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 Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 5:15 pm
((This is a self RP between my two soqs, Samsara and Zulian!))
A shiver ran through Samsara. It was not a shivering of flesh, but a shivering of awareness and emotion. It ran through her in rushes and ebbs, like the relentless beating of a wave on the sand. Behind her a long tail was twitching but she didn't know what made it do so and it seemed to be beyond her control.
All over her she felt... different. The blood that coated her was losing its freshness and becoming sticky and fetid. That wasn't the worst of it, though. The worst was the dead thing that lay upon her... the fur and flesh of a mountain lion that had been alive so recently.
Another shivering of emotion ran through her and the hoarse growl that came from her throat was unlike any sound she had made before in her life. Her new tail lashed more wildly. What had become of her?
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Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 5:28 pm
The pull of that chill spring night had drawn out Zulian with the force of a siren's song. He had fed during the day, and yet his usual sated sleep eluded him. It wasn't a smell on the air calling him out. He had sniffed every which way and smelled nothing unusual or terribly interesting. It wasn't any sound, or sign of intrusion. It was just... the night.
He prowled without any real motive or direction. At times like this the thinking part of his mind shut off and the animal side took control. He didn't need to put into words for himself the sharp edges of the trees against the darkness. He didn't need to stop and ponder the meaning of a stale pile of scat. He saw it. He knew. He was.
As he raised his head to peer at a shadowy figure in the branches above him he caught the scent. Blood. Something bleeding. He turned fluidly toward the source of the smell and inhaled more deeply. It didn't smell fresh. Was it an injured animal? A site of another creature's kill? He began to slink on toward whatever it might be.
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Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 5:35 pm
In Samsara's haze, she had no chance of noticing the other skinwalker before he was upon her. Though his strong scent carried clearly to her, she didn't yet know how to interpret the new signals feeding into her blurred mind. Her senses had undergone a great awakening and somehow left her behind. She inhaled a breath of something acrid and musky and coughed at the sensation instead of thinking about what it might be. The only smell that she recognized was blood, and that was overpowering.
She heard the snap of a twig and whirled around, panting. A rat that had been scuttling across the forest floor stopped mid-step and stared at her. The rat's eyes were wide with fear and her own were large with a wild hunger. But hunger for what? A thread of drool dribbled from her lip and still she didn't understand. What did she want to do with the little animal? She took a step closer. She understood now. She just had to-
There was another sound, this time louder and directly behind her. This time it was her turn to stare in fright. In front of her was a true monster of a soq, as giant as her father and with glowing eyes staring out from behind a cat's empty face. Skinwalker.
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Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 5:46 pm
As Zulian grew nearer the smell grew more refined and intense. He recognized it now. Yes, he certainly recognized it now! His fascination and excitement overwhelmed his caution and he plunged ahead into immediate full view. His glowing eyes blazed at the sight before him. Another skinwalker!
When he had served his human master, there had been other mounts like him that he had known. They had loathed each other and wanted nothing more than to tear each other apart... and yet some part of being forced to work with others of his kind had filled him with such a satisfaction of viciousness. He had hated them and wanted to kill them, but together they wrecked such havoc with the humans that controlled them. Had he found another skinwalker warrior such as the ones he had known?
He focused and looked more closely at the mare before him. She was a skinwalker, yes... but nothing like the giant creatures that he had bestowed terror with. She was small. She was very young, so much that the pelt on her back still looked fresh. The most ridiculous thing to him were the wings on her back, flimsy and glittering.
A deep and rumbling laugh came from his throat. It was filled with astonished derision at the sight before him.
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Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 5:52 pm
He laughed. The terror still rocked through her but in a blazing instant it was replaced with something else. The feeling it was replaced with had the heat and intensity of a raging fire. The searing inside her burst out in a snarl that was more feline than equine. The vision of the laughing skinwalker swam before her and she took a step toward him as if her legs were moving by themselves.
"You... you...." Her voice was choked with fury and her breath drew in with hoarse gasps. She was speechless, reduced to some snarling animal in the moonlight.
But that wasn't enough. She lunged forward. It was instinct and not thought that bared her new fangs and pointed them straight at the neck of the enemy that mocked her.
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Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 6:03 pm
Zulian still laughed as the other skinwalker staggered toward him. Had he ever been so pathetic? He couldn't remember his own cursing but couldn't imagine himself ever so weak. Whatever he had been before cursing, he had been born to be a skinwalker.
The mare was going to attack him, but Zulian felt no intimidation or threat. She was half his size and looked more likely to fall over than hurt him. He chuckled again, then stopped as she made her move.
Her attack was just as clumsy as expected. With his years of training it was only too easy for Zulian to evade and counter her attack. He slipped backwards with a speed that belied his large stature. The mare stumbled forward with the momentum of her thwarted attack and then Zulian lashed out. He shoved forward with his body and sent her reeling to a side. Then he kicked her legs out from under her and sent her crashing to the ground. It was pathetically easy.
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Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 6:14 pm
Samsara was on the ground before she knew what hit her. She gasped with pain at the impact and her hooves scrabbled as if they could still carry her galloping away. The rage was gone again just as quickly as it had come. It was the shivering but heightened, the same ebb and flow.
She was going to die. She had ended up in the place that haunted every soquili's nightmares, the place that parents warned their foals of. She was helpless on the ground in front of a skinwalker and he was certainly going to kill her.
Her eyes squeezed shut and she let out a frightened whimper. Faces flashed in her mind. There was her sister, just as much a kalona as the strongest of purebloods. Adour could have saved her. She also saw her father. Hadn't he warned her about the dangers in the darkness? Where were they?
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Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 8:16 pm
Zulian stared down at his quivering prey. This was another skinwalker? This was a member of his proud race? He could bite her throat. It would be easy to bite and hold until she stopped breathing and then hold until she stopped doing anything else. It would be so easy it wouldn't even be fun.
"Do you know what?" He growled breathlessly down at her. "I don't know why you're so scared because you're too boring to kill when you're scared like that. But if you were less scared I might want to kill you, so maybe you should stay scared instead." As usual, his speech was disjointed and had a rambling nature to it. Social skills had never exactly been his strong point.
"You're so stupid and pointless," he continued. "Get up so I can bite you properly. Get up." He gave her a sharp push with one hoof, somewhere between a nudge and a kick. "Get up!" His final utterance had more of a growl and a snap to it. Something akin to disillusionment was filling him with aggravation. Skinwalkers were not supposed to behave like that.
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Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2011 5:15 pm
Samsara flinched each time she felt the hoof of the skinwalker. Each time she wondered whether next time he would just bite her throat out and be done with it. And he wanted her to get up so he could kill her? She didn't even know if her legs could hold her if she tried, not that it was a tempting proposition.
He kicked again and she let out a sharp yelp. It hurt. Her sharp teeth had bitten through her lip and now the fresh taste of blood was filling her mouth. Even with her own blood, there was something heady about the flavor. It was almost intoxicating. It made her want to... want to...
She didn't wait for the next kick. Though she was still on the ground she lashed out with her fangs at the heavily furred ankles of her attacker. If he made her bleed, she'd make him bleed a little too!
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Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2011 5:22 pm
The mare's bite caught Zulian, but just barely. Her teeth scraped across him as he jerked himself backward away from her. He felt thin lines of pain left on his leg and knew that his blood would begin to trickle from those small wounds. He snarled in surprise and anger. She was still on the ground. He could kill her so easily! He reared and his hooves scrabbled the air in preparation for landing a final crushing blow to her skull... and then he fell back on all fours again, watching.
His disillusionment was fading. Now what he felt... was intrigue.
"You look like you're fighting it," he remarked, staring. "You shouldn't do that. You aren't prey anymore, you're a predator and it's a lot better than being eaten. You can't eat me but you can eat other things. Don't be stupid." With that, his latest threatening ramble was finished. His breath rasped in and out with the tone of a whispered growl.
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Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2011 5:30 pm
Samsara answered with a deep growl of her own. She climbed to her feet and he made no move to stop her. What he was saying didn't make sense to her. What did he mean by saying she was a predator? The blood from her split lip dribbled from one corner of her mouth. Had he seen her before, when she'd killed the rabbits?
Her tail twitched. A breeze ruffled through the black clouded pelt on her back.
No. That wasn't what he was talking about. Her labored panting grew more intense. Her clarity was only present in bursts that night. She couldn't think. She could sense the stare of the skinwalker as he watched her. Her tail moved and then... she moved her tail. She commanded it to curl, ever so slowly winding around one back leg. She could feel the leg and she could feel the tail. Her tail!
The skinwalker stared at her and she stared back at it. She understood now. There was not one skinwalker prowling in these woods tonight. There were two.
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Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 11:21 pm
Something had changed in the way the mare was looking at him. Before she was a frightened animal. Now she was a hunter, like him. The change happened so quickly. Was that what it was like to be a new skinwalker? To be one thing one moment and another the next? He found himself glad that he didn't have any memories of his life prior to cursing. He would never be bothered by things that happened before. As far as he was concerned, he had always been a tiger.
His tail twitched in time with hers.
"You know now, I think," he growled, watching her. "But do you know this?" He shifted. His hooves burst forth into bristling claws and his sharp teeth only grew more fearsome. Soon there he was on the forest floor, a massive armored tiger from another land.
"Do you know how to do this?" If possible, the growl that came from his tiger throat was even more feral than his normal voice. "Because if you don't I think I might kill you." 
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Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 11:34 pm
A tremor ran through the pelt on Samsara's back as she watched the other skinwalker transforming. She had never seen a skinwalker transform before. It was disgusting, something so utterly unnatural that it made her flesh crawl. She longed for that sensation so much that it was almost a pain within her. But how?
The pelt seemed to grow tight around her. It pinched and constrained and she gasped as if she were being choked, though she knew the pelt did not reach around her throat. She kicked backwards. Something was happening and she neither understood it nor enjoyed it. She looked at the tiger. He looked at her and they were looking into each other. It wasn't her that looked back, though. It was the thing inside her and draped over her.
The pelt tightened. Samsara could no longer fight it and didn't try to. Unlike the tiger's smooth transformation, hers seemed as jerky as a fall down a rocky hill. She thought she could hear creakings and poppings while her muscles and bones shifted and rearranged themselves. Her body, the one that she had worn her entire life, was gone. She could feel her paws gripping the soft earth beneath them. Her whiskers marked the pulse of the breeze. Her slitted eyes constricted then dilated again to take in all of the meager light available.
She was still nowhere as large as the tiger but she was c.loser now. She wasn't stupid enough to try to attack him again. What she wanted to do... was to find something else. "Meat... blood... feeding..." The first utterances of her cat voice were not profound, but her galloping mind could express nothing else.
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Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 7:50 pm
Zulian had watched other skinwalkers transform before but it was strange watching this one. He didn't like the way her wings folded into her body. It didn't seem right to him that a skinwalker should have wings. Wings were for birds and delicate things. Skinwalkers should be anything but delicate.
She didn't look like she knew what to do with herself as a cat quite yet. Zulian tilted his armored head and watched her silently. How had he learned to hunt? He couldn't remember.
He could... he didn't know if he liked the idea, but some ancient and less vicious instinct in him prompted the words that came next. "I could teach you how to hunt." It didn't even sound like himself. The tone was almost normal, less of the growling rambles that he usually gave. Strange.
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Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 7:55 pm
He was offering to help her hunt? Samsara's lips curled back in a sharp toothed sneer. Only one person had ever taught her to hunt. She only ever had needed that one person, her monstrous, beautiful sister. "No!" she snarled at the other skinwalker, a cat yowl tearing through her voice. "I don't need you!"
She turned around and was bounding through the undergrowth before he had a chance to respond.
He still outweighed her by far even in their cat forms. He could have easily torn into her after she turned her back to him and if Samsara had been more in her right mind she might have considered that. But she didn't. She ran into the forest on her four new paws and was soon too lost in sensations to even think of the other skinwalker she had met. The first kill she made in this new form was nothing impressive, a fat bird too stupid to take flight, but it was a start. The blood ran down her snout as she ate and she savored every last bit of it.
Finally, she was whole.
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