mark me with fire
#1
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_____First things first, Corona was already out to make a mental map of such a new place. Now that she was settled with Inferni once again, she knew she'd be an even better help to her brother if she knew more about the area that encompassed. Gabriel had told her where to stay away from and pointed out where that was, so for the time being Corona didn't think she'd be heading off in any direction towards Dahlia de Mai any time soon. Not while they had Talitha, at least. But the very notion of it made her blood boil, it let a seething anger slowly course its way through her veins.


_____But for now, it wasn't the only thing on her mind. There were still unanswered questions she wanted to ask and even now it was a little hard not to think of the destruction that the fire on the other side of the mountain had caused. She couldn't help but wonder what siblings were still around and she wondered if her father was there or if he had moved on. Then of course, there were thoughts of what she had left behind before Marlowe had told her to go back. It seemed as though no matter what she did, she was always brought back home. Not that there was anything wrong with that, it had finally dawned on her just what sort of concrete position she needed to take.


_____As she came to a stop where a small stream ran through the thick forest, Corona pushed her nagging thoughts aside. It wasn't the time to regret, it wasn't the time to worry, she was supposed to be out there figuring out things about the countryside
that was more or less home. A permanent home, she reminded herself, not longer having the desire to travel knowing that things hadn't changed whether or not she was there. The only things that had changed was the size of her collective family, but on a whole, Inferni was the same. The family that remained there was the same and she hadn't changed that much either.

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#2
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Rachias had been spending most of her time tending to her father or keeping watch over the other sickly boy. If she wasn't inside taking care of him, she was just outside the shack sleeping, or at least making an attempt to. It only seemed like they were getting worse, more delirious and tired as time passed, and Ahren seemed sickly lately, even if he wouldn't admit it. She would spy him in her haze of attempted sleep every now and then, watching him as he neared the shack and went inside, but the two of them hadn't really had any time to sit and speak to one another. He had cared for her when she was younger, at least for a short time, after all.


Finally, thanks to a full night of rest, Rachias was up and about, finding it a miracle that she hadn't yet been afflicted with whatever sickness was taking the rest of them. With the strap of her pack over one arm and a bucket in hand, Rachias made her way away from Esper Hollow. She was on a mission to get water and perhaps make a stop off in the city at some point, to gather things to help make the sick more comfortable. There was a small lake in the lands, but it made the girl wary, unsure if the water could possibly be tainted by whatever was causing everyone to get sick. Thus began her search for a stream or something of the sort.


The young female was quiet as she went, slipping through trees and over stumps, considering the many things that were happening in her life. She'd gone back to find her brother, only to come back with no answers, and now she was possibly losing her father. All that would be left were her family members in Inferni, many of which that she wasn't exactly fond of. Coming to the edge of a stream, finally, she regarded the other female with only a glance, at least for the moment. It did startle her though. The faint scent of Inferni that came off of her. She'd never seen the other before though. "Quiet day." She commented finally, dropping to crouch at the side of the stream. Maybe if she made small talk she would seem less paranoid, might find out more than what her head could possibly muster up.
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#3
*has table ADD*
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_____She crouched down along the soft bank, cupping her hands together to scoop up the water and take a drink. The skies had been grumbling most of the day and thought she could smell the rain in the air, the growing storms were distant and far off. All for that better she presumed, not really one to walk back through the rain or particularly in a forest where the trees were natural lightning rods. But well before someone turned up on the other side of the bank, Corona felt their presence. Living on the coast in the former portion of her childhood had taught her to listen to just more than what she normally heard. The animals were tell-tale signs, as were the brush that they all had to walk through.


_____However, what did emerge on the other side of the stream wasn't a wolf, but another coyote. Corona's eyes didn't move her from the moment she had appeared, surprised to find someone of that sort so far out there. She couldn't have been with Inferni, could she? “It is for now,” she answered, offering up a kind smile. In the end, as long as it hadn't been a wolf from Dahlia de Mai, she would have done the same. “Sky's been grumbling off and on most of the day though, so I think it might rain.” And walking in the rain did have its advantages, like the way it masked them.


_____“Are you from around here?”

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#4
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Rachias hadn't been banking on it raining any time soon. Just something else that would cause her concern and make her wonder whether or not her father would be kept dry by the small shack. She hated to seem like she was questioning the work of someone else, but the comfort and well being of her father was the most important thing to her at that point. Blue eyes lifted toward the sky, trailing off to the dark clouds that seemed to be gathering in the distance, and she frowned. "It figures." She muttered, though she still smiled. It would have been more simple to sit out her buckets and let the rain fill them, but she supposed she could do that anyways.


"Actually, I'm not sure if I really have a place." She spoke with a quiet chuckle, no matter how true the words felt. Inferni, Clouded Tears, Inferni, and then nothing. She really hadn't had a stable home for quite some time. "There was a fire across the mountain earlier this year. I lived there with my pack until it happened, then came across the mountain with them." Even if she hadn't wanted to. "I went back across to look for my brother and just recently got back. I haven't been back to my family though, the pack. I don't know if I'll go back." She knew, she knew all to well that she wasn't going back, but something inside of her still felt as if she was abandoning them, even if she didn't follow the same line of thought or the way of life that they did. "Are you from around here?"
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#5
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_____I'm not sure if I really have a place, was a phrase that Corona could have sworn she had used before. To her recollection it was the very phrase that she had used as a child a number of times, even though she was firmly settled in a rut between two greater evils. Being a hybrid had both its advantages and disadvantages and even if she was more wolf than she was coyote, Corona could have sharply resembled a coyote in the right light. Until she turned around of course, and revealed just how much of a wolf she really was. But being a Lykoi gave her the right to step from the light into the dark, and being a de le Poer let her do the opposite.


_____And she stood right in the middle of both of those lights, being the dichotomy of her parents. Bound to go crazy one day with a straight face and a religious calling to back her. “I grew up on the other side of the mountain too,” she said with a small smile, “but it's been a couple of years since then. I've done a lot of travelling.” Or something like that, anyway. She had been back as many times as she had gone, each time finding herself a little bit more than the last time. Each time she learnt just a little bit more of the world she had come into and how to function to survive one step ahead of the rest.


_____“Did you live in Inferni by any chance? You seem like someone I should know.” She was too familiar in the sense that she reminded Corona of someone based on appearance alone. There was always a chance that the family she spoke was the very family that she had left in Inferni; but she couldn't come up with just who she could have possibly been. With her mother still gone (and in Corona's mind, assumed dead), the youngest batch of siblings had scattered to the four winds. The only one Corona had ever gotten a look at had looked at her with pure hatred and even now, his face was a fuzzy image in her pile of memories.

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#6
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In all reality, Rachias knew very little about either side of her family. She understood that most of Inferni was somehow related to her, usually by having the same mother as she, though never really the same father. After that, there was nothing. She had never gotten the chance to know her mother and knew very little about anyone else, Arkham aside, anyways. Then when it came to her father, she knew even less than that. As far as she was aware, he had no family, nothing that tied him to another single soul aside from his children. She would have indeed been surprised to know that he was connected to more people than he might like to have been.


"This is the farthest I've been from there." She commented quietly, finally allowing herself to fall to her rear. She placed the bucket at her side, folding her arms in her lap. Rachias really hadn't ever thought of traveling far either, there was no real desire to. Though the statement from the other female made her quietly wonder what other places were like. That was, until the question came. Did you live in Inferni by any chance? You seem like someone I should know. She was silent for a time, eyes dropping to the surface of the stream, just staring. They couldn't actually make her go back there, could they? Then again, the other female did seem a bit larger than she, maybe she was here to drag Rachias back.


After a moment she finally allowed a sigh to escape her, giving a hesitant nod of her head. "I was, yeah." Blue eyes moved from the water and back to the other hybrid, lingering on her face a moment. "I left there to go live with my father after my mother disappeared. He lived in Clouded Tears, so I decided to live there also. I finally went back to Inferni to be with my brother though." She explained, rather hoping that it all made sense. "Once the fire hit I tried to stay behind to find him but Gabriel wouldn't let me. I finally slipped off and went back to search for him, but I didn't find anything. Now I'm back here. I don't really think I'll go back to Inferni though. My dad is sick and I'd rather be with him than anything else." It was a lot to take in, even for her, and she was living it.

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#7
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_____Her silence was a little unnerving, leaving the older girl to wonder if she had said the wrong thing. Maybe touched on a memory that wasn't supposed to be remembered. But she was forever curious, especially in the name of family. Corona knew all too well that she had scores of them all around, family that she had never meet but wanted to meet. Mab had once told her a little bit about her family, just as Ahren had. Kaena had never talked about her family, but Corona had never really asked her mother. It was one question she was sorry she hadn't got to. But that aside, her ears pricked to listen up when she spoke again, and that was the revelation she had been looking for.


_____“You're one of Laruku's kids,” she said quietly. That meant a lot of things. “We share a mother, Kaena. I'm her eldest daughter, Corona. Ahren de le Poer is my father.” And technically she knew that she wasn't the oldest daughter, but Maeryn was dead and gone so it didn't matter. Corona had never seen Kerberos again after a couple of times, so maybe he was dead and gone too. Those were things that she didn't think about. But she cut to the chase, remembering that she had found the cabin where Laruku had been staying.


_____But if he was sick… well, that wouldn't do. “Your father and I are friends, I've known him for as long as I can remember… how sick is he?” Maybe if he wasn't something that bound him to death, she could try and fix it. Though she had never really treated any sort of viral illness, Corona had spent a lot of time reading about them. She knew how easily they were spread and how in critters like they were, just how bad they could have been, provided it was the problem. It would have been a shame if he had made it out of the fire only to come to pieces now, wouldn't it? Maybe he was just burnt up; she couldn't help but speculate.

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#8
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Rachias could faintly recall speaking to Gabriel about family or, more specifically, about fathers. He had told her that his father wasn't around and, realizing that her own had hardly been around, she'd thought that it was the normal thing. The girl had soon found that it wasn't supposed to be the normal thing and with the urge to find him and spend more time with him, she had done just that. He hadn't wanted her there though, for reasons that she didn't quite understand when she was younger. Now he claimed to love her, spoke kind words of her and that he was proud, but somewhere deep inside Rachias feared that it just might be the sickness talking.


Her rampant mind was quickly pulled in by the older female's words. First, because she immediately knew her father, but second by revealing the fact that they were sisters, in some odd way. Rachias wasn't sure what exactly to think. She knew that she had existing sisters, that they were somewhere out across the world, but she hadn't ever met one. Rachias hesitated, thought, fought with herself for a moment before finally opening her mouth to speak. "Yeah. I'm Rachias." It was all that she could think of in that moment, stuck in a state of something close to shock. "Ahren took care of me a little when I was younger, when I was having some...problems...with my dad.." When my dad implied he never wanted us.


She broke her gaze away finally, turning her eyes to the bucket at her side. "They're hot with fever. It started with Jasper, so they told me, and then it moved on to Laruku. Now I think Ahren might be getting sick, he just doesn't want to say anything. They're all delirious and weak though. They mutter odd things and fight with sleep all day." There was really little more to it than that. "Seizures too, I think, but I don't think they've had any lately. Anyways, I just came out here to get some water for them. Not sure if the water near where they are is safe and all, since we don't know what it is, but I've been helping everyone else care for them."

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#9
I hate it when everything I write is awkward. *kicks post*
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_____Though she couldn't technically draw it from just a little bit of things that Rachias told her, their stories were very similar. One probably had the happy ending whereas the other was far from it, but Corona felt like they had a lot more in common than just a mother. A little comfort was drawn from knowing that Ahren had cared for her and the younger girl continued, Corona learnt a lot more about the situation at hand than she wanted to. Jasper was there, as was her father, and they were both stricken with the same thing, whatever it was. Her mind was already reeling back over the possibilities of what it could have been, all of the books that she had read, all of the people she had ever spoken to in her travels.


_____But at the same time, it made her feel sick. The world felt a little blurry on the edges, but Corona was used to fighting with her composure, she was used to not letting herself get so easily overwhelmed. Fevers, delirium, talking to things that weren't there, and seizures… she knew it wasn't a very good thing. “Where are they at? It's good that you're giving them water,” she said, wondering if keeping them hydrated was really needed at that point. More importantly, she was curious as to who the “everyone else” was, but avoided the question for now.


_____“Do you think I might be able to get a look at them? I know quite a bit about medicine, so maybe there's something I can figure out to give them to help.” Or save them, maybe. It was very troubling knowing that while she had uncovered one family member she only vague knew about, two others that were important to her had quite a crisis on their hands. Corona hadn't intended to come back and find all that had gone on, but it was going on. Marlowe had led her back at what seemed like the right time for their world (or hers) to be hanging by the seat of its pants.

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#10
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"They're in a place called Esper Hollow, staying in the only shack in those lands." She explained quietly, finally dipping the bucket down in to the water to fill it, pulling it back up on to the shore. "I met one of them from there, Laurel, for a brief moment. Seems nice enough. He's letting me stay around to make keep an eye on my dad. Hell, he's even letting sick people stay there, so I don't think he'd really mind if you came along." Something, at the very least, had to be said for a man who would take in the sick, even when he didn't have to. Now Rachias just felt lucky that someone had found him in time to realize that he was sick and might need help.


"They can't really eat, so I've been trying to keep them water around, and keep them cooled off and dry." She stated, even if only to reassure herself that she was doing something at least a little bit helpful. "Would you like me to take you there now? I try not to stay away from there for very long, just to make sure they have someone keeping an eye on them." Did she have things she needed to gather before she could come? Would she check them out first and then decide what she needed? Rachias wasn't sure, but she knew that she was suddenly hoping to get Corona there as soon as possible. "Laurel told me, right before I went in to see my dad, that it's possible for it to spread to us if we go in there, too." She felt herself lucky that she hadn't gotten sick yet.

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#11
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_____Maybe it was the attentiveness to her father that drew out the familiarity that Corona was looking for. Even though all of her family was important, she was almost obnoxiously clingy to her father and because of that, would have done anything for him. So she picked out the information of utmost importance for the time being—Esper Hollow and this Laurel guy—and spoke up to answer the younger girl. “Yes, please.” It was at that point where she crossed the shallow stream, uncaring as to whether or not her feet got wet. The matters with Inferni and Talitha were dumped momentarily into the backseat, though her mind was readily going through options over things.


_____“I really appreciate you looking over my father and brother,” she commented once she had reached the other side, wanting to believe that it had helped in a way. They were being paid attention to, cared for, something that needed to be done. “And I promise that I won't get too close, whatever they have is something that shouldn't be spread around.” It didn't sit with Corona well knowing that Jasper had gotten sick first, though the thing that sat with her was guilt. Her relationship was rocky at best with him, but she still cared about him. He had more or less been down the same road that the rest of them had been down by now.


_____So much for a happy welcoming party, though.

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#12
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I powerplayed them a little bit, just to get them off and walking. -badamberbad-


With Corona's answer, Rachias began to get herself situated. She rested the bucket back on the ground just long enough to find her way to her feet, leaning over to grab the handle and lift it from the ground once more. It was about that time that Corona reached her side of the shore, and Rachias turned to her. "I know I shouldn't have gone in there in the first place, but I hadn't seen my dad in a few months." She commented quietly, just to make sure that her (sister? half-sister? What would she call her?) was fully aware that she had already been exposed to whatever it was that they had. "I haven't been feeling any different or bad or anything, though." She was surprised herself that she hadn't gotten sick yet.


"Esper Hollow is just to the northeast of here, not very far." She explained then, turning somewhat away from Corona to begin walking, but making sure to stay at her side so they could continue talking. "I try not to go very far right now unless I have to." Of course, she supposed she didn't really need to explain why. Rachias was silent for a few moments after that, fighting with thoughts and questions in her head, until finally one came to her head. "Have you seen her?" Her voice had dropped a couple notches, suddenly unsure. "Our mom, I mean." Of course, Rachias didn't expect that anyone had since seen her.

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#13
That's okay. I do it so often I don't even ask any more. I'm really bad. *needs to be put in the time out corner*
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_____The more Rachias spoke, the more Corona was sure that their stories were very similar. There was a considerable age gap between them, but it hardly meant anything to Corona. She had spent a long time shunning those younger siblings away, but they all had similar stories. Jasper wasn't that different compared to she and Rachias, only he had gotten the short end of things. His mother left his father, and then his father had left completely. Corona felt in some way, she had been left by Ahren too, but it hardly dampened the spirit she had to keep their bond stronger whether he liked it or not.


_____“No, I haven't seen her,” Corona said, trying to remember the last time she had actually seen her mother. There had been that brief stint when she had run away from France and came all the way back to Inferni, but it didn't last. She had questioned herself in the same way she was questioning herself now, asking the internal conflict in her, wolf or coyote? “I haven't seen our mother since I was a child. The last time I saw her, she came to see me.” And Corona had never forgotten their conversation, she had never forgotten how she asked her mother not to hurt Ahren. She had never forgotten the way that her mother's voice had cracked with emotion.


_____She hadn't forgotten how she cried after she had left.


_____But the forest was growing thicker and the canopy was more dense; the temperature and the humidity drop and rose in its own ways. “I wished I could tell you where she's gone away to, I really do. I've often wondered that myself… Gabriel and I, we considered that she may have gone away to die. But I don't know. I don't think we'll know.” Maybe she shouldn't have said that, but it was true. Their mother wasn't quite so old as much as she was worn. Her body was aged more than her mind and her spirit, it had taken many more blows so for all she knew, maybe it gave out. She feared in a sense that her father would meet the same end and perhaps for the sake of everything, he too would go away to die.


____But it wasn't worth thinking about, right now.

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#14
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Rachias had long since decided that her mother wasn't worth worrying herself over. She had told herself, ever since the day that Gabriel had gathered them all to tell them she was gone, that her mother had never cared enough about them to stick around or even give them a chance to say goodbye, that she shouldn't care enough about her to wonder or miss her. As time passed though, Rachias found that it was almost impossible not to wonder. Where had her mother gone? Why had she gone? Why hadn't she just told her children herself that she was leaving and not coming back? Why had she taken Eris away and not taken any of the rest of them? There were to many questions that she could ask, to many possibilities and scenarios that she often thought about over and over in her head. She doubted there would ever be answers.


Corona's words only led her to believe that even more, that she might never get a chance at those answers, none of them would. Some of what Corona said made her think a bit more. Had she gone away to die, wasn't it because she didn't want her family to find her in some horrible state? To save them all the pain of watching her wither away and be able to do nothing? There were to many things that came to mind if that were the case, like why she wouldn't have wanted to spend the last few days or weeks with her family, but it all seemed to come back down to good intentions. Rachias wasn't really sure what to think.


"I never really knew how old she was." The younger girl commented as they walked, turning blue eyes away to gaze around them, making certain she was heading in the correct direction. She didn't actually remember much at all about her mother, other than the missing eye and the fact that it was her that her father had always come around to see.

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#15
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_____Corona didn't know how old her mother was either. Old enough to be her father's mother, old enough to have children who were in fact, older than he was. She had long wondered about what had become of Kerberos and outside of only having met him once or twice, she wondered if he was still alive. She wondered where he had gone in the world beyond what they had there. At some point, she had even asked around about him to see if anyone knew him, but no one did. “I can only guess,” Corona mentioned offhandedly, “we have an older brother, Kerberos. He's two years older than I am, so that would make him roughly about five years old.”


_____So she could surmise that her mother had been maybe three or four by the time she had been born. Maybe five, if that were really the case. But how she wished her mother wasn't something of a distant memory. They had both become ghosts of Inferni in some regard; Corona had been away for years and now she had a feeling her mother was doing the same. But at least she still had the other parent, for now. Whatever it was that had supposedly made them all sick troubled her because there was always that risk. She didn't want to lose anyone else, though it was kind of an inevitable sort of thing. One day her father would cease living, and then she'd be right behind him. That whole year gap in age meant a lot of things, at least in her mind.

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#16
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Trying to finish up my really old threads. DX We can stop here or go for a post or two more, up to you.


A five year old brother? The thought made her ears pin back against her skull immediately, fishing through her mind for all the thoughts that ran through her head. If she was correct that would make their mother at least seven or so years old. Then again, Rachias didn't exactly know how long they usually lived either. Everyone seemed to die so young or disappear, she wasn't even really sure of her own family's ages. "How old is Gabby?" She finally asked, her voice quiet for a moment. How many brothers and sisters did she have? How many times had he mother given birth? It sounded like, at least to her, that Kerberos was the oldest that Corona knew of, but what if there were some older than that?

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