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Maybe it was that she just enjoyed it. When she'd been younger Ember had been timid--shy, even. But now that she had grown up, had gone from pack to pack to pack, she'd grown up a lot. There were times when she felt herself relapsing into her old personality, but now that she had fought Hybrid again [not to say that she did well, quite the opposite] she felt more satisfied. She had wanted to fight him, to get in a few hits. Both him and Firefly had made her feel so weak...she had made her peace with Firefly, and now Hybrid wasn't in her head as much.
Ember was still in recovery, and it probably wasn't best for her to travel, but she hadn't been able to see the birth of her siblings because she hadn't healed much by the time they decided to come into the world. So now she would see them and marvel at them...and compliment the little babies and her mother. She did feel guilty for having missed it. She'd only heard about it through her older sibling Naniko...or she wouldn't have even known to begin with that they had arrived.
The dark, green eyed wolf was shifted. She had a broken collarbone and some fractures in one hand, but other than that it was just bruises and sprains. She could deal with bruises and sprains. Ember walked slowly, putting one foot in front of the other, bypassing the border completely and heading into the heart of the lands.
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"Woah, woah." He stood behind her, brow raised and a skeptical look on his face. "You reek of some different lands from here." The hybrid had found some interesting patterns of stealth in his shifted form, in that the limping didn't completely give him away when his bad leg was now just a bad arm when he stood on two feet. His scars and arm in the sling had a slight intimidation to them, yes, but he bore no bleeding wounds nor terrible bruises at that point in time. This stranger, however, was not only straying onto Phoenix Valley lands where she obviously did not hail from, but she was pretty beaten up and bruised from what he had observed. No, he hadn't stalked her. Actually, he'd just been going by.
The hybrid took a few steps closer, eye watching her with a glint of indifference and apathy. It was his duty to question her, yes, and considering he'd stumbled onto Phoenix Valley lands himself without reason and bearing some serious pain and emaciation, there was compassion there somewhere. If she needed help, then it could be found. Her scent was familiar, though, but he paid little mind to it. "These are packlands, here. You, uh... You look like you've had better days." His eye looked her over and he frowned. Well, at least she wasn't collapsing on top of herself and getting a terrible welcome as he had.
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She hadn't shifted back down to her four-legged form for a while, and she was beginning to forget what it was like. Ember had heard that it wasn't really good to shift while you were injured; that it could mess up the way the bones were healing. But it was just something that she'd heard. Who knew if it was true. Either way, though, she kind of preferred her optime form nowadays. It was easier to fight this way, if she needed to.
"I've heard this one before. It doesn't end well." She didn't smell like Phoenix Valley, that much was true, but that didn't mean that she didn't belong there. Or that she wasn't welcomed. Her mother was probably busy with the pups, though...she couldn't keep all of her members aware of all of her relations. Maybe this wolf didn't even know Iskata, though. "Yeah. You too." He didn't look bad, though; in fact, she thought that his face an an odd sort of appeal to it. "You live here?" A stupid question. But she was here, and she didn't live here. Ember had never really had the best sense of smell...she couldn't tell just from his scent whether he resided inside Phoenix Valley or outside.
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What was it with stangers and waltzing onto claimed territory lands, anyway? DaVinci hadn't been the first he'd run into, and he knew this dark-furred creature wouldn't be the last. He didn't have anything against it, really, other than the sake of security and pack safety. He was the one in charge of emergencies in Phoenix Valley. He supposed he sort of had an obligation to ensure the pack was safe for the pups to be roaming--there had been a sudden influx of them, what with both leaders' pregnancy, and now that that miscreant Lucifer was wandering about drooling over the white-furred shaman, Jefferson scowled sarcastically to himself and could only guess what drama and black-furred loserbabies could result and could be crawling around in just a matter of time. One thing was for sure, Jefferson wouldn't be their babysitter. No, he just watched and made sure the pack was safe. Hell, the last thing they needed was a bear attack. His scars were perfect evidence of what came of bear attacks.
He scratched his nose idly and allowed his eyes to meander indifferently. "Fighting isn't on my schedule today," the brute replied rather simply, but shrugged when she continued. Hell, of course he looked shitty. He was four years old. If he looked as shiny and new as the white-furred yearling Pendzez, still romping around in his blissfully ignorant innocence and trampling on other lands like this creature was doing, well, Jefferson would be finding more important things to do than sit around in the ranks of a pack and wait for something to happen. He didn't mind it, though. Of course he didn't mind it. "I've had my share of claws and snaps. Not important." His eye affixed on her, now taking a few steps closer. "I'm one of the pack's guardians." A shrug. "I'm not one for sending bleeding folks away... We have a healer, if you so desire."
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She didn't really know what she was doing nowadays. All that she knew was that days kept passing by. Most of the time she kept around the neutral territories; only very rarely would she venture into a pack's lands during a time when most were up and about. She tended to hang around Crimson Dreams at night, when she knew she wouldn't run into any of Naniko's children. There was just something about pups that she didn't like. She wasn't sure what it was.
"Yeah. Sorry. I should tell you why I'm here. I guess I would be suspicious if I were in a pack and someone just came right in. But then..I never really got to know my packs well enough to know every member. So it was hard." He spoke about being a guardian; that was a good thing. It was a really good thing. If there was someone like him around, people might think before messing with family. "Good to see you're doing your job. I can't really protect mom and the new pups...I don't live here. So it's good that you can. You seem capable." Ember didn't like pups in general, but if they were in her family then she would tolerate them.
She shrugged when he asked about the healer. It was pretty considerate of him, really, but she didn't notice that part. "Nope. Don't need one. It doesn't hurt as much any more--I think it's getting better. I am kind of cold, though." Oh. She hadn't even told him her name yet--or anything about why she was there, really. Just mentioned how she should tell him why she was there. "I'm here to see my mom and my new brothers and sisters. She knows I'm coming."
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wc388
--
Hell, Jefferson wasn't much of a pupsitter, but he supposed he managed to do his job rather well. The brute hardly strayed from Phoenix Valley lands; his handicap made it difficult sometimes, but even when shifted and comfortable on two solid legs and claws, he preferred the business life and solidarity of the pack lands. Remaining there made it less likely that he would run into a conflict, or so he had always hoped. He could simply deal with his duties and go on with life; he missed the old days when he could explore, but after the bear attack, he realized that seeing the world with only one eye made it half as effective, and the world had suddenly lost all of its glimmer. It was glazed over, uninteresting, grayscale... the color had been sucked out of the milieu. Of course, he stayed in Phoenix Valley to avoid unnecessary reunions and trouble, but it was times like this that the purpose was somewhat defeated. He raised a brow and scratched at the back of his neck.
Of course, when she mentioned her mother, Jefferson immediately reacted with an overdrawn rolling of the eye and a rubbing of the brow. How did this always happen? He chuckled somewhat and shook his head. "Second time that's happened now, random folks wandering in looking for their mothers," he said, silently cursing that annoying fool DaVinci and his peculiar wit that Jefferson had grown to eventually befriend. "You're not another one of Iskata's, are you? There's a lot of her kids flopping around somehow." The only other liable female was Deuce, of course, and Jefferson sort of cringed at the idea of Deuce having children. Surely, they would all be soft-spoken coyote-haters like their mother. Of course, both Iskata and Deuce had been pregnant as of late... well, she could correct him if he was wrong, but he sure hoped he wasn't. "Jefferson," he nodded. "The ranch isn't far from here; you can wait there. I'll show you." Somehow, his reaction to this dark-furred female was unbelievably different from that of his first meeting with DaVinci, but the cold always numbed his easy-to-spark rage anyway. This girl seemed primarily harmless either way; he was not at all intimidated nor threatened. He didn't seem to mind a stranger's company, for once.
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Ember had spent the better part of her life healing from one injury or another, but she didn't have a disability like Jefferson. She knew that, eventually, all of her injuries would heal. Her hand would be the worst one, the hardest to get all the feeling back into [or so Naniko had said] but it would heal after some time as well. She didn't really mind the pain--out in the cold, everything felt the same. Some days she felt more like the loner that she was, keeping to herself and away from any packlands, but other days she wanted nothing but to spend hours and hours running through Crimson Dreams or days lazing about in the pasture with the cattle in Phoenix Valley.
She was satisfied with his answer and gave a nod. "Ember. My sister Firefly came?" She asked. She had seen her sibling only a short while before, and it made sense that she might come to see Iskata too. Ember hadn't caught up with Kansas in a long time, and wasn't sure where he was at, and she didn't know yet that Davinci had returned from his trip. "Yeah. Mom's got a lot of kids...some that ain't related by blood, too. The leader of the pack Crimson Dreams is one of hers that she adopted years back. I guess she did a good job with Naniko, seeing the way she turned out...with havin' her own pack and all. Wonder what went wrong with the rest of us" She was halfway joking, and looked to Jefferson to see his expression.
"What about you, though? You got any family around here, Jefferson?"
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-actually did think Deuce was Ember's mom, knows better now- WHOOPS!
Ember was a creative name, he found, but that opinion was quickly swallowed. There were far too many children of Iskata now, some of which he knew to be adopted or of differing fathers to only add to the confusing bunch of family he had to somehow manage to keep track of. It had to be taken into consideration that Jefferson had very little experience with family. In all reality, the most he'd found in family as of late were the faces of those he'd run into that shared some blood somewhere and that which Laruku and Iskata had told him. He wasn't Jefferson, he was Maluki, according to his mother (whomever she was), but times had changed since those days. He'd found, over the past few months of familial discoveries, that his bloodline was a rather broad one, and, if Ember was related to Iskata... well, she was related to him, as well. The brute decided that this concept was suddenly unimportant, and it was dismissed in his steady flow of thoughts.
"Who? Firefly?" He shook his head and shrugged. The name sounded familiar--maybe Iskata had mentioned it once--but it rang no bells. Just another cousin of his or some matter. He didn't really care. "No, DaVinci. Gray little ass showed up a few months ago and has been here since." It wasn't that he and DaVinci were a bad pair in company. It was more that their opposing personalities were quite comical against each other, and now Jefferson referred to the male negatively, though he was quite amused by the creature's antics. He made an effort to remember Naniko's name, as she was one of the adopted ones and didn't actually share his blood. Good. There were too many of them. When Ember looked at him though, her voice upbeat and jovial, he blinked a quietly perplexed green eye at her and scoffed lightly. "Running packs is overrated," he shrugged, rolling his shoulders. "Too much work. Hope I don't get stuck in that boat."
His posture sunk somewhat at the mentioning of family, almost discouraged by the topic. "Yeah, too much of it," he grumbled, rolling his eye when she wasn't looking. "Iskata's my aunt or something. My half-siblings run Dahlia de Mai. My mother's out there somewhere and my adoptive brother hates me. I don't remember any of them," he suddenly chuckled, overcome by a sudden attack of amusement. Why was it funny? Because he was stuck in the middle of it all, and hell if he'd ever wanted to be when he couldn't remember a thing.
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She had found that it was better not to think of family members as family sometimes. Ember had found that she often drew away from her family...so she had taken to keeping her distant cousins and adopted relatives as "friends" instead of family members. It made it easier. She didn't have to visit them or keep up with their lives...and they didn't form some weird blood bond with her that made them feel like they had to look after her.
"Distantly related, then. Cercelee is my cousin." She wasn't sure what to say about Davinci. She'd never really known him; he'd run off when she was a baby, and Firefly had followed him. Then their mother had left, to go and look for Firefly. So...the reason that she'd been without a mother for most of her puppyhood was him...was Davinci. And Ember wasn't really interested in keeping in contact with people who had messed up her life once in the past; she probably wouldn't talk to him if she did see him around. Whatever he looked like.
"I haven't run into him." She chose to say, shrugging. A few moments passed before she said something else, this time a question. "What do you do around here for fun? I haven't been this way in a while"
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Whoops, I had left extra stuff in my last post's OOC bit from another thread. Sorry about that. (It's gone now.)
He picked up on the lack of enthusiasm in her voice when it came to DaVinci--however, the one-eyed brute decided to leave the subject at rest when she moved on to another, although he managed to comment on what was aforementioned. "Cercelee is related to me somewhere," he muttered. "Haku is my younger half-brother. I haven't met his sister, Mew, but she's there too." He didn't know where she was in the rankings of her pack, but he'd forgotten about Cercelee. At least, if he ever needed to make peace with that pack and things didn't work out so wonderfully with his stepbrother, there was always the kindhearted Cercelee to speak with.
As for things for 'fun' to do, well... He rolled his eye and smirked at that one. "I'm not the one to ask," he replied, thinking how Lucifer and his idiotic love affair with Deuce, or Pendzez with his ridiculous packland trespassing could have answered it better than he. "I'm always working. All I do on my own is sleep," he mumbled quietly. It was the truth; his duties took more of his time than he had realized, now that the concept was presented to him. He worked alone, most of the time. The brute rarely saw Deuce, but that was probably because she was off picking daisies with that miscreant Lucifer somewhere. Iskata had people coming to see her all the time, but it was becoming less and less common that he himself took time to speak with her just for pleasure and not business. He'd seen plenty of DaVinci for a lifetime, but he wasn't complaining. But all in all, it wasn't like he was a child anymore. He didn't have the youth he had once had. "Not like much can be done on three legs," he said, brows suddenly furrowed and voice serious. The hybrid didn't like the subject. Now that he had to think about it, he'd never really "had fun". He could not think of a time where he had.
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To her, fighting and training was fun. She wasn't sure what other wolves liked to do, and was interested to learn more about it. She'd seen pups play, yes, but she'd never seen an adult run around and play. The only time she could remember acting like that was when she'd played with Lubomir...but that had been a while back, and she had only been half-grown herself.
She tried to think of something for them to do, frowning. "You'd be surprised. Maybe it's hard to have fun with only one eye"She retorted. "But I can still remember how to have fun. Sort of. So..." Ember reached forward, aiming to push at his shoulder. "YOU'RE IT." She took off running without a second glance, heading off through the trees parallel to the borderline.
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LOL. Jefferson: "FUN DOES NOT COMPUTE! ERROR! ERROR!"
He stared after her a long moment as she suddenly dashed away, eye widened and, inevitably, completely thrown off guard. Jefferson frowned sarcastically, shaking his head and calling after her. "But I don't..." He trailed off quickly, scowling and looking at the ground in an apparently paralyzing confusion and frustration. He'd never had fun. He'd seen kids playing tag like that before, but they were kids. Not to mention, on one occasion, he'd passed by a group of siblings playing tag, but he wasn't noticed. He wasn't noticed, despite that he was covered in blood, the liquid dripping from his fangs and splattered on his face and chest. They hadn't known yet that his mother had gotten in his way, and that she was laying in halves in her final resting place in some bushes. He hadn't done it on purpose. That madness that took over when he was attacked had done it all--he couldn't remember a thing, but he was at fault. It was a common procedure. Jefferson didn't deserve to have "fun".
He wanted to shout after her and tell her to come back, that she wasn't allowed in the pack territory alone, or that she would embarrass him in front of the rest of his pack, whom he was supposed to be leading. Instead, he found himself sauntering after her at first, at least until she reappeared in his line of vision. More surprising to himself than anyone else, he took off after her, catching up almost immediately--he had been built for speed, and on two legs, speedy he still was. He realized the freedom of running (though two legs could never replace four in that feeling) and he was grinning, he was laughing. He was reaching after her with only one arm, gave her shoulder a good--almost punishing for making him run like so--smack, and he stopped to catch his breath. He chuckled to himself. He panted. He was out of breath for the first time in what seemed like ages. For a few seconds, Jefferson had forgotten all the things he balanced on his shoulders. The feeling was cleansing, releasing... and he peered up at Ember with one eye, shaking his head. "You've got some nerve," he snickered. It was all he could think of to say.
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She could only barely remember the rules to this game, but that didn't ruin the fun of it. Just to be running at a full speed, off into an unknkown area...it felt good. To not know what was coming next, for once, whether Jefferson would catch up to her or if she might be able to slip away from him. If she did, she would come back to him (that would only be fair), but if he did catch her then she would have at least gotten a nice run out of it anyway. She hadn't stopped to wonder if he might be angry with her for running off, or if it was something that wasn't allowed, but as soon as she felt a hand on her shoulder the notion came to her.
But he didnt look mad. She'd stopped immediately and turned back around, ready to chase him if he'd decided to continue the game and run away from her, but he hadn't done that either. "I can't believe..." She said, between breaths, "You caught up so fast. No fair" The running could have gone on forever and she wouldn't have minded. Now that they'd come to a halt, though, her muscles felt like jelly. She went down to her knees for a second before flopping ungracefully down onto her back in the snow. "I'm kinda out of shape, though, I think."
At his comment she could do nothing but grin back up at him. "You should come to AniWaya--I know the territory there pretty well. We'll see who wins next time"
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He tipped his head up, grinning through his panting breaths a moment in an effort to soothe his heartbeat down to its normal speed. Jefferson was terribly out of shape, much worse than she was (evidently), though the creature was not what one would call "bulky". His starving days as a loner had taken a toll on his metabolism, and now gaining weight was not particularly easy--not necessarily a good thing, but still. His good arm had plenty of muscle in it due to its extra use without the second arm being available, and his hind legs were somehow built for speed. He'd always been fast, he'd just never been... in good shape, whether starved or fed. The cyclops missed the old days when he could run on all four legs--he had been fastest then, impossible to touch (except when starved and caught off guard by angry bears, evidently), but now he was limited to two, and never found himself running. The beast's bones were not yet considered old... just lacking the inspiration for use.
"AniWaya?" He straightened, stretching his back a little and smiling somewhat at her. "I've yet to meet anyone there and I don't know anything about the pack. Don't think I'll be stopping by anytime soon." He smirked a little, getting the impression that she called the place her home--it had formed just recently, hadn't it? He was climbing in the ranks... it was about time he started paying more attention to the other packs and their leaders. He didn't know AniWaya, Crimson Dreams was foreign, and he'd [lucky] never had to deal with Inferni. Jefferson assumed Dahlia de Mai would be a quick ally with Phoenix Valley, as its leaders were both close relations and he was rather fond of Cercelee, anyway. "I used to be a runner," he said, now thinking back to her words. The beast's smile waned. "That was a long time ago."
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"Well, now you know someone there. And you'll have to come over to see what it's like, really." She said smartly, raising her eyebrows. She didn't have many visitors, as not many even knew that AniWaya existed...but she hoped that Jefferson might come by every once in a while. Ember was a normally solitary wolf, and only got along with a few individuals. The ones that she did get along with, she wanted to see again.
"If you don't want to, though, that's okay. I run around a lot...maybe I'll come back here someday." She shrugged.
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