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i'm just a boat on the ocean
cakeThrough the months, as Bane had walked, as he had learned, he would write. Rarely did he re-read what he had written; it wasn't meant as a voice for the ages, but rather as a personal venting mechanism to keep his head screwed on straight. For too many months, the pills had been rare to come across and he had felt the adverse effects. Wartime was hard, and all suffered in one way or another. Bane's scars weren't physical, they were mental, and when he was high they were easy to ignore. On paper, they were obvious. Sometimes he burned the volumes for renewal. It cleansed the soul, the jackal-man had once said, laughing the laugh of a dying man.
cakePen in hand, the dark wolf sat on the beach, looking out towards the Bay of Fundy. The sun was setting and the water was restless, one of the few sounds breaking the silence. It was white noise and he barely noticed. Seagulls occasionally shrieked up above, and he ignored that as well. A pad of paper lay in the cold sand in front of him, virgin-white and waiting to be made into something. He had picked it up the day before in Halifax, and had planned to fill it within hours. But now, he simply looked at it, and as he looked, nothing came to him. Contemplating things was what he spent most of his days doing now. There was one thing that was on his mind more often than any other thing, but he would not put that to paper. Some thoughts were best left locked in the confines of ones' mind.
cakeDropping the pen, the broad-shouldered wolf leaned back on his arms, stretching his legs out before him. He believed in Fate, and in some small way this was important; maybe tonight, he simply wasn't meant to use the ink.
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She'd had to go through a horrible territory to get here, but it seemed worth it now. Siobhan hadn't been to the coast yet, mostly sticking to the middle of the territories, but now she was beginning to discover them. Back home there hadn't been anything like what she was seeing here. From far away, it had looked like a normal part of the lands--everything in this area was dismal and gray, so she hadn't thought anything of it. But as she got closer and closer, she slowly realized it. That wasn't solid ground out there...it was moving. Sure, she had seen water before...but she'd only ever found it in the form of snow or ice. In the tundra of the north there hadn't been anything like this. Siobhan stood in front of the water, just out of its reach, staring out over the sea. What would it be like to step on it? When she did manage to tear her red eyes away from the ocean, she glanced down the beachside. With a start, she realized that she wasn't alone; a figure sat fifty yards down from her, looking down at something. So far, it didn't look like he had noticed her. Siobhan considered what to do for a few moments, looking back at the ocean and then back down the beach. Maybe he could tell her about this thing in front of her. What it was called...if one could walk on it...things like that. But she wasn't so sure about going up to someone who was a complete stranger. She started to walk toward him, changing her mind halfway and ducking behind a boulder that sat along the shoreline. He was huge! The small coyote hadn't noticed it from the distance she'd been standing at before, but he was much, much bigger than her. Even that fact by itself made her wary of him--she would be no match. But she had so many questions to ask him. Surely he would know the answers. She peered out from the side of the rock, watching him carefully.
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Mind if this is set on the 18th? IC
The instinct worked to keep his senses alert while Bane was otherwise preoccupied. It was a guard of sorts, a scout, constantly scanning the area while he walked, or wrote, or thought; and today it was no different. As he sat on the beach, at a loss for words in his head, he could feel something. It didn't feel like a threat, but few things out here really did. Leaning forward again, the doctor picked up the blank notebook and drew his knees up, leaning on them as he glanced about. His eyes were sharp as he looked up the beach, and soon they settled on a small white head poking out from behind a boulder. A child -- a wolf? Yet they were so near Inferni. Never before had Bane seen a white coyote. A halfling, most likely. They made up the majority of the population here, it seemed.
Rising to his feet, Bane tucked the notebook away into the pocket of his cutoff jeans and walked towards the rock that sat up the beach. A distraction would be nice to help him forget his mental block. He kept his pace slow and his stance casual to avoid seeming as if he had violent tendencies. For all he knew, she wasn't alone. He stopped some ways away from the rock, after circling it to see what was on the other side. And he had been right: a slightly blurry child, who looked too old for her size to be a wolf. Coyote. A white one. Perhaps a small halfling? Either way, he smiled at her, and at her timid nature. She was right to be afraid.
Calm, easygoing, perpetually curious, he spoke: "Are you lost?"
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She has social anxiety >>
What was that thing that he was holding onto? She hadn't seen something like that before. Siobhan focused on it, squinting her eyes so that she might see it a little better. But no...still nothing. It would just be one more thing that he could explain to her. That is, if everything worked out and they did actually start talking. But there were a lot of steps that she would have to take for them to start talking. First, she'd have to come out. It turned out that the first step was the hardest of all; she stood behind the rock watching what he was doing for a few long moments, caught in indecisiveness, before he noticed her. When she saw his eyes come up she ducked back behind the boulder, cursing herself. She should have just gone right up to him and talked to him. It wouldn't have been hard. She was making it too hard! But at the same time, there was a ripping, all-consuming fear sitting in the back of her mind. Like something bad would happen if she stepped out from behind her hiding place...even if he did know where she was now. But then the big wolf spoke. She looked out at him again. It was customary to respond when someone spoke to you, and if she didn't go up and talk to him now she would definitely look bad. Rude, even. And she had all those questions still. The pros were beginning to outweigh the cons in her head. If only Ezekiel had been here with her. Then she definitely would have gone up to this stranger, at least. Still wary and worried, she took a shaky step out from behind the rock. So far, so good. Nothing bad was happening. Siobhan tried to stop the trembling as she took step after step closer, stopping when she was a few feet away. From this point she could see how huge he was. What was he going to say to her now? She should answer--he was waiting for her answer before he said something to her again. "Siobhan..." No, that was stupid! She just had to tell him that she wasn't lost. "Siobhan...not lost. Siobhan lives close to here. You is lost?"
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-- IC
For the most part, Bane was a gentle giant. Though cold-hearted enough to do what was necessary and feel no regret over it, he would not have hurt a child (or a lady) without one damn good reason. Of course, back home, he hadn't been noted by the natives for his size. They were all arctic wolves, and large like him, males and females alike. Rather, it was his black fur that caught their eyes, and their interest. "Got caught in a fire," they used to joke. "Spawned by the devil," the slaves were more likely to say. Bane had always found this entertaining.
The wind changed just as the girl stepped out from behind the rock. Bane caught that telltale scent, the smell of Inferni. He had already assumed this, given the obvious fact she was a coyote, and likely an albino at that. She was an endearing little thing, insecure as she seemed, and Bane kept the smile as she tried to speak. He had always wanted children. Specifically, he had always wanted a little girl. It was a funny thing, something few would likely have guessed.
"No, I'm just wandering about," he replied. "I'm Bane Kiles. I'm sorry if I frightened you, Siobhan. Did you come to look at the ocean?"
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She didn't know whether the quiet that fell between them was a comfortable sort of silence or not; Siobhan hadn't had much practice at talking to people. Her mother had rarely spoken to her, and if it was it was always to tell her something that she needed to do better next time. That was basically it. She hadn't even spoken during Siobhan's punishments--when the small girl had done those bad things. Her mother had never yelled at her, never raised her voice above a grumble. He explained that he was wandering about. Didn't he have a mother to go home to? Or a family? She didn't any more, not she had been chased out, but she had Ezekiel and his father to come home to. She hoped that someday she could be the same kind of daughter to someone that Ezekiel was to his father--she could see that they had a very nice relationship. There weren't any punishments or grumbling or complaints, not ever. So she believed that whatever they had was a great success. She leaned her weight from foot to foot as the wind blew against her in one direction, then the next. It was a habit that she'd had ever since she was little, leaning from one side to the other with the wind. She'd always thought that it was possible for the wind to pick her up and take her away, if she'd only lean hard enough into it. Usually she fell over first, though. "Siobhan saw this from very far away...this moving thing. She wondered what it was, and came to look. Yes." She nodded, clasping her hands together. This wasn't so hard! And he was asking nice questions that she could answer, too. "Bane is looking at it too." She observed. "Siobhan is interested in meeting others--but Bane is a very big wolf! She has never seen one like him."
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IC
Half the battle of winning a war was knowing your enemy. A person would speak and each word they gave to the air would tell a story of its own. This was a learned trait, and it was something Bane applied to everyone without thought, friend or enemy alike. Standing before him was a child who had likely been deprived of a lot in her short life, a child who had been raised outside Inferni. Her speech, though clear, was far from perfect, and any other child at her age would be quite fluent. The problem with studying people was that each answer raised further questions.
She finished speaking and his smile returned. She didn't seem very afraid and he was glad for that. Nervous, yes, as she grasped at her own hands and looked up at him, but not afraid. Rather young to be able to shift, he noted. Then again, he had been young at the time too, unnaturally so. Perhaps they were just evolving towards more permament werewolf forms. "We're tied then, Miss Siobhan, because I've never seen a coyote as white as you." She reminded him of an arctic fox on two legs. "This moving thing is called the ocean," he added as he motioned towards the water. "More specifically, the Bay of Fundy. It's very nice to look at. Have you never seen the ocean before? A lake, perhaps?"
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There were many things that he had said that she didn't quite understand...but she felt silly asking him to explain every little bit. They were supposed to be having a conversation! It couldn't be completely made up of her asking questions. But she didn't know what a Fundy was, or a bay. Or even a lake. "Home was like this, Bane, snow all around all the time. As long as Siobhan lived there...there was always snow." It was far enough North that it never melted. "No water like this was anywhere there." She was trying to phrase it so that he could understand, so that she might give him some information instead of it going the other way around. "Bane has seen a place like that before? To drink, the snow is melted into thin wet stuff" She looked back at him intensely, unsure of what kind of an answer she would get. There weren't any of those things he had just spoken about...so she couldn't say much about them. "This water...it is like that? Like the melted snow?"
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cakeSiobhan is so cute.
cakeShe answered with her slightly muddled words, ones the wolf understood fully; he had a feeling the girl didn't quite know the things he spoke of, and he pondered the kind of upbringing she had had. The world was small, but vastly larger now than it had been when the humans had called it their own; though they had adapted much human technology, canines still hadn't have phones, or airplanes, or even schools, at least not where Siobhan had evidently been raised. Had she been an adult the black wolf would not have been as accomodating. Children were a different thing altogether. He was a patient man.
cake"I have, Miss Siobhan. I come from a place called Iceland. It was cold there, and we did the same thing to drink in the winter, when the snow was too heavy to find water." As he began to know more of the young girl in front of him, Bane attempted to adjust his speech accordingly, so she would understand him. "It's exactly like that. The ocean is just a lot of melted snow. But it's not good to drink, because the ocean has salt in it. Would you like to touch it? Come on." His words were encouraging, and the genial smile remained on his face and he turned towards the ocean, walking slowly enough to allow her to keep up. He liked the girl, and he had a feeling she wasn't unintelligent, simply uneducated.
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:]] <33 What should they do? I don't remember! Talk about their families? ^_^ And Siobhan kind of reminds me of Matilda from that movie Matilda x3
She was very interested in going closer, but wasn't so sure about doing it by herself. Bane had explained it, and it sounded simple enough...but she had learned in her life that simple things rarely were. He seemed like a really nice wolf, so unlike Adelaida, who she had met a few days before. "Iceland sounds like a wonderful place" She said, walking with him to the water's edge. It came forward at her and she stepped back away from it. Then it went farther away, and she stepped forward. It just kept moving! "Zeke said that it will get warmer...that all of the snow will be gone. Where does all of it go, then?"She questioned, reaching her hand down toward the water. A larger wave came, touching her hand and submerging her feet at the same time. Cold!
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cakeFamily talk is good. I'll have him ask her stuff. :o
cakeWonderful wasn't quite the word the older man would have used to describe it. It had been a place torn apart by war, and the beautiful land had, over time, begun to show the effects of the conflict. But it had been home to him. More home than anywhere else ever had been. Until he had landed there, until the chains had been taken off his wrists and ankles, Bane had been a chronic wanderer. Perhaps now he had returned to that life.
cakeHe watched her move with the tides, as if she wasn't quite sure what the ocean was doing. Bane saw this a sign of the intelligence he knew she had; most children would never have thought to question why the ocean moved as it did. Asking questions was really the only way to learn. As such, he was glad to answer hers when she spoke them. "When the snow melts, it will go into the soil beneath, and the plants will drink it. What's left will end up in the ocean. That's why there's so much water here. When the summer comes, the ocean will be warmer, as well." Bane added as an afterthought, watching her reaction to the cold water on her feet. He remained up on the beach, a few steps behind her. "Do your parents live here in Inferni with you, Siobhan?"
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That made sense, that it all would go into the ground. Water went in, and plants and flowers came up. They got life from all of the water in the soil. Maybe that was how they were able to start up again in the spring, all fresh and new. "Mmmmm...no. Dad and Mom live at home, very far away from here. It is cold there, very cold. Does Bane live with his family? Here? Is he in a clan like Siobhan?"She stared out over the ocean. She had thought that she'd seen something in the water, really far out, and she stood still, trying to watch it.
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cakeThe wolf watched the young coyote girl, seeing the intensity in her eyes as she gazed out at the ocean. The eyes of someone who had never truly seen anything before. She was small, likely not very strong. Back home, she may have been killed for this weakness. She may not have been good enough to even be a slave. Never before had this bothered Bane, and even now, it didn't; he knew his racism was vast, yet limited. He took his duties seriously with the spirit of a soldier. Ultimately, he did what had to be done. Here, he was under nobody's rule.
cake"No, I haven't lived with any family since I was about your age. I live alone, in the city. Do you miss your parents?" Sometimes he liked to hear peoples' views on things, to try and understand the majority, to try and see how they thought. They who lived by their emotions, who followed their hearts because their minds were too clouded. With her, it was because some part of him found her intriguing enough to spend his time on. All thoughts of his writing had, for now, been pushed aside.
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"Zeke is so good to Siobhan--she likes being there with him and his poppa. Gabriel is very nice too." She sat down on the sand, picking some up in her hands and letting it fall back down onto the ground. It was really nice that Bane was here to answer all of her questions. She would have felt so silly asking Ezekiel things like this. She didn't want him to think that she was stupid.
"Why does you live alone now? Your family did not come with you here? Or was they from here...and moved away?" It was a confusing concept to her. She could understand leaving her mother, because her mother hadn't wanted her there. Did he not like his family very much? Or had they kicked him out, maybe? When she had come here she had gotten a brand new family. Didn't Bane want to do that too?
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OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER
cakeOne of the two names the girl mentioned Bane recognized. Apparently the Inferni leader had a son. He was glad to see Siobhan was receiving good care. She seemed quite happy here. Didn't seem at all like she was missing her family. In that way, they were the same, though perhaps for different reasons. "That's good," he mused, and as he spoke, he moved forward and knelt down next to her, watching the ocean as she played with the sand.
cake"My family did live here. My father and I were swept away by the ocean when I was very young, much younger than you. Unfortunately, my father and I didn't really get along, so we decided to stop travelling together." This was a very toned down version, but it was the truth, and Bane had a feeling the girl would understand it. Glancing over at the white coyote, the dark wolf smiled. "However, Miss Siobhan, I wasn't able to find a new family I could live with. You're a lucky girl."
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She stood up after a little while of playing, brushing some of the sand off of her paws. It really was cold outside, and even though she had a coat...it was beginning to sink in a little more. The sand had made her behind very very, cold, which made the rest of her cold as well. "Yes. I's...not getting along with my mother eithver...like you with your father"
She was very pleased with the things that had happened today; she couldn't wait to get home where it was warm and think all of it over again. It wasn't nearly as cold here as it had been in the far north, of course, but she had never been outside of a den for this long of a time. Her mother hadn't allowed her to leave theirs. "Siobhan is thinking that she should go back to them now, though. But she will visit again? Where should she look?" Did Bane live here on this beach? Maybe there was some sort of a hidden den that she didn't see.
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cake"I'll be around." Bane told her, and he looked over at her and smiled as he said this. The place he stayed was a secluded area in the city, in the sense that there weren't many strangers living nearby, and he rather liked it that way. The point of being a loner, after all, was to be alone, was it not? Of course, she was just a child, but Bane had been exposed to a much different environment than her, where she would be a means to an end and nothing less. He hadn't yet entirely shaken that mindset, or the paranoia that came with it, that lurked there in his eyes like monsters in the closet. There were wolves here, no doubt, that would kill her for being born who she was. For that reason, he didn't think having her wander the city alone was safe, and he in no way doubted Gabriel and Corona's ability to look out for her.
cake"You head back home and get warm. It was good to meet you, Miss Siobhan. I look forward to seeing you again." He stood up as he spoke, looking down at her through his glasses. She was an interesting case with an undoubtedly interesting story, and it was these things the dark wolf lived for. And once he was alone again, perhaps the words would come to him a little bit easier.
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"If you knows where Inferni is...you can come there! Siobhan will let you inside and you will not be in trouble." She promised. She would love to have Bane over! She knew that there was ocean around a part of Inferni...maybe she would go and see that, too. With all of this new information, she felt like she was ready to see more oceans. Meeting Bane today had been wonderful.
"Siobhan would be very happy to see you if you came." She nodded. "Thank you for teaching her these things about the water." She turned toward Inferni, starting to pad away.
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cake"That sounds good," Bane told the girl with a smile. He knew as he spoke these words that it was highly unlikely he would ever enter Inferni without a very good reason: wandering around on wolf-unfriendly territory with a small girl was suspicious, if anything was. But he knew that she would leave the clan occasionally, and it would be during one of these times that he would see her again.
cake"You're welcome, Miss Siobhan," he replied as she began to walk away. Such a polite girl. For a short time he stood and watched the white figure heading off towards the clan; this perhaps was pointless, as there were no other scents around, but the paranoia had penetrated deep into his brain. When she vanished from his sight, he turned and continued back up the beach, thoughts of his writings slowly returning to him.
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