[html] He'd been there only once before, to the land of the coyotes, where he had learned of the existence of more siblings, more family members to despise him. Jasper had, apparently, not learned his lesson the first time around, as he soon found himself on the borders of Inferni, staring in like a child facing a haunted house. Where else did he have to go though? His father, well, there wasn't really need for much explanation there. Something was wrong with the man that Jasper had followed across the ocean. He'd finally found him, finally gained some awkward kind of peace with him, only to once more feel as if he were a stranger. Rusalki was gone, he needed help finding him, and the only person he could think of was Corona.
He said that she had been there to visit him while he was sick but Jasper hadn't seen a single sign of her since then. Maybe they had both been delusional then, his father probably only thought that he had seen her. Wouldn't she have come back to visit then? Unfortunately for the tan and black male, it wasn't as easy as following her scent around to confirm her presence. His nose no longer worked and, without actually seeing her or hearing from someone who still had a bit of sanity left, he couldn't be sure that she was there. He held himself somewhat slumped over, nervous and shaky, with both hands clasped together in front of his stomach, fidgeting and waiting.
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[html] let the dogs bite at your ankles On occasion, she was drawn out to the borders for one reason or another. It wasn't necessarily to contribute to their upkeep—Gabriel did that job well enough on his own—but just something she felt like she could do. Anselm was gone, so they were one leader short, but even that wasn't anything new. Corona knew that her mother had lead the clan without any other supporting leaders in more or less the same state that it was in now. Gabriel may as well have not been any different, though maybe a little less gruesome on the physical scale. There were both not nearly as scarred as they should have been. Or maybe she wasn't.
Corona more or less stayed out of sight most of the time, kept to doing what she did best. She interacted with family only and had little regard for the others because they seemed the more likely to be less open-minded and even more biased and full of shit in the form of ridicule and intelligence. Some of them were so far gone that they were only good for fighting. And those somebodies was really reduced now to that someone, and that was Hybrid. Corona didn't pay any attention to him if she could help it, though she knew his worth. She knew what he did for Inferni and that was enough. He had earnt his keep. But as she moved through the sparse trees along the toothpick line of skull and bones that made up their visual border, she spotted an all too familiar figure slumped there.
“Jasper?” Her tone filled with instant concern and worry and Corona didn't hesitate to cut the distance between them short to look him over. “What are you doing way out here?” That question should have been rephrased—why are you out here, what's wrong?—but she didn't. She couldn't, knowing that if something was wrong, he would tell her. At least she hoped he would tell her, but there was no guarantees. let the sunshine burn your eyes [/html]
[html] What would happen if Gabriel found him near the borders again? He'd been warned once that it wasn't smart to stay near Inferni, but the hopeless feeling of knowing that he had potentially lost everyone he had ever been close to was to much emotion to hold back, it didn't matter if harm came to him. Even the thought of that mysterious coyote, the one who seemed to keep finding him and taking advantage of him, came to mind in the long days that he spent thinking about his family. He had little to go on, his nose had worked the first time that they had met, but it no longer did him good. He could barely remember his face, but the chances that he lingered in Inferni were good. Even knowing that, knowing there may be a chance encounter with the predator, he still came.
As brave as it might have seemed to anyone who knew him, Jasper was still scared. He could feel his skin crawling beneath his fur, which in turn stood on end, even more so when the quiet sound of feet could be heard ahead of him. He was even to afraid to look up and see who it might be, telling himself over and over in his head that it was a bad idea to have even tried to find her. Despite the quiet words that went through his head, he kept his ground, only able to stomach lifting frightened eyes to meet the form of the other at the point that she was so very near. It was a sudden feeling of relief and surprise and even a bit of hope all at once, that seemed to grip him and take away the sick feeling that rolled in the pits of his stomach.
"You really are here." They were quiet words, full of shock and disbelief, and even perhaps on the verge of tears. "I thought I lost everyone.." His lips quivered as he spoke, but Jasper had learned a thing or two, or at least had attempted to, in his time with his father. He wanted to be strong, even if he had mistaken his father's potential heartlessness as strength. He fought back the tears, gritted his teeth and shook on his feet until he thought her might crumble to the ground in defeat. He didn't know whether to hug her or run away before she got a chance to whack him.
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[html] let the dogs bite at your ankles As perceptive as she was, there was very little to mask the battle of emotion that waged war beneath Jasper's muted expression. He didn't look at her, but he didn't need to. She extended an arm out to rest her hand on his rounded shoulder just to give him that sense of reality. A sense of being grounded. Yeah, she was really there, flesh and bone, still the same. Well, mostly. Her brow knitted with visible concern as he spoke and a dreading sort of sense came over her like the ocean waves washed over their sandy tracks.
“What's wrong?” Thought he lost everyone? “Why would you think that?” What had happened that she was so painfully unaware of? Maybe he was out of it, maybe he was still sick. The thought came to her and she didn't stop it. She had become desensitized to the madness of the world. Little surprised her, so it was no wonder that the thoughts came so easily. Still, the fact that he came out to Inferni of all places told her something was up, even if he was sick or not. let the sunshine burn your eyes [/html]
[html] The careful touch to his shoulder sent a shiver through his body and for a very brief moment, he was calm. It did make him wonder, though, why Corona had even come back at all. Why had she left last time? He supposed it didn't matter though, that she had her reasons. Why had he followed Ahren all the way across the ocean, even though he knew that he would never be able to make things better or make them like they used to be? Not even Jasper knew the answer to that, only that it felt like he was supposed to follow him.
"I think something is wrong with dad's head." He explained quietly, running his eyes across his own feet, where his toes curled up beneath themselves out of nervousness. "He burned down my house." Was it actually a house to call his? Laurent had built it for the both of them, but now that Laurent and the rest of Esper Hollow was gone, would he even have bothered trying to live there still? "I lost a friend while I was sick..I don't know where he is.." He squeaked, certain that it may not make any sense at all. "So there isn't anyone else but you.." And Jasper desperately needed someone, even if he didn't know how to admit it.
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"He burned down my house," and I sat here and went LOL for some reason.
[html] let the dogs bite at your ankles Had she been human, the colour would have probably drained out of her face momentarily. It wasn't nearly as bad as she thought, but rather at first she thought maybe Jasper was being silly. Until he mentioned that Ahren had lost it and gone and burnt down the shack that he had been in. Without really considering it, Corona compensated for him. “He probably did that because that's where the sick were kept. So there wouldn't be anything left for the illness to cling to.” In the same sense that they had burned diseased bodies in the past, she decided. Made sense. Corona didn't question what her father did, though when that had ultimately stopped was questionable.
She gave his shoulder a little squeeze to reassure him. “You're okay though, aren't you?” He wasn't burnt up to a crispy critter, so that much was good. He didn't look like he had been wrung through a ringer any more than he usually did, so she could go about pretending everything was okay. Some things didn't make sense, that much was true, but that was normalcy. Complete and utter normalcy. Jasper wanted someone to comfort him and Corona could do that, she supposed. She had done it well enough with Talitha, so why not her own brother? let the sunshine burn your eyes [/html]
[html] I didn't even realize that until you pointed it out and it made me LOL. XD
One of the wonderful things about his sister was that she often made sense, or seemed to find sense in things that he often couldn't. Maybe the house had been burned down to get rid of the sickness and he nodded in very faint, yet still slightly confused, understanding. He hadn't been there to see what exactly had happened before the fire. Maybe Ahren had gone inside to make sure no one was in there, but it would have been nice if he had been given a chance to remove some things that he might have wanted. Then again, if the sickness could cling to a place, he supposed that it could cling to objects inside of a place also.
"I think so.." He muttered quietly, lifting his eyes to his sister's face finally. It wasn't true, not anywhere near it, but he didn't have the heart to tell her. He still thought that there was something wrong with their father, still felt the empty loneliness of having a friend suddenly go missing. He doubted that anyone but himself would be able to find Rusalki. "He said you came to see me while I was sick." Had she been worried? Did she come to watch him die? Jasper wasn't sure about anything anymore, but it didn't really look or feel like she had wanted him to waste away to nothing.
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[html] let the dogs bite at your ankles
He thought so and in some small way, that quiet answer quelled her concern briefly. As Jasper looked up, Corona smoothed out a piece of hair that went askew, preening him absently as he spoke on. “Yeah, I did. Rachias and I took care of you, Laruku, and Dad.” She really thought that Rachias deserved more of the credit than she did, because she had kept a constant watch over them. Corona always was the one who came and went.
“I'm glad you're better now, I was really worried about you for a while,” she went on to say, the edges of her mouth curling into a small smile. He was a good kid, at least compared to the rest of them that were around. It had always been said that the good died young, but she supposed that they had won that round. Hopefully no more illnesses would spring up from the ground and take root in them. They could come up with the cures to physical illnesses, but the thing they all couldn't stop was madness and that madness was something that she had ignored all of her life. It did not exist.
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[html] She seemed far to..happy and caring for the sister that he remembered. It was comforting and odd in a way, the way that she was suddenly acting. Her reassurances, or attempts to reassure, only made him feel even more oddly about the whole thing. Being the attention-starved young man that he was though, Jasper was happy to take it all in and push those feelings and thoughts aside for the time. Apparently there was someone else there taking care of them, which meant Corona had come to take care of them also, even though she didn't really have to. Was it only because dad was there though? He was happy enough to think that she had come to take care of him, he didn't need to question her on it.
"Did mom come?" He asked suddenly, quietly. It was a question that had been on his mind since the very moment that he woke up, because he could vaguely remember her being there. Jasper wasn't stupid enough to go asking Ahren about it though, anything that had to do with his mother never seemed to turn out well when it came to their father. "I think she came to see me." He wouldn't tell anyone else but Corona that, but Jasper knew full and well that it might not even have really happened. It was nice to think that it did, though.
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[html] let the dogs bite at your ankles
She wasn't a very good actor, but she still tried. It was harder to act a certain way, but easy not to act at all. Bury it underneath the sand, bury underneath the rock and the magma beneath that. Put it in the very core of the earth and prayed it didn't bubble back up between the cracks and crevices—the literal scars that were etched into the planet as it were—and pray like hell they all got away with the secrets they hid. But this was her normalcy. Maybe it was a fantasy. Maybe her father was crazy. Maybe her siblings were crazy, maybe her mother had been crazy. Maybe she was just as crazy as they were. But she denied it, she had reasons (excuses) for everything.
“I don't know if she did or not,” Corona replied after a thought of consideration. Had Matinee ever really been there? The gypsy woman had crossed her thoughts a few times. The anger towards her had bubbled up in idle moments when she had been rearranging things. Doing nothing meant that she over thought everything eventually. “You'd have to ask Rachias, I guess. I wasn't always there like she was.” And if Matinee had actually come? Well, Corona didn't care too much as long as she had left Ahren alone, but the gold-haired hybrid had never caught so much as a whiff of her.
She doubted she would ever tire of hating that woman.
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[html] "That's okay.." He told her quietly, deciding that he really didn't want a positive answer to his question. He was happy to believe that she had visited him, that it had been her that he had spoken to that day, even if he would always know in the back of his mind that it probably wasn't true. Rachias, whoever she was, probably wouldn't know who his mother was even if he did manage to find her and ask her about it, and his father would likely deny that it had happened, even if she really had come.
Still, all of the idle chat and small bouts of comfort and reassurance didn't make him forget about that night with his father. He'd felt sick that night, his father's words had plagued his mind and turned his stomach, and Jasper had even gone as far as to tell his father that he loved him. What was going on? "Do you think I could stay with you a while?" His question was a quiet one, hesitant, but he knew that it had to be asked. Where else did he have to go? Who else was there that he trusted and would keep him company in the dark? "Maybe just out here somewhere? Close by?" Because he didn't expect Gabriel to just let him come in to Inferni because he was afraid of the dark.
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[html] let the dogs bite at your ankles
“Of course,” was her answer. She wasn't going to turn him away. He was family for one, but it wasn't like Inferni didn't have room for him. “We have a mansion here. I think I'm the only one who makes any use out of it, so you could probably stay there with me.” Keeping him away from Hybrid would be another story, but she doubted in the dwindled numbers of their ranks that anyone would really care much or act adversely. Talitha would probably shy away, Ryan and Ezekiel probably wouldn't care too much one way or the other, which left Gabriel sitting somewhere in the wings.
If anything, she supposed, he might have needed convincing. Corona was aware that they had met before, but she wasn't really sure what he had really thought of Jasper. Even the notion that Jasper wanted to stay with her of all people was troubling. It stuck out in her mind well enough to merit being a problem, but she tucked it away. “Would you like to see it?” she went on to offer after a brief pause, hoping it would do. Better than him being out in the cold open somewhere near by.
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[html] Jasper hadn't been expecting the answer that he received, at least not the one that seemed so much more in depth than a simple 'sure'. They couldn't much do anything about him staying just outside of the lands, but Jasper wouldn't have done so if Corona wouldn't have liked that. Instead, she had invited him into the lands, to stay in a mansion that was potentially smack in the middle of everything. Jasper hadn't been bluffing when he had asked her though, and so he nodded his head in a nervous sort of manner. "Ok.." He told her finally, an attempt to gather his wits about him, even if he was sure that Gabriel would eat his face.
"Maybe I can meet them sometime." He told her idly, something from memory. "Talitha and Ezekiel, dad said I could meet them some time." He had asked back when they were just pups though and even if Jasper wasn't all that closely related to them or nothing at all like them, he had still wanted to meet them. "They won't hurt me right?" He leaned in to ask his question, whispering in a dire tone of voice. Jasper didn't doubt that Corona would keep him from harm but he also knew that he couldn't always tag along with her.
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I fail.
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“I don't see why they would,” she answered him before turning and heading off towards the mansion. “Talitha's liable to be afraid of you, she didn't have such a good run in with some wolves,” but why for she didn't bother aying, “and Ezekiel spent some time away from here with a couple of friends of Gabriel's that are, well, wolves. I'd say they're pretty adjusted.” As for meeting them, she didn't know how that would all go down. How they acted one day could very well have been different from another.
“I bet they'll like you,” she went on to say after a moment, musing over the possibility that they would get along just fine. Optimism didn't always come to her, but she felt like she could handle feeling that way. “So maybe you'll find some common ground to talk about. There's another here that you might get along with too. Her name is Ryan. She wears clothes like those coyotes that were here did.” Corona liked her well enough, so she was worth mentioning too.
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[html] Family or not, he knew that it meant very little. Even after Gabriel had found out that they were somehow related, he still acted as if he wanted to eat him. Then, that day on the beach, Gabriel had almost gotten him. Something had changed in those last moments and he'd been given a chance to run away, which he supposed was the only reason that he was alive. Of course, Jasper couldn't really imagine anyone being afraid of him and, even if she was, he knew that it wouldn't last long once she met him, though he did wonder what had happened that would make her be so afraid. "I hope so." He said quietly, ears flattened and not quite convinced that having them like him would be as easy as it sounded.
"Laurel." He told her in response to her words. "His name was Laurel." And even though Jasper hadn't known him for long, hadn't really trusted him at first, he still kind of missed him. Ryan though, sounded like an interesting character, if she was anything like the few that he'd lived with for that short time, and seemed like she would be easy enough to find, if he ever manage to get up the guts to go out and try to make friends. "I can't smell anymore." He piped up once more, both out of nervousness (they were deep into the lands already) and out of being informative. "Not since the fire."
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“Laurel,” she repeated, as if to assure him that she remembered his name when she'd only choose to probably forget it later. Aside from meeting him a couple of times, she hadn't been able to form much of an opinion of him. A memory would remain, but that was about it. Though at his confession of not being able to smell, Corona couldn't help but throw him a look of sympathy. Losing something that was quite vital like that was never good, but as to why it would happen was a little lost on her. She had never thought about the things that could make that happen, fire or not.
“I'm sorry to hear that. I imagine it doesn't make things easy for you.” The fire was so long ago that Corona figured if it was going to be temporary, it would have gone away by now. “You still cook though, don't you? I remember you having an interest in that, I think.” Of course, she thought absently, if he couldn't smell, then his sense of taste was probably a little hindered too. They didn't have very good taste to begin with, no doubt having traded that sense out to amplify their keen sense of smell. Either way, she tried to spur some sort of conversation with him that wasn't dreary or ominous.
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