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The fighting had started, for the most part, in small groups. She didn't know if the entire pack was going to go over there and attack or not...but if they didn't, the coyotes were likely to do it to them. Wasn't it better to start it first? She supposed that the coyotes could point fingers later on and say that they were the ones who had started everything...with the fighting and all, though. But her pack didn't seem to care. Ember didn't really enjoy fighting, trying to cause somebody else harm. It scared her to know that she was hurting somebody else, when she'd felt that kind of pain before.
The now shifted female looked up at the remnant of the pirate ship that loomed up in front of her, sticking out of the sand. It was huge, and she took her time exploring the outside with her eyes. Would it be possible to get up inside there? There were a few ropes hanging up off the sides of it. Her foot was still a little sore, but it'd work just fine. She grabbed the end of the rope, starting to scale the side of the ship. She dug the claws of her foot into the halfway rotted wood, using that to help her a bit. She got to the railing at the top and reached with one hand to take hold of it, pausing in the middle of her upwards climb to wince. She'd been bitten very badly on her shoulder by Hybrid, and it still hurt quite a bit. He'd gone through the muscle. She must have snapped something that had once been healed; blood dripped down her arm, off her elbow, and down onto the ground.
The girl gave one last try, letting go of the rope and holding on with both hands, pulling herself up onto the deck of the ship. There she sat, gasping. She wasn't sure how she'd get down...but surely there were stairs up here somewhere.
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I'm sorrrrrrry. ;; When is this dated?
He had never thought much of pirates, even when they had landed on the beach one day. Even then, he could not have been bothered to go see them, to figure out what was going on. It had been the same with the humans -- look from a distance, but if they didn't bother you, then don't bother back. He knew he was far too content to only deal with that was directly in front of him, to not worry about what did not directly and immediately affect him, but it was a simple way to live, and it was harder to find trouble in what was simple. But there he was, all the same, prowling through the innards of an abandoned ship like some kind of thief. He was far from the forest he had settled in, and he couldn't really remember when or why he'd decided to come here to explore. If it was really exploring.
He saw, but he didn't really take in. He felt and touched and heard rodents scampering around in the shadows, but the silence was much more prominent. He was immersed in a decades old story, a ship, a civilization, a death, but he absorbed nothing. Maybe there were ghosts around. He couldn't see them. Could ghosts see each other? He was probably one of them. A small cry and a thud from the deck above did manage to get his attention though. It was a disturbance in the eerie peace he found hidden in the molding wood. Wordlessly, he took the stairs back up to the surface and blinked at the girl he faced once again. Ember?
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[html] How about July 25? :o
Of course she would have picked the most difficult way to get up aboard the ship. A quick inspection could have told her that there were a few rotted out entrances near the bottom...but she hadn't really gone around and looked. The rope had been there, and it'd looked pretty easy from the ground. She flopped down onto her back, watching the blood run down the tilted deck, away from her. She had only just gotten her shoulder fixed up in Twilight Vale earlier that morning, and now she'd messed it up again.
Since she wasn't hanging around her packlands much, she had found other ways to keep herself occupied. Mostly exploring. Ember didn't have a lot of friends to hang out with, just Cercelee and Khaden, and both of them were in the Vale.
"I climbed up the side!" If that much wasn't obvious. She looked at him from her upside down angle, laying sprawled out on her back on the deck. "Where'd YOU come from? Looking for treasure, too?"
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That works as long as it's in the morning. :3
The world seemed so small at times. Despite the hundreds of miles that undoubtedly made up this side of the mountain, it seemed as if he could only run into the same handful of people over and over, and most of the time, they were relatives of one sort or another. It was a curious matter, considering that he knew there were many more people in the area than just that. Coincidence stopped feeling like coincidence after a while, but he wasn't sure that he really cared either way. There's a ramp on the other side, the hybrid pointed out, eyes settling on the reopened wound on her shoulder. You didn't get that just climbing up, he observed.
Guessing that Inferni had something to do with it didn't take a lot of deductive ability. He had gleaned more information than even he could readily realize from his conversation with Conri. Gabriel was on a warpath, and everything else that followed was only a matter of time. Laruku didn't know what to feel about that either though. His anger towards the other hybrid had, like most of his other anger, begun to fade a long time ago and he didn't feel much of anything towards the man anymore. Gabriel had taken care of his children when neither he nor their mother could; he was grateful for that, but at the same time remembered that the very same person had murdered his cousin's mate so long ago. Theirs was a strangled relationship, but most of Laruku's relationships seemed to be that way.
But instead of mentioning the coyotes, the tattered male said, Fall into another hole?
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"Awwwww. I can't believe I didn't see it. It was kinda fun, getting up here, though." Ember sat up, frowning at the line of blood dripping along the cracks in the planks. "No. And it keeps getting in...fected." She remembered the word that the other wolf had said. "I dunno. I can't keep staying in Twilight Vale forever. Do you hang out here a lot?" It wasn't a really common place.
"Hybrid doesn't like me. Said he was gonna get me next time he saw me." More than he already had. The wound hurt like Hell. Ember wasn't looking forward to that day, no, but she was determined that she was going to be ready for it. "I'll have a go at him if he tries...but other than that it's best to avoid them whenever I can." She didn't know if there were any coyotes from Inferni that weren't so horrible. If there were some, she hadn't met them yet. "You got attacked a few times, too. What happened?" She held a hand up to her shoulder, pushing on the gash and wincing. Maybe it'd stop bleeding soon. With her other hand she pointed at him, to his many scars.
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She spoke so casually about it all, as if there was nothing particularly noteworthy about her injury or the fact that it had been given to her by a member of Inferni. Just another day, just another wound. It was disconcerting, but he supposed he shouldn't be surprised. It was not so out of the norm; they had grown up in this kind of environment. Why should they treat it as if it was some kind of surprise? No, he said of the ship, This is my first time here. And though it was nothing against the wooden vessel, he doubted he would be back any time soon.
Laruku didn't recognize the name she gave, but assumed he was just another Inferni member. Vaguely, he wondered if Rachias was still there or if she had gone back to look for her brother after all. He supposed he hoped the latter, but he didn't really think that his daughter wandering alone across the fire-ravaged wasteland was that much better than her staying in a warpack. Either way, he hoped she was all right. He did care, after all. Avoiding them is usually the best plan, he said vaguely, then looked down at himself.
Indeed, there were a lot of scars, including more than a few that he could not immediately remember having. It seemed like every time he looked, there were more, even though he knew he hadn't received any new ones since that night, that dawn. They're all long stories, he answered, tracing over the half-hidden one on his collarbone -- that one was almost invisible now, but he remembered it well; it had been one of his first. Not all of them were from coyotes, though many of them were, But most of them were probably my fault anyway. At that particular moment, he had a hard time thinking of one that wasn't.
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Ember knew that there had to be some exceptions when it came to coyotes, that not all were bad and that not all of them would want to fight, either. At least, she hoped not. She didn't know how well Dahlia de Mai would fare, really. They weren't the biggest pack in the world, and she wasn't sure if the others were good fighters or not. She obviously wasn't.
"I don't really want to fight them...I just wanted to get him off of Cercelee and make him go away. It was luck that I found them at all--I was just wandering around through the forest." She figured that she could go and hide when the real fighting started. She hadn't really made any friends in Dahlia, and didn't feel the strong pack loyalty that she'd felt when she had lived in Storm and Labrynth Glen. Ember would do what was best for herself...which was to stay away and see what happened. "Not that I'm a pacifist or anything. I have some morals, I think. I just don't care what happens as long as Cercelee is okay. And she's not gonna be in any kind of fighting condition...so no worries."
She wondered if her shoulder would scar. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to--too many stories, maybe. Were you born in the old lands, like me?"
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Cercelee? His tattered ears perked at the name, then flattened somewhat. Is she all right? Laruku had failed Adrastos long ago; he had failed to keep his cousin's daughter in the pack, thus failing to effectively take care of her. Certainly it was in her blood to wander and he had secretly been relieved to see her again when she had returned just before the fire, but it had been a failure on his part all the same, just like all of the other children that had come before her. He avoided saying anything more about the war itself. He didn't know who was in the right or wrong, didn't know the details of their conflict, and still could not bring himself to go find out even when he knew he had family (however distant) and old packmates involved. It was easy to say he was just a coward in the end.
I don't think they'd be any stories you'd want to hear about, he told her, shrugging passively. The hybrid had his share of old wounds from Inferni, from before his own war and after. Segodi had left long marks on both of his thighs; Karloff has torn open his shoulder; Voltaire had cut up one of his forearms. The nameless coyote on the beach had given him the two gashes across his chest and the holes in his left ear just before he'd killed him. Gabriel had ripped open his face and his stomach, but he didn't remember that fight, only knew the outcome. The rest had come from wolves he couldn't remember the names of anymore... and himself, and Tsunami. Those were the scars he remembered the easiest; they were the ones he deserved the most.
Yeah, he continued, I was born in Clouded Tears, like your mother.
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The memories of life in the old lands were beginning to fade in her mind over time. She hadn't gone outside Storm much back then, so she didn't know a lot of the other pack names. At his last comment she simply nodded in understanding. At least she knew the name now, where some of her family was from. She thought to ask about Phoenix, if Laruku knew where he'd come from, but held her tongue. He probably didn't know anyway.
"Cercelee is in...I don't know what she called it. Critical? Critical condition. She lost lots and lots of blood. There were so many different cuts I couldn't keep my hands over all of them, so some kept bleeding" Compared to her cousin, she'd gotten out of the fight pretty well off. And she figured that she'd be able to use the knowledge she'd gained from the fight for the next time she got ambushed by one of them. She wasn't planning on putting herself in harm's way, but she did want to be ready for it if it ever happened again.
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This is really old. I'ma end it? :3
Conversely, his memories and recollections of his current life were vague at best. Day-to-day activities and ponderings escaped him, and the entire last few months blurred together like some improbable dream. It was an overreactive shock of sorts -- he had not left home for nearly three years, the sudden change had uprooted more than anyone might have expected. He was detached from it, so he had trouble remembering any of it. Nothing felt relevant.
Critical condition. A sneer surfaced in the back of his head. Of course she was in critical condition; she was probably dying. What Ember was doing wandering around an abandoned ship while her cousin lay on a possible death bed, Laruku did not begin to wonder. It was perfectly normal, after all, for packs to be at war and for friends and packmates to be left bloodied in the middle of the forest for no greater reason than because "the coyotes attacked." This was their way of life, and it had become accepted.
Laruku did not ask any more of Cercelee. If she died, he didn't want to know about it. The shirking of responsibility and the embracing of ignorance would continue because sometimes, it was the only thing keeping him sane. I should go, he instead informed the girl solemnly, You should probably get off this boat too. No point in risking more injuries in your condition. And that was all. He turned to find the ramp down the other side of the ship, running away again.
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