[html]
SOMEWHERE THERE'S A CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK
BIGGER THAN THE SHADOW OF DEATH IN THIS TOWN
She knelt on the soft dirt, barely noticing as the dampness seeped through the fabric of her dress. Slender fingers brushed away the dirt as she peered through the protruding roots. The trees had taken over here – claiming anything in their paths and hiding head stones beneath them. Her crimson gaze fell over the crumbled remains of one such marker, and she sighed when the foreign symbols were something she couldn’t decipher.
She slowly drifted towards the iron gate, staring up at the letters that spelled out Queen of Piety Cemetery. To her, it looked like nothing more than an intricate pattern and she admired it in a silence, before turning to lay her eyes across the expanse of the grave site. In the evening light she could barely make out a black figure against the monochromatic head stones. She had a feeling that her presence had been detected long before she had even realized she wasn’t entirely alone with the ghosts of the past.
[/html]
[html] http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v469/ ... F-head.png); background-position:top; background-repeat:no-repeat;">
wc325
"You're not a ghost," came a rather blunt voice from immediately behind her, its owner apparently unafraid and hardly intimidated by the gravesite just steps away. No, Jefferson had the slightest idea who she was, but as long as she was not there to haunt him for the rest of his days, he much didn't care. The male stepped up beside her and pointed his one eye up at the closed gate, frowning a moment in thought. As he carried on with his own business--that is, getting the gate open with only one hand--she was ignored and disregarded for being there herself, as the hybrid hadn't expected seeing another soul at the grim old cemetery out in what seemed the middle of nowhere. Regardless, he wasn't afraid of no ghosts, and he'd walked all the way there--might as well get through the gate and get it done.
He captured an iron rail of the gate in his fist and pulled at it, scowling all the while and offering a few frustrated grunts in an effort to open it. "Damn," he muttered to himself in defeat as he scratched at his head and once again regretted having lost the use of his other arm, now held rather uncomfortably in a sling across his chest. He straightened the open shirt collar at his neck and pulled at the gate again, grimacing and mumbling a great line of curses as he fought with the gate--though at one point, managing to budge it somewhat. Was it locked somewhere? Green eye flashed from place to place, trying to find solutions. The use of only one arm and the lack of muscle tone in his still emaciated body was more than enough of an obstacle to overcome. After a long time of pondering to himself, he glanced over his shoulder at her and paused, brows furrowing. "You know how this thing works, lass?"
| [/html]
[html]
SOMEWHERE THERE'S A CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK
BIGGER THAN THE SHADOW OF DEATH IN THIS TOWN
She suddenly turned, whirling to her side to lay eyes on this stranger. He looked to be in rough shape, but he was obviously not letting that fact hinder him in any way. He eagerly moved up towards the gate, while Ryan stood where she was and watched in silence. She could hear him mumbling and it made her smile as he worked. When he finally admitted defeat and turned towards her, Ryan shook her head. "I don’t know. You’re guess is as good as mine." Either way, she moved towards him, her dress looking almost ghostly fluttering against her frame. She raised her fingers, grasping the iron gate, as her gaze searched for a solution. "Maybe someone doesn’t want us inside," she offered, adding a half laugh as she let her hand fall away from the fence. She caught sight of a padlock, unclasped but wrapped with chains. She pointed with a slender finger. "That’s the key." If they undid the chains, most likely the gate would open enough for them to gain entrance.
[/html]
[html]
wc315
escape is never the safest path
For a brief moment, Jefferson found the woman charming in a way, having picked up a chuckle or two from her direction while he fought and cursed over the gate's stubborn gates. When it came to admitting defeat for something, Jefferson was the last to do so--he was stubborn at heart, already constantly perplexed on his harmless he looked with his couple handicaps. The last thing a beast like he needed was to lose a fight with an iron gate to only forward how weak he really was. That was the sort of exposure that the hybrid never wanted seen. The scowl remained on his face as she stepped daintily and pointed out the padlock, yet the male was not at all surprised of its presence. Unusual, as the male's knack for noticing details was sharp.
"Huh," he mumbled sarcastically, reaching his good claw over to seize the padlock in a fist. He jiggled it around briefly and studied it before there was a brief pause and a very sudden, loud jerk of his hand that ripped the padlock apart seemingly without effort. His gritted his teeth and tossed it aside, ignoring the resulting ache in his wrist from the motion. Briefly, the hybrid regained his sense of dignity in the simple act, but thought nothing of it as he unwound the chains from the gate. If his assumptions had been correct the first time, the chains would have been rusty enough to break on their own, just as the padlock had been. Unfortunately, the chains still seemed... new. He pulled one of the gate doors open, finally, and shallowly stepped within. "Don't know what a lass like you wants from an old boneyard, but don't expect me to save you from any ghouls. I got too many of my own to be worrying about." There was a brief snicker, though it was mildly suppressed.
|
[/html]
[html]
SOMEWHERE THERE'S A CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK
BIGGER THAN THE SHADOW OF DEATH IN THIS TOWN
She watched as he seemingly pulled away the padlock with ease, even though he wasn’t entirely sound. She silently studied his battered body, wondering what kinds of things the hybrid had been subjected through throughout his lifetime. She would never ask, but still the curiosity remained. As he pulled the chains away from the iron and pushed the gate open, she couldn’t help but laugh at his words. "What makes you think I’ll need saving?" She asked, giving him a smirk as she easily slipped inside the cemetery. The light of the day was diminishing, and harsh shadows were thrown across the scenery. One couldn’t deny that it was eerie here.
"It’s Ryan," she added, walking past him and strolling towards a headstone. She crouched down, brushing her fingers against the cold stone and wiping away the grime that had collected. She traced the lettering, unable to read the name that was inscribed on it. "My name, I mean."
[/html]
[html]
escape is never the safest path
...Graveyards. He didn't hate them, but he wasn't exactly jumping for joy to have found one. He was on a quest and, luckily enough, had built enough of an immunity against fear over the past couple years that even if he had been afraid deep down, the hybrid would have numbed out the feeling and moved on regardless. However, Jefferson was not only possibly the least superstitious creature that one could find, but his belief in ghosts also ran slim. He had little use for ponderings about ghosts and demons; an afterlife was a concept he never bothered to consider.
"Never heard the concept of a 'damsel in distress'? I never expected a lass like yourself to be wandering a boneyard by yourself." He chuckled lightly as he stepped from grave to grave, pausing briefly before each to inspect the names. At a point, he leaned down and began to dust and remove stray particles from the gravestone. "I'm Jefferson. What're you doing here?"
|
[/html]
[html]
SOMEWHERE THERE'S A CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK
BIGGER THAN THE SHADOW OF DEATH IN THIS TOWN
She wondered silently if her mother was watching over her now as she explored this cemetery. Her mother hadn’t been buried in a plot like this, because she had never known of such thing. After exploring, however, Ryan had come across someone to explain the concept behind it. She found it slightly eerie that the humans buried their dead under the ground in a collective place. She had thought about ghosts and ghouls too, but didn’t know what to think. If anyone were to have an afterlife or come back from the dead, she would hope it to be her mother. She just wanted to see her face once more and tell her she had been alright after her death.
"I don’t know," she responded. "Same thing as you, I guess?" But then, she didn’t really know his purpose to being here either. "I just thought I’d explore, is all. I was curious to see what kind of things the humans would have kept behind those iron bars." She rose, standing fully upright, and watched as he read over headstones. She wondered if he could understand what they said.
[/html]
[html]
wc320
escape is never the safest path
Was he exploring? He hadn't quite considered it that, to be honest. He'd had set intentions when the graveyard fell into sight: learn what he could in connection to his own past, even if it was something unrelated to him. Perhaps more than humans were buried here, he had decided. The human reign had been absent from their soil a long time. Who was to say that normal beings like himself or Ryan hadn't decided to bury their dead in the graveyard? ...Although, now that he was thinking about it, that was almost inappropriate. Why would one of his kin ever want to be laid to rest in a boneyard of miserable, worthless humans? He sneered at his own ignorance. Perhaps he didn't need to look through these graves at all... after all, he didn't know what he was looking for in the first place. Eventually, he already knew, he would end up with no results, no aid whatsoever, and yet his eye continued to glance over the gravestones like some sort of detective.
"Not really 'exploring'..." He brushed the dust from another gravestone before releasing a long, weary sigh. It was hopeless, and yet since he didn't plan on trucking it back to such a place again, he had no choice but to go through the rest of the small cemetery as well. "Bones, bones, more bones," he said quietly, pushing himself back up onto his feet and stretching his back casually. He cast a quiet, curious glance on her when she fell silent, and recognized the looks she gave the headstones as she looked them over. An ear twitched. "...They're not that hard to read, if you know how." It was a subtle offering, letting her know that he could be of help, but naturally, Jefferson wasn't the type to exactly put himself out there that easily... so his offerings were always in subtext. "What are you looking for?"
|
[/html]
[html]
SOMEWHERE THERE'S A CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK
BIGGER THAN THE SHADOW OF DEATH IN THIS TOWN
"But the problem is I don’t know how," she told him, looking at the headstones as if hieroglyphics were inscribed on them instead of the language that many of the luperci around here could seem to understand. She wished she had the skill to read them, but realistically she didn’t really care about taking the time to learn it. There seemed to be other things in life that were of more importance to the newest addition to Inferni.
She moved forward, crunching in the leaves that had fallen from the eerie trees to litter the gravesite. "Nothing in particular," she replied, brushing the bangs away from her venetian red gaze. The evening light had been fading meanwhile and the stars were becoming visible in the navy colored sky. They twinkled above, grinning down at them as they wandered this place of demise. She wondered if there were really such things as spirits. "Do you believe in ghosts?" She asked him in a whisper, as if the question would somehow offend lurking phantoms.
[/html]
[html]
wc298
escape is never the safest path
"It's not that hard to learn if you try," he said idly, eye focused on a headstone as he dusted it off. Something looked familiar about the name for a moment, but it passed. It was just another dead human, wasn't it? Why did he care? Why did he possess such sympathy for the dead? Pushing himself to his feet, Jefferson moved the fabric of the sling over his arm to a more comfortable position and glanced back at her. "I taught myself in my time as a loner. Didn't have anything better to do." More specifically, his reading capability was a bit low, and could only read small pieces of words or took a long amount of time to piece letters together. He had read the name 'Jefferson' before adopting it when he woke up without any memories, so it seemed this Maluki had possessed at least some intelligence.
As for ghosts, he was skeptical. He made a face and looked up at the evening sky, but offered a slight shrug of the shoulders. "Nothing against them if they exist. I don't have any ghosts tailing me around as far as I know. They'd be pretty damn disappointed if they were." He chuckled lightly to himself, gaze straying as he overlooked the small cemetery and shook his head a little. "I don't know much about the dead. I've killed plenty in my time... so far, none of them have been out to get me unless they sent the bear." He didn't bother to clarify that, now that he was thinking aloud and had disregarded her presence. "There's plenty reason for a lot of the dead to haunt though. I could care less if they were running around or not." His eye turned back to her. "And you, lass?"
|
[/html]
[html]
SOMEWHERE THERE'S A CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK
BIGGER THAN THE SHADOW OF DEATH IN THIS TOWN
She listened to him, offering no response, but silently wondering just how much work it would take for someone to actually learn how to read those strange symbols. She was sure she could probably do it if she really put her mind to it, but she couldn’t be bothered. At least, not at the moment. She was still falling into step with what it meant to be an Inferni member and then there was DaVinci. Not to mention Anselm, whom she hadn’t seen around much lately.
"Ohh, I don’t know," she replied, picking up one of the fallen leaves and twirling it in between her fingers by its dusty colored stem. The thin golden leaf fluttered in circles, creating a soft whirl of sound like paper would. "I haven’t seen one, so I wouldn’t know. But I guess I wouldn’t object if they did exist." She sat down on top of one of the headstones, unaware that the humans would have seen this as disrespectful to the dead. It was harder to make out any details from her counterpart, as the sun had successfully faded behind the trees and cast the world in a strange array of navy shadows. It would have been smart to start heading back towards Inferni.
[/html]
[html]
wc242
escape is never the safest path
Was there really any reason to be afraid of spirits, anyway? He'd considered it once, twice, a few times... they had no physical body and he wasn't superstitious enough to believe in possessions of any sort whatsoever... he supposed the only harm a ghost could do would be to frighten a youngster, but no self-respecting adult like he could be spooked by a meandering specter. In fact, his father--whom he believed to be dead, for some reason--could have showed up at any given time and received no real fear as a payment. More specifically, Jefferson would question a ghost of his father more about the afterlife than his own past, for the sake of curiosity. The last time this hybrid had his heart pounding out of fear was when he had nearly lost his leg to the mother bear and was left for dead... and had truly believed he would die. Was he afraid of death, then? ...He couldn't say.
"Death and dying is something to think about," he said idly, eye wandering again over the cemetery. How desolate it looked... how sad. "The dead had their lives. They have no reason to come back and spook the living. Here..." He leaned down onto one knee, tracing his finger over the letters of a headstone, reading as he did so. "M... A... T... T... H... E... W. 'Matthew'. Just figure out the letters and the sound they make, and you have a word."
|
[/html]
[html]
SOMEWHERE THERE'S A CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK
BIGGER THAN THE SHADOW OF DEATH IN THIS TOWN
She smiled at him, watching as his dark form moved in the shadows of the dying day and knelt before the headstone. She leaned forwards, hands grasping the stone on either side of her thighs, and watched as his fingers outlined the engraved letters. She found it humorous that he would still try and help her with the whole reading thing, as if he thought that she would really pick it up. It had to be harder than he made it sound, didn’t it? It couldn’t really be that easy. She got up from the grave marker, wandering over to stand behind Jefferson, peering at the letters he had just read. Maybe he was right. Maybe the reading thing wasn’t so bad after all. "Where do you live, Jefferson," she abruptly asked, thinking maybe she could convince him into playing escort.
[/html]
[html]
| http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g210/ ... parrow.png);background-position:bottom;background-repeat:no-repeat;">
He looked up over his shoulder at her, a comfortable though roguish smile lightening his face just slightly. It was a rare look for him, or so he thought, though social interactions as of late had kept him in a more pleasurable mood than usual. Jefferson recognized skepticism in her eyes and smiling face, and he had to stifle the slight chuckle that rose from his throat. He'd had that look once--he knew he'd be eaten alive after his fighting abilities had been seemingly ousted at the ruining of one of his legs, and yet the beast had recovered. His leg had never fulled healed and it did give him trouble, but out of effort and practice, the hybrid had managed to master altercations on three legs, and thus his scarred and demeaning appearance were a bit unintimidating despite the knowledge and training he'd given himself. "Phoenix Valley," he said simply, somehow unafraid to admit that nowadays. He climbed to his feet and began to dust himself off. "Pretty long ways away, but the walks are good on two feet. Lot of questions to answer right now, so there's a bit of walking to do." His eye focused again on her. "And you?"
| [/html]
[html]
SOMEWHERE THERE'S A CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK
BIGGER THAN THE SHADOW OF DEATH IN THIS TOWN
She considered his words, "Lot of questions to answer right now, so there's a bit of walking to do," and only offered a nod in response. She couldn’t say that she had heard of Phoenix Valley before, but she supposed that didn’t quite surprise her. She still had some exploring to do out in the west, and hadn’t come to realize how many wolf packs there actually were. "Oh, I’m living with my dad in Inferni," she informed him, aware that sometimes people grew a little skeptical at the mention of the coyote clan. Somehow, she didn’t expect that from Jefferson. "Will I see you around again?" She asked, supposing that Phoenix Valley wasn’t anywhere near where Inferni was situated (otherwise she would have heard about it, right?). He seemed like a decent guy – she hoped this wouldn’t be there last meeting. "I suppose I should be heading back," she added, as if to clarify her intentions.
[/html]
[html]
| http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g210/ ... parrow.png);background-position:bottom;background-repeat:no-repeat;"> I'd say... done? :3
--
She was a curious type, he observed; the type that had maintained that sort of innocence possessed during childhood, but had grown and matured in it. Ryan seemed the respectable kind nonetheless--not quite someone he'd open up to, no, but it was rather hard to find that someone anyway. She lived with her dad. Funny, how relations worked out. He wondered if he'd ever meet his own father at all. Inferni, though... He'd heard some stories, but her presence and kindhearted attitude seemed to deny them. He was okay with that. "Not on Inferni lands," he chuckled. Jefferson hadn't the slightest clue where they were, and it was rather obvious he had no plans of trespassing onto coyote lands. No, he'd had enough of blood conflicts for a lifetime when he'd run into the coyote-hating Deuce the first time around. The last thing he needed was an entire pack hating him for the opposite, although he'd heard that some half-breeds had made their home there. "Stop by Phoenix Valley whenever you find it," he smiled, nodding as she began to turn away. He had duties to attend to himself... although mindless conversation ran slim nowadays, and he almost regretted their departure. "Watch out for the Shaman when you do. She's not too fond of our coy blood." A snicker before he stepped out the gates and started away, waving his good hand over his shoulder. "'Til next time."
| [/html]
|
