She had a sense that some day soon, a knowledge of this northern neck of the peninsula would come in very useful. Not for any pack or political purpose: this notion was utterly based around the personal. since the festival where Caspa had performed on stage, despite wearing a hood and short cape most of the time, she knew she'd put her odd appearance on display quite enough to call in the attention of any passer by who might know her family: guess where she hailed from. In this world of wolves and coyotes, she knew her relatively strange appearance instantly linked her with the Samirans: nearly all hounds like herself with long feathery fur, drooping ears, arched muzzles. Qualities that should have died out, without carefully controlled breeding.
It wasn't as if she was hiding. But at the same time, Caspa did not wish her family to know where she was if she could help it. Part of her dedicated path was to be as separate and aloof from the world as she could - an impartial observer, and that would become hard for her, with direct links to her relatives. One day she would return - when she was stronger, when she was better prepared.
So, on all fours in her lupus form - the lowest to the ground, and swiftest - she walked the line from coast-to-coast, checking for encroaching trails that she might recognise. Outsiders entering the lands of 'Souls were numerous, but she could detect nothing familiar, nothing with a pattern. She had begun at Amherst, where she'd scoffed at herself as she trailed through the streets. There was no mysterious, outlaw hustler group living and working here: this town was all but deserted. The man she had encountered was simply crazy, and not fighting to defend or conceal any kind of illicit goings-on. She knew now the place that her enemies were hidden, but it was not a place she was at liberty to enter or attack. At least, she could rule out the town of Amherst.
Caspa had moved north, using her nose at first to scent the shortest route to the sea, and then her eyes, for there was little vegetation to obstruct her view and no haze - the sky was overcast, but the brooding clouds rode high, allowing room for stark rays of white sun to penetrate here and there, giving a patchwork appearance to the greyscale atmosphere. The trails she found were all anonymous, all meaningless. This was a relief.
But the unbroken landscape did have one surprise to offer up. Before she could quite complete the bisection of the landbridge, she came upon stone walls: deep trenches dug out of the earth, lined with bricks and floored with strange troughs. This had been built by somebody, but it hardly looked like the more modern human buildings. Surely too old for luperci, thought Caspa, knowing her history well enough. She leaped lightly down into a trench, walked its length. At the other end, she halted: the wall was too high for her to jump out again, having seemingly become higher as she walked along. She sniffed around the base of the trench, searching for a raised foothold to use to propel herself out again, rather than having to retrace her steps all the way back to the other end of the barracks.
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Her feral form had become alien, unused and strange when compared to the fragile, elegant beast that adorned her frame in dirty lace and torn ribbons. She was small and petite, with dainty paws, cat-like grace, and a feathered coat that hardly compared to the rough, rugged coat of her non-domesticated cousins. Her family carried marred blood, but Elvira stood out, always, a rare gem in the dust.
Hawk-like eyes, revealing the predator within, remained ever vigilant on her surroundings. This creature stood out just as she did, and Elvira remembered her in a vague, bored manner, as she crept along the trench, watching as an eagle might observe an oblivious hare. She was a plague, a virus, and a parasite, so though she had grown exponentially, it was apparent in her frailty that she wasn't properly capable of caring for herself, and whomever had last adored her, breaking her apart and tearing her to pieces, no longer did.
All that remained were veiled bruises and a steady, slow pace to mask the pain that spiderwebbed forth with each movement. Pausing at the edge of the trench, a breath away from the beast should her gaze dare stray toward her, Elvira stared.
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A prickling tingle fingered its way down her prominent spine, causing her to suddenly and in a violent movement lift her eyes to the heavens. Yellow eyes stared back at her: despite their lofty positioning, reminding Caspa more of snake than hawk. If it hadn't been for the scent and those eyes, she would never have recognised Alaine's daughter. Her body was frozen with the surprise, with only her fur lifting in the faint wind that channelled down the ancient trench. The girl was high above Caspa, atop the stone wall a picture pretty as if she were artwork displayed on a pedestal, except that gaze could never be compared to the dull eyes of a statue. Elvira was so out of context that Caspa had no idea what to think or how to react to the sight of her. The tiny puppy she had been was gone, and there was a desolate savour to the image of the grown hybrid. Eventually the hound moved nearer to the sheer wall, age-worn into a crumbling rock face, and resting a paw on the rock as if showing her regret at not being able to get higher, returned her stare to the dandelion eyes. "Elvira Winters?" she whispered hoarsely, then cleared her throat. "But… how came you to be here?" Tar-black eyes radiated a blank bewilderment.
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The hound whirled around as a creature stalked, suddenly realizing the predator that lurked. They remembered one another, and Elvira thought of the snake and the venom. Oh, how she'd come to adore poisons and the effects that they could have on living things. Like a serpent, she was small, but deadly. Her name rose on the air in a hoarse sound, so soft and low, filled with uncertainty. She was all that remained. Everyone else had fled, leaving her for dead. Her own mother had cast her aside.
She needed no one--or, so she told herself, even as she gravitated toward cruelty and regret. "Maybe I died," she said, in that soft, sweet voice laced with sugar thick enough to kill. "And now I'm just a ghost, haunting this place." How such an ideal tickled her fancy, and she very nearly squirmed with delight, veiling a smile. Images of her own corpse danced to the fore of her mind, rotting in the sunshine, and she was nearly as giddy as a child on Christmas morning.
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Caspa snorted. It seemed she was destined to be the bearer of reality checks to every puppy that the Miracles pack had ever brought into life. First Skoll with ghosts and faeries, and now Elvira had herself become a spirit. "Ghosts do not exist, and I am not mad," she answered simply. "Therefore you live… for now. Perhaps you confuse the probability with the present. You are here alone?" Caspa had never felt at ease around this girl. There was more below the surface than met the eye. By the beating of her heart, she realised she felt the child was in danger of some kind. Caspa felt nothing then but the urge to save her. Shepherding ancestors called to her blood down the years. The white hound stood up on her hind legs, resting forepaws against the wall, barely even halfway up although with the proportions of her limbs being what they were, she was as tall as her Optime form in this position. She wanted a better look at the Winters girl, a reason for the feeling of chills that laced her flesh. Was it a lingering scent, or just the lack of scent that implied isolation, abandonment?
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Of course she knew that she wasn't actually dead, but Elvira had never possessed much tact. She would say and do things to make others uncomfortable, whether intentionally or inadvertently. "Yes," she replied, for she was indeed here alone. Everyone had abandoned the vile girl. She watched as the canine stood against the wall, so tall and thin in a body far unlike those around her.
It's elegance caught the hybrid's eye, and she couldn't help but to admire the sleek form. There was a momentary spark of envy, for while she was a precocious chinadoll, petite and small, this creature was long and elegant. Elvira wished to possess the body of a woman, tall and proud, rather than remaining in such a youthful figure.
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Of course the girl was alone. Even when she had been infantile and still in the care of her family, she had been found alone and nothing about her presence inspired feelings of friendliness. "You're not lost, though," Caspa whispered, eyes narrowing: it was a statement not a question. She hesitated, unsure how to proceed without repelling the girl. "It is a dangerous path you choose," she said at last. Elvira was too young to walk alone: the life of a loner was unsafe for anyone, let alone such a fragile youngster. "Will you not come home with me? You do not need to forsake your old life entirely, and the Court will always have a place for lost children." Caspa was anything but motherly, but every protective instinct she had screamed out that Elvira was in danger. Of what kind, she hardly dared imagine. There was toxicity in those falcon eyes.
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She was a dog amongst wolves. There was nowhere for her to belong. Her own mother had cast her aside, and though some deep, buried part of her desired comfort, like the dog that she was, forsaken on the roadside, pride coiled like a snake in the grass, hissing and writhing and rejecting the idea of returning to where she had originated from. She couldn't stand the idea of returning with her tail between her legs, whether or not that's how it would actually play out. Always, she was the pessimist. This world was a cold, dark place as far as she'd seen. Even so, this woman fascinated her. She was just as much a cur as she was.
Instead, Elvira said nothing, which wasn't quite a refusal.
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There was silence then, and Caspa wasn't sure of eliciting any more response from the child at all. She could at least check her over, and eliminate the possibility that the faint bloodsmell was a still-current hurt of some kind. It was the least she could do. But Caspa didn't want to retreat down the ancient barracks, for fear the girl might leave while her back was turned. So with grim determination she eyed up the scale of the stone trench wall and then gathered her lanky deer legs beneath her to leap.
Quite amazingly, her forepaws made it to the edge of the rock face, and she might have followed them with the hinds as her front legs braced against the wall, except that as those paws hit the wall some old rock crumbled away and sent them skittering ground-wards once more. Caspa strained with her front paws but could lift herself no higher. How ungraceful it would be to tumble back down again. Hanging in limbo, the strain on her tendons already beginning to make her ankles tremble, her eyes found the girl again: even smaller than herself, what use could the exiled Miracles child be to her now?
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