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 Posted: Fri May 13, 2011 5:24 pm
 He was thinking about wet earth.
He was thinking about how the earth consumes things. How it eats the dead and spits out flora, how it chews so slowly that it takes an especially foolish creature to be swallowed alive. It was the wrong season for scary stories, really, too hard to scare the piss out of puppies, make a wolf's mouth go dry, with the land in blossom everywhere you looked, but he had thought about wet earth, and now he was off, imagining, digging a hole in his mind and being swallowed, being spat back up miles further with roots in his mane and worms in his teeth. The spotted wolf smiled to himself, a private twitch of his lips. There were few sensations better than inventing.
It made the traveling easier, too; between packs, he would daydream as his long legs carried him, oblivious to the present as he built and destroyed scenarios, monuments, populations in his head. He didn't run into much trouble. Hunger would eventually bring him back to Telk, and at this time of year it was easy work to land a meal. He made his best stories alone.
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Posted: Sun May 15, 2011 8:23 pm
 Kaeerah was bored. Boredom was never a safe emotion for a wolf whose primary forms of entertainment involved disemboweling others and finger-painting with blood. Luckily for Jonsi, though she was exceedingly bored, her appetites were contained. Her desire for flesh, at any rate, was satiated, and her full belly restrained her energy levels. So, rather than prowl the shadows, the blue-flamed wolf was content to lie in the shade and gnaw at a bone that lucked suspiciously canine -- one that still had a very wolf-shaped paw attached to the opposite end. Her ears perked up, sweeping forward, and she glanced up at the sound of another's approach. She tilted her head -- crowned so carefully with the bleached skull of her father -- and locked cold blue eyes on the intruder with a calculating curiosity, but said nothing and continued to gnaw.
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Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 7:36 pm
You see, some wolves had all the luck - it would always be Jonsi that ran into the soulless cannibal, but he would happen across her when the cannibal was full. Something to smile indulgently about later, surely, in the act of shrugging off his charmed life. What wouldn't make it into the story, though, was how he almost walked by without noticing, nearly missing the bright bright flames and the compelling, gritty sound of crunching bone. He was busy imagining a ghoul king, so swaddled in his imagination that he at first took her for an aspect of his contrived scenery, a ghastly blue-flamed wolf risen from some burial ground.
But then it clicked, of course: he faltered and then stopped, his shaggy mane rising in part from fear, and in part from some sense of the paranormal. She was real, wasn't she? Oh, mother, she was looking straight at him, she must be, and those eyes - if he could learn to stare like that he'd never worry about getting himself out of sticky situations again. Jonsi pulled himself together, standing tall and thin and proudly raggedy, and passed the stranger his most insidious smile. "Why, I did not see you there," he crooned, his pale green eyes looking tired and benevolent. "I hate to think I've interrupted a reverie."
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Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 8:09 pm
Her brows raised, disappearing beneath the hollow of the skull she wore. She set down her bone between her bright paws and licked her lips slowly and deliberately as she looked over the spotted wolf. The paw she had been gnawing seemed to point casually toward him - beckoning, perhaps. The color was bright, not yet faded from time.
"The only reverie you've interrupted is your own," she said, at length. She watched him for a moment, debating whether he were oddly brave or just very dumb, and then set to the task of cleaning the blood from her forelegs. She looked oddly demure, oddly delicate, in the process. "So perhaps I should be apologizing to you instead."
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 5:37 pm
The spotted wolf would ever be susceptible to the bones of a good story, and more fool he. His eyes, pale green and bright against the wan charcoal markings on his face, softened in appreciation at the frightening delicacy with which she moved. Her words were refreshingly clever too, and he grinned his jumbled smile, hazily concerned that he was so easily put off his guard by a wolf who seemed to have torn someone's leg from their body. "Well said," he admitted, his head ducking bashfully. "I've been careless." Careful to keep he gaze light, he glanced back to the armored wolf. For all her grace, she must be very powerful, and he thought she must be cunning enough to be an alpha. "Have I overstepped my way into your pack's territory?"
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 11:23 am
"Pack?" She asked, with a laugh -- a delicate, feminine sort of laugh that didn't quite suit her bloodstained maw. She shook her head, blue eyes glittering with amusement as they sought out his.
"No...no, I have no pack." Her eyes dropped down to his lank body, the particular raggedness of his charm. "I'm guessing you as well?" Her brows raised, the skull atop her head shifting upward slightly with the gesture. She dropped the leg she'd been gnawing and nosed it away from herself. "They say a lone wolf is a dead wolf, you know."
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 4:04 pm
Had he suffered a blow to the head? Or was he really so easily dazed by the overlay of grace on danger? She was eating a leg. She had made a threat. But it only served to stupefy him, like a frog transfixed by the beak of a crane. He dropped his gaze. "I guess we are both dead, then," he admitted, giving his studded ear a little flick. "Or all three of us? Four, even?" He bobbed his nose toward the she-wolf's grisly possessions.
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 10:24 pm
She smiled, a curiously disarming smile considering there was skin between her teeth. "Some of us more than others, maybe," she said. She shook her head a little, shifting the position of the skull atop her head. She couldn't remember what it felt like not to wear it; she'd grown into it, like her own body.
"I'm Kaeerah," she offered. "This is Cicero," she added, gesturing in the general direction of the skeleton she was wearing. It was hard to tell whether she was making fun of the spotted wolf or if she genuinely felt the skeleton warranted an introduction. Her eyes dropped to what was left of the leg. "And that...well...I don't recall if I got her name, actually."
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Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 5:39 pm
"My name is Jonsi," he returned, with great gentleness; "and it is my trepidation and pleasure to make your acquaintance." Seemingly unable to contain himself, the silvery wolf broke into a warm and beguiling smile, his crooked tooth an unusual focal point of the whole production until he reined himself in, his gaze trained on that disembodied paw. "And I hate to begin with the obvious, but..." his brows quirked quizzically. "Are you eating a wolf?"
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Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 6:05 pm
She dipped her maw towards him, her blue eyes sending him a thoughtful, piercing look. He was...well, handsome wasn't quite the word, she thought. But unique, certainly, and confident in that uniqueness, and that was intriguing. Like an ugly child who had never seen its reflection.
That thought made her smile.
"I am," she said, casting a cursory glance to what was left of the paw. "Oh! Where are my manners? Did you want some?" She met his eyes, her expression politely inquiring. "I'm afraid I've mostly finished this one. But we could go out for another, if you're hungry."
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Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 6:34 pm
His brow furrowed, as he apparently required to give the matter its fair share of consideration. "You know...I'm afraid I don't." He worked on not smiling again. "As agonizing as it is to refuse you." He was watching her keenly now, aware and slightly titillated by the penetrating stares that sometimes came back to him. "Now, when I say this...you should know that I believe you are pulling it off with such vigor that I cannot get comfortable around you. But I find your outfit a little curious." He stared at her, ever so slightly on edge, but visibly enamored with her. "Is your intention to look like a ghoul? Or have I got it wrong?"
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Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 6:57 pm
Oh, my. It was flirting with her. How charming. How adorably misguided.
She giggled -- such an odd, dainty sound to come from such a uniquely terrifying wolf. "You needn't flatter me, Jonsi," she said. "I'm quite full." She was well accustomed enough to wolves trying to charm their way out of her jaws. It never worked, but she never minded the compliments.
When he finally spit out his question, she allowed a pout to cross her lovely, delicate maw. "Do I look ghoulish?" She asked, with just enough petulance to be charming.
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Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 9:18 pm
He grinned sheepishly, and shrugged. "Now that I'm going, I don't think I can stop." It was a good thing the whole 'I can see the appeal in letting you consume me' angle was a bit too intimidating with that paw in between them, or he really might not have been able to. "Beauty and terror, I find, are exceptionally good motivators." His eyes narrowed. "Did you eat the whole wolf, then?"
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Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 10:36 pm
That he failed to answer her question made her smile. Perhaps that was a yes, then. But she could handle being ghoulish. Far better that, than derailed discussing her father. Some wolves were said to carry their past around with them everywhere; for Kaeerah, that was a literal thing.
"All the good parts," she replied, calmly. Again, it was hard to tell if she was serious or not.
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Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2011 7:52 pm
"Of course," he murmured back, and lapsed into a small contemplative silence. "I have a guess," he said after a moment, "about that skeleton." He was watching her quietly, feeling the pieces of a story fill his mouth, wondering how this idea would go over. "Have you ever been through a bog?"
The rangy wolf seemed cautious, and when he spoke his words were soft and slow. "They have areas of hungry earth sometimes, mud that bites like an alligator and doesn't let go. And when you struggle, you only serve to better its grip, and so it pulls you in, in long, slow swallows...until you are just food, in the belly of the earth." He smiled just a little, looked at his paws. "Thus the bones you find sometimes, when digging."
And then he looked back at Kaeerah, lively again, though still on edge. "So, maybe you got swallowed, Kaeerah. But you came back up, with a grave to decorate you."
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