OOC: Sorry it took so long! I'll add the table and a description of her recent backstory so that this all makes sense when I get out of church tonight. Love you! Happy posting!
Ykesha had always had an affinity for the commandant. Like a child, bare arms raised in want, did the woman look upon the face of the this Divine. Joy overflowed her cup. An unusual expression marked the coyote’s face when bestowed with a supervisor’s smile; vehemence became her legs, zeal marked her body. With bright eyes she moved, the stitches of the world seeming indistinct as the fabric that held it together became openly known. This is a hand of the Righteous. Ykesha was clutched within that palm, pressed flat against thumb and finger like a gripped sword. If a mighty hammer was brought down, it was she who distributed this damage, puppeteered by an unseen craftsmen. As a lass, the girl was proud. As a woman, she was on fire. The Great Hand was stretched out, marking the land with ire, as this blessed body, so small and fragile compared to her Master, fell to brindled knees to watch Eternity unfold.
Who could annul it?
This hand is stretched out.
Who could turn it back?
Ykesha knew the Master’s fingers had scraped across her warm belly in her first months in Quebec. Though many had hardened both body and mind to succeed in a city run by drugs and crime, chaos became the crown placed on every head. In her first week, the white lass had never stepped over so many split luperci corpses. Wail, O Coyote! Cry out, O Half-Breed Dog! Like insects the gang lords scampered in on pointed legs, consuming and defecating upon the land once embraced by order. And as insect rise up to take flight, so too did these vermin. Like a poisoned tree sloughing off its blackened branches, each neighborhood fell, their hands clapped between mandibles of iron. The mighty beetles clung to the trunk that was Quebec, climbing ever higher into her sickened boughs. Although she was strong, not even the brightest of oaks can withstand a proper infestation. The city, a weighted tree in a very old forest, became broken and dislodged. It cracked under the weight of its new inhabitants. It fell to the ground.
This was the Will of the Gang Lord. His hand was stretched out.
And although the rod that had struck the city was later broken, from the serpent’s corpse rose the adder.
The hand is stretched out still.
When the mobs moved in, they took an already abused Quebec and ravaged her. As the minor gangs retreated back into their burrows to breed, the real criminal masters straddled the weary city, pinning her arms to the ground to chew mercilessly on exposed and wounded breasts. The hoard finished what the gangsters had started, and this time more than a tree was leveled; the entire forest went up in flames. As a scythe flattens a harvest, so too did these new luperci flatten Quebec. First the alleyways. Then the neighborhoods. Finally an entire city’s morale. Everything bent a knee to the impressive and mindless march. These were the days when each devoured the flesh of his own arm, too unnerved to act otherwise. The wild cats and urchin children vanished like minos fleeing a larger fish, darting into cracks and crevices, praying, bleating in worry to the exposed sky. Many died - both beast and wolf - their bellies torn open, hot and red. The villians fed upon organs and fear until their hunger grew weary. Then they marched, seeking a change of scenery. Seeking something. Driven by someone.
The hand is stretch out.
The Puppeteer’s wrath knew no boundaries. He reigned in His wild children, scoffing at their behavior, trying His best to wipe the raw wounds from their knees. When Quebec was finally pinned beneath the calloused thumb of the Mob Lords, the wild rape and slaughter pulled back, recollected, and became cunning. It was then that Ykesha learned her place amongst the Rulers. It was within those urine-soaked streets that the brindled woman truly understood the value of the Authority. Her breast swelled to please, it heaved with want, was willing to be pulled apart and cracked opened if only to bring pleasure to the head of her gang. This was her worship, leadership was her Deity. For Him, Ykesha crawled amongst the scum of the city, slithering across a filthy belly. Doing filthy things.
Her Master’s hand was stretched out, and it had tasted wrath. Yet even a palm as firm as His can be moved. Betrayal befell her beloved, and marked her as well.
His hand had retracted.
Upon the woman’s left breast sprung a scar of the most lucid in appearance. A gore wound, the result of a trident that dung thrice into her body, running her through like a piece of skewered meat. First the head of the mob fell, his damaged corpse sending the young coyote into a frenzy she was yet unaware of. Yet a blind attack, no matter how skilled, is played out with a handicap. Ykesha almost met her Master’s fate; but the wounds carved into her heart were far more tender than those which befell her flesh.
The Maker has fallen.
Strange.
And so the woman fled, collecting her broken body, sliding like a shadow amongst shadows, followed by both her memories and a more solid enemy. One of those loyal to the new King of the undercity tracked her, licking excitedly at open jaws. She was a shrew packed full of the group’s secrets. She was a liability. Days turned to two weeks and still the fea crawled to safety, the offspring of her Master’s killer following. Escape evaded her. Rest was no close friend. Every inch of the woman was wired in haste; so too was her pursuer’s.
So when the forest finally broke in a familiar land and the coyote found herself facing a scene most queer little registered within her weary mind. There was another - a wolf, or unshifted luperci - but more than that the hybrid had not absorbed. Her brain was overcome with other thoughts: lethargy, disquiet, desperation, panic. The other was not far behind. He never was. And here rested a bystander, unaware of the impending jeopardy which trailed the white woman’s weary steps.
There will always be a hand stretched out.
