o hai i come visit u
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To the distant north where the spiders crawled all over a forest, Laurel had come to know there was another “pack.” He didn't know whether or not to call it a pack, because supposedly it was composed of nothing but coyotes and the last time he checked, he didn't know too many places where coyotes ran in packs. Small groups that were spread out and generally all family was what he thought of, anyway. Wolves had long since forgotten how to do those things, but they were a little more of the itchy foot sort (of course, not that Laurel was an outstanding example of a coyote or anything). Through the mess of trees and spiders, one of the first things that caught his attention were painted skulls on stakes at the border.
Charming.
Worth studying for now, and then he'd bother to get attention.
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 A strange coyote showing up at the borders of Inferni wasn't too unusual, but it was enough to capture his attention and get going to investigate. What was unusual, though, was when the coyote was already happily placed elsewhere and not looking to join Inferni. Anselm knew the scent from when he'd gone to Esper Hollow--it was the dominant male. He also knew the name from Nikita (these things just stuck for him)--Laurel.
As he approached he kept his posture largely neutral, although his tail was elevated and his ears were pressed forward. Allegedly good relations or not, this was a ritual bred into him that he would not soon abandon. Just as he'd shown the proper deference to Nikita on the borders of Esper Hollow, he expected the same here.
"Laurel, correct? Anselm," he offered immediately; perhaps Nikita had mentioned him, perhaps not. "Are you here for business or just visiting?" He was ready to go along with either, and maybe a bit of both. |
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Turning a slender ear at the sound of someone approaching, Laurel was surprised to hear his name fall from lips that belonged to someone who he didn't even know. The surprise was clearly evident on his face as he turned his attention from the decorated skulls to the red-eyed wolf, but was soon replaced for vague curiosity as Anselm continued to speak. “Uh, just visitin’,” he trailed off, turning to face him better. “First time someone's known my name when I don't recall us meeting anywhere… you've probably met someone else from the Hollow, right?” Unless he was a voodoo specialist of mind-reading, at least point Laurel would have been thinking of anything to make him regret he could read minds and scare the crap out of folks.
“This is Inferni, right? Some obnoxious chick told me coyotes belong here and acted like I was breaking rules by sitting on the grass and all, so I had to come and check it out later. Nice skulls,” and well, he obviously wasn't there to join, which for the most part Anselm probably understood since he left it out of his questions.
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He shook his head in the affirmative. "I met Nikita about a fortnight ago," he explained. Had it been that long already? A lot had happened in two weeks. Still, he remembered the experience fondly; Esper Hollow proved be quite alright in his book. From what he and Gabriel had discussed so far, he figured that his cousin's sentiments echoed his own.
"Yeah; that's us. I wouldn't be surprised if you faced quite a bit of that for awhile, at least until those damned wolves take their heads out of their asses for long enough to figure out you've got no affiliation with us whatsoever." He grunted a bit. He had to wonder if they would ever figure it out--as it were, they assumed all neutral coyotes were bad like Inferni and they'd been doing that for years. Would a revolutionary new pack finally open the doors for progress? Even if it did, Inferni would probably be marked as criminal until the end of time. So it went. |
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He laughed as Anselm more or less described how he felt about the situation. Almost anyone he had met had regarded Esper Hollow more as a pack than it really was and for that reason, automatically assumed that just because it was led by coyotes that they had to be connected to Inferni. Despite the fact that they had mostly wolves sitting around the same camp fire singing songs and getting drunk. “I don't think it's really going to matter whether or not they pull their heads out of their ass or the sand, some of them just don't grasp things,” and then again, some coyotes didn't grasp what they were doing either. The road went both roads, as much as Laurel wished it wouldn't.
“We're not even much of a pack, more of a gypsy band. They're liable to come wage war on us one of these days and find out we moved on to somewhere else.” A wiry grin couldn't help but stick on his face then, only picturing the faces of those who thought it was better to smudge coyotes into the ground and leave them there. Let them be apart of the earth instead of the same family tree, but apples didn't fall that far anyway and once they were on the ground, they started rotting. “But I guess they were a little bit around about Inferni too, telling me it was all coyote.” Anselm didn't look like a coyote to Laurel, mostly like a wolf, even if there was some little feature about him a little different from the usual cookie cutters.
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Hypocrisy ran rampant here, and he knew he'd made a couple of "bad choices" (like not bothering to get the full story first). Over time, mostly after talking to his cousin, he'd come to learn more about the origin of the conflict--Asphyxia had attacked a Dahlian first. Still, he was convinced that Inferni was in the right--Haku had already gotten revenge by going after Asphyxia, and those who he had killed later were completely uninvolved in her attack. He hadn't meant to kill an innocent wolf himself--he had honestly believed it to be the murderer. Haku had knowingly gone after innocents, thus he was the messed up one that needed to be punished. Those that chose to back him were guilty by extension. Was it all just a bunch of rationalisation? Maybe; but it helped him sleep at night.
The talk of a gypsy band intrigued him--it was something unobtainable to him (or so he'd brainwashed himself into thinking). In many ways, he felt stuck in his current position, although ultimately, the decision was a very firm and conscious one. This was where he belonged. Still, it was nice to dream. "Eh, I don't know. There are a number of hybrids here; it makes me wonder how much of it is a race issue versus a state of mind issue, for our part." He shrugged a little; for the outsiders it still seemed to be a race issue. Perhaps that was why the coyotes and hybrids of Inferni all felt forced into that state of mind?? |
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*punts this fail post into a portal*
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“I think it's purely a state of mind, but who knows. People have their reasons,” or so he supposed. Laurel didn't give two shits one way or another the way the wind blew. If people wanted to hate each other, there wasn't a whole lot he could do to stop it, so he simply stated out of it. Life went on anyway and he had managed to stay alive and mostly unscathed his entire life with that mindset. “They get it in their heads that one apple spoils the bunch, and then the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and then their kids are told the same thing all of their lives. Cycle keeps going.” And so it had for hundreds of years for all he knew.
But anyway, the whole thing didn't surprise him. Hybrids were the ones caught in between, especially if they just happened to be split fifty-fifty on the whole thing, he reckoned that they were caught right in the cross-hairs of fire from both sides. It wasn't like they could choose their heritage, they couldn't reverse what their blood was made of, and it was just plain common sense that they couldn't change who their parents were. “Hell, most of our band is made up with wolves, but I've been in ones that were spilt pretty evenly on whatever. Coyote, wolf, hybrid, we're all forks out of the same tree in my book.” He'd met coyotes and wolves that were pretty nasty to their own kind and maybe a hybrid or two that thought they were the greatest things on earth, having the best of both worlds.
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He could understand what Laurel was saying, but he could also see why it couldn't be avoided. One apple might not be enough to spoil the whole lot of them, but when you got a bad one every other time you picked one out it was harder to be forgiving. In his experience, at least, he was met with hostility a good portion of the time. It wasn't like it could be dismissed as an outlier or easily ignored. Most of it wasn't an unwillingness to change on his part, either; even in 'Souls, where things were slightly more forgiving, he'd managed to get along with a number of wolves that hadn't attacked him outright. Umbra, Bleach, Poe, Naniko.. Indeed, a number of his encounters here had been pleasant enough. Unfortunately, wolves like Iskata and Deuce still stuck out in his mind as nasty wenches--and then there was practically all of Dahlia de Mai. As for the kids, it was unfortunate that they perpetuated the feud, but once more little could be done to change things. He'd been pestered religiously because of his mother's mixed blood as a child, and he knew that the Inferni youth were targeted, too (Talitha was a prime example, as well as the poor kid Haku destroyed).
"Where I grew up wasn't a very nice place. There wasn't even much fresh water, much less prey. Fights were a daily event, and coyotes and hybrids got the worst of it. But here, there are plenty of rivers and lakes, and there is a prey population great enough to sustain large numbers. If nothing else, there is always the sea--inland we didn't have that for fishing and whatnot. I suppose I don't understand what the big deal is--I see no need to go intruding on others' spaces, and if everybody else did the same there's really nothing stopping everyone from ignoring everyone else entirely." There; he had said it. This was something that gnawed at the back of his mind constantly, simply because it defied logic. Yet strangely, nobody seemed to grasp the concept except for him. It was really quite agitating when he got to thinking about it. |
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_____Yeah, it was really nice to at least see eye to eye with someone for a change. He didn't see what the big deal was, but he also supposed it was something that traced back with them as well. Before they had been blessed (or cursed?) with a higher intelligence, it was always about the little things. Food, water, shelter, territory. Simple things, but even now they still held onto those things because they were important. They were free to establish themselves and form their own little governments because they all lived in a state of constant anarchy. They self-governed themselves and if influential enough, they governed others, they ruled over them.
_____“I don't see what the big deal is either, but I mostly keep myself. As long as no one comes around causing trouble then there won't be any trouble.” But of course, because of his lack of sedentary living, things like food and water and territory didn't hold as much worth. He'd sooner move on than get caught up in anything that could have ended his life (or others who had [in]directly followed him). “There's enough space between the packs that I've been around and where we've set up camp, so I imagine we'll avoid being in someone's backyard.” Of course, that was provided that they didn't stay there forever. He hadn't decided just what it was that he was doing and then again, wasn't really much of a leader either.
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Trouble always had a way of finding Anselm, even if he changed his name, packed his bags, and went somewhere entirely new. For a few months he had found a delightful retreat in the Waste where only the occasional traveller passed through and he was mostly left to his peace. That all changed with the fire, though, for once the weary victims had regained their strength they'd gone straight for Inferni's throat. Originally there might not have been much to keep him from moving on again, trying to find some similarly abandoned territory, but by now he held a fierce loyalty to Gabriel--and Inferni by extension. He belonged here, and if that meant riding through the punches tossed their way, that was simply how things had to be.
Laurel, by contrast, seemed to be free of such anchoring restraints. It seemed odd to him that a whole crew might ship off whenever they pleased; wasn't that something that loners did? It was sort of awe inspiring to him, merely because it was so out of reach. "I take it things are going relatively smoothly for you, then?" he asked, hoping the answer was yes. Laurel had already mentioned "some obnoxious chick," and Nikita had implied some friction as well. Hopefully it had cleared up by now; of course, he had no way of knowing that a much tinier, though equally lethal foe was plaguing some members of the Hollow. The wolves and coyotes could feud all that they wanted, but viruses didn't discriminate.
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_____“Yeah, pretty much,” he said with a shrug. There hadn't been any other incidents with folks inside or outside where they had set up shop and most of the folks that were coming around were either there to join or figure out what in the hell Esper Hollow was all about. He was even sure that the fact they housed anything that came along was a deterrent for some. But like in the sense that sickness didn't discriminate, Laurel didn't either. He didn't pry into the past very often, even when he knew there were some interesting things there. It wasn't his place to know those things, because he didn't openly share his with just anyone either.
_____“We do have about three folks who turned up recently that are pretty sick though. There hasn't been some cold or disease running around, has there?” But since they had gotten there, it seemed like everything was taking that downhill turn like he had heard about a few times in his life. It was that sickness that was wanting to act like a deterrent to him; he wanted to get as far away from it as possible most of the time, but it was also his job to stick by the moral code he had set up. It would have been too easy to pack up and leave them to die, but who would really want that on their conscience? They weren't bad people, either, at least not that he knew of.
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Anselm's ears pricked up at the mention of an illness. That was odd--it was still summer, wasn't it a little early yet for colds? Then again, Laurel had asked about a disease which implied a more serious condition. "Not that I'm aware of," he said with a frown. "What are the symptoms?" he asked, rather curious as to what to look out for. The last thing that he wanted was to get sick--he just literally didn't have the time for that. Besides, if it was contagious, who knew what would stop the whole damn valley from getting it.
"Oh, and how long have they had it?" he wondered further. Was it something that struck suddenly or something more elusive and sinister--something that struck so long after exposure that you no longer knew who had given it to you. Either way, how quickly had the signs gone from barely noticeable to a full blown problem? So many more questions flitted through his mind, and it was all that he could do to keep from spilling them out all at once. Anselm had always been very curious, especially about things that might come to affect him personally.
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*also gropes her avatar.* <_<;
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_____Well, that was just great. If nothing had been going around, they had probably just earn themselves a seat on the “do not visit under any circumstances” list. Especially given how grave some of those symptoms were, he already didn't like the sinking pit that had come to settle at the bottom of his stomach. “I guess they've had it a little over a week now, maybe longer,” he said with a shrug, not really sure if it was something that had been effecting those after being around for a while or something that moved quickly and spread like a wildfire to dry brush. Maybe it was a good thing that he was avoiding that shack.
_____“It's seemed to affect them all differently too, but the major things that have been apparently with all three of them are hallucinations and generally acting like they have a cold. One of them has had seizures, the other is pretty much comatose, but the last one is pretty mobile and hostile.” There was a pause, and then he sought to add quickly: “But we've got him tied up and locked up so he doesn't hurt anyone or himself. The hallucinations with him are just that bad. No one else seems to be sick though.” And God, he had kept an eye out. He had been watching how they all acted and moved, how they spoke and whether or not they even seemed sick.
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Anselm did not like the sound of what he was hearing and it shown by the frown on his face. Hallucinations, seizures, comas--it sounded like whatever this was affected them neurologically. That put the disease on a whole new level that made simple respiratory problems seem much more trivial. Being immobilised was no trip to the beach, but the idea of needing to restrain those who were not disabled was slightly horrifying. His gaze dropped to the ground for a few moments as he digested the situation fully; Laurel had painted a pretty good picture already. This was very serious and he knew not to take it lightly. Immediately after this meeting was over he would go to see Gabriel. Heck; maybe even everybody ought to be aware of it.
His ears fell back as he peered back up to Laurel: I'm sorry. He really didn't know what to say, though--other than that he was glad he didn't have to deal with it--so he kept his mouth shut. Even though the kindly gypsies would nurse the ill back to health or until their grave, he wasn't sure that Inferni would care to risk it. If anyone a little off showed up while he was around they'd probably be kicked to the doorstep and told to go die in peace. "It sounds like things turned sour pretty quickly, then," he finally said. A week was not very long. "I don't know what that is but I'm not sure that it sounds like something that would clear up on its own. Do you have medics that know anything about its treatment or cure?" he wondered.
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_____There was a little doubt in his mind that what they were dealing with was certainly a grave thing. Whatever it was or wasn't, it was something that he had never seen before. Though on one side of the card, he thought it was kind of interesting that after all of this time they were facing things that hadn't cropped up before (as far as he knew); humans that were still alive and disease that did a quick job of pulling the rug out from under their feet and rolling them up in it just as fast. It was right to be concerned, it was right to want to warn anyone and everyone, and it was right to even be afraid of it. He was, though he hadn't quite labelled his avoidance as that.
_____“No, we don't,” which at the moment, was an unfortunate thing. “At least, we don't that I know about. Right now we've just been keeping an eye on them and making sure they have water or food when they need it.” Asanotohl had expressed some knowledge about healing, but that had only been out of fixing broken bones. What he needed was someone who understood more than just how to make a splint. “But I've been keeping my eye open for someone who might know something about it. You don't know anyone in Inferni who could look at it, do you?”
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(!@#$%)As far as he knew, nobody in Inferni had extensive healing knowledge--he assumed Gabriel knew a thing or two about setting bones and basic first aid (as he did), but that was about it. Hybrid and Samael struck him as fellows more bent on destruction and taking lives rather than healing and saving them. He knew that a couple joiners had shown up speaking of their experience as medics, but they had all vanished within less than a month. He didn't know about Corona or anybody else that might know a thing or two, either. I'm sorry, but I do not... he trailed off, although he was still thinking. An idea came to him.
(!@#$%)This may be a shot in the dark, but it's better than nothing, I guess. There's a pack to the north east on the mountain called Shadowed Sun. Their pack philosophy revolves around learning. Presumably at least somebody there knows medicine? he thought aloud. Then again, he wasn't sure if any of the wolves would be willing to trek halfway across the land just to help some coyote's sick friends... but again, it was worth a shot. He shrugged a little, somewhat frustrated that he couldn't do more about this. Maybe it'd be worth his time to study medicine more extensively--then Inferni would have a capable medic on hand at all times. But did he have time for that? It seemed like such a daunting task. Either way, good luck. If I hear anything I'll let you know... and I'll probably try to see how you all are faring over time, he said.
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_____A frown turned up on his face, though inwardly Laurel thought he would try and venture towards Shadowed Sun at some point. Not today though, seeing just how much of an impromptu wandering away he had pulled, going any further meant that it would take just as much time to go back. And who knew how things would be then, given how scattered about they all were. He really shouldn't have been wandering as much as he had. Absently, he nodded with Anselm's words all the same, knowing that they'd need that luck if they intended to get anything done or anyone better.
_____“Well, hopefully the next time I see you, I'll have better news to tell you. It might just turn out to be some cold that just screws up these three worse than it would you and I,” and honestly that's what he hoped it would be, but what were the odds? He didn't even want to bet with himself what they were, which definitely made it a serious matter. “I should be getting back though. It's nice to finally meet you though.” At that point, he offered his hand out for a handshake, as though to seal that friendly union between leaders.
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(!@#$%)He nodded in agreement--there wasn't enough good news these days. Your land's getting overrun with wolves. Your clan's at war. People you might have kinda liked are on the other side. Your niece-thing got kidnapped. Your joiners get to disappearing as quickly as they come. There's some freak disease running around. Whoopee. What was next?
(!@#$%)Anselm sighed inwardly as he reached out to accept the handshake. At the very least, Esper Hollow seemed to be led by very decent folks. He sort of doubted Inferni would ever have a problem with them. Gabriel had seemed satisfied enough after Anselm's report on Nikita and now he had even more positives to add regarding the other leader--plus the bad news about the illness.
(!@#$%)Take care, he said softly as Laurel walked away. The caramel wolf watched for a few more moments before turning around himself. This news was semi-urgent, he decided, and he wanted to see Gabriel at once. Maybe his cousin would know more apothecaries or have some insight himself. It was worth a shot.
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