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concrete jungle.
owls, ftw. this is a bit long & ends awkwardly.
Our grey lady, on a inconsequential night in January (as it was), sat whistly by herself in the Human City. The old place which she had decided to occupy might have once been a nice library, but was now nothing more than the pathetic hovel that housed soggy, moth-eaten leather-bounds and dusty computers. Time had certainly taken it's toll on the place. Lith was seated at a table in the rear of the library, where she was framed by a tower of books that teetered curiously as a chilly wind blew through the broken window near her. The recently-turned four-year-old rested her dark head upon an arm which was layed out upon the table, hand clutching the far edge of the wooden device, and peered fixedly at a book propped up by her ever-present black bag. Her strange eyes, though half-lidded and perhaps slipping slowly closed as each moment passed, wandered back and forth across the yellowed pages, drinking in the prose which resided there.
A sigh. As if there was great effort attatched to it, the coyote reached (with her free arm) toward the open book, and tossed the finished page lightly out of the way with a flourish. A murmur, a little squirm to restore comfort, and she was still again. Until a noise, soft but so sudden that it was enough to unnerve, caused our grey lady to flinch, bristle, and whip her head around to the broken window. What sat there was a common barn owl, brown feathers askew and yellow eyes staring creepily at the alarmed coyote. "Hist!" he said again, hopping as he saw that her attention was now his.
"What?" grunted Lith with a scowl, an expression that suited her much better than the vacant one she had been wearing.
"What is it doing?" asked the owl, turning his head unnaturally far to one side.
The Tirones observed the diurnal avian for a beat and a half, brow drawn low with the dark corners of her lips curled down as well. "Reading," she answered finally, turning back to her book. It was a lengthy thing, all about nymphs and fickle deities and whatnot; a read for salvation from boredom, and that was that. To even think of applying it to reality was ridiculous. This outlook, however, could easily be mistaken for hypocrisy if one knew the nature of Lith's tattoos on either of her inner-thighs, and the stories behind them. But, hardly anyone would where she was.
"Reading?" asked the owl, shrugging his wings. The coyote gave a nod followed by a murmur of confirmation. Clipping his beak once, the bird made the few downstrokes it took to reach the table where she read, and landed with a bit of a skid in front of her. "Folly," said he matter-of-factly, adjusting his hopelessly ruffled feathers. The woman straightened, mismatched eyes narrowing dangerously thin.
Oh, her patience.
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It looked like rain, but nothing had fallen from the sky just yet. Or rather, he supposed it would be snow that came down -- the city was already blanketed in it, but it was dirty and walked through with footprints from a thousand people, real or imagined. Brown and grey holes in the white, big and small, the slight impressions of wings sandwiching pairs of bird feet. He wandered thoughtlessly as he always did, gravitating towards nothing consciously, and he still didn't know what filled his subconscious.
The library was not one he had visited before. The familiar one, the one with the grand piano, had been reduced to a dark pile of ash and the hybrid did not want to think about who had done it or why. The door creaked when he pushed it open and the fluttering of feathers greated him there. Across the dusty chamber was an owl on a table and beside it, a coyotess. His first impulse was to turn around and leave. Inferni had never brought him anything but trouble and he didn't see why that should change now. Most likely, it would be a meeting of no consequence -- he didn't imagine that troublemakers took much time to read, but assuming things brought trouble just as often as the coyotes did on their own. But for the while, it seemed the tattered male would stand in indecision.
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time passes and i don't realize it.
i'm sorry.
Tearing her caustic gaze away from the bird, Lith faced this new stranger. Her expression was unusually blank as she took in his appearance: red eyes, scars everywhere, the posture of someone who had given up hope. She supressed a smile. Beside her, the old owl hooted, ruffling his feathers to make him look larger.
"Go away!" squawked he, hopping slightly with the force of his exclamation. Finally having enough, Lith swiped at him, black claws extended menacingly. But, the owl, blessed with flight, swooped out of the line of fire and onto a distant bookshelf. Of course, this action was met with great fussing and a ruffling of feathers. The gray lady, satisfied, turned away from the bird and back to the red-eyed stranger.
"Apologies," said she in a purr, propping her dark chin up on her hand. With her other, the book was closed and tossed aside, where it landed on the floor and stirred up a storm of dust. The lady said nothing for a few moments, gazing at the male with her strange eyes, as she fished another book from her towering pile. She knew nothing of the wolves' traditional hate for coyotes, (particularly ones of Inferni) and definitely knew nothing of this creature's certain history with the clan in general. She didn't even know his name. But, perhaps this was a good thing for tattered hybrid.
"What brings you to this decrepit place?" Lith asked him, opening the book casually. The spine gave a sharp crack that startled the still air, and the coyote smirked.
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Me too, really.
He should have probably left when the owl told him to and the urge to just do so increased when the woman spoke. A purr. A seductress's trademark and a whole aveune of bad memories that he had only half-forgotten. And yet, only his tail twitched and he continued to stare at her with an empty expression. This was why his life was in shambles, wasn't it? Because he didn't learn from longstanding mistakes. Because he didn't take the warning signs as they were. Because he was stupid and had no reasons why. He didn't trust her smirk, but hey, no hope, no fear, right? He had long ago stepped beyond the gates of "nothing left to lose."
This is a library, he said stiffly, finally taking a few steps forward to the nearest bookshelf. I came to read. In all honestly, he wasn't trying to be a smartass. It was the truth and the only reason why he hadn't left yet, probably. The other library he knew of was nothing but cinders and he didn't want to look around for another one in the rain. What've you got there?
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