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Dark shadows swept across the northern face of the mountain, creeping like tendrils across it's newly dead face. The moon hung low in the sky, beginning it's long trek back down beneath the horizon. It would be a few hours before morning arrived, and within the few hours the thick gray clouds would mask the brilliance of the moon, casting blankets of darkness over the lands in long frames of time. Soot and brush from dead tree's made the northern face of the mountain almost impossible to see, laying over the rocky surface in thick layers, easily masking scents with the thick aroma that came from it all.
It was beneath the moon and the clouds, over soot and ash, that the Nothing girl traveled. Veiled beneath a blanket of darkness, snaking her way up the smallest portion of the mountain. She had been instructed to return to Bleeding Souls, to seek out a man named Gabriel de le Poer and to deliver to him a message. Much to Dhalia's surprise, Bleeding Souls was no more. Burned to the ground. Her travels had quickly taken her to the south west, to the mountain, where she could only assume that the residents of the obliterated lands had fled. Her nose curled in disgust at the feeling of the soot clinging to her, clumping across her paw pads in a mixture of moisture and dirt.
Soon enough the lands began to change, slowly becoming more lush and green, until the point that she was finally surrounded by forest. The grasses played well getting the soot and dirt from her paws as she continued on her way, weaving in and out of trees. The young red female kept going until the point that she met a rocky jut out from the side of the mountain, just large enough to hold her. Stepping out across it, she stood at the very edge, icy eyes cast out across the lands that she would soon be descending in to. This should prove to be interesting...
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[html]  Uhh...I dunno. XD Haiiiii tho. I totally waited a few days to see if someone else was going to snatch this up ;D
She could feel it growing nearer and nearer, unrest swelling amongst the ranks. As things got worse and worse in the pack, she found herself wanting to explore more of the outer territories...away from everybody else. Ember had come to Dahlia de Mai not knowing that her sibling was already a member there. She didn't enjoy being around Firefly one bit, so being out in the other territories meant escaping her green eyed sister as well.
She didn't really care about the war, whether it went one way or another. Dahlia de Mai was a home to her, yes, and she did have family there...but she barely knew them, and had only been in the pack for a couple of days. It wasn't enough for her to put her life on the line, especially when she still didn't know the entire story. She'd joined too late to find out what was really going on...and everyone had a different side of it to tell her.
It felt like years since she had left Storm rather than months...and today she was planning on going to the top of the mountain to look out toward her old lands. Her mother had said that Phoenix was gone and that he wasn't coming back...but she still thought that he was out there somewhere. Maybe waiting for something, or someone before he'd return.
The female was best disguised by darkness, so it was in darkness that she travelled, slowly, surely toward the mountaintop. The moon lit things up as she climbed toward the deep, black side of the hill, the place where, if she looked off at night...she would be able to see the nothingness that their lands had become. It was something that she felt like she needed to see.
She reached the top and stared out into the night, into the vast black. She was within hearing distance of the coyote's lands, but she didn't care. She was dark...and everything here smelled like ash. They couldn't see her smell her, even if one did decide to venture over and see what was going on. She sat down, lifted her nose toward the moon, and let out a low, long howl. Somewhere, where Storm used to be, her howl was reverberating through the dead, blackened trees. Somewhere out there.
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Forgive the extreme 'blargghhh'ness of this. I'm dead tired and forcing myself to stay up in case I get called in to work.
Thick gray clouds had been on her heels practically the whole time, swarming and spreading across the sky. When Dhalia stopped, unsure if it was her imagination or not, the clouds seemed to stop with her, as if they were following along on her journey. It was a sign that a bad storm was on it's way. Dhalia liked to think that, perhaps, it was sudden warning from the planet. A desperate cry from nature itself, trying to let the residents of valley below know that something terrible was about to creep in to their lands. The red girl knew though. She knew just how ignorant and deaf to the world that creatures could be. They wouldn't hear the cries of the planet. They would never see her coming.
The perfect silence of the night was quickly broken and dark ears tipped forward across her skull in a rather curious manner. The sound had come from behind her, the side of the mountain that she had started her journey on. Luckily for the girl, she hadn't traveled that great a distance in to the other side. To stay or to go though? She was on a mission with a special message to deliver. That didn't mean, of course, that she couldn't have some fun of her own.
With the decision in mind, Dhalia turned swiftly from the ledge, disappearing back in to the dense trees like a shadow. Working her way back through, weaving in and out of the forest, she finally came to the very edges, where lush grasses once again turned to tainted soil and ash. The scent of the ash invaded her nostrils, taking over any trace that she might have been able to pick up. It didn't worry the girl much though, because attentive ears had picked up the sound of the call. She knew the general direction and that was where agile legs carried her, creeping across the darkest side of the mountain like a stalking cat.
Finally, when she thought she might be close to the other creature, she spoke. "I can hear you, pretty songbird." Instead of calling out, her words were quiet and careful, a test to see just how close she might be. Eyes of ice pierced the darkness, a shimmer casting over them as the clouds unblocked the light of the moon, though they were quick to shield it from the world once more.
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For a moment the land was cast in silver again. Ember didn't understand why more wolves didn't come out at night. Some said that it was bad for hunting, but she'd been able to catch plenty of night animals outside before. Her favorite thing to eat was turkey...but she'd only found one of those once in her entire life. Most of the time she was able to catch animals unaware in the darkness--they were groggy from sleep, and when flushed out, didn't know where to go to get away from her. Or where she even was, really.
There wasn't a lot of life over here, though...not on this half of the mountain. She'd heard that a forest would grow back, replenish itself...but how long would that take? Years? And then it'd take years after that for animals to finally begin moving back in. So they'd never be able to go back there. Not during her lifetime, anyway.
She heard a voice behind her and almost gasped. She'd thought she was completely alone. Who would be in this area this early in the morning? The voice was feminine, no doubt there...but she didn't know it. Maybe a coyote had been investigating the darkness, just like she had been. Should she speak? Ember kept her mouth closed for a few moments, unsure. But why not? She could always run away if whoever it was wanted to fight with her. She was a quick runner. "But you can't see me."She'd just given herself away. She cast her gaze about, trying to catch the glitter of eyes...but the moon dissapeared just then, swallowed into the clouds.
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Dhalia's intentions with the mystery creature were unclear, even to herself, though she found that she was already enjoying the moment. She had left her home and traveled great lengths to get here, which meant that she had been forced to leave all of her personal things behind. They would have only hindered her journey and some of the things, such as her 'dolls', would have been most impossible for her to bring along. She missed them terribly, which was why the thought crossed her mind for a brief moment. Dhalia was not stupid though. She didn't yet have a place to call home, no tools to work with and no place to keep her collection. It would come later, though.
Ears tipped carefully forward through the silence, wondering for a brief moment if the other would play it smart and keep quiet. Soon enough though, words broke the eerie quiet and dark ears soaked them up. Slinking forward more, so very close to the voice that had called out, Dhalia spoke once more. "I don't need to see you, songbird." A female, as the voice told her, and Dhalia was almost certain that she could find her through the darkness by sound alone. It meant careful movement and exact silence though, which was often easy for a creature of her minuscule size.
She took her time stalking forward, careful with her paw placement and the motions that her body made. Finally, just when she could barely see something in front of her eyes, she stopped. The moon had yet to be revealed from behind the clouds, hindering her sight and thus her judgment. Whatever it was in front of her was dark, seemed like the size of a wolf, and she held her breath at the realization. After a moment of dead silence, the girl spoke up again, whispering in to the darkness. "I can feel you." Even before the words finished, Dhalia nudged forward with her shoulder, aiming to brush herself right past whatever it was in front of her.
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She squinted in the darkness. This really was ridiculous, this entire idea. Why'd she come out here in the first place, and put herself at such a risk? It seemed like a really dumb idea now that she thought it over. She could get hurt. Ember wasn't much of a fighter...she had next to no experience. So if it came down to that, she'd make a break for it instead. "You should say your name. Unless you're too afraid."
She felt a light brush and stepped back, hackles raising in alarm. That was too close for comfort. The large female turned, spotting a nearby boulder, turned white in the leftover light of the night. She lept upon it, sitting down and looking below her. "If you aim to harm me...well, I wouldn't try it. This songbird's a phoenix."
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The instant that Dhalia felt the brush of fur, it was suddenly gone, leaving only the faint sounds of steps as the other female removed herself from her previous position. Curious again, the young female ambled a few more steps forward, only catching a brief flash of images through the light, the other female making a leap for something. What it was, she was not sure, but turned herself in that direction, only to take a few more steps and then stop. Words hit her ears in that instant and she smiled to no one but herself, easing her body to the ground to take a seat.
"I could smolder a phoenix in to Nothing with the swipe of a paw." Her words were said with meaning, like she actually believed that should and, in fact, she did believe it. At the moment, though, her intention was not to harm. Rather, she simply wanted to have a bit of fun, which she would admit that she had.
"Since you're a self proclaimed phoenix, songbird, would you be the one to blame for this fire?" Of course, Dhalia very much doubted that she was the cause for it but, perhaps, she could get a bit of information about what was.
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Nothing. It sounded familiar...but she couldn't be sure that "Nothing" was the creature's name. She had been using her own last name, but maybe the red girl hadn't known that. Her question was confusing, about whether she had started the fire. Ember hadn't even been around the lands when they'd started. She hadn't ever considered that someone could have started it, either...she'd thought that it'd happened as a anything else in nature did, a natural way. Maybe lightning had struck a tree and it had sparked off.
"No...that wasn't me. I was away when it happened, actually. I came back when I saw all the smoke." She considered this. "I don't know who could have done it. Someone obsessed with fire." She had no interest in fire or learning how to make it. She hunted and ate her meat cold. That was how she liked it. If you ate it soon enough after you killed it, it was still warm...so why bother cooking it? "But you don't know who did it either."
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It seemed quite the silly thing to point out. "If I knew who did it, then why would I ask?" She asked then, almost confused. Alas, she now knew that there would be very few answers that she could get from this one. "I used to live there.." She admitted, knowing that there were actually very few that would have any idea who she was, and those few weren't on the top of her favorites list. From the other's words it sounded like she had lived there also, at some point.
"What is the place over the mountain called?" She inquired softly, blue gaze searching through the night. "It's where everyone went, right?" She could only assume since the smell of ash and remnants of the fire were so thick that it was hard to tell if anyone had been through. If they had, then it certainly hadn't been recently.
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[html] ooc:Thank you for fixing my table <3 if it was you. xD
"I dunno, ya seem pretty weird to me. Maybe you had some crazy reason." What kind of an animal was out here at this time of night, anyway? She couldn't smell a pack, couldn't smell anything but the scent of the burnt destruction that lay over the other side of the hill. "Me too. For a while, anyway. Place dragged me back in."
"Yeah. There are a few packs...and a coyote group. Almost everyone made it. A few pups were lost, some family members...but most were fine." Her sister and brother hadn't been so fortunate. "How long were you gone for, anyway? The fire was ages ago."
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