[html] and who's to blame; i could assume
Meandering mindlessly indeed. Sorry for rambling, I got caught up in digressions.
the loneliness of my white room
Ah. Meandering mindlessly did not become him. Luckily, he had things to do today, so it wouldn't be mindless for long. Either way, he was enjoying his exploration, his usually restful being stirred into activity by... what? Curiosity, maybe, or the winter's chill — actually, as Cancerian moodiness dictated, he was feeling poetic and romanticizing the title of lone wolf. Just to better fit the part, he'd even removed his pink collar, afterwards making the slow and agonizing(ly beautiful, he supposed) shift into his two-legged form to brush and comb the fur out. Though he'd been born, not bitten, he'd always found it a little difficult, and as such felt pressured to do it privately. Nevertheless, he was back on four legs now (the better to travel with, my dear), and he shook from his exquisite mane down to the tip of his tail, if only to reassure himself that he was evened out and decent enough to venture from his camping cove.
Back to the point — he'd traversed the unclaimed area of the bay and scaled the lowest elevations in the northeastern mountain range in a matter of days, and, to regain his footing in the area, promised to take it slow from now on. Even so, the aforementioned cove was already close to the Concrete Jungle's sparse suburbs, situated in the southern mountains smack in the middle of four hills. His obsessive-compulsive spatial thoughts had dictated that he create a fire pit right in the middle of that, and, while he'd spent some time worrying about it, he was fairly confident that he'd gotten it right after looking in from one of those hills. So, naturally, unable to be satisfied with himself for too long, he'd now gotten it into his head to window-shop for something a little sturdier. Less primitive. He'd have made a better dog than he did a wolf, and more a Pomeranian than a Malamute. Then again, the fire pit and tiny abandoned house he'd found nestled there did have a certain rustic charm...
He now paused somewhere high up (but not too high, as he was phobic of heights, especially abrupt, jagged ones), sitting, thinking. The view was admittedly beautiful — mountains to his right and a sprawling cityscape a bit to the left and front of him, as if nature and humanity had been waging a war. Someone had told him stories about it once, and he let his mind wander, wondering. |
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She frowned as she started toward the human city, finally deciding on a path. Each mountain pass was filled up with snow...it was all about deciding which ones would be stable enough to travel through. Naniko didn't know these mountains too well, she hadn't come through this way very often, so she didn't know which would be the best. She'd settle for this one.
She was shifted, that was a help, and she carried a backpack with her today. She had plans to visit the library, to get a few books about the Italian language. There was a new wolf in her pack that only spoke Italian, and she wanted to see if there were any similiarities between Italian and her own second language, French, so that she could begin to teach her. If there were a few similarities, it would make it a lot easier to teach.
Naniko's feet sank down in the snow as she walked, and she had to pull them up carefully with each step she took. Her strength was going; she panted a little when she finally made it through the worst, deepest parts. The white wolf sat down heavily in the snow, her green eyes closing for a moment. She'd rest for a bit and then finish the trip.
[html] and who's to blame; i could assume
the loneliness of my white room
Shakadyn was most certainly not the type to sit in snow — no, he'd chosen a vantage point that was bare of it. Down this way the trees were few, and it was difficult to tell if they were dead for the winter or dead permanently. Certainly the latter theory fit better with the picture of broiling low clouds flirting with mirrored skyscrapers; indeed, pollution from an age ago looked to be having an effect on the landscape even still. Don't be so dramatic, he reminded himself. There are lighter clouds everywhere — and Mother Nature seemed to be taking a new foothold here, slowly but surely. It'd be a long time, but unless humans returned or werewolves chose to rebuild it, the city would one day be run over and destroyed by greenery.
It gave him further pause. Someone(s) had told him stories about it twice. Canines themselves were a lot like humans had been, or so the tales had said. Many had submitted to superior figures. Bosses, celebrities, gods... like pack wolves to their alpha. He sighed. Of course, there'd been an expression for humans like him, too, one that he only made literal. An errant philosophing thought told him that it was fate, destiny and order — they'd been meant to inherit the earth from day one, humans were only a glitch in the system. He squished that thought abruptly. The very concept of fate was... well, it was understandable, but only because he made a point to understand things from different angles. The universe was governed by chaos (he remembered that thing about butterflies and tornadoes and whatnot), and didn't anyone who believed in fate ever find it unsettling that, according to such a belief, they couldn't make a single decision for themselves? Actually, a pattern much the same was followed in packs. That was why he was a lone wolf.
... Canines inheriting the earth. He'd bet that the humans of higher rank had never expected themselves as individuals to fade so completely, and that the lesser of them had lived their lives in fear of it. (He shook his head. Sex was for pleasure. Children happened just so people actually remembered their parents.) Well, they weren't inheriting much earth at the moment, but if all of his thoughts applied to humans and wolves equally, at least they were carrying on a psychological legacy. Finally he was distracted from his broken, abstract thoughts by a hint of movement far to his right. (A delicate sixth sense was easy to develop if you were a Shakadyn.) His ears perked unconsciously as he turned his head to regard the she-wolf or, forgiving his less-than-ideal eyesight, what he thought was a she-wolf, with his pale eyes. |
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There were times that Naniko wondered why she had joined a pack at all, why she continued to stick around Clouded Tears' territory even after all of her family had left it...and she still hadn't found an answer. She felt tied to the territory, the place that she had been taken to at three months of age. She and Laruku were the only pack members that were left from that time, more than a year before. Maybe it was because she had nowhere else to go that she stayed there, or maybe it was because she didn't want to be like them. Those that had left. To her Clouded Tears had been a safe haven when she'd had nothing. Been a nobody.
Right now she had a job in the pack, being the apothecary. She took care of whatever medical needs the group had, as well as caring for a few of the wild animals in the surrounding area. It kept her busy, most of the time, until she found something that needed more attention. Like Maria.
Naniko rubbed at her sore leg a little as she sat there, running her fingers over the scars. As long as she didn't run into any more coyotes she'd be fine. Her leg still hurt a little in places, mostly around the area where the break had been, where the bone had been pushed up through the skin. It was worse that she had already broken that leg once in the past; healing for this injury had taken much longer this time around.
The hunter stood up to her full, towering height, surveying the lands around her. White, white white. She could see a bit of skyscraper peeking up in the distance, past the next slope, a sign of hope. She lifted her nose to the breeze, filtering through all of the scents. What ones were new, and what ones were old? She was having trouble telling the difference. Naniko started walking again, starting for the human city. She pulled her feet up from the crusty snow when they got stuck, trying not to trip. Maybe it would have been faster to go in the four-legged form...she slipped on the next step, falling forward into the snow.
[html] and who's to blame; i could assume
the loneliness of my white room
Her spill gave him a start. It wasn't with his eyes but with some other, older sense that he could tell that, metaphorically, she had been very far away, perhaps even farther away than he himself. He didn't have time enough to chastise himself for standing up so quickly and A. getting vertigo and B. actually wanting to help someone — well, he tried to reason with himself. He would have let someone less Innately Intimidating and Cool do it, right? If they'd been around. But there was no one else around, so he was just being a good samaritan. But he was supposed to be a bad samaritan — no, no, that. That right there merited jeering from an inner voice or three. Even as he trotted briskly to her side (he'd started out by walking, but got his ass in gear a touch when it became obvious she wasn't getting up again) he allowed it, because it was a childish desire, wasn't it? He'd been so easily frightened as a pup, plagued by a sea of nightmares in which there'd never been a one pleasant dream, and now he was — had been, for the first five years of his life — trying to compensate by becoming all of the bogeymen he'd once feared. Well, that was silly. He hadn't even killed anyone (yet), much less himself, and had always found it undignified to taunt and laugh at whatever poor thing had been a target of bullying day in and day out. On the other hand, he could always shoot for psychological villainy.
All of this went out the window as he drew ever nearer to the white she-wolf, so like the snow in color and stillness. It was difficult to focus on the finer points of murder and appropriate preambles to such an act when your maternal (yes, even in men, or perhaps that was another Shakadyn thing) instincts were blaring embarrassingly. What on earth were the chances that she was younger than him? But then, did she have to be? He found it much easier to nurture (or think about nurturing) others in his peer group, and he'd never liked pups. Once upon a time he'd hated them to the point of giving quite a wide berth to whatever area he'd even seen their pawprints in, let alone the way he'd fuss and sulk if he'd smelled one, but his tactfulness had increased with age, and so now he just acted charmingly awkward (when he couldn't avoid them... still) and let them follow him around. Ridiculous — but, he was at her side in record time. A record for him, anyway. With his ears still perked, he mustered up enough of the romanticism that had hovered at the edges of consciousness all day to say the most noble and seductive and mysterious and un-stupid thing he could think of. "Er... are you all right?"
Or not. |
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I love Shakadyn >> I just wanna eat him. He and Naniko are like. Polar opposites. And I like your writing style, by the way.
Sometimes she didn’t know why she did some of the things she did. It could have been abandonment issues, but was that really all? Everyone in her life that she’d ever gotten to know had left. She didn’t have a lot of friends, not even a handful of them…and she spent more time around animals and pups than she did fully grown wolves. Maybe it was that she didn’t like to act her age; she’d been told by others that she was far too friendly, too trusting to survive. But here she was.
There were times that she wondered why she was still here, while the rest of her family had moved on to other lands. Why hadn’t she gone with them? Some days it was hard to get up, easier just to sleep past the sunrise, straight through the morning, past the afternoon.
Sometimes, she’d read, humans had problems like hers. She’d heard that it was called a “mid-life crises”…but she was far from middle aged. Naniko was just over a year and a half old, the oldest child from the mating of Kaelyn Trickery and Roman D’angelo.
Maybe her problem had to do with the losses. When she had lost everything, when the crying and carrying-on is was all over, there was only one thing that she’d done. Gotten back up. Started smiling again. She would never meet someone as considerate, loving, and loyal as her mate had been, would never find another wolf as kind as Iskata had been. But that wouldn’t keep her from looking, and trying to emulate their behaviors herself. They had been so wonderful to her while she’d known them…she would do the same for somebody else.
She lay down in the snow for a few more minutes. The snow had made the decision for her…she’d need to take a longer break, it seemed. She closed her eyes, feeling warmed by the brightness of the sun overhead. Her pack was pushed up over her back, a few of the herbs spilling out of one of the pockets. It was that strong smell that made her jade eyes look up, only milliseconds before the words were spoken. She jumped, scrambling up onto her knees, eyes wide. ”I, well, I decided that I ought to give up. I didn’t realize I had an audience”
[html] and who's to blame; i could assume
Ah, thank you! I worry that Shakadyn's voice is too rambly and messy to tolerate, sometimes, and this post is even worse than usual in that regard due to my being strung out. Sorry about that.
the loneliness of my white room
He raised an eyebrow delicately. Give up? On what exactly? Did he have a suicide case on his paws, here? He hoped not. Excessively empathetic though he might be, Shakadyn was unaccustomed to dealing with anyone's self-loathing but his own, and he hadn't felt that way in some time. Of course, not all suicides had to do with self-loathing, but — no. He'd stop that train of thought before it made its way to the station. He was enough of a space case as it stood today, and such problems never do deserve exacerbation. Luckily, all signs pointed not to a desire to off herself, but rather give up on walking for the moment, which was decidedly easier to handle. Disturbingly, he realized he still wanted to help, and, sighing privately, he headed for her rucksack, intent on rearranging the fallen herbs. Such uncalled for situational messiness was an intolerable provocation to the obsessive-compulsive personality. "Well, now you do," he quipped. And she was quite lucky to have him as an audience rather than someone more... immediately vicious. It worried at a corner of his brain that, in a metaphorical sense (he did so love metaphors), looked as though it had been butchered by the teeth of rats for being worried so often. Should he have been aggressive? Would it have made the scene more interesting? Laughter resonating from the chambers of his mind alerted him, once again, to the fact that such an insecurity was terribly neanderthal.
If he had been vicious, it would only have been giving in to his instincts spurned into action by suspicion, nothing more. After all, life was brutal. Nature was brutal. Nature was the beast whose fiendish designs had dictated that enormous wasps laid eggs in living tarantulas, in order for their larvae to have fresh food when hatched. The she-wolf had hurt her leg, but from a detached and coldly rational point of view, that was life. Unfortunately, today he was feeling more like a character in a Shakespearean play than he was feeling detached and coldly rational. While that might have allowed some raw punches delivered with a poison kiss by Mother Nature herself, they would end up delivered in lilting rhyme with very little of the mandatory reason, and would thus be ultimately harmless. Unless of course you were one of those people who just could not stand poetry, in which case Shakadyn's melodrama capabilities would annihilate you. That reassured him a touch. He hadn't lost ALL of his wolfishness, it was just... uniquely encapsulated. Getting back to the task at hand, it would have been far easier to obsessively compulse about things if he had had hands to do it with, so perhaps "at hand" was more of a self-aggrandizing pun than he was entirely comfortable with. "Might I ask where you are, or rather were, headed?" It slipped out before he could remind himself that nerve-riddled small talk did not become him. |
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Darn. The last time she'd gone to the library snow had been piled up over the door, and she hadn't been able to get in. She wondered if it would be that way now, or if any of the snow would have melted. Did temperatures vary between the pack territories and the city? Maybe the blacktop would make it melt slower...or maybe not. She didn't know about the city, not enough to make a conclusion like that. Perhaps this entire mission had been to waste...
She brushed some of the snow off of her fur without realizing what she was doing; it wouldn't matter if she was snowy or not, as she was about the same color as the stuff...but this made her feel cleaner. A bit more presentable. It had been a long time since she'd had anything that would qualify as a conversation...she wasn't sure what to say now. The bubbly wolf was unusually quiet after his first comment, frowning, unsure of whether he was making fun of her or not. She suddenly spoke again, though, when he reached down for the backpack-- But it was too late. Some of the herbs that had spilled could cause really bad rashes, and a few of them were poisonous..."You'll want to wash your hands."
Naniko reached for her pack once it was properly organized, shrugging it onto one shoulder. "I was hoping to make it to the human city, to see if the library was uncovered. Last time there was snow all over the place, snow that would have taken me an age to dig through. What about you? Do you live here?" She didn't smell any sort of a pack on this wolf, only a strange mixture of territories and strangers. "And before. I meant that I kept falling down, and that I thought I should give up and take a rest."
[html] and who's to blame; i could assume
I'm finding the idea of his passing out and Naniko's taking him home to treat him amusing. Likely impractical for the distance.
the loneliness of my white room
He felt a bit better, having put things in place again. Organizing things tangible to his sense of touch was a brief and welcomed respite from the chaos of his mind, and from those dubious things tangible to his sense of sight. However, she'd suggested that he... wash... his hands. Well, wasn't that an interesting play on words, because being on four legs generally necessitated that you use your mouth to manipulate things. The tone that she had said it in dictated that he surreptitiously take a mouthful of snow, wait for it to melt a bit and then spit it as far as he could, and, having executed that in record time, he thanked whatever god would listen that he'd picked the herbs up so very delicately between his front teeth. If he died tomorrow, at least he'd know why in the afterlife. Not that there necessarily WAS an afterlife; in fact, he was atheistic, but, you know. Just in case.
"Do I... live here." He said it speculatively, eyes like frost casting their wintry gaze far over the snow and hills to the suburbs beyond, leaving a glittering coat of blue appreciation in their wake. It even came to rest on the city, dilapidated and ruinous as it was (but don't misunderstand — his tongue screamed for the taste of urban decay. He had associated it with fancy coffees that bore sketchy psuedo-Italian names). He supposed that the scene must be very majestic in its way, but the fact that it blurred somewhat after a few feet kind of ruined the effect. "Good question. I plan to." He failed to mention that that had been the reason he'd set out today, and that it was the reason that he was awake during the day at all, because he was much better at extorting information from others than he was at sharing it. Nevertheless, he'd missed an excellent opportunity to be sarcastic by answering her question directly, and so he promised to himself that he'd be extra saucy from now on to make up for it.
Pretend, if you will, that mere minutes ago he hadn't been busy wallowing in melodramatics — things like brushes with death undoubtedly, absolutely, DEFINITELY (with seven cherries on top) always had that effect on a person. He had noticed that she brushed the snow from herself in a way suggestive of sheepishness, and as usual allowed himself yet another moment to boast privately, with much grandiose sarcasm, about his rugged and manly good looks. As if. Back on Earth, stepping from the air balloon of his ego, he figured that she was probably more embarrassed about falling down in front of him than anything. Understandable, but he didn't much mind, as he tended to ignore the Freudian implications of things like that. So she was headed to the library, huh? (In the "human city", even; surprising for all that it belonged to them now.) Well, son of a bitch. He liked books. He liked books a lot. "I don't suppose you'd mind if I accompanied you. It's the gentlemanly thing to do; you know, making sure a lady doesn't fall down more than once or thrice a day." |
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[html] That would be funny :3 Maybe not, but she could take care of him in the library? She'd toy with the idea of leaving him there to die, though, of course >>; And sorry for not noting that he was in his normal wolf form :3
He took a while to answer her, and during that time she examined him a little more closely. He wasn't bad looking, she supposed, but she wasn't really in the market. Besides; a loner like him could only mean trouble for a pack wolf. Relationship-wise, anyway. Conri had moved from Syemv to be with her when they'd been together, he'd given up everything. She couldn't imagine a lone wolf wanting to join the rigid ranks of a pack.
"Good question?" She asked, frowning again. His next question caught her off guard; she hadn't been expecting this. Usually she met wolves and parted with them rather quickly..even her own family members. He actually wanted to go with her? After the initial confusion she brightened a little. Sure! She really would like some company. But she couldn't let him know that, especially after the last comment he'd made. "Sure, I guess. I don't really care." She turned away from him, starting toward the city. In all reality, he probably knew the city even better than she did. He probably knew a faster way to the library. But she didn't care. If he wanted to come with her, he'd have to follow her.
[html] Sorry for the delay and pitiful length. My muses are not feeling so energetic.
Couldn't imagine? Oh, but it was only instinct! At least, it had been, long before they all could speak human languages and walk on two legs. Nature did indeed lose some of its ferocity when you defied it in such a way, if only as a result of being too shocked to react. He glanced at her with an appraising eye. He deserved her brush-off, or would have had he gone any further with his smartassing, but lords above, was that ever impolite! Poisoning him and then acting as if he were naught but a fly on the wall. Well, then. He padded through the snow, tail curled like a sled dog's. It was a delicate situation, he supposed — after all, the odds that someone offering to walk with you in these parts had ulterior motives was uncannily high. Even so, if that was what troubled her, she probably would not have mentioned the deathly nature of her plants, instead biding her time until he collapsed and then doing things to the corpse that he'd rather not contemplate. Maybe she looked down on him for not having been able to tell? He should have been looking down on himself for that. His knowledge about humans and their culture, while abundant (some might say excessive or even obsessive), certainly had less practical use than her own of botany.
Of course, his knowledge was all the more useful in this area, and in the winter, to boot. (Although, she was not quite right in her assumption, as even if he had known a quicker route he'd have forgotten it after so long.) His mood had planted itself firmly on a swing (and no rusty, squeaky old thing, either — this was a sparkling new little red number), so that he now hovered between his pre-encounter melancholy and his post-encounter gaiety. A balance like that was very given to subtly dark devil-may-care grins playing across his jaws. "Don't you? Oh, I'm hurt," he mused, and though that undoubtedly didn't help his case, he couldn't resist. Granted, it wasn't all sarcasm, as the volatility of immediate reaction brewing in the pit of his stomach could attest to, but he'd prefer to ignore that if he could. "Not that I can blame you. I haven't even introduced myself." But then, what was there to introduce? Naturally, he'd wait for her to take the bait, and if she didn't, all the better for him. He really should not have picked such a ridiculous name. "How easy is it to like a character that doesn't even have a name?" That was spoken with some bitterness behind it, but he dropped the thought before it could make itself at home. |
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[html] Pitiful length?  Mine are too, then xDD
She didn't have her companion with her today, the usual little magpie that clung to her backpack, to keep her mind occupied, so she was (however grudgingly) forced to focus on him instead. Was he following? Did he even want to go any more? Why did she care about it so much? She didn't know the answer to any of those. Naniko had been a pack wolf of birth, but there had been times that she had considered a loner's life instead. She'd had other moments of weakness, as well. When the packs had merged, and her father had become the leader, she had almost joined with him, to help him. But that had been around the same time that she and Conri had warmed up to each other-her interest in him had outweighed her desire to gain a better rank. The green eyed wolf felt hyperaware, now, listening to the sounds of their paws crunching on the snow, wondering if he was going to say anything. It was probably better if he didn't reply at all; she wasn't sure if she could think of an intelligable answer. She had a lot of things going through her head at once...but she had a problem with picking out the right words to say. When she was younger they'd called it a speech disorder. Trying to say too much, all at once. So now she tended to keep quiet, rather than open her mouth and embarrass herself. Adults weren't supposed to have speech problems. He spoke, and she felt the urge to reply. "We can travel together without my liking you." Was she being rude? Perhaps. "Do not feel compelled to tell me your name if you do not want to. However..I feel fine with giving you mine. It's Naniko. Naniko D'angelo, from the Clouded Tears pack."
[html] To hell with fancy tables! Viva la revolución!
D'Angelo, huh? He was running into a lot of them, wasn't he? Her first reply had charmed him into a grin, even. "Well, I like you...r style," and then, with only a moment's devilish thought, he said, "I suppose, for all intents and purposes, you could call me Lysander." It was smooth and dignified enough. In fact, he might just make it official, or at least an official mask. He could have told her with his nose that she was a pack wolf, but... Clouded Tears. Wasn't that interesting. Even if he'd been gone for a year and a half, some of the soft familial wolf scents that he could smell on her fur were reminiscent of the Chimeran wolves he'd known. Shakadyn was not exactly a gossip so much as he was a pain in the ass, which spurned another question. He was far from feeling too awkward to make conversation with strangers today (more like right now, the way he was bouncing about) — and anyway, she'd told him her name, so they weren't technically strangers any more, right? "Tears, then? Really? What happened to Chimera?" Yeah, true enough that he could have worded it so that he sounded a little less like a stalker, but he fancied it obvious enough that he'd been around before.
He let his mind run away with him. Marauding pirates? A war? Brutal massacreing by a rival pack or coyotes? (He wouldn't be surprised to find that the last was somewhat true, had he found out.) It was a way to pass the time, anyway. Thinking always was. Some might say he did too much of it. Save for the occasional glance over at Naniko, he kept his eyes on his path... Bad habit. C'mon, man, someone said. The world's wide and wonderful! Get an eyeful while you still can! His internal voices had quite a way of sounding like something taken from a self-help book and the diary of a madman simultaneously. He'd seen enough of the world to satisfy him (you liar, you're always bitching about traveling more) and enough of the people in it to satisfy him, too... so what was he doing here? Being contrary, that's what he was doing. Another bad habit — turned pro, this time. |
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She'd met a lot of wolves in her life that she hadn't liked, but she didn't count Shakadyn amongst them. So far things weren't going too badly between them...for wolves that had just met. She had known Ahren for only a short while when she'd realized that they weren't going to get along. But, though he was peculiar, she had no reason to dislike Shakadyn. Yet.
"I'm glad. I haven't spoken with a wolf for a while...it's much preferred to the usual small woodland creatures. And it's nice to meet you, Lysander." What he said next puzzled her. How had he known about Chimera? It had been a while since she had lived there, more than a year. But then...she did go back to the lands quite often. She'd just gone back there to visit her father's grave, only a few days before. "It was dissolved. I believe that Physe, my dad--he tried to join his pack with another one, Syemv...but it didn't work out. They were attacked by coyotes. I was too young to really understand, I suppose, or I would have been with him fighting. He died a few months ago...he was pretty old. He had a really bad disease."
Most people didn't ask her about her past. She hadn't spoken about it in such a long time. "I was living in Clouded Tears at the time, though, with Iskata. She took me in after I suffered a bad blow to the head. I had lost some of my memory, and could barely even remember my name...and since then, Clouded Tears has been my home." She was doing a lot of talking. Naniko wasn't sure if he would answer or not, but she would try. She was interested in learning where a wolf such as 'Lysander' had come from. "What about you? You don't smell of any pack. Did you grow up here in Bleeding Souls, or somewhere else, Lysander?" The city was getting closer and closer, the black towers looming overhead.
[html] Ahhh, I'm sorry this took so long! I'll be faster from now on.
Bemused, he looked away from her again. So much for being hostile, eh? "You too, Naniko." Pretty name. Vaguely Japanese, though his second and more likely guess was some sort of Native American language. Cherokee, perhaps? He minded himself this time, staying silent while she spoke, absorbing her every word. So he had been right... coyotes had attacked. He'd never been very afraid of them, but he'd seen the gruesome masterpieces on the southern beach. Wolf skulls impaled on poles — perfect ivory canvases, promptly painted in blood. That wasn't Nature's doing... wolves had been the ones to kill coyotes, once upon a time, and they'd never built such grim graves for the fallen. The morbid curiosity present in everyone made him wonder how and why the tables had turned. He'd save that question for another time. And Syemv! Had he not been so fond of his current vagabond lifestyle, he'd have joined. Maybe they wouldn't have even gotten in the way of his exploring. They'd been explorers themselves. Well, too late now. He quieted his instincts that longed for a pack, closing his lonely blue eyes nearly all the way to hide it. That sort of arrangement would only bring him down, nevermind that he'd been perfectly content with it in his younger days, and a quick rank-climber to boot. He might even have been a Beta once... it was so long ago that he couldn't even remember, and both realizations were, together, almost enough to embarass him.
Physe, Iskata... unfamiliar names, but he didn't let that get in the way of his understanding. If nothing else, he was a good listener. "Sorry about your father, madame." Ignoring the salt-and-peppering of his speech with sundry French phrases, he'd never been quite able to grasp where that phrasing had come from — he hadn't been the virus that had killed him. Even so, it was polite, and it hurt to lose a parent. Right? He didn't even know if his were alive, still the leaders of the pack, still secure in their tiny niche of the world, still overbearing pains-in-the-ass... but he assumed it all held true to this day, because his family was unusually long-lived. Had he escaped? He could only hope. If he'd never have to see one of his relatives again, it'd be too soon. (Even his half-sisters and his nieces, no matter how fond he'd been of them, or as fond as he could have gotten of his family.) Sighing half-heartedly and softly enough for Naniko not to hear, he looked up again, in time to see the city much closer than it had been. Talk really did take your mind off of things. Haha... Lysander. Where a moment ago it had delighted him, now it had near enough power to make him sick — but he refrained from correcting his "mistake", even though he was charming enough to pass it off as the name of an uncle or brother he'd been thinking about. (He'd never had a brother.) "No... I can't claim to be from around here." One truth to make up for the lie. "I don't think I can claim to be from anywhere." He grinned after he said it, disguising its bitter sweetness. Again! He had to stop thinking of such brittle things. |
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[html] No problemo ^^ And Naniko's name actually is Native American; it means "she who runs quickly"
Way back when, the D'angelo family had been a prodominant family amongst all of the packs, like the Sadiras, Phoenixes, Lykoi, and Kali families...but now there were only three of them left that she knew of, and one, herself, that she knew would be sticking around for sure. Her little sister Selene lived in Storm, and was being cared for by another of Physe's adopted daughters, Dierdre, and her mate Pilot...and her cousin was a loner that stayed around the neutral territories. She and Naniko had gotten into a lot of trouble in the past, with antagonizing the beach-dwelling coyotes. She looked back to him, then up at the high towers of the city. Would it really be that bad to live here full time? Naniko was devoted to helping run the pack, so she wouldn't consider it now, but maybe if she ended up without a home she'd try it someday. Only taking care of yourself...that didn't sound too bad. "It's all right. But you don't have to call me 'madame', you can call me 'Nani'. Most of my friends do." She offered this and then looked back ahead, continuing. "My other father, Roman, and his mate Kaelyn...they left when I was really young. Before I got hurt. In fact, I was looking for them when I fell, I think. Physe and Roman were mates for a while, and me and my sister were supposed to be their kids. But Roman ended up feeling like he had to take care of mother after she had us...so him and Physe split up. I didn't want to go with Roman anyway...I think that's why he left me and Pontiac." It had been forever since she'd said this to anyone; usually she didn't have any reason for revealing her past. But she didn't think she'd be seeing Lysander again...so why not? "If not here, then where?" She asked, her green eyes turning back to him again. "Do you have someone special back there? A mate or something?"
[html] An intriguing story. He wondered briefly why she felt it prudent to tell her life story to him during their first meeting even though she had said "most of my friends do" as if it were an invitation. Reasoning took over and governed his wondering, shaping it with skillful hands: it was therapeutic, telling everything to a stranger. Strangers could give you insight and advice that friends would hold back out of politeness, and, social by nature, most wolves would probably not frown upon it. Unfortunately for her, this day was a day for cryptic riddling and secrecy, as evidenced in his response. "A mate...?" Laughable. Laughable, but he didn't laugh. To most, this was a legitimate inquiry, but to one such as himself, a perfect example of asexuality, not so much. And behind all of his dandyism and politeness there lay in wait an icy cynicism, so indeed it was that he thought "love" nonexistant — only something borne as the byproduct of an idealistic sex drive.
"Of course not. Why would I be here if that were the case?" The only "something special" from his home was a certain breed of antagonism that he had yet to encounter in his travels elsewhere, and he was spending his life running as far away from it as possible. There was a soft something in the air, pixies' bells — a shimmering silver glamour that drowned out all else. Snow, muffling all natural sound, leaving only the tones of their voices made flat and hollow in following. Many things in the world were beautiful, but none of them in quite such a way as a city blanketed with snow. Something to look forward to. |
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"Oh" She said simply, looking forward again. There was nothing else she could say to that; it did make sense, really. But maybe he was just a wanderer...she couldn't have known. The real question that she was asking, it seemed, was whether he would be sticking around. If he had other obligations, then she would accept that and stop acting so...bubbly. The plain truth was that she didn't mind walking by him at all--in fact, it had been a long while since she'd been able to appreciate beauty such as his. It made her feel old, strangely...even though she wasn't even two years old yet.
"I'm sorry for asking. I was just...curious. I had one, once. But he left...I'm not sure why. He might be dead; I never got the chance to find out." That had been the time that the coyotes had mangled her leg, making her completely useless. She'd wanted to go out and look for Conri, but hadn't been able to.
She gestured toward one of the side streets as they walked into the city, shrugging her pack up a little farther onto her shoulders. "This way."
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