish to be cared for, to be wanted..." She bit her lip as she finally turned away from him. "I worry about you.. because once.. " her words seemed to fade away as she finished speaking. "..you were alive..." She knew it was stupid trying so hard to find a reason to stop him from walking down this crumbling path he was on, but once he seemed real, and now he was like dust in the wind.
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*fails at life*
Did he want to be forgotten? He wasn't sure that he'd thought enough about it to even have an opinion. It's inevitable, isn't it? he answered instead with a rhetorical question. Everyone is forgotten eventually, as everyone they knew fades away or moves on. Being remembered only lasts a generation or two. Nothing's forever. People did not last forever, nor did their words, their actions. They were water, draining down through the cracks in the sand. Eventually, the sun would burn them out and the sand would be dry again. No one else walking over it would ever know that it had once been wet. It was a perpetual cycle, and he was content to accept all of it. Besides, what did people really have to remember him by? All the mistakes he'd made and all the people he'd hurt and kept hurting, even now.
Laruku turned to Iskata when she demanded it of him, and the same empty smile he'd given before appeared again. Everyone has to die sometime, he told her simply, and then stood up. He should have died in the fire, and maybe he had. Iskata could see ghosts after all, right? Did the dead know they were dead? The hybrid turned and started away in another aimless direction. He lived here now, but there was no home, no place he slept in twice. It was just a forest. I'm sorry, he mumbled as he disappeared.
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She just sat there and stared at his as he slowly but surely answered her questions and concerns. She dropped her head down sadly as he'd moved away, the last words he'd said ringing in her ears. After a moment when his footsteps were fading she raised her head, a distant sadness in her eyes as she whispered. "I am too.." Turning to look back at the stream before her she stook one step then another before settling down in the spot her cousin had rested moments before, the ground still warm and his scent clinging to the air.
Dropping her head down to her forelegs she stared into the slow moving water and wondered for a second if anyone would miss her when she was gone. Within moments she closed her eyes and just listened to the world around her softly fading.
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