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 Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 11:34 pm
** I'm going to take this first post to give some OOC props to the people who did some proofreading for me to catch (most) of my strange grammar fails and also contributed letters to this beast of a solo.
This solo could attend Amityville as a student. Just sayin'.
Thank you to:
Eight, Mili, Nata (for giving me the opportunity to develop Shehk, even if she never intended this to happen), Enoh, and some other people I can'trememberbecauseIsuckandthishappensohgod....
Okay, I tried.
Now, I'm also going to say that the pieces of this solo will be posted over the course of a period of time so I can go through and clean up a few inconsistencies that have cropped up from prom and a few added in RPs that have happened since it was written. This also gives people time to read what has happened before this turns into a monster. This will also give Prom time to wrap up, just in case I have to fix anything else in the beast.
I was going to post it in batches, but then I realized 'You know what, this is a story that needs to be all in one place. The letters, the pictures, the wall of text. This needs to be experienced all in one place instead of separate threads'.
This solo is over 120 pages long in Word, it not for the faint of TL;DR.
So if I miss something? Give me a little bit of forgiveness, unless you really want to be the person who is going to grief me over not writing a small novel perfectly the first time through.
Also, any races I mention in this solo that are in depth (there are two) are races I have created.
** Another Note! Shehk's 'Undead Haze' (AKA the wiping of her memory from her past life in rebirth) is why she can't remember what Decebal looks like, her early undead years are complete mush while her brain was putting itself back together.
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 11:35 pm
Despite the throbbing of her head, abused by having to be prettied over for prom, Shehk pulled a hat on over the portion of her head that was still raw, bleeding, and slowly patching itself back together with FEAR. Maybe by the time she returned to this point and started unpacking everything she was now packing up, it would be better again. It was worth hoping.
It hadn’t taken long for Shehk to pack up all of her things she would be taking home with her; she didn’t possess many that she was attached to in the first place and those she did were easily packed away in her old dusty suitcase that smelled vaguely of old black mold and some wood rot. The pricolici had taken care to line the inside of it with some yellowing newspaper she had found in her possessions, hoping that if there was actually some part of the suitcase that was rotting away, she could hold it back using said newspaper. Also she hoped that this preventative measure would prevent all of her stuff from falling out of her suitcase if a hole suddenly formed in it. The suitcase hadn’t shown any signs of having such problems when she’d brought it with her to move into the Undead Dorms, but when her clothing was limited to begin with, she had to protect what she had to keep it from any sort of possible infestation or sudden loss. Outside of her clothing, she had also stashed away some toiletries; a towel, a bar of soap, and a few other amenities that she feared would be significantly lacking from the house of a single male vampire who spent his time writing creepy letters and sending her...strange gifts. At least, she had mostly figured that her ‘Daddy Long Legs’ was indeed a single vampire based on his letters and from what she had garnered was a strange fascination with her; she had to wonder what sort of past life she'd had to earn a...very determined admirer who also allowed her to space; Then again, Shehk would have refused to be on a leash to them anyways.
She’d checked it three times before she was sure that was all of her things, then herded Nuk Jr into the closet subspace.
“I’m sorry, boy. You can’t travel on the train with me. I barely can get Skoll, Hati, and Precious on. I’ll let you out again when I’m there.” She’d pleaded forgiveness with her ‘skinwalker’ with much less passion than she’d fought with her ex-skinwalker; after a while she just hadn’t been able to put her heart into it, so much of it had already been broken up by it happening to begin with. Shehk would have hated to admit out loud that the reason why she hadn’t let Nuk Jr go on the train with her was because simply that; He was a skinwalker named Nuk, Nukpana was also a skinwalker named Nuk. She had been stupid in naming a pet after her not-at-the-time-ex-boilfriend and it was hard for her to even spend a prolonged period of time with her pet, no matter how much he adored her blindly. Nuk Jr wagged his tail and licked Shehk’s hand, nuzzling up against her chest and keening and overall just being sweet. “No, boy. I’m sorry..I’m sorry. I’ll let you out when I’m there, I promise…..” she repeated over and over again. Nonetheless, it was still difficult to get him to part from her.
She nonetheless had managed to force him in and closed the closet door behind her, leaning against it as she locked it, sniffling a bit. Her head rested against the door for some time as she forced herself not to break down again. Skoll keened anxiously, unsure of what was going on, but knowing fully that something was wrong; he’d known something was wrong since the Alpha had come home from the open house. She’d only gotten strange-r since and it was making him uncomfortable. Shehk’s behavior reflected more heavily onto Hati who seemed depressed by all of the ‘Alpha’s’ sulking about the flat. Shehk had tried to be as doting as possible on Hati, but even as she did her last round of the room, Hati followed closely on Shehk’s heels, nearly causing tripping several times before Shehk had stopped to pet the female of the Celestial Wolves.
 “It’ll be okay. We’ll all be okay.” She repeated, her voice shaking a bit, before she sighed, trying to get all of the anxiety out of her chest and away from her. It hadn’t worked anywhere near as well as she had been hoping it would and only served to make her feel worse. “We can’t keep moping around here forever, Hati, Skoll.” Shehk bid, picking up her suitcase, and giving the room one last long look, before she herded Precious into the bird cage the corrividus had been brought to school in. Another check of the room, a long surveyal of everything she was leaving was all Shehk allowed herself before she’d left the room. She double-checked to make sure the door was locked then shoved the key to the room into her pocket. Before she allowed herself to truly depart from her room, however, shed taken the time to fish through her jacket pocket. She edges of the envelope she produced were slightly crinkled, but nonetheless she slipped it underneath her door so only one end stuck out from underneath it.
TO NUKPANA
She’d written that in with her nicest handwriting, thick and boldly. Noticeable so that there was no doubt who she had intended to pick up that envelope and read its contents. Somehow, however, she had a feeling that the letter would still be sitting there when she came back. Why would Nukpana be coming around to her dorm room to check on her after everything that had happened? Why would he care? She wasn’t worth it; she wasn’t worth all the s**t she’d dragged him through and that much was clearer to her now than it had ever been in the past. She hadn’t even felt better after writing the letter she was leaving.
She just had to get it off her chest. While the paper it was written on was slightly crinkled from Shehk’s newly developed nervous twitch, as well as obvious spots where she’d cried on it, the letter had only been a sentence overall;
“You deserve better.”
Shehk had fussed with the placement of the letter several times before she’d let it be. Further under the door, less underneath the door, lengthwise, height wise, upside down. At one point she’d even thought about just putting the letter into her pocket again and not even leaving it at all. But she knew that she had to leave the letter and she had to leave it right there. If she left it at Nukpana’s door it wouldn’t mean as much as him finding it at her own. She could hope he’d have read it if it was there. Skoll had pawed at at the letter with a digging motion, attempting to pull the letter out from underneath the door, but the pricolici shooed him away from it with a swat on his rump. “Skoll, stop that.” She stated firmly.
Shehk gave the entire hall one last good look before she took the blackboard on her door, erased all of the messages on it and written to take up all of the space on it;
“SHEHK HAS GONE HOME FOR THE BREAK, SHE WILL RETURN IN 10 WEEKS. SEE YOU THEN.”
She’d soon headed down the hall with her ‘posse’ on heel; down a flight of stairs and out the door. Shehk had to take a deep breath as she walked out of the dorm room she’d spent the last months. Part of her felt like she was abandoning it; she was leaving a part of her in there and she just couldn’t do anything about it. Not if she wanted to change. And she knew she had to change if the summer was going to yield her the results she wanted in herself.
She wouldn’t do anything about the feeling of abandonment. It was a part of herself that she needed to leave behind in order to go towards the split in the road she’d been forced down after waffling about it for over a week. Not that Shehk particularly enjoyed the idea of having to go any of this against duress, but she’d decided that frankly there wasn’t a better course of action she could take. It was also the least she could do under the circumstances and hopefully it would have distracted her fro the ache in her heart while she was away.
The walk across the campus was as quick as she could make it, making a point to keep Skoll from chasing after any squirrels and keeping Hati with her. Precious protested being in the bird cage, but there wasn’t much Shehk could do about that until their trip was over. It would never occur to Shehk that she could have let the corrividus out of said cage and she’d be at their destination when they got there. Shehk checked her train stub as she approached the train station, the mere idea that she was leaving bringing her great stress.
The train station wasn’t as empty as she would have liked it to be when Shehk had arrived, noting that it appeared several other students were headed home as well. Though she was hoping, for all of their sakes, their summers would be much better than her own was going to be. Her own negativity had her making sure that she was going to be miserable the entire time away. However, Shehk wasn’t entirely alone at the station either; Sammy had come to see her off and sat with her and the two had a long talk about what was to come in the future while she waited for the train that the pricolici needed to board to arrive to take her home. She could only hope this one didn’t crash.
“I hope I’m not a completely different person when I come back.” Shehk had lamented, but she had been quickly reassured that no matter what she would be Shehk; and she would be amazing.
None the less, she’d far-too-soon-for-her-sanity herded Skoll and Hati onto the train which smelled like old people and like someone had forgotten a rat had died somewhere. Shehk paused before she got onto the train, instead taking her last moment to give the other ghoul a last hug before she forced herself onto the car and gone to find a seat that was as far away from the horrible stench, but also where Skoll and Hati could settle and hopefully be as unobtrusive to the other passengers as possible. Hati had taken to cowering underneath Shehk’s seat. Skoll planted himself in front of her while Precious’s cage was set neatly into her lap. It was a very nice cage, however the corrividus kept attempting to peck through it at the Pricolici’s hands.
Skoll had snarled and snapped at the first person to come and sit in the cabin with Shehk, backing up closer to Hati and eying the stranger, a middle aged monster that had business at the first stop, warily. Shehk had longed for more hands to sooth all of the nerves that were needed to calm everybody she was sitting with at that time. Skoll was unnerved, Precious was unnerved, Hati was anxious, and Shehk herself just wanted to puke then find a corner to curl up in and fall asleep. She really would have liked a place to fall asleep in, actually.
The nap would have kept her mind from wandering as the train ride continued on. Her brain went wandering all over the place; would she be the same person when she came back? Would she lose a part of herself while she was away? Would she find a way to become a better person? Would she be able to get Nukpana back, or would she move on to someone else? The last thought caused her chest to ache painfully and she soon moved away from the thought.
Instead she had struck up conversation with the monster across from her; he seemed to be some sort of ogre, from what she could tell. However, her ability to surmise what type of monster was which was not something she’d been trained in. It was mostly guesswork. But if she’d had to guess, that would have been it.
“Do you take this train often?” she’d asked, leaning her arms over Precious’s cage. The corrividus squawked the entire time, but the man spoke back and over the unhappy bird, seeming unphased by the noise. “I travel between the Amityville center town and the first stop rather often. I have family in one and work in the other.” He answered, seeming humored that such a nice young lady was talking to him. Shehk smiled a bit. “That must be nice. I’m travelling to see family myself.” She replied, looking at her ticket stub. “I’m heading to someplace called ‘Shady Hollow’?” she seemed as though she’d never heard of it.
However, the monster on the other hand seemed to know exactly where that was. “You’re the first person I’ve heard getting off at that stop in a long time. There’s hardly anything out in Shady Hollow anymore. That mixed with it taking nearly a week for the train to get there make it a rare stop indeed.” Shehk’s nose crinkled a bit. Had that been why Decebal had told her to leave when she had? Would there even be another train through where she was headed until the time they had agreed for her to leave?
Suddenly the length of her stay seemed like a requirement, more than a decision.
The conversation had continued for some while, but after the first stop she found herself sitting alone. To pass the time, she had leaned against the pane of glass that called itself a window and propped her chin in her palm, staring longingly outside, sniffing once as a single tear ran down the stitching in her face and dripped down her chin. Shehk had worked harder to keep herself preoccupied after that. However, it had been far more difficult than she would have liked, the process arduous and mostly spent fishing old moldy crackers through the bars of Precious’s cage while keeping her fingers from being pecked off. Skoll and Hati had licked up the crumbs of the crackers appreciatively from the floor.
Shehk made a note to not let them lick her face after they’d been licking the floor. The floor of the cabin was utterly disgusting, that much was clear.
Eventually she’d been able to get comfortable and let her mind space out, staring at the scenery as it passed her by. It went from a bustling near-suburban city, to long dried fields, to thick wooded areas. Every time the train made a stop, Shehk checked her notes, then her ticket stub. It wasn’t that one.
It wasn’t that one.
It wasn’t that one.
It was nearly six stops, and several days of becoming anxious and various company on the train, before she gathered herself up. Skoll growled at the third passenger to sit across from Shehk on the trip; an older ghost gentleman. “I’m really sorry about him, I hope he didn’t ruin your ability to enjoy your trip.” Shehk apologized as she grabbed up her suitcase, before smacking Skoll on the rump again and chasing him off the car on the heels, Precious’s cage held in one hand. Hati followed along anxiously and nearly got her tail caught in the door as the group disembarked from the train.
“Are you sure this is your stop, young lady?” another older gentleman, a patchwork, by the look of things, asked as she stepped off. Shehk nodded. “I’m pretty sure this is it.” She confirmed. The man seemed uncertain of her decision, but nonetheless boarded once Shehk and all of her things were safely off of the car of her choice, leaving her to face the only sign anything even existed out there.
An actual sign.WELCOME TO SHADY HOLLOW
Shehk looked at the sign, then at her ticket stub again, then at the sign again. The sign was horribly worn it seemed to just give her splinters from looking at it. The paint itself was peeling, but had a fresh layer of color on them. It looked like someone had made a point to repaint the words on it so they were legible from the train’s windows. Beyond that, the entire place looked as though it had been untouched in months at the very least.
Possibly years was what the pricolici surmised. She ran her hand along the railing of the stop, lifting it to rub the dust that had accrued on it between her thumb and her fingers. She felt like she’d just prevented that part of the railing from fossilizing from her touch. She frowned at it then sneezed, dust whirling up all over. Shehk swatted it out of her way and quickly walked, holding her breath as long as she possibly could while keeping herself in motion. Not to say she couldn’t have held her breath for a long time, but keeping an undead body moving did require oxygen at some point in time, and the coughing soon came on. She just couldn’t walk nearly fast enough to escape it.
She took a deep breath once she’d passed the station and walked out into the old town, Skoll and Hati sneezing as they followed on her heels, which looked just as lonely and abandoned as the train station had. Shehk could have counted on one hand how many denizens of Halloween she passed as she walked through it; there were 4 exactly; Three older ghost men, and an undead barkeep who had spent a lot of time sewing his head back on neatly. It looked like at some point someone had tried to take it off of him and from what Shehk had been able to tell it had been some type of wild animal, the based of his head looking horribly chewed on and like someone had been suturing skin over the exposed fleshy areas of the back of his neck.
Shehk took a deep breath when she approached the group; they hadn’t been hard to miss when a chunk of the front of their building was missing completely. Dust was sent into the air as she and her small pack of animals walked. “Excuse me!” she called out. One of the ghosts turned to look at her, the other two only peering over at her from the corner of their eyes. The one who looked to her had a rather large hat on, complete with plumage. He looked almost like a pirate with a ghost corrividus looming on his shoulder. Precious and the ghost turned their heads to try and get a better look at each other, sizing each other up. Precious ruffled her feathers and squawked. Shehk frowned and tried to ignore it, hoping the group of men would as well.
The undead man eyed the cage with a certain amount of annoyance usually reserved for crotchety old men who sat on their front porches all day yelling at whippersnappers to get off of their lawns. Shehk suddenly felt insanely young under that gaze.
The ghost in the hat spoke up; “W’dya need, sweet thing?” he asked, his voice drawling out. Shehk could tell that in life the ghost’s teeth had rotted out and there had been a lot of booze in the last hour of time in this town, her nose filling in information for just about how she imagined his breath smelled. She tried to not crinkle her nose and make offensive faces about it. She took a deep breath. “Could one of you perhaps point me in the direction of the home of..” she paused, setting her suitcase and setting about ruffling about her pockets to fish out the last letter she’d gotten. She held a corner of the envelope in her teeth as she pulled the letter out of it. She unfolded the sheets of paper, flipping through them to get the page she wanted.
“Sorry..” she mumbled. One of the other ghosts mumbled back a ‘s’fine’ as Shehk read over the page again. “Okay, I’m looking for the home of Decebal Larentiu Iordanescu?” She flipped the page over. “It says I should be looking for ‘Hollow Creek’, but I’m not sure what direction that would be in?” she looked up at the group anxiously, wondering if they’d just laugh her right back onto that train and send her right back towards where she’d come from.
Part of her still wished that had been exactly what they had done.
What had happened instead was the ghost-hat man offered Shehk his arm, picking up her suitcase in his other hand, which was more prominently a hook and walked her along. Skoll growled at his heels and Hati nearly didn’t come along at all. Shehk whistled and clicked at the pair in an attempt to soothe them. It didn’t exactly work because Shehk herself wasn’t feeling the best about how things were happening either. She wanted to wake up and everything since before prom to have been a horrible dream. She didn’t want to lose everything from the last year to a dream; She wanted to think that Nukpana would always exist and she still had a chance with him by some sort of magical fluke. Shehk wondered if that was how he’d felt when she’d been the one trying to pretend he didn’t exist and move on with her life. What sort of magic spell had he cast on her to get underneath her skin…and why did she care more now that he didn’t want her anymore?
“Y’must be Shehk.” The man said as he walked her along, one of his feet dragging lamely. Shehk nodded meekly. “Well, yes….but…” she seemed to hesitate, her trust in the ghost sinking down from ‘I might possibly trust this guy’ to ‘below actually trusting’. Precious and the ghost corrividus were still having a leer-off even as the ghost lead Shehk towards the thick and very much live trees at the edge of the dead town. The man didn’t say much else after he confirmed her indentity, simply walking her through the town and off towards a rather hefty number of living, but very ominous looking, trees. There was fog intermixed amongst it and she could have sworn she’d seen something dark move through it. After a certain point the ghost stopped and handed her suitcase to her. Shehk frowned.
“Decebal came n’town a few days’go and said we should be ‘pecting you to arrive, m’dear.” The man explained, then grimaced lightly. “Be careful through these woods. Decebal isn’t one to like unwanted company n’there be plenty o’it in here…” he looked about the trees and Shehk’s stomach knotted itself up. Now she was in Romania-ween, going to a house of a man she couldn’t remember, and she was in danger of creatures in the woods. She wondered if she’d get back to Amityville at all, or even to Decebal’s house in one piece.
She lingered there at the edge of the fog, staring out into the unknown of the trees and the possibility of horrible maiming. To be perfectly honest, Shehk just did not want to be maimed and the sheer idea of it was intimidating. For something undead, she didn’t like pain. She’d made a point of avoiding pain as much as possible through the school year, even with her activity level. Shehk looked to Skoll, then Hati, then into the fog again. Did she enter and face Decebal, or did she attempt to go home now and give up when she’d already gotten that far?
There was no question about it; she had forced herself to have the resolve to see this whole thing the whole way through the second she’d begun packing her things. She’d had weeks to cool off and tell herself she wasn’t doing this out of revenge against Nukpana. She’d already done enough revenging, as it was. She was sorry for a lot of it too.
Her tail remained low as she took the first step into the unknown. Hati attempted to cling to her leg, whining lamely while Skoll tailed the group, looking into the trees and sniffing the air. Whenever anything so much as snapped he’d bark. More than once, Shehk had shrieked out of surprise of the barking and Hati had yelped out of fright. The poor girl just wasn’t enjoying this ‘relocation’ bit. Shehk’s ears remained alert, listening for the creatures in the trees, waiting for one of them to lunge out at her and take advantage of her weakened and emotional state. Once one had run across the path she walked on and she’d nearly turned tail and run immediately away to never be heard from again. Skoll and Hati had been the only reason why that she, as Alpha, couldn’t flee. She had to watch out for the two of them and thus she had forced herself to keep plugging along.
Slowly.
The fog itself was illuminated in almost an alien manner. It reflected light while there was absolutely none to be had amongst the thick of the trees. While it was a good hiding place for the creatures she had yet to have seen, breathing it in seemed to make her insides feel lighter. She wondered if there was something in it every time she took a breath in. Whenever she exhaled it, it would glow in swirls then vanish away.
Each breath she took and each step to follow had filled her with a bit more bravery. Which was fortunate when Skoll was starting to lose his own nerve and was relying more and more upon the Pricolici to lead.
It wasn’t long until the branches of the trees cleared out and a rather modestly sized house, which seemed to grow out of the ground as much as the trees had, came into view. She looked around, wondering if she had missed a sign somewhere. Nothing. Shehk swallowed butterflies and looked down at her companions. Skoll looked at the house with absolutely no fear in his body. It was a shame his mate had no such confidence to her form. The pricolici took a minute to pet Hati’s ears, trying to soothe her nerves.
Shehk wished someone would pet her ears and do the same. Confidence aside, being suspicious was something she couldn’t help but do as she stared down the building, her hands moving absent-mindedly over the wolf’s head. It took a long moment for Shehk to finally pull herself from the celestial wolf and face the house again. If this weren’t it, she’d have to get directions again. She had to hope this was the right house; going back into the woods just wasn’t a route Shehk wanted to take, no matter how safely she’d gotten through it the first time. Risking her safety wasn’t something she was willing to do.
“Well…it’s not like I’ve got anything to lose...” she convinced herself shakily before taking the first step towards the house. Skoll had to nearly herd Hati along to come with. It seemed amongst the four, only Precious seemed at peace in the atmosphere. Hopefully Shehk would be able to follow the corrividus’s lead and calm down during her stay. She knew it was going to be a long one and probably a very unusual one. Shehk should have sent another letter asking what to expect from the trip, but she’d taken it as any excuse to get out of Amityville and rid herself of any chance to see Nuk for the coming months.
The idea of writing him passed through her mind briefly.
Slowly, Shehk walked up the stairs that lead to the door of the house. The paint of the house was peeling and faded. The porch outside of the front door seemed highly unkept, as dusty as that train stop had been with dried leaves and pine needles littered all over the place. Really nobody had taken the time to care for its appearance. There was something about the bare minimum of care the house had that reminded her of her room back at the school. Had she subconsciously picked her decorative taste from this house? If so, she made a note to at least put a poster up and do laundry when she got back. If she got back at all.
She knew she was about to find out more than she’d ever wanted to as she approached the door, and lifted one hand to knock. The door itself was in fortunately good shape, having obviously been used more than any other area of the front of that house. Her fingers barely rapped on the door when it swung open with such sudden force if she hadn’t been wearing gloves she may have lost the skin on her knuckles.
The man standing at the door was not what he’d been expecting to see when she was meant to meet a vampire. In fact, she was the opposite of what she’d been expecting and to say she would have been surprised would have been an understatement.
To The House At Hollow Creek:End
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Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 6:36 pm
When one, such as Shehk, normally imagined a vampire, they imagined a pale skinned 25+ year-old men who often had a hot and toned body with smoldering dark eyes and dark hair slicked back into perfection. There were also possibly sparkles. Shehk had been imagining Professor Darcy as a standard of comparison and part of her had swooned at the thought of it. What she had ended up getting in meeting Decebal was very and completely different.
What Decebal was, was a slightly-built 21 year-old man with sun-bleached hair that was too long for it’s own good and ruffled all over like someone had rolled him out of bed, dark skin tanned by the sun, and bright almost clear eyes. He looked like the kind of person who would have been a beach bum in life and gotten far too much sun, if Shehk had to pick a standard of comparison that would have been it. She was currently baffling over the enigma of a man who had appeared at the door instead. She’d lost more and more color the deader she got. How did he….? However, he didn’t exactly look like a happy-go-lucky person based on the look on his face, his brows furrowed deeply together. In fact, he seemed completely unhappy at the sight of the pack of animals that had arrived on his doorstep. He reached out and took both Precious’s cage and Shehk’s suitcase from her.
Shehk was too busy staring in shock of the man to put up much resistance against him relinquishing her of her things, her hands releasing the easily. He was definitely not what she’d been expecting.
However, as he walked in, she tried to follow him into the house only for him to block her with one of his arms. The vampire turned on her, his eyes narrowing; “I don’t allow dogs in my house.” He said firmly, not looking to Hati and Skoll, but his attention focusing intensely onto the Pricolici. Shehk narrowed her eyes back at him, glowering darkly. “Excuse me?” she hissed back at him sounding quite offended by the implication he’d just made, her fangs baring slightly. The man put the cage and the suitcase down before he again turned on her, approaching. Shehk suddenly realized that she really wasn’t equipped to physically go against what the vampire said as he pushed her back out of the house by her shoulders. Any resistance she had put against him was easily pushed aside by his surprising strength. Shehk truly had tried to keep herself from being pushed out of the house too.
“I said, I don’t allow dogs in my house. You three...” he looked at Shehk, then to Skoll and Hati. Hati wagged her tail anxiously, giving him a pleading look. Decebal seemed completely bothered to see the behavior that was reminiscent of a common house dog. “..will stay out here on the porch.” He finished saying firmly. Shehk was completely flabbergasted. “I’m not a pet, I’m a Pricolici.” she snapped back at him once her sense had been regained. She would NOT stand for being put out on the porch and treated like some common mutt! The vampire brought his face threateningly close to Shehk’s, his breath creepily warm against the flesh of her nose and lips. Had he been any closed, the very tips of his own fangs would have brushed against her skin as he spoke; “Then start acting like one.” With that, he’d closed the door behind him, leaving Precious and her luggage inside with him.
Shehk stared at the door that had just been closed in her face.
“What is even the flying ******** hell!!?” Shehk swore, slamming her foot against the door angrily, as though doing that would be able to open it up and let her in. Violence solved everything, right? HE had been the one harassing her about not being able to write a proper letter? HE had known her before her death? HE WAS A CHILD! At least compared to the standard Shehk had in her mind about vampires, young, able, and not pale and beautiful as she’d been expecting to meet. To say that the physical appearance had her getting a few hang-ups would be an understatement. Shehk had liked to think the physical appearance didn’t matter to her, but ******** if she’d felt teased by what she’d gotten in a VAMPIRE of all things.
That was like a pricolici that wasn’t a wolf. Her bones cracked, shifted, and strained under the transformation of her body, the now large white wolf on the porch beginning to pace back and forth. She clawed at the door desperately, but received nothing. She hadn’t even done enough to rouse the vampire to yell at her to leave it alone through it. So she simply barked and paced anxiously, hoping to get underneath his skin. She was not a pet, she was not a pet, she was not a pet!
That was when she’d heard the deep rumbling of a growl behind her, turning to look into the fog, the glow in her eyes flickered on as she stared out into it, scenting the air to try and pick up any sort of smell she possibly could. Skoll growled at her heels and Shehk snapped at him to stay put, huffing through her rotted away nose and looking to Hati, who had taken up one spot on the porch and hadn’t moved. The trip had not been very nice to her so far. He immediately complied and moved over to check on her, touching his nose to the darker of the pair. Shehk turned her attention into the fog and slowly walked into it, her steps as cautious on paws as they had been when she was on two feet; she didn’t dare walk fully into it, however. The idea that there was something in there, and she wasn’t sure what was on the other side of it, intimidated her. She had barely even poked her nose into it when something had attempted to sink it’s teeth into the bone of her snout, under what would have been presumed to be an attempt to bite flesh.
Shehk let out a shrieking howl, out of surprise, and backed off, shaking her head back and forth before she snapped her own jaws back out at whatever was out there, lunging into said fog. The glow in her eyes worked as a faint fog light for her, allowing her to see barely ahead of her nose. At least, better than ‘just shadows’. She imagined it would have been perfect hunting ground if she had fog-vision. That same fog reinvigorated her with the same confidence she had grown to have as she first walked into it. There had to be something in it. There was no doubt in her mind about it then.
The creature who had assaulted her nose howled at her and she turned towards the noise, only to be struck from behind. How had it thrown it’s voice like that?? Shehk whirled to bite at whatever she could of the offending creature gnawing into her rump, grabbing it in her jaws and shaking her head back and forth savagely. The creature howled the entire time, ultimately whimpering and fleeing from her. Shehk attempted to follow the path of it’s fleeing. She’d never gotten a good look at it nor was she actually even sure what it was. Nonetheless, it had left a sore impression on her rump even as she clambered back onto the steps, looking back into the fog angrily. Fortunately she wasn’t bleeding. However….
She wasn’t going back in there.
Shehk settled onto the porch to rest off the throbbing feeling and Hati scooted over to sit with her alpha in the dust. Both Celestial Wolves settled their heads onto her back while she stared off the porch into the fog suspiciously. She growled whenever she saw something move through it, daring it to come and try to get her again. Had she a nose still, it would have flared. She longed to be able to snarl; proper lips, proper nose, proper muzzle. It all would have helped her case phenomenally. All she could do was bare the fangs that were always bared. Fortunately, however, nothing ever clambered from the fog onto the porch where the three were.
It was a long several hours of sitting on the porch waiting to see if they’d be attacked again. Shehk watched when Skoll and Hati got up and started to chase each other about the porch in cheap amusement. It gave her some mild entertainment, her tail thumping against the wood against the porch. But when the pair ran into the fog, Shehk suddenly popped up, making a concerned noise, worried that the creature from earlier was in there ready to attack them again. But the happy barking continued between the pair. She was relieved, but nonetheless walked into the fog to keep an eye on them, in case that thing came back to assault them.
The growling from earlier seemed to return, causing Shehk to growl in turn, her fur slowly puffing up. It threw Hati and Skoll, the pair bounding over to remain by ‘alphas’ side, but Shehk soon seemed to realize that that sound wasn’t another creature, but another creature’s stomach. She looked back at the pair of wolves that had herded themselves over to her. Hati keened at Shehk and she knew immediately that she needed to find something for of them to eat. She turned her head to the door and carefully approached it again, butting her head against it, and then scratching at the wood. Decebal still didn’t answer that either.
Shehk paced about the door and barked loudly, shrieking once, before jumping to place both of her front legs on the door to scratch at it more. She barked all the while. The door soon swung open and Shehk sat, staring at the vampire who had answered it, the glow in her eyes flickering angrily and her tail thumping against the porch as she waited, irritably, for him to answer her.
“You can’t expect us to stay out here without food.” She said firmly, thinking it was a perfectly reasonable request. If they had to sleep and stay outside, they needed at least some care put into them. Though she herself knew that she didn’t require food absolutely, she still gave the serious look to Decebal. Skoll and Hati weren’t as free-of-nom-requirements as the pricolici was. Decebal’s expression was impassive, stroking Precious, who had perched quite adoringly on the vampire’s shoulder. Possibly more adoring for him than she ever was for the Pricolici. “You’re not a pet, you’re a pricolici.” He repeated her words against her in turn. Shehk’s eyes flickered a bit and she snapped at one of his legs, just for the Vampire to kick her right in the gut and off of his porch. Shehk yelped when she hit the ground, getting up and growling at the vampire in the fog, beginning the pace back and forth.
This was turning into the worst idea she’d ever had about anything.
“If you’re going to claim to be a wild beast, become one. A wild beast doesn’t need to be fed. It feeds itself.”
The door closed again and Shehk growled at it, barking and clawing at the ground angrily, before she turned to look into the fog. Her head and ears lowered cautiously, but she soon decided against it. She wasn’t sure what was in there and frankly the idea of getting hurt again made her slowly climb back onto the porch. Hati and Skoll clambered back onto it as well, but seemed much less enthusiastic about playing than they had been before.
Shehk wasn’t sure how long it was before the sound of their stomachs bothered her again, but she got up from the porch to run out into the fog to sniff around. She was a pricolici with a mission. Skoll had attempted to follow her, but Shehk turned and huffed at him, barking for him to stay. He did, though hesitantly. Which was fortunate as Shehk soon found herself wandering further and further into the fog, nearly lost, the glow from her eyes illuminating it barely for her. She could barely keep track of herself, nonetheless another creature that wanted to be dependent on her.
Had she been paler in fur color, the fog may have camouflaged her completely. It glowed as it was breathed in, then exhaled, leaving glowing remnants about her body as she moved through it. She practically cut through it and it moved in and through her in a way so natural to her. But she a dingy wolf with fur that looked like she’d gotten it dirty and had yet to have taken the time to clean it up. So being invisible in the fog wasn’t an option to her.
Instead, she simply had to settle for being noticeable in the fog as her canid body cut through it, her nose lifted to scent the air. It smelled like suffocation. It was a strange comparison to make, but the fog was getting thicker and thicker as she walked along and every time she breathed it in she imagined dozens of creatures that required oxygen more than she did succumbing to it and gasping for air. Branches cracked underneath her paws, the trees seemed to twist and become more ominous and more than once she’d stepped on something herself that hadn’t crackled, but rather crunched with a loud snap like it wasn’t meant to break. Ever. She paused in her walking to turn her nose down to it, sniffing to see what it was.
Completely and utterly horrible was what it was. She lifted her paw to look at the offending item, only to find a series of scattered and broken bones, which she nudged with her nose, turning them over and sniffing them again for further investigation. They were old, but there was a fresh scent of blood about them, pieces broken off and the insides licked clean of their centers. Something larger than she was had been here. And it had been eating creatures that could have easily been her size. The realization caused every ounce of bravery Shehk had in her at that moment to leave her body as she slowly backed away from the path she’d been taking.
However, as she backed up, she felt her rump come into contact with something, causing her to yelp in surprise. Oh gods! It had her, it had found her!! The panic set in just before she had the sense to turn around and see what it was that was about to descend upon her to eat her dead. She paused when she saw her rump pushed up against the bark of a tree. “Well I feel stupid.” She thought to herself, quickly turning to book it as fast as she possibly could back to the house.
Shehk had practically flown onto the porch on her running back. However, she found that upon her return Skoll and Hati were wolfing down a plate of food that had been left out in her absence. Shehk’s ears drooped and she knew fully that Decebal had left it out having no intention of letting them starve. But she also knew he did it knowing she would come back with nothing to care for the two with on her own. She felt like a failure to her ‘pack’, not even trying to touch the plate as she walked to the other side of the porch and settled back down into the dust. She stared off into the trees suspiciously.
Her eyes followed as something ducked between two of them and ran off further into the thick of the forest. She knew it was there. She’d just never be able to tell exactly what it was. Despite not knowing, the pricolici knew she was going to stay exactly where she was at that moment and wait to see how the night went. The sun was going down and Decebal had yet to have gotten his senses about him enough to let her come into the house.
The sun set and the night sprung to life. Shehk remained vigilant on the safety of the porch, looking out into the fog that was beginning to illuminate the forest by it’s own luminescence and watching as more and more creatures of the stirred up. She’d never realized just how nocturnal many of the creatures of Romania were. They made Shehk antsy with all of their activity, but more so because even though the fog was brighter in the dark, there was more darkness for them to hide in. At one point a bat flew and smacked her in the face, much to the pricolici’s surprise. Shehk had howled and practically crunched it’s face off to get it to stop twitching and gnawing on the flesh of her face. It had made a very quick meal to silence the pang in her stomach, though she knew it would take more than 10 weeks without food to starve her to death. She wasn’t sure if she was hungry or if she was stressed or if she was still miserable for emotional reasons. No matter the reason, she knew she was trying to silence her stomach and the causes of it’s aching by whatever means she possibly could.
Nonetheless even with her stomach silenced, she hadn’t slept at all in the night and instead listened to the sounds of the forest as it came to life. It had nearly called her off of the porch as well to run freely amongst the rest of the creatures. But she didn’t know what else was out there and didn’t wish to risk it. Sometime in the night, Decebal himself had become active and set to running about the house doing something that involved a lot of shuffling of furniture and noise.
It was definitely interesting at night. Shehk wondered why she slept all night after hearing all of the noise.
In the early hours of the morning even before the sun had fully risen, a stranger had appeared from what Shehk had assumed was ‘nowhere’ and approached the house with a confidence that the pricolici was insanely jealous of. Shehk watched her as she approached the door. The visitor, female from what Shehk could tell, appeared to be a young monster of some variety. She had somewhat-long unruly hair that covered her face as much as it could and her mouth had dozens of sharp teeth that reminded Shehk of her own fangs. It was after a long stare, Shehk’s mind immediately turned to suspicion against the visitor; Where had this girl come from? She’d seen a grand total of four people when she’d been at the town. Which meant….
Shehk immediately approached the monster woman, sniffing at her anxiously and growling underneath her breath. The ghoul looked to her and reached down, as though she was considering petting the Pricolici’s head. Against her better judgment, Shehk’s tail slowly began to wag. She loved pets probably more than she should have, and for that she was about to pay for her own stupidity. What she got for it was her head slammed against the porch with more force than she’d ever been smashed with before. Was this the kind of brute strength the teachers had to suppress to work at Amityville and not kill the students? The idea flashed through her mind momentarily, but wasn’t entertained for long.
Her head had hit the wood. Hard.
Shehk had heard something crack underneath the force of the woman’s hand, but she wasn’t sure if that had been her face or if the wood had tried to give out on her. Either way, she had to get out of the hold she was being put into! Shehk flailed and growled under the hand that held her down, gnashing her teeth and letting out a shrieking howl. Her claws scratched and dug at the woman’s fingers. It was after what felt like the longest minute ever, she managed to scramble out from underneath the offending hand and took a few steps back. Skoll began to bark as well, but Shehk simply snarled at him to stay back, then turned and pounced onto the woman, hoping to get a hold of her throat.
Yet again it was too easily that the stranger, not even with both arms, threw her off. As she went sailing Shehk smashed into the railing of the porch before rolling off of it over onto one side. Shehk yelped again as she went down, hitting the ground and sending pine needles flying everywhere. Decebal finally opened the door to see what the commotion was about.
The sight he was greeted with didn’t seem to bother him as much as the pricolici would have liked it to. Where was all of the concern he had for her in his letters, huh?
Instead, he turned to his visitor. “Do you see what I meant?” he said simply to the woman. The woman only grinned and shrugged in turn, leaning one arm against the vampire’s shoulder in what may have been a misguided attempt to be seductive. She then looked to Shehk who had picked herself up and started huffing about in the fog, watching them and beginning to pace once again. “What a miserable excuse for a creature,” She said frankly, not ashamed in the least to have made such a straight to the point assessment of the young undead monster. “She’s far more domesticated than you led me to believe when you spoke of her, Decebal.” The woman laughed and Shehk growled in her direction. “She has nearly none of the wilds you sent her off to school with.”
Shehk paced in circles, her ears alert. Listening. Sometimes her eyes would look to Decebal and the woman, sometimes to Skoll and Hati who looked confused as to what was going on. Her wilds? Shehk wasn’t sure what they were talking about. She’d never heard of any ‘wilds’, but it wasn’t like she’d become any less of a wolf while she’d been away at school. So that couldn’t have been it. She paced further into the fog, as far as she could to be out of sight, but still listen to the pair. Shehk didn’t even want to see their faces.
“Is she sulking?” she heard the woman ask.
“Possibly. She was upset last night when I threw her out of the house.” Decebal answere. It sounded like he was possibly massaging his temples out of frustration with his invited houseguest not being what he had wanted. Well he wasn’t what Shehk had been expecting in a host!
“She’s upset because you’re making her be a wild animal instead of a house pet?” Came the female voice again. There was a laugh punctuating this notion and Shehk growled at the tail end of it. As much as listening to them be right was helpful, she didn’t like it.
The idea that had been suggested struck Shehk like the porch had her face. She was NOT a house pet!! She had been so vehement against the idea of being one that she hadn’t considered her own behavior over the last few months; that having someone else catching her meals for her and that someone else taking care of the house she had over her head was causing her to act like a dog because she didn’t have to do anything besides try to be a good companion. Many instances of letting people pet her ears and coo over how fuzzy and pretty of a canine she was, as well her tail thumping against things when she was happy flashed through her mind. Her stomach sank.
She growled walking in another circle. She hated this glow-y fog; it was full of pain and other creatures. However, she was also learning that the porch that she’d thought was safe was also quite capable of being painful. She wasn’t earning anything by sitting on a porch and getting her a** handed to her by some unknown monster that was schmoozing it up with the sire. Shehk already hated this break. She hated it a lot.
Shehk harrumph angrily as her brain churned over the notions spilling through her head, turning on her paws to start wading through the fog, more carefully than she had been earlier. She’d managed to return back to the bones when the anxiety struck her right in her gut again. She paced several steps away and looked at them sizing them up, then looking around to see if there was anything large enough to eat-her-sized shadows in the fog. She then proceeded to start walking around it in a large diameter when she’d run into something. She nearly jumped out of her skin just to find it was, yet again, an offending tree.
She growled and scratched it up with her claws out of frustration, only for it to answer her with a deep rumble that sounded like a groan of pain. Shehk had half the instinct to bolt from it, but instead she froze; Holy shitting ******** balls! It was alive!! Shehk had never had that idea, the one that trees could be alive, occur to her, and she attempted to flee from the tree as it reached out to grab her. However, it was quicker than she was to react and it caught her, wrapping roots around one of her paws and tugging her back. Shehk yelped, struggling against it, but the tree was stronger than she was and it pulled her back towards it, whether her paw wanted to bend that way or not.
Shehk shrieked and dug her teeth into the root, chewing at it and digging at it with her other paw in a desperate attempt to free her leg from the roots. She felt something in her captured paw starting to bend out of place and she let out another pained shriek of a howl. However, it seemed her efforts to be freed of it would pay off and the tree would release her before anything broke. Shehk retreated away from it quicker this time, limping slightly, but venturing deeper into the fog. She didn’t care what was in the fog; she simply wanted to get into the fog where she was safer from everything that could see her.
That tree had really hurt! She growled as she slowed to a walk. She needed to slowly ease her other leg back into commission in case she needed to use it later. Shehk looked about, noting that she now no longer had any idea where she was. Her tail slowly began to retreat between her legs as she starting to creep through the fog. Where was she? Where was she? Where was she? The panic was setting into her mind and she was quite sure she wasn’t going to get back to the house unmaimed at the rate she was going.
It seemed that instead of finding her way back to the house, the trees and fog began to thin out more and more as she walked along, barely allowing Shehk to see the expanse of grass out in front of her. It was an amazing expanse of grass, lush and green with dew forming in it. The light that could manage to creep between the trees seemed to illuminate it like she’d just found some sort of sacred lost treasure.
To Shehk, that was exactly what it was. It was like the Holy Grail! She happily ran into the grass without giving the area a second thought about how suspicious it was or if there were creatures in the grass that would have happily eaten up her toes and thrown her bones into the pile that had continuously been freaking her out. Shehk was on top of the world in that moment.
She could feel small creatures fleeing from her paws as she romped through the grass and in some cases she quickly ran after them, her fur flashing as the fog parted for her body to flow through it. It felt so natural to be there. All of it did. The running, the grass beneath her paws, the animals fleeing from her terrorizing them in the form she was currently in. She felt, as though she’d run through that grass so many times she’d been blind to forget it and it had always been waiting for her to come back to it and run through it again.
When she realized the creatures fleeing from her were small enough to possibly be food, Shehk body ducked into the grass as she slowed herself down to a nearly complete stop. She huffed a slight chattering noise in an attempt to mimic the sound of birds and her ears perked up to the greatest of their ability. She was listening for everything. However, soon another holy artifact in the eyes of the pricolici appeared and she had to force her tail to not wag a mile a minute at the sight of it. The palest of ears perked through the grass, followed then by a face. Oh, it was a face. It was a beautiful face. A beautiful delicious face at that. The pale pink nose of the rabbit barely twitched before Shehk lunged onto it silently, sinking her teeth into its neck and lifting it up, shaking her head back and forth savagely.
The rabbit shrieked uselessly in her jaws as though doing such would save it from her hungering stomach, writhing against the fangs that sank deep into its flesh. Shehk clung to it desperately, not willing to let her meal go, going as far as clenching her jaw shut. Soon its pulse slowed and the body stopped squirming. Shehk dropped her prize and stared in surprise at the ease at which that had come to her. If she’d had fingers at that moment, she would have pinched herself. Her attempts to catch any sort of food had been far less successful while she’d been at school.
How had she…?
Was it a fluke?
Shehk wasn’t about to look the gift-horse in the mouth as she licked the bloodied spots from the rabbit’s pure white fur, picking up the rabbit again in her teeth. She began walking carefully through the grass and back into the thicker fog, holding her prize proudly.
Now she was anxious to get back to the house.
She had to show Skoll and Hati what she had caught! She’d show them and then they’d be so proud! And maybe Decebal would let her into the house and not make her stay outside again if he could see she was capable of capturing food.
She may have been a touch too hopeful on that last thought, however.
Slowly Rekindling the Wilds: End
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Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 8:50 pm
A crinkled envelope covered in dust. The front reads ‘TO SAMMY’ Dear Sammy, I’m sort of wishing someone would come and put me out of my misery of this place. I came out here thinking ‘Hey, I’ve already hit pretty close to emotional rock bottom for me without being completely emo, right? Shouldn’t be able to get worse!’ Well it turns out the thinking behind that logic is utterly and completely flawed; I think I would have rather had to put up with seeing Nukpana being happy without me every day than be out here. Actually, revisiting that thought, I take that back. I don’t want to see him being happy without me. I still miss him tons. I know that’s really stupid and I probably just sound like a stupid teenager, but that’s the plain and simple truth of the matter. I’m out here in hopes he’ll realize he misses me when he doesn’t get to see me every day. But I shouldn’t spend this entire letter sulking about one skinwalker. That isn’t fair of me to pull on you. Shady Hollow is an interesting place, to say the least. I haven’t spent a lot of time in the town, but it appeared to be rather small based on what I saw when I walked through it. For lack of better pun, it is almost a ghost town. I’m almost surprised the train even stops here. The buildings are mostly rotted away and I’ve seen a grand total of six living people out here. Three ghost pirates (in a landlocked area?), an undead bartender (he kind of seems like a grumpy old man on the front porch sort of person), Decebal, and some monster woman who likes to roll around the house on a semi-daily basis. I’m pretty sure it’s twice a day, but sometimes it is only once. While I’m talking about her, let me tell you about this b***h! I have no idea what her name is, or even what kind of monster she is, but let me tell you this: She just can’t let a sleeping dog lie! I’m not even kidding, Sammy. I’ll be sleeping on the porch (more on this to come, keep reading, really!) and she’ll just pick me up by the scruff of my neck in my sleep and fling me off of the porch! It’s like… HRRRNNNGGHH!!! I can’t even put it into words! She makes me SO. ANGRY! I LOATHE her! I wish she’d fall out of Hekla and into the human world and they would hunt her down and stab her repeatedly!! I just.. ARRRRGGHH! (You do know where Hekla is, right? I think that is too far from where we are though sad ). All I want to do is sleep! Why won’t she let me?? Anyways, as you are probably wondering, Decebal (that’s my Sire’s name. Did I mention that before? I can’t remember so I’m repeating it again here for good record) has me sleeping out on the porch! The porch isn’t even clean Sammy! It’s covered in filth; Leaves, pine needles, and dust. It’s like nobody has touched it in years! Or at least even months. And he has me sleeping in it. I am not happy about it. He took all my stuff before he tossed me out too. Said something about me being a housepet. I am not a pet! I am a Pricolici! He asked me to come out here, so why is he treating me like utter s**t now that I’m here?? HRRRNNGGHHHH!! To burn off the rage that monster-b***h and sire cause me, I tend to spend my time running around outside of the house. Beyond the house is a fog-covered forest filled with all sorts of weird stuff. I’m not really sure what is out there in that fog, and I’m not sure I really want to find out. One of the other monsters (undead? Demon? I don’t know what it was) attacked me when I first started investigating the fog. It wasn’t pleasant, so the forest and fog is only as pleasant as far as I can keep myself uninjured. The trees smell nice though! At this point I’ve only been here for a few days, so I’m not sure what all I can say about my experiences here yet. From what I can tell, I may be coming back to school with some new stitches and possibly a reattached limb or two. Which sucks. My hair hasn’t quite started coming back in either. I hope I wasn’t wrong in assuming it would grow back! I love you and still want you to have it, Sammy, but man. I kinda don’t want to take on the permanent bald spot! Maybe I’ll find a way to perform magic and get that fixed up. I’m certainly not going to be asking Decebal about it. He might terrorize me about it or make other weird stuff happen. I’ll try to fill you in with more information about Hollow Creek when I get a chance in the near future, but I can’t make any promises with the current track record. I hope summer is treating you better! Sincerely, Shehk PS; Please send help. Or Food. Possibly both if you can manage it. If only one, food is preferable at this moment. Thanks! A letter from Sammy, written by Miliardo Kason Dear Shehk, Seriously? Waiting forever to hear from you and you open with the line ‘wishing someone would come out here and put me out of my misery’ you really know how to make me feel better over break, wait that sounds really self-centered. I guess it doesn’t matter because I’m still worried about you even after I get past that line and read everything else. Seriously, you need to come back, right now, the next train hands down. Please if Nuk’s happy without you he’s a tool and I would kick his a** clear from here to whatever bumble-vil ghost town your in, what was it Shady Hollow? Just stop thinking about him, happy or not you should worry about yourself and not him, if he’s stupid enough to ruin a good thing like you guys had then he deserves nothing. Don’t date, date, do whatever but please stop thinking about him? And please, I’ve heard all the drama between you from day one, remember it was me who tease you about him all the time? This isn’t anything new to me. Though if you wrote this to Israfel he would have probably ran out the room the moment he got the letter to show it to Nuk with some long winded speech of ONE TRUE LOVE like the babbling fool he is. It must have been useful for something at some point before now? Didn’t people live their once or what? Regardless it sounds boring as sitting through some of the break sessions around here. Hell they don’t even have any going it’s just a fist full of students wandering around doing nothing. Not to mention the cafeteria hours suck during break since they don’t have to feed as many of us. Pirates though, that at least sounds like they might have some awesome stories if you had the time to hang out with them. Shehk your doing a horrible job of convincing me not to buy a train ticket for the next ride out to kick this ghoul’s a**. Why are you letting her do that? Why haven’t you snuck into the house I know you’re smart enough to have at least tried to find another place for sleeping where she can’t just toss you out like trash! Dammit Shehk I am going to come out their bring half the school with me and burn this guys house down for treating you like that! You didn’t deserve this and he was the one who invited you to top it off! Well at least you have a place to go in the woods, it can’t be much worse than the woods we keep around here right? Wait it attacked you out there too? Seriously, Shehk, no more vacations you can come with me next break when I go and visit Siddie’s place again if were still together. It’ll be a lot safer I’m sure. I hope your spot grows back, I still have guilt trips about that, and the whole pin thing, and yeah, I’m a bad friend I miss you and I hope you make it back in one piece! BFF 4 Ever, Sammy Lee PS; Buying a ticket, the only train they have is the one that you’ll be coming back on but I swear I’m going to be on the train to bring you home :C I MISS MY PUPPY. PSS; Mailing you a few jars of blood, can’t mail myself lame.
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Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2011 8:36 pm
Living outside of the house had proved to be more interesting of an experience for Shehk than she had originally been suspecting it would have been. Had she known it was going to be so much fun, she would have protested less when she’d been forced outside that first day. She’d already always enjoyed being outside to begin with so the reason why her mind hadn’t gone ‘Hey, this is gonna be great’ to her sooner was a complete mystery to her. Running free had liberated her of a great deal of the woe she had sunk upon her shoulders, though not really the single one that really mattered to her.
However, on the flip side of things, she had discovered quickly that Decebal was an awful and horrible person. He had a magic way of ruining every proud moment she had since she’d arrived there. Throwing her outside first of all, but then when she’d brought home the first rabbit she’d caught there, he had stolen it from her and then ducked into the house to hide from her, refusing to return it. This had become a repeated event as when the second rabbit was brought home, it was also stolen. The third and fourth followed. It had caused Shehk a great deal of stress to have her progress constantly stolen away by the vampire, and her stomach wasn’t very happy either, if she had anything to show for it.
Her solution, once she’d gotten frustrated past the point of reasonability, was that she soon stopped bringing her meals to the house at all. Instead she had taken up eating her share of the food in private, and quickly at that. In turn, she’d drag home to last of the remains of the rabbit after she was satiated. She’d stopped eating to the point of being full at all. Once her stomach was silenced, she would not eat again until it spoke up again. However, she still hunted on a rather steady schedule. Not for herself, but to bring something home to her companions. The rabbit would never make it anywhere near the porch, though. She would sit in the fog and huff, calling the pair out into the fog with her.
The first few times they had gotten lost in their attempts to find her, with the paling of her fur allowing her better camouflage. But there was soon a method that varied from day to day. Shehk would rub her scent all over a spot in the trees, careful to not scratch at them anymore, and expect the pair to meet her there when she returned. They would eat, and then she would throw the remains into the fog. She found it made the fogdogs far more compliant and less inclined to bite her on the a** when she shared her kills with them.
Another habit that accompanied this behavior was that Shehk began to hunt at night. Once the moon started to peek into the sky, she would go running out into the fog without any hesitation in order to mingle with the other nocturnal animals. She’d discovered quickly that many of them were much less vicious than she had originally assumed. In fact, she wondered why she had feared any of them to begin with. However, she had never found the creature that had attacked her the first day into the fog in her natural form. None of the other creatures of the forest seemed to know of any creature that would do that. Or rather, why may have but at the same time they seemed to not want to talk about whatever creature it was that would attempt to eat something at Shehk’s size.
Shehk wondered if it was still looming around, waiting for her to put her guard down so it could attack her again. Her rump hurt at the very thought of it happening, though the teeth had left no permanent mark on her and she’d fixed up without too much of a problem. Nonetheless, she’d gotten enough confidence to be able to go out to mingle, despite the uncertainty there was involving everything out there amongst the trees.
There were all sorts of creatures who lived in the fog and trees, Shehk discovered. She’d gotten into the habit of mingling with the fogdogs, but she’d met an array of other creatures that she hadn’t seen at the school. The most surprising of which had been a Strigoi, which Shehk had spent time marveling at due to its race being her last name. The Strigoi was also amused by this strange fact, but wasn’t bothered by the fact that a pricolici had such a fine name. It had even approved. From there she had met several other denizens of the woods; A moroi, a few werewolves, and even a strange creature called a Zburator. They were all quite friendly, she’d discovered, as long as she didn’t antagonize them.
In fact, as long as she left them alone, they were inclined to do as little damage to her as they possibly could.
Leaving them to their own devices had been her smartest course of action, instead focusing on keeping herself, along with Hati and Skoll, alive. The trees tried to kill her enough as was without her getting into a fight with anything. The two wolves, once they’d had a week to settle onto the porch had found themselves thriving in the forested areas almost as mush as Shehk was, running freely through the fog without fear. Shehk had enjoyed it herself. The more time she spent in the fog, the whiter her coat had turned as a result, fading as she breathed in the anonymity that seemed to coat everything and flowed with an enviable freedom. It made her feel mighty to run through all the trees as quick as she could.
The bark and needles of the horribly twisted and mangled old trees scented the air with a beautiful pine smell and the crunching of dried needs and dead bone remnants under foot created a most beautiful sound to her ears. Sometimes her confidence made her feel like she felt like she owned the trees, but she learned quickly not to get haughty out in the middle of Shady Hollow. After all, out there, there was always someone willing to put her into her place. For example, the unnamed long-haired woman who enjoyed rolling around once every other day to throw Shehk off of the porch like she owned the place. Shehk’s ribs throbbed at the mere thought of that woman, wondering secretly if one of them had been cracked from their ‘party’ that same morning because she’d moved too slowly. On a normal schedule, Shehk moved quickly enough wait until the night was long over to return home, sleep a maximum of six hours, then wake and flee the scene again. She was on a strangely set pattern of behavior that was ingraining into her as ‘survival’.
It was on the Webday of her second full week, having arrived at the beginning of a weekend when she’d first shown up, with Decebal when a creature that terrified several of her new friends into fleeing with it’s presence appeared to her in the fog. Shehk had nearly run for the hills herself, her tail creeping between her legs at its presence. She’d been out running with her pack when it had appeared to them.
It had one horrendous and pulsating green and yellow eye in the middle of its face, which had skin that looked like it was trying to rot away, several smaller eyes looking out at the pricolici between the exposed muscles of its face. Its torso was wide, and heavily muscles, but it split down the middle, held together by what Shehk counted as three rows of horrible sharp teeth. She knew even before it opened that there was a mouth there. Her mind ran away with the idea of what was behind it and she felt herself becoming paralyzed by its unyielding stare. It seemed as though it didn’t have any eyelids. A single translucent ‘wipe’ would come across the lens of the eye, and Shehk knew there was no breaking eye contact with the creature. It would stare into eternity. It stood on two legs and held absolutely not animal-like qualities, but seemed more like a hulking monstrous Cyclops. Shehk had to assume it was meant to look that way and it wasn’t trying to hide some part of its form to her. At least, she really had to hope that it didn’t get bigger than that. The vague idea that this was the horrible thing that was eating the other creatures in the forest and perhaps had been the creature that had attacked her on her first night in the fog struck her and she suddenly had to wonder why, when their mouth was so big, they hadn’t just shoved her entire body into it and walked away.
Shehk eventually gained enough sense to get herself walking, beginning to pace back and forth in the fog, watching it, not breaking eye contact with that single horrible eye that stared back at her. It evaluated her. Her own eye left a trail of light as she paced, evaluating the creature in return, her eyes narrowing as she got a better look at it through the fog. Her fog vision was becoming more and more helpful as she adapted herself to be able to use it. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help but eye the mouth on its torso and moved away, bearing her teeth, growling. She barked towards the two wolves with her in an attempt to shoo away Hati and Skoll as quickly as she could. However, in the moment she looked away from it, the creature reached out to grab them, snagging Hati by the tail. Hati shrieked and barked, Skoll turned in his running and jumped onto the hand, digging his teeth into the flesh in an attempt to try and make it relinquish its hold on his mate. It threw Skoll away with as little effort as Shehk would have batted away a feather. The muscles of its torso undulated as the rows of teeth cracked open and a thick oozing hissing saliva dripped between the teeth onto the ground. What was about to happen suddenly dawned on Shehk just in time for her to watch Hati be thrown into that dripping and hissing massive mouth, the teeth snapping shut promptly once it was sure there were no stray pieced it needed to pick up. The entire happening took less than 10 seconds.
Shehk’s shrieking howl filled the air as she pawed the ground, changing course immediately to run towards the creature. She didn’t care if it hurt her in that moment; She had to try and get it to open that mouth again before it swallowed Hati and she couldn’t get her back! Right as she pounced at it, however, those horrible teeth parted again and the saliva oozed out again, filled with chunks of dark fur. Shehk nearly hit a tree in trying to redirect her jump to keep her from throwing herself into that mouth.
She could see Hati between the parted teeth and Shehk barked, hoping to rouse the cowering canine into acting and removing itself from the mouth while it could on it’s own strength.
Hati remained where she was, whimpering and unsure what to do out of sheer panic. Shehk again ran towards the creature and threw herself at its face, attempting to sink her teeth into the monstrous eye that stared her down. The eye didn’t even flinch as she jumped upon it. Instead, the creature threw her off with barely any effort, sending Shehk flying. She smashed against the ground and her entire body to flinch. She was really sure something had been cracked that time. Her body rebelled against her as she tried to get up. However, once she’d managed to regain herself again, the creature had already vanished. It was gone.
Hati with it.
Shehk was devastated, feeling utterly useless. She was only barely able to whimper underneath her breath as she hobbled on her feet in a lame attempt to do something that resembled walking. She’d barely taken any steps towards Skoll, who had turned his gaze onto her with a growl, when a voice spoke up from behind her. The wolf turned to look at the familiar nameless female standing there, her arms crossed.
“You’re just going to let it walk away without putting up more fight than that?” she said, her voice sounding highly disapproving of the lack of resolve Shehk seemed to have in finishing what she had started. Shehk’s ribs throbbed and she forced herself to steady her body frowning as well as she could when she had no lips… was a canine with little facial expression to begin with.
“Well there isn’t much else I can do..” she answered lamely, the attempt to look serious vanishing from her face. She’d given it a shot, hadn’t she? Wasn’t that all she could do? Shehk couldn’t say she was be proud of her lame attempt, but she could at least say she tried. The woman seemed utterly pissed to hear Shehk’s answer to her, however, going as far as to..
Holy s**t.
Shehk immediately backed the ******** off of as the woman took one of the fallen trees and lifted it, with great ease, over one shoulder. Shehk could barely see the top of her fingers holding the tree in place to keep it from keeling over completely. The woman sneered at the pricolici.
“You can tell that to your precious pet when she comes back to you. That you lack resolve to save anybody because allow your body to determine what your limitations are.” She hissed through her sharp teeth at Shehk, before she turned, storming off into the fog. Shehk’s tail easily crept between her legs as she turned to limp back towards the house to try and sit on the porch of the house.
Between eye-mouth creature and b***h face, Shehk was getting a relatively decent pounding from living out in the middle of nowhere. She was starting to really question what kind of person she’d be when she got back to school.
Skoll had distanced himself from the pricolici upon their return to the house, obviously upset with her for failing in her attempts to rid the creature of his mate. Shehk didn’t blame him for blaming her. Shehk was becoming an emotional wreck and she couldn’t get the image of Hati’s attempts to writhe out of that hand that had ultimately just resulted in her being eaten. Things worsened when the woman returned to the house later and simply shook her head. Shehk wasn’t sure what to make of the look, but she assumed the worse. She could feel herself being judged from every side of the situation.
Shehk wanted to go find somewhere to go curl up and die. Uh… die again.
The remaining celestial wolf eventually paced off of the porch and into the fog, leaving Shehk to sulk on the porch by herself and all of her thoughts. Her ribs ached horribly from having been thrown around so much that day. She could have sworn one of them was broken. Possibly two. She sighed her best doggy sigh and laid her head to rest lamely on top of her paws. It could have been a more eventful day, but she didn’t even want to go out anymore. She didn’t even want to open her eyes again.
She ended up spending several hours lying in the dust. She had been considering just leaving when the time of day suddenly stuck her. Quite literally. Her favorite (not) tormentor had come by for her second round of the day and heaved the pricolici, without any effort, off of the porch with more force than Shehk had been inflicted with by her in the past.
Shehk yelped again when she hit the ground. She was really having a good day of ‘flying’.
“So you’re just going to sit here and feel sorry for yourself instead of going out to fix the problem?” she interrogated, spitting in the Pricolici’s face and Shehk recoiled from it immediately, wiping the saliva from her face. She didn’t even have the strength to growl back at her assailant. She was getting too used to being thrown around and she was just too hurt to put up a fight against it.
“I’m disappointed in you. You’re waiting for someone else to be the dominant party whenever your problems come up because you just can’t handle having to do something yourself. That’s the reason why you’re ******** out here. You had some pointless little tiff with a boy who in another two years is going to mean nothing to you.” She annunciated her words harshly.
She repeated herself.
“He. Will. Mean. Nothing.” The woman said again as she slammed both of her hands against the railing of the porch and the support beams of the house protested, creaking. Dust was unsettled, resettling and stirred up all about the place repeatedly by the woman’s harsh gestures.
Decebal called from one of the windows; “Do you mind not destroying my house? I kind of have to live here!” He didn’t sound very bothered by the fight going on, and Shehk wondered if she’d have the opportunity to gnaw on his ankles later. She hoped so.
The monstrous woman removed her hands from the railing. “Yeah yeah, I’ll not do it again.” She repeated with a huff, not sounding very sincere, before jumping the railing to approach the pricolici again. Shehk growled and took a step back from the woman.
She wasn’t sure what was hurting more right then. Her pride, her guilt, or the fact that there was salt being rubbed in every possible open wound she had at that moment. Shehk continued to growl as she forced herself back up to her paws and threw herself against the woman. The woman caught her with one leg and kicked her off with little effort, the toe of her foot catching the pricolici right underneath the ribs as she flung her away. Shehk felt something inside of her snap as she hit the ground again.
Literally snap.
The Pricolici hissed with pain, rolling off of her side immediately. She slowly rose to her paws and started coughing, blood oozing out of her mouth from between all of the gaps in her teeth, slowly staining the bone of her face. She felt like something in her body had just been punctured, and the feeling was radiating down the entirety of one side. Nonetheless, she turned her body towards the woman and approached again, huffing under her breath. Shehk was hardly a thread. However, she did manage to sink her teeth into the fleshy ankle at head-level.
She was kicked away without a second though, rolling back across the ground outside of the porch. This time Shehk didn’t get up, laying there on one side huffing miserably and coughing up blood. The monster woman approached Shehk and lifted one leg, prepared to bring her boot down on Shehk’s ribs.
Decebal had finally seemed to decide that what was going on was enough and made a point to step in. The door of the house flew open and the man practically flew out of the house, landing in a position where he was crouched over his pricolici-ward.
“Marianne.” His voice was firm in a way that he’d never turned it onto Shehk and filled with absolutely no nonsense. He had little patience for bullshit, it appeared. He was almost as unhappy then as he had been when Shehk had showed up on his doorstep, looking like a dog that was happy to be adopted and go home from the pound. The woman reneged to the vampire without question, however.
“Marianne.” He spoke this name firmly, though he didn’t use his fangs as any sort of leverage against the woman. He clearly didn’t need to. “You have meddled enough in my work.” He picked up Shehk, who winced and let out a high pitched whine of pain. He carried her like one would a stuffed animal underneath one arm; with hardly any care whatsoever. Decebal made no effort to move inside yet, his sharp eyes looking to Marianne. “Also, regurgitate Shehk’s companion. The amount of time you said you were going to hold her passed long ago.” He ordered further.
The woman frowned, pushing her long hair out of her face (Shehk was surprised to realize she only had one eye… s**t…) before she unzipped her vest to show the much-smaller mouth on her stomach. The teeth on it split open and Hati was expunged from it, the poor Celestial wolf dripping in acidic digestive fluids and looking like she’d been chewed on. However, she was able to get up on her own, she simply whined a lot.
Decebel threw Hati over one shoulder once she was up. “I now have two dogs to fix.” He harrumphed.
“You didn’t seem so opposed to my interference when I was doing it before.” Marianne said, zipping her coat back up and shrugging. Decebal gave her a very annoyed look. “Previously you weren’t digesting my ward’s pet nor nearly killing her. I now have a lot of work ahead of me.”
The woman made a slight face and shrugged again. It almost looked like she was saying ‘Don’t have a cow, man’.
“You only want her to stay alive because you hope she’ll turn into Helvetica.” Marianne accused, but her expression changed when the vampire gave her a strict stare. “We do not mention her name while Shehk is here.” He said. That name made Shehk’s brain ache, but she left it alone. Her mind wasn’t up for working and her body was too weak to even keep her eyes open or to care at that point. Was she going to die again because some stupid one-eyed mouth-torsoed b***h had been harassing her?
Shehk hoped she wouldn’t, but in her current condition she couldn’t make any promises.
The sun’s rays touching her face would be what woke up Shehk at dawn the next morning. Her body twitched and the throb of pain to follow caused her to nearly jump awake. She hissed and winced, wrapping her arms around herself. Her insides ached horribly. It was only when she realized that her pelvis was shifted and her shoulder blades had realigned that she realized that at some point in time between passing out and waking up she had shifted back to her humanoid body. s**t.
She tried to sit herself up, pushing against her arms lamely. However, her insides rejected the idea of it wholly. Decebal, who had been sitting nearby in a rather large and retro looking chair, did as well, frowning. He rose quickly to approach Shehk, pushing her shoulders down to force the ghoul to lie again. The spare look she’d gotten of the room caused her to deem it as some sort of personal lounge.
“Stay laying down. I barely got your insides put back in order, I don’t want you to break them all apart again until they’ve had time to set into place.” He instructed. Shehk frowned looking at him. The inside of the house smelled like dust. Shehk had determined from that he never cleaned anything. Well, it didn’t smell like old moldy dishes.
Perhaps he just didn’t dust the house then.
Shehk looked to the vampire, a grimaced frown pulling across her lips. “Did that woman…” “Marianne.” The vampire corrected her quickly. Shehk nodded and amended her inquiry. “Did Marianne…eat Hati?” she asked, her brows furrowing together.
Decebal made a face that Shehk couldn’t quite read. It may have been the exhaustion that was still trying to keep her down.
“Yes and no.” he answered slowly, before he continued. “Marianne doesn’t actually eat. Her race…predigests things to allow other races to eat things they normally shouldn’t be able to. We call them Cleaners, though they do not have a proper name.”
A look of horror came over Shehk’s face at the description she was given. Had that been what she was doing to Hati??! The vampire frowned.
“It was never her intention to let anything eat you or your companion.”
Shehk frowned, not really believing that Decebal hadn’t left her outside to let her run around and get hurt all over the place. However, her primary concern wasn’t that. Instead she asked her 10-million-dollar-question:
“Then what is eating the animals out in the fog?”
Decebal made another unreadable face, but made a point to not answer her question. If Marianne hadn’t been what tried to eat her a** out there, and also wasn’t what was out in the woods leaving broken bones and blood all over the place, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was bigger and more terrifying than what she had already seen. s**t.
Shehk took a long moment of thought about that, before she looked to the pair of celestial wolves who were sitting by the fireplace.
“Is Hati OK…?” Shehk finally asked, wrapping her arms around herself again, trying to not whine about the pain in her ribs. However, she did feel like she was covered in a layer of grim. The idea of possibly needing to go and take a shower later presented itself, but she didn’t feel well enough to get up agai-
s**t, her face hurt too. Shehk put one hand to her face, feeling up where the stitching in her face would lie. It felt...different.
Decebal frowned, seeming to note the look on the pricolici’s face.
“Your..” he paused, not exactly appreciating having to use the word to follow “Pet….is fine. You’re in a worse condition than she is. Your organs were as patched as I could make them with FEARhealing..” Shehk groaned at the word and mumbled ‘Goddammit Cricket’ underneath her breath. She hated Cricket. Why did she have to be reminded of the school nurse while she was on break? She put the thought out of mind. The vampire continued to speak. “I had to re-set one of your ribs and…I fixed your face.”
Shehk froze at that statement, her eyes slowly moving over to look at him. She growled a bit.
“What do you mean you fixed my face??” she asked. The vampire immediately looked elsewhere and away from her..
“When you are well enough to stand on your own, I’ll show you.” He answered after a long awkward moment. It was possibly the closest he’d ever gotten to actually seeming like more than a hard-a** to her.
Shehk dropped it, knowing there was nothing she could do about it. However, she hadn’t enjoyed that week to follow in bed. She was too busy waiting to see what horribly maiming things he’d done to her while she’d been sleeping.
And if she’d have to kill him for it.
What Lies in the Fog: End
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Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2011 8:39 pm
Shehk had been sleeping, trying to recover as her ribs rebelled against her in pain from being kicked by Marianne. It wasn’t a particularly meaningful sleep, as sleep was unnecessary to her undead body, but she’d done more unnecessary sleeping in the last few days than before she’d come to spend time at Hollow Creek, snuggling with the boy uncounted. That had totally been necessary sleep. Sleeping wasn’t to be complained about, however, as Shehk settled in to the swing of things. She had to get what she could while she was still inside. Decebal had treated her with a sort of distant reverence; like he wasn’t entirely sure how to handle her outside of being cold towards her, or as though she was some sort of plague. That had left her with a lot of time alone and nothing to do, so sleeping had been her solution to that problem. But that particular nap, she’d found herself actually dreaming for once.
As a not, dreams never came easy to the pricolici. They came as easily as a true deep sleep ever had, which was possibly once or twice a month. Tops. Her body just never truly required her to sleep, so truly falling into a sleep was something that didn’t just happen, just like dreams didn’t. Yet somehow, this dream felt familiar to her… like she’d had it before, many times.
In her dream, Shehk was laying out in the same clearing she’d found in the fog amongst the trees and been catching rabbits in since that first night. Only now, that barest hint of sun had vanished completely. The fog had overtaken the clearing and she lay there in the grass, listening to animals as they skittered through the grass, avoiding her, eyes half closed, her tail wagging. However, she was not alone, she could tell because the sound of another large body bending the grass under its weight as they shifted was picked up by her ears. There was another figure sitting in the grass with her. She smiled as their hand slowly stroked over her hair; gently…gently…. And his voice whispered into her ear in Romanian, his breath warm;
“Vei fi mereu al meu, da?”
For some reason, Shehk just couldn’t identify what it was he was saying. She knew those words. A part of her waking mind knew what those words strung together and said. She had said something similar to someone else once. But she couldn’t place it. She rolled over and shoved her hand into the other person’s face as she spoke;
”Du vet att jag inte kan förstå vad du säger!” She laughed, before she grabbed the other person towards her, kissing them. Somehow, Shehk could understand that. She was telling him that he didn’t understand what he was saying to her. What language was she speaking to him? It wasn’t Romanian. He just laughed and pressed his face into one of her ears and began to hum. It was a soothing tune, slow and almost melancholy. She’d heard it somewhere before. It reminded her of a cello. Had she ever played the cello? No..she’d played the piano.....
YIPE!
She was snapped out of the dream and her subconcious pondering when her vampire caretaker had come upstairs to check on her as she slept. He had propped her up to change the bandages around her torso, trying to be delicate, but as he didn’t know where she actually was hurting, Shehk suddenly jerked out of sleep, whining at the hand contact with her ribs, flinching away from Decebal. His lips tightened and he grumbled at her, sounding only mildly sympathetic to her suffering.
"Sorry..."
He didn’t exatly sound like he was sorry, but Shehk had to take him at his word. She grit her teeth as the vampire made no point of being gentle with her. His touch was rough as he rewound her bandages and she settled back against the couch, her face contorting with pain. ******** that hurt like a b***h and it made her wince whenever he tightened them around her. With another sigh, she settled completely. "It’s fine.” She said in turn, her ribs still aching with every breath she took. s**t. ********. Damn. ********. Jack-Dammit. She had been swearing a lot more, if only out of pain, recently. And when just breathing hurt, the idea of just stopping it altogether was appealing. But no. Decebal said her body needed the oxygen to patch itself up.
The vampire reminded her of this once as he finished his patching job, tucking the blanket back around her. Decebal was about to take his leave of the room when Shehk stopped him, looking over her shoulder at him.
"Decebal?”
She spoke out to him, and the vampire paused, looking to her, his eyes narrowing a bit. "What is it?” he asked, not really sounding like he wanted to entertain too much idiocy from her. Shehk’s lips tightened a bit. "I.... For some reason, my brain just won’t tell me what it was, but can you tell me what ...” she paused, fumbling over her words a bit, before shabbily pronouncing it; "Vei fi mereu al meu, da?’ is? I ... I feel like I know it, but at the same time part of me doesn’t want to know what that is...” she sighed. Decebal winced at her pronounciation, but walked back over to her couch, dragging a chair over with him to take a seat next to the resting Pricolici.
"You really need to work on your language.” He snipped, as he always did, jabbing right at her faults without a thought about it. Shehk frowned. "Not many people to talk to in it back at school.” Decebal frowned, and Shehk could tell he was categorizing that into a category of ‚things I need to work on with the ward’. With a sigh, he finally answered her question; "’Vei fi mereu al meu, da?’ means ‚You will always be mine, yes?’.” His lips tightened a bit as he said it, as though that phrase was painful to him. Shehk’s brain seemed to immediately reboot. She’d known that. She had totally known that. Her brows furrowed together and her head throbbed. Damn....
"I had a dream someone said that to me..and for some reason I couldn’t understand it.” She explained in her defense, then sighed, waving a hand, before slumping a bit. Decebal didn’t seem that much more understanding over her having asked at all. He leaned over his seat. "The reason for that is because you are very much out of practice in speaking it. Is there truly nobody to converse with at Amityville?” Shehk sighed shakily. "Well, there is a hunchback named Christof, but he has no tongue most of the time and thus it would be just me talking. Not helpful.”
Plus he seemed to prefer English because of her bad pronounciation skills.
"I don’t think I’ve met any other student out there that actually speaks the language, so no. Just me.” Then again, she wasn't sure anybody else was from boonie land as this place seemed to be.
Decebal had this look about him that made it seem as though he wanted simply to leave, but instead he spoke again;
"Noi va trebui să stabilească acest lucru, atunci.”
He made a point to speak slowly. Shehk’s mind winced as it took care in picking up the slight nuances in how the vampire spoke towards her. Oh man, it had been a long time since she’d had to pick up the language on the fly, and Decebal repeated himself twice, before Shehk answered him. "Era român nu limba mea naturale, Decebal?” she inquired, slowing her speech to take the same care in her annunciation. It seemed weird to her that in her wakening she’d somehow forgotten something so..ingrained. Decebal had her repeat it again, pressing on her lips to help her with the nuances of her tone. She reepated it three times before he seemed pelased with it.
When he finally answered, the vampire shook his head back at her. "Ai vorbit suedeză.” He replied.
This was a strange notion to Shehk, who leaned back against the arm of the couch, thinking the statement over and over again. Putting the words to memory, but also taking in what he had just told her. So she was ..swedish? That was.... Shehk couldn’t help but keep making a face. Forever a face that said that fact made no sense to her. Swedish..swedish. Wow! That was...
"Te-am cu adevărat?” she sounded suspicious, but something about her tone caused the vampire to wince visibly. Shehk tilted her head a bit at him. "Am crezut că am pronunţat că frumos!” she defended. The speaking was at least warming up her pronounciation a little bit. "Nu mă simt suedeză....” she mumbled at the end.
Decebal could have been described as amused, if there was such a range of emotion for him, patting Shehk on the head with one hand, "Tu nu a acţionat foarte suedeză, fie.” Shehk reached up to swat his hand away, but lifting her arm just made her ribs hurt and she winced, whined, and then sunk into the couch cusions. Hnngghhhh....
"Odihna. Vom face acest lucru mai târziu.” The vampire spoke up, moving to adjust the pricolici’s blanket about her in a careful and delicate manner, before taking a minute to smooth her hair down. His hand lingered on that sore spot. That place missing all of that hair seemed to cause a certain amount of anger to form on the vampire's features. He pulled his hand away to keep from pressing down on the scabbing area of skin.
After a long moment he spoke.
"Don’t do this to yourself ever again.” He said, his tone serious. "A lot of work went into putting you back together, Shehk. No boy should be worth harming yourself over.”
Shehk sighed and looked away from him, "I’ve been hearing that a lot. I just...I didn’t think physical pain would hurt as much as I did inside...and to be honest, my head hurts less than my heart does. Is that stupid?” Decebal shook his head, but didn't speak for a long time, mulling some thought over in his head. When he did speak, he sounded pained, "You’re.......” he paused, his lips tightening into a grimace, "talking to someone who is holding a torch for someone nearly 14 years dead.” The Pricolici sat up, her expression completely surprised by this sudden development in her sire's life-story-as-she-knew-it (a*****e of a bache-..widower?); "Like undead or...?” she started asking, but her voice trailed off. Decebal sighed. "No. Dead. The person I loved will never be coming back.”
Hearing such a sad tone from the vampire caused Shehk to immediately feel guilty for her own whining over a boy who was still alive and she could..maybe....try to woo back. That was an idea that struck her oddly. She’d been a pretty nasty person in the end of everything, but she said nothing to his face, to him, anything. Most of her nastiness had mostly been aimed towards the skinwalker.
"I....” She paused, biting her lower lip. "I’m sorry I’m making my problem bigger than it is.” Shehk said, finally settling in. Decebal nodded slowly. "Just don’t do it again. I can fix this over a couple of weeks..but I will only do it this once, because you don't know better.” There was a long moment where Shehk didn’t look up. Decebal grabbed her face and jerked it up so she was looking him in the eyes.
"You are out here because I care, Shehk Strigoi. My methods may be crude, but I care about your wellbeing. If you hurt yourself purposely again, I will kill you myself.” he said, his voice getting a seriously dangerous tone to it. Shehk squirmed, but the hand remained firm against her chin. Finally he let go of her and Shehk slammed against the arm of the couch, she winced and whined at the pain it inflicted upon her.
She sighed, as the vampire got up and left her, a look that seemed almost saddened flashing over his face before he did, before leaning into the couch, closing her eyes, ready for another one of her long naps. As she settled in, she hummed to herself, a tune that was both familiar, and always so far away.
Peaches in the summertime...apples in the fall...
if I can't have the girl I love...
I don't want one at all.
A chat with Decebal: END
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Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2011 8:51 pm
"How are your ribs feeling now?" Decebal asked as he looked up from his desk and the pile of papers he was sorting through.
Shehk looked up, hearing the vampire spoke, sighed then yawned, stretching out to test the throb of her insides and test the limit of them. Her arms got about forehead-level before she grimaced with the familiar pain. Shehk looked back to the vampire once the pain had finished thrumming through her body, a dull ache. "It could be worse, it could be better." She said, sitting up. She still had to force herself to move when she did, but moving was more interesting than sleeping and listening to the fireplace crackle.
The vampire seemed pleased to hear the update from the pricolici, but nonetheless got up to go over to her and see what was going on with his own eyes. Shehk made a point to sit still as he gently felt at her ribs, then moved his hand up to feel at her itching scalp, a faint glow to his fingertips. FEARhealing. She hated that damn FEARhealing so much, if only because of her association of it with that hellish school nurse, but it was doing her more good than fighting it would have done for her. Even if the healing had her wanting desperately to scratch at that spot on her scalp so much. Auughhh, it itttccchheeeddddddd!!! It itched, it itched, it itcheddddd!!!!!
It must have been plain on her face how much that one spot on her head itched, as Decebal made a point to scratch it gently himself, and Shehk's tail thumped against the couch.
"Oh..oh..that's the spot…auugghh..ititcheeesss…" she whined, eyes rolling up in her head from the contact. The vampire was amused by the reaction it was instilling into her. He stopped soon enough, however, the amusement running out without much merit to it. "This is healing up nicely." He commented finally, pulling his fingers away from the healing patch of scalp. "You might actually get your hair growing back in by the time you go back to school." Shehk sighed with relief at the vampire's diagnosis of her poor head. Oh thank god, she hadn't maimed herself horribly and forever. She didn't want to be maimed forever! That would have been horrible nasty s**t. Not that she couldn't have tried to hide it up a bit, but…
She just kinda liked knowing she hadn't just ruined herself forever over a moment of idiocy, even if she'd never regret it for having helped out Sammy. Decebal, once he was done with his check, nodded firmly, and then walked over to the desk to take a seat. Shehk watched him with a long look that lasted several minutes, her elbow propped on the armrest of the couch.
"So what is it you do at your desk all day?" Shehk asked suddenly, the curiosity getting to her. She'd seen him sitting at that desk near every day from her vantage point of a couch she hadn't gotten up from ever; reading a book, reading a newspaper, reading something. Occasionally he would write something, but it was… she couldn't tell for the life of herself what he was doing over there that seemed to be so interesting to him! It was driving her nuts! The vampire seemed to smile, or something resembling a smile, not answering her.
She hadn't seen him doing any sort of 'work' or anything like that, unless that was what he did at that desk all day. Did he have a job? He had to have a job if he was paying for her to attend a boarding school like she was, but she wasn't able to tell just what kind of work he was doing. It was insanely suspicious and he didn't ever leave the house if he could help it. She could count on one hand how many times she'd seen him leave, even if she chopped off a couple of fingers. She could always hear him walking inside somewhere. Doing something; moving furniture, pacing, reading a book out loud to himself (she suspected he was secretly trying to culture her). He was up to something. She never heard him on the phone, she suspected he didn't even have one for lack of reception in the middle of ********, yet somehow whenever Marianne came over it was like he had summoned her, always greeting her with 'Nice of you to make it' or something similar.
Did he have telepathy? Was that it? Was Decebal not-so-secretly reading her mind while she went insane on that couch and documenting it to put into some sort of research library? That would have made far too much sense!! Auuggggghhhh!
Shehk spent several hours watching the vampire as he continued to play dumb about whether or not he actually did anything at that desk. He'd read the newspaper, then pull out some old book and start staring at it like it was the most intense thing in the world. That day, Shehk was feeling brave enough to try walking, as though that would be enough for her to wander over to that desk to find out if he was reading some sort of smutty magazine while she was right there and amused because she would be none the wiser about it all.
She awkwardly pushed herself up to her feet, drawing the vampire's attention when she nearly stumbled back down again, her arms going out awkwardly to either side to keep herself balanced. He was up in an instant to catch her, frowning at her attempt to make herself move before he thought she was ready to do so. "Stay." He said. Shehk sneered. "I'm not a dog." She said, grumbling a bit, putting one hand on the vampire's shoulder to stabilize herself against him. He frowned, pushing on her shoulders gently to herd her back to the couch in the same way she'd been herded out of the door not too long previous.
"Shehk. Stay laying." He said again, this time with a touch more gusto than he'd emphasized it earlier. "Don't rebreak anything or else this will go on forever, and I'm not going to take care of you like an infant for ten weeks." Shehk grumbled, "I just wanted to see what you're doing.." she said defensively, frowning and grumbling a bit. Decebal didn't seem amused. "It is my own business." He said firmly. Shehk's lips tightened a bit, but she folded her arms and sunk back against the couch.
She'd leave it alone.
For now…..
It would be several days later before she was finally able to get up and walk again, though it was only short distances without the vampire to assist her in it. She'd made a point to figure out just how many steps it took for Decebal to walk between the couch and the desk, and with that information, as well as her own limitations, in mind, the pricolici finally hobbled over to the desk while Decebal worked on setting up a room upstairs. That would be where she would be staying proper now that she wasn't an invalid who would be taken out completely by walking, nor living outside. She'd been nagging him on the couch about what he was doing at near every hour he was in the room with her, what he did for work (he never answered this for her), why didn't he like dogs (another long stare), no she did not need a flea bath (he'd accused her of it and Shehk was not pleased by the dog implication again). Mostly she did it because she was lonely and he'd been somebody to talk to.
For the most part, unintentionally, she'd harassed him into getting her own room instead of living on a couch. There was a long moment as Shehk looked at the door, then at the desk. He wasn't coming back anytime soon. She could tell that immediately, because she could hear him shuffling upstairs. Her ears perked up, following his steps, listening to the drag of furniture. Once she was sure he was going to be there for at least a few minutes, she made her move. Carefully, she pushed herself up off of the couch and sidled over to the desk. Another check between herself and the door, then she sat herself down in the seat of his desk and looked at the heavy leather bound book that sat out on it. He'd practically tortured himself over it and it had done nothing but make her more and more curious. The pricolici carefully cracked open the cover to look inside, hoping the book didn't suddenly start shrieking at her.
….
What it was, was a photo album. It sort of made Shehk's heart ache to look through it. It was mostly pictures of Decebal and one other person. She was a young woman, possibly in her late teens, early 20s at tops with brown eyes and wildly curly brown hair that seemed to have a mind of it's own. Sharp teeth. She didn't seem like a vampire to Shehk, convince of this more and more as she flipped the pages.
Pictures of them seemed like they were young, like from school, copies of old love letters, notes written on the corners of some of them a date and a place. Kisses on the cheek, kisses on the lips, her laying out in the grass, him trying to prevent a photo from being taken, pictures of him cooking… and then came the pictures…
s**t
Shehk immediately slammed the book shut as she heard the sound of the vampire coming down the stairs, but didn't move anywhere near quickly enough to be back on the couch when he was back in the lounge to see what she was up to. She had to try desperately to not give him a deer-in-the-headlights look when he opened the door. Shehk's ears drooped guiltily instead, unable to hold it in.
Decebal looked at her, then slowly towards his desk. In an instant, Shehk knew that he knew. She could see it on his face. He knew like Nurse Cricket knew everything. That woman just knew…just like the vampire staring her down just knew. His lips tightened. She knew that she was now going to be barred from being in that lounge ever again. He'd make sure she never went into it and he'd keep her away from that album. That had been the one. The one 14 years dead. Shehk just knew.
He said nothing, his eyes narrowing as he crossed the room, took the blanket off of the couch and threw it over the back to clear her of 'that' space. The vampire then turned and offered one arm to the pricolici. Shehk wrapped both of hers awkwardly around the offered arm and fumbled along at his side as he began to walk out of the lounge and up the stairs, his pace quick and unforgiving. The stairs had been a task in and of themselves, full of much failure for the pricolici, and Decebal ultimately had to pick her up to carry her up the stairs.
There was silence.
Disapproving silence.
He set her down at the top of the stairs and pushed her along, gingerly, with one hand. "The open door is yours." He said, sounding less upset with her than she'd been expecting him to be. Shehk looked at him and nodded. "T..thank you.." she said, taking an awkward breath. She only took two steps before the vampire spoke up again.
"And don't snoop into things you shouldn't on your way there." He added, the miffed tone she'd been expecting from him previous. There it was. Him being upset with her curiosities.
Shehk's tail curled between her legs and she nodded once as she hobbled away from him to find that open door. She didn't even look at any of the other ones.
Curiosity Didn't Kill the Pricolici: END
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Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 2:18 pm
The week spent recovering hadn’t been as bad as Shehk had been expecting when she’d initially woke up to find herself inside and not in any condition to get up and walk. The first few days, once she’d been well enough to, of walking again had been as painful as, if not more than, she’d been expecting them to be. Her body protested the entire process as her body worked putting itself back together. Fortunately, Decebal had been nice enough to hold her hand through the first portion of it. It had mostly involved her hobbling about and nearly falling down the stairs, to say the least. He’d proven to be a nice enough guy once he’d gotten over the ‘I have animals in my house’ issue he seemed to be having. In fact, more than once, however, he’d chased precious out of the house for perching on Shehk’s rib cage and causing the Pricolici to shriek in pain.
It seemed he cared more about her now that she was in an emotional state of turmoil with a physical ailment to go with it.
Nonetheless, once she’d been well enough to handle it, Shehk had hobbled to the bathroom for the moment of truth. She’d been waiting a week to see what he’d done to her face and now she got to know. She took a deep breath before she actually took the look in the mirror. Decebal stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder to keep her from falling from the sore body, though his reflection in its entirety was missing. It was a strange optical illusion to feel him there, but not see him behind her. Shehk almost wondered why he has a mirror at all at the time. She’d have to ask him about it someday. However, the look on her face determined one thing for her; it appeared the damage that had been done was minimal. Shehk still had to gawk at it a bit when she saw her reflection. She gasped then leaned up close to the mirror, running her finger over the split in her face, making an awed expression.
The stitches in her face were gone. They’d been replaced by stainless steel staples, which stayed firmly in place and kept a neat appearance, even as the muscles in her face twitched. Her tail picked up to wag slightly in approval at the improvement to her appearance. Decebal’s hand twitched on her shoulder when she did, however, and she soon stopped, giving Decebal a suspicious look. Was he going to pull on her tail if she did that? She grimaced a bit as she pushed herself up straight.
She then looked to the items sitting on the edge of the sink; a bar of soap, a bottle of shampoo, and a bottle of conditioner. All of which had been packed away in her suitcase before it had been stolen away from her over two weeks ago.
She looked to Decebal, looking positively irritated. Her tail twitched.
“Did you go through my stuff?” she asked, crinkling her nose and frowning at him. The vampire removed his hand from her shoulder, but he didn’t deny it; “I unpacked it while I was reorganizing the house.” He answered innocently, sounding as though it was no big deal. Or that she hadn’t had anything hidden away in her suitcase that she would have preferred male eyes didn’t see. Reorganizing the house? Shehk seemed slightly baffled by this notion, but didn’t push it any further. Had that been what he’d been up to while she’d been living outside?
She just sighed instead. “Well..I guess it saves me a trip.” She answered, putting her hands on her hips. “I…may I take a shower?” Shehk looked to Decebal, expression as hopeful as it could be when it was minced with pain. She was really hoping it wouldn’t be turned down.
Decebal caught that look, sighed, and then waved one hand dismissively. “Only a shower. Taking a bath would rip something open.” He instructed carefully to her. “Yeah, Ok.” Shehk’s brows furrowed together in response, still hulking over the sink shaking her head then shrugging back at the vampire. “I knew that already..” she grumbled as he retreated out of the bathroom.
Shehk hadn’t had much on to take off after the two weeks outside and then having to be patched back together, but it took great effort to unbutton the shirt that had been thrown on over her bandaged ribs. She stared at herself in the mirror, looking at the mangling that had come to her torso. The stitches were freshly fixed. It looked like someone had patched the skin up before sewing it back together. Extra strength healing. She looked to the door to make sure it was locked. After she’d taken time to ogle the gap in her torso and look it over, her skirt and boots came off with less effort. Her body still throbbed despite how far along in healing she was every time she moved to do the most simple of task.
Stepping into the shower took a lot of care, but the carefully moved the soap, shampoo, and conditioner over into it with her. With that she pulled the curtain shut and started the water.
Even while it was cold, the water felt like sanity was being restored to her. In two weeks she had already been beaten near the edge of oblivion and her entire body throbbed for it. She may have hidden underneath a bed if Marianne came into the house while she was recuperating. Her mind couldn’t help but keep going back to the pain that had been inflicted upon her as the water flushed over the bandages wrapped around her torso to keep her bones in place. However, that pain was minimal in comparison to the rush of emotional pain that suddenly rushed through her mind. She leaned against the side of the shower, beginning to sob. She hurt all over. But most of all, she was still hurting inside.
Two weeks away from school should have cured her of missing him. At least, she was convinced it should have. She should have been over it now and not kept replaying that fight in her head. Every thing she’d said to him, every stupid mistake she’d made because she’d been blind to think he would love her unconditionally. Marianne should have been right; He should have meant nothing. But as weak and vulnerable as she was right then, all she wanted to do was wake up and crawl into his room. Crawl into the pile of pelts that made up his bed.
She wanted to settle into Nukpana’s arms and feel how warm his body was. Listen to his heartbeat, hear him breath as he slipped between shallow and deep sleep. Had it all meant nothing? It had meant everything to her and the more she thought about it, the more easily the tears came to her. She just couldn’t help it.
She’d forced herself to swallow up her sobbing long enough to try clean herself, a task in and of itself; with the soap she had to be careful around her ribs in case the pressure caused something to shift and crack out of place, bringing the earlier pains back to her. Shehk leaned one arm against the side of the shower to keep herself upright during the process. Similar problems arose when it came to washing her hair. There was still that raw patch on her head from when she’d ripped her hair out, though it had slowly started filling in underneath Decebal’s care (he had seemed appalled to find out that Shehk had ripped a chunk of her hair out. Something about ruining a perfectly good body). The only thing she’d been able to wash without incident was her tail.
Which had gone over rather well.
Toweling off had been a challenge in and of itself because of the pain that its contact would put her in every time she tried to rub herself down. A lot of pain had deterred Shehk from that course of action and she had ultimately wrapped said towel around herself, holding it around herself up at her chest. She picked up the clothing on the floor with a wince. To Shehk it felt like it took her five minutes to both bend down then get up again. It was funny how pain seemed to just make time drag along. It hurt all over and she nearly puked up blood just from the attempt to do something so simple. However, once she was up straight again she hobbled out of the door just to find Decebal standing there.
The vampire stared her down with another one of his unreadable looks and Shehk frowned at it.
Shehk wasn’t sure if she should have been embarrassed to be wearing nothing but a towel while he stared at her or if she should have just shrugged it off and hobbled off on her merry little way back to her room. Instead, she just allowed the sobbing to come back and leaned against his chest. Decebal froze, suddenly having a mostly-naked-young-female against him, sobbing her eyes out. It was a raw and very exposed emotion that would have been delicious to one who fed off of emotions. He wasn’t sure what to do, at least it seemed that way for a few minutes, but eventually he sighed and carefully slipped one arm underneath her knees and scooped her up as gently as he could. He pressed her face against his chest, allowing her to keep sobbing as he walked, carrying the sobbing Pricolici across the house and to the room he’d set up for her sometime during the time she’d been banished to living outside.
He set her down on her feet outside of the door.
“Get dressed.” He said firmly, though it sounded as though he was making an effort to not sound antagonistic towards her. “I’ll…” he paused, his eyes trailing up to look somewhere behind his left ear as he thought about the next course of action for him to take. How did one deal with a sobbing female so early in the morning? Oh. He had an idea. “Make breakfast or something.” Decebal grumbled at last, sounding completely like he had no real inclination to go downstairs and get to cooking. Or that he was unable to cook a breakfast that wouldn’t burn the house down. Shehk was left to dress by herself. The pricolici didn’t mind this in the least, knowing fully well she was capable of dressing herself without assistance at that time. However, she kept it simple with just a plain button up shirt and a simple skirt. She didn’t even put her shoes on again as Shehk really didn’t want to end up outside again. But, if she even did she’d be on paw anyways. She didn’t need shoes in the house and she really didn’t want to have to take the time to hunch over and lace them up just to be taken off again when she had to lay down to let her insides rest.
It was nearly 30 minutes later that she’d deemed herself ‘decent’ enough to go downstairs again, most of it spent wincing. Though some of it had gotten effort devoted to more miserable crying. Being in that house was just making her depressed when she had nothing to distract herself with. But she had eventually made a point to join Decebal in the kitchen.
It was an old kitchen that reminded Shehk of a country farmhouse that she’d seen in a picture book a long time ago. However, that wasn’t the thing about that kitchen that marveled her; it was the vampire at the old gas burner stove wearing an apron and the accompanying mess of him having set about assembling a wide variety of things. From what she could tell, he was a master of cooking which was the opposite of the impression he’d left on her earlier. How he’d talked about having to make food she had assumed it was going to be something he was no good at. Shehk sat at the table anxiously, watching him work. He almost looked like he was enjoying setting about the task he’d taken up. If nothing else, this meal was going to be garlic-free and Shehk could fully appreciate that.
Well, unless they both wanted to keel over onto the floor and just die all over. That would have been delightful, wouldn’t it?
Not really.
Shehk eyed the amenities put out on the table with a suspicious look, turning around and looking at several strange fixtures out on it. It appeared that Decebal had a thing for pineapples, if the décor said anything to Shehk about the matter. It was the strangest thing for her to see. However, once he was finished cooking, the plate that was put in front of Shehk caused her to turn her attention from such things. She looked at the vampire, and then she looked back at the plate. Her stomach nearly growled at the sight of it. It was definitely better eatings than she’d been getting the day before, or even the week before that. Rabbits? What rabbits?
She prodded at the meal with a finger suspiciously, looking over everything curiously. Pancakes, egg, some sort of hash, and milk was about what she’d evaluated it all to be. And innocently so. Though, it looked like he’d mixed blood into near everything on the plate. Shehk wouldn’t complain about that, as blood was delicious, but she sniffed it in an investigative manner. Decebal sat at the table with her, prodding his own meal with a fork and popping a piece of something that d blood-filled scrambled egg into his mouth. Shehk still hesitated to touch her own food as she was too busy looking it over.
Decebal seemed to have noticed Shehk’s strange meal-related behavior, wondering if sometime in the last three weeks she had forgotten how to use eating utensils (he didn’t dare call it silverware, given that he kept his house silver-free). He reached out to prod her fork towards her only for it to garner a completely different reaction than he was expecting it to. Shehk had almost immediately flown from the and across the kitchen, plate going with her, to sit in a corner of the room. She growled and bared her fangs at the vampire for a moment, before turning her back to him. Now the food remained protected between the pricolici and the walls she had sandwiched herself up next to. Even without the utensils, Shehk scarfed it down.
The vampire’s expression mingled somewhere between surprise, amusement, and shock at the sudden reaction Shehk had at him so much as inching his fingers towards her meal. He wondered if that was a result of him having stolen so many of her meals the first few weeks she’d been there with him. She growled when he got up to move about the kitchen while she wasn’t finished eating, looming over her plate and watching him intently. Even when he sat back down at the table to resume eating his meal, Shehk’s eyes didn’t even leave him. They remained fastened on him as she picked up the plate and shoveled the remains of the 40% blood meal into her system.
However, once she’d finished eating and her sense had been regained, her ribs kindly reminded her that they weren’t ready to be torqued around as much as they had been with her dramatic leaping job about the room. Shehk winced compliantly to the proverbial nudge in the ribs and crawled back over to the table to whine. She didn’t actually sit at the table once she was there. Instead she took to peering over it to survey what was still there. She then slowly reached out to try and grab the glass of milk on it that she’d left there when she’d ducked-and-covered away from the approaching hand of the vampire. Decebal grabbed the glass of milk and moved it away from her fingers when they were almost close enough for her to grab the glass from the table. Shehk huffed and reached towards its new location.
It moved again.
Shehk’s tail thumped in irritation against the floor of the kitchen as she grabbed for it again. Decebal moved it away. She growled underneath her breath; “Stopmovingthejackdammnedmilkandletmehaveitalready.”
When he moved the glass again, Shehk grabbed at the vampire’s other hand, pulling it over to her mouth in order to dig her teeth into the first area of flesh she possibly could get to, tail thumping repeatedly against the floor all over again, growling into the fleshy hand. Decebal hissed and yanked his hand away from her mouth near immediately, but the second his attention was dropped from it, Shehk grabbed the glass of milk and again retreated to the corner of room to nurse at it. She growled in the vampire’s direction.
The same behavior as before settle into place; Shehk looking to the vampire as he moved and generally being territorial about her food. The milk went down much more quickly than the meal had. However, the same mellowness returned into place as her body reminded her that it ached all over and that she was being mean to it. Shehk forced herself up to her feet, groaning the entire time. She hobbled over and sat at the table again. She frowned, her ears flattening back as she looked over to Decebal who was still eating his breakfast.
Decebal stared back at her curiously, propping his head in the palm of one hand, elbow resting on the table. “What was that about?” he inquired innocently. Shehk frowned more, if it was possible, back at him. “You know damn well what that was about.” She spit back at him. The vampire shrugged lightly and continued to eat, having made no effort to wolf his own meal down anywhere near as quickly as Shehk had. He didn’t feel his meal was threatened, at the very least.
Shehk watched him eat intently and her stomach pleaded for the possibility of more noms in the future. Decebal frowned and looked over to the stove when he realized why the canine was watching his plate with so much interest to her expression. “There’s more if that’s what you’re wanting.” He said, jabbing his fork in the direction of the food that was still sitting out on the stove, ready for the taking. Shehk’s eyes followed that gesture hopefully. Without even a second though, the pricolici got up and skirted around him to settle at the stove to dish herself up a second plate. If Shehk was predictable in any way, it was with how easy it was to buy her using the proper food. She took more than a reasonable portion of food, looking to Decebal after a moment of dishing it up.
“Are you going to have seconds?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at him. The vampire shook his head. “Not really. I fed properly earlier this week.” He said. Shehk wondered for a moment if that meant he had fed off of her. Nonetheless, she shrugged and soon just set up two more plates for herself, bustling herself back over to eat. She even forced herself to sit at the table as she ate the first one of them, going as far as to use the fork left for her. She still twitched every time Decebal reached in her direction.
Shehk had managed to eat the whole thing at the table before she turned her attention to the second plate she had dished up. If she was going to get good food she was going to eat as much of it as she could while it was still an option.
It was only when he reached out to get the pineapple-shaped-peppershaker from next to her she flew into the corner to eat again. Her food paranoia seemed to amuse the vampire. Shehk remained there for the rest of the meal, frowning at the vampire while shoveling the second plate of food down. Her eating habits were deplorable, that much was obvious.
Decebal was highly amused by it all, chuckling as he finished his meal.
After the meal was over, however, Shehk helped clean up the kitchen. It was then Decebal struck up some small talk with her;
“It wasn’t my intention to make you want hide your food from me.” He said. Shehk growled back at him, her tail twitching. “Well it’s my food. If you hadn’t always been stealing mine I wouldn’t have to protect it.” She snipped back at him, though her tone wasn’t malicious in the slightest. She didn’t even look at him as she spoke, too focused on the task at hand. She was nearly elbow deep in soapy water as she washed dishes, her tail wagging quite contently behind her. Decebal reached over and grabbed it, tugging down on it. Hard. Shehk yelped and turned on him, peeling her hands out of the water immediately. Decebal pinned her between himself and the counter, giving her a serious stare.
“So tell me. Do you still miss him?” the older vampire asked. Shehk frowned. She knew it was a stupid question for the vampire to be asking. Of course she missed him. She held her arms held against her chest as she stared up at him, trying to keep her body as compact and away from him as he could be when she answered him. Her ears twitched with something that seemed to imply that she was bothered that he had even thought it proper to ask her about such a thing. She took a deep breath before she answered.
“I do. I miss him every morning I wake up.” She said, quite slowly. There was no hesitation in the answer, or even a doubt about the truth behind it. “Sometimes I ev-”
She was broken off in the middle of her thoughts as the vampire pressed his lips against hers. It felt like he hadn’t even thought about doing it, or that he had possibly kissed her in that same way a dozen times before. Shehk froze, though he pressed no further than that, not attempting to slip her any tongue or anything of that variety. Decebal also kept his hands to himself.
Shehk pulled away from him, pressing her hands against his chest and pushing the vampire away. He reneged to the rejection easily, but gave her a sincere yet anxious look before he spoke.
“Do you still miss him?” he asked again, as though a part of him hoped he had somehow miraculously cured her of the depression one silly skinwalker could cause to her by doing just that. Shehk frowned for a moment, her expression slowly breaking down as her brain caught up with what was happening. Then she completely broke down, beginning to sob again. Shehk slumped to the floor her back against the cabinets and wrapping her head up in her arms, curled up against her legs.
“Yes.” She sobbed. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.” She repeated it over and over again, sometimes sniffing between it. But the mantra went on and on. There was no doubt about Shehk’s feelings. That much was sure to the vampire. It wasn’t confidence in his own sexual prowess that told him that it would take quite a bit of feeling on her part to actually reject him in the name of some wild boy. It was simply that she hadn’t changed her mind when he’d taken advantage of how emotionally exposed she was in that moment.
Decebal sat down next to her as she sobbed, putting one arm around her shoulders and pulling her over against his side, offering her his shoulder and then resting his head on top of hers, idly stroking her hair with one hand. He seemed to be bothered by the results of his experiment, but he didn’t share it. The vampire swallowed hard and then he spoke to her.
“Well… then I’ll have to see what I can do to turn you into a girl he won’t be able to say no to.” He put his hand underneath her chin and pushed her chin up to look at her. “Even if you have to corner him and give him no other choice.” He added, smiling his first real smile.
Shehk sniffed and wiped her eyes. She offered a smile back at him, if only partially because it felt like maybe she was going to end up doing something this break besides get thrown off of porches and nearly have her organs crushed by giant monsters with teeth-torsos. She took a few minutes to regain herself well enough to allow for conversation.
“You think I’m capable of being like that?” she laughed dryly. “I don’t think I’m made of that much stuff.”
Decebal quirked a brow at the fact Shehk even had to ask about it. “I made you food territorial in three days, made you willing to run into uncertainty in one, and you braved a Cleaner in less than two weeks.” He shrugged and laughed. “I think in another eight weeks I can turn you into quite the creature that only an idiot would pass up.”
One brow lifted.
“Really now?” she replied. “And how badly is this going to hurt?” she asked. Decebal grinned.
“The fact you can joke about that right now is going to change soon…” he trailed off, getting up to leave the kitchen “I guarantee that you won’t be the same ghoul you were when you showed up on my doorstep,” he bid as he exited the room. Shehk watched him and soon got up to follow after him. Her tail even dared wag a bit as she walked.
She was going to see how deep the rabbit hole went, even if the curiosity would be what killed her.
Down The Rabbit Hole: End
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2011 9:28 am
Breakfast. Breakfast was a very special thing since that first attempted meal together. Shehk had retreated into her corner immediately with her plate when she’d dished up, dragging a chair with her as she leered suspiciously at the vampire who sat at the table. She hugged the plate she held to her chest, nearly wearing the damn thing. Not that Shehk was going to comment on such a thing nor did she care in that moment. Decebal seemed just as uninterested in commenting on her strange behavior. They were her noms, and she wasn’t going to be sharing them!! That much she had made clear.
The vampire looked up at her with a casual lift of his brows, pausing in his reading to watch her as she stared back at him, her gaze intense.
“How long before you plan on sitting at the table?” he asked simply, as though it was not a big deal in the least. Shehk sneered back at him, not as easy to forgive as the vampire was to forget; “I’ll sit at the table when I think sitting at the table will garner me the ability to sit and eat without having to battle you for my meals.” She said with a huff. The vampire turned the page of the newspaper he was reading, giving Shehk’s concern a moment of thought, before he passed it by with nothing but a shrug. Shehk puffed and huffed, but there was no way she’d be blowing any houses down that day. Not with her ribs sore and her body unwilling to allow her to actually take deep breaths. That and Decebal’s house was probably as indestructible as he was.
After a minute, he tapped his fingers a few times onto the table, before he waved for her to come over.
“Fine. We have too much to do today for you to sulk in the corner of the kitchen.” He said, beckoning her. Shehk looked at him, looked at her plate of food, and then leaned back and away from him suspiciously, ears flicking. “I don’t trust you.” She said, frowning, shoving a handful of something bloody and delicious, but horrendously messy, into her mouth. Just to be safe and make sure she got something in her. Decebal seemed to be appalled by her manners, shaking his head and getting up to cross the kitchen.
The vampire grabbed the seat the girl sat in and dragged it back over to the table whether she wanted to go or not. It mad an obnoxious noise against the floor as he moved it, Shehk tried to hold onto both the chair and the plate in her hand as the chair moved, the idea of getting up not passing through her mind. Once Shehk was, with some shellshock from being moved, at the table, Decebal sat down again.
With that, he shoved a notebook over to her.
“I want you to make a list of everything you hate about yourself – I don’t mean I want you to hate yourself. I want you to write down the things you really wish you weren’t; Like I wish I wasn’t so dashingly handsome.” He grinned at his joke and Shehk gave him an annoyed look, frowning. The vampire simply continued explaining what it was he had meant by his words. “ That’s what we’ll be working on over the next six weeks.” He said, looking back down to his newspaper as he shoved a bit of breakfast into his own mouth. Shehk looked at the notebook, then up at the vampire. “Can’t you just write down things and we’ll work on them?” she asked. Decebal seemed to at least be big enough of an a*****e to jab at her faults. The vampire shook his head, rubbing salt in the wound that said Shehk was going to have to pick herself apart.
Boo.
“I could easily make you into someone I think is perfect. But the person who has to think you’re perfect, is you.” He said, flipping the paper over to start reading over a crossword puzzle. Shehk’s lips tightened as she pulled the page over to herself, flipping through it with her brows furrowed together. She had to admit he had a point about her having to love herself and all, but it was still a while before she took up a pen and started writing.
There was a pause in her writing when Decebal moved, her eyes darting to him to make sure he wasn’t going to steal from her plate. He didn’t. Once she was sure he wasn’t going to suddenly reach over and take breakfast from her, Shehk resumed writing. She took extra care to write legibly, taking in account how important writing in general was to her sire. However, even when she wasted time writing neatly, there were a lot of things she had to think about.
She knew if she wrote down the first things that came to mind, Decebal would tell her she was dumb and make her do it again. It was easier to save some time and try to figure out her faults analytically rather than have the vampire loom over her head and remind her in how many ways she was a failure in his eyes.
Though she’d later revoke her opinion and realize that Decebal actually didn’t completely and totally hate her.
She looked up at him. Decebal didn’t look back at her. Taking this as a sign, she cautiously wrote down her first thought:
I’m a Coward; I refuse to put myself into danger if I can help it.
She bit her lower lip. She knew that was true. But there was another long pause before she put the pen to paper again and added to that first thought.
I also try to shy away from emotional commitment because it leads to emotional pain and I fear I don’t live up to the expectations other people have of me.
She didn’t even pause before she wrote a new thought underneath the first one about cowardice;
I don’t handle stress well. I panic, or I do something stupid. I don’t like doing stupid things because they get me hurt, which leads back to being a coward.
A deep sigh. That seemed to cover that fault rather well, didn’t it? She wondered if she was objective enough for it to actually be accurate of her to make this list. Part of her wondered if just ‘being a coward’ covered all of her problems. It both did and didn’t. She couldn’t just hand that to Decebal, because it wasn’t suitable, however.
She needed to think harder about it.
Shehk bit her lower lip gently, taking another bite of her breakfast, before she put the pen back to paper. It was time for something new. She couldn’t write down every fault she had that simply returned to the point that she was a coward.
I Get Content. I don’t objectively look at the things I have going for me and take them for granted. It hurt to write, but she had to put it. This was the root of her biggest emotional loss. Her heart throbbed a bit, but she forced herself to bypass that thought.
It was stupid of her to dwell on one thing for so long, but…. She just couldn’t let it go. She didn’t want to let it go. She wanted to exhaust that first option before she even thought about moving on. Perhaps she simply had a point to prove, a bone to pick, something like that. Decebal’s arm moved again and Shehk looked up from her paper, staring at him with wide eyes. He sighed.
“I told you, I’m not going to take it from you, I’m not interested.”
“I don’t know that for sure. You’ve stolen a lot of food from me in the last couple of weeks.” She said in turn, grabbing another bite of food with her bare hand and shoving it into her mouth, crinkling her nose. Decebal sighed and leaned back in his seat. “Well I don’t want it now...” he said. Shehk stared for a long time, before she hissed through her teeth at him before she looked back to the paper, then to her plate. She ignored writing to finish cleaning off the plate, just to get rid of the distraction.
Then it was time to address the paper again.
I don’t know how to have fun. I’m too serious and I take myself too seriously. I need to lighten up. she wrote it, crinkled her nose, then nearly struck it out. Her pen paused over the page and she retracted it. No. This was accurate. This was a correct statement. She had to face this part of her as well. Shehk wiggled the pen around in her hand for a while. The sore spot on her head was itching and she reached up to rub it gingerly, though she wasn’t sure if the spot itself was hurting or if it was just sore from her spending too long trying to think. Hrrnngh.
She’d have to pad that stupid desk when she got home. It had been the real cause of her pain, hadn’t it? Well, figuratively…okay, somewhat literally too.
There was a moment where she considered what she was just thinking, sighed, and again it was time to write. It would be the truest statement she could possibly make on that entire list.
I blame my problems on other people and take my anger out on them. I refuse to take personal responsibility for things and I somehow hope that by displacing fault I can rid myself of guilt…
Her ears drooped. She didn’t like this exercise. It was an exercise in ‘Prod your own wounds and see how much you can make yourself hurt’. She didn’t like this exercise at all. She looked at Decebal and he stared back at her, expectantly. She had known the entire process was going to hurt, she just wished it had hurt physically instead of on the psychological level it was tormenting her on in that moment. Physical pain got better.
Emotional pain even numbed after a while.
Psychologically she was pondering if she was going to be sore from this experience forever. Perhaps she was simply being dramatic. It wasn’t like he was training her to become food protective again. She still had to hope there wouldn’t be another exploding letter to tell her she sucked in the near future, as the first one had sucked enough as was. She looked up at Decebal, seeming ready to ask a question, then looked down at the page.
She finally wrote down the one thing she hadn’t really wanted to.
I don’t put my heart into things. I let them happen to me, but I don’t make them happen myself. I’m passive.
She looked at each of her faults and frowned. Written out on paper, it was no surprise she wasn’t interesting and that Nuk had doubted her. Her ears flattened. Decebal gave her a look when the look came over her face, seeming to know exactly what notion had passed through her head.
“Did you just think about that boy again?” he asked. Shehk’s eyes darted over to him and she nodded. Decebal took the notebook, ripped the first page out of it, seeming content with the prodding Shehk had done to herself, before he handed it back to her.
“Write it down. Write down what about him you thought of. Every time he pops into your mind, do this.” He instructed, careful in his choice of words. Shehk’s ears flattened, but she wrote it down anyways. She was doing a lot of writing that day. More writing than should have been proper. Why did she have to do so much writing? Oh yeah, because that was the kind of person Decebal was. He liked writing. She liked….typing… like with a keyboard of a pad of some sort. This manual writing stuff made her hand hurt.
I thought about how good of a person Nukpana was to put up with me for as long as he did.
Decebal read it over.
“Now write something about this boy you like. Make it as serious as the faults you wrote down are. Don’t just half a** it. And try to sound positive about it. You mope like a kicked b***h. And you already passed the threshold in which you could act like that because you were one.” He added. Shehk frowned, crinkling her nose up at the vampire. She then looked at the page.
What did she write about?
She bit her lower lip again before writing again.
He’s patient, even if he doesn’t intend to be.
It seemed like a good one. Decebal leaned over her shoulder and read it. “Still sounds mope-y. We’re going to have to work on that. You’re very negative, Shehk Strigoi. I can’t send you back to school if all you’re going to do is bring your peers down.” He said.
“You’re better than this, Shehk. Start acting like you’re better than this and you will be.” He said. He flipped the page he’d removed from the notebook earlier in his hand, before taking her empty plate from her and putting it in the sink. “Now go clean up, Shehk. I’m going to contact Marianne and we can start working on your..” he chuckled a bit. “Cowardice, shall we?”
Shehk frowned, eyes widening. Oh Jacking Jack-Jack. Marianne? Crap.
“Maybe I should wait until she clobbers me to clean up then.” She said weakly. Decebal shook his head. “Mope-y.” he repeated before leaving Shehk to stew in this idea what her doom was heading for her at that very moment.
Shehk was scared.
She was very scared.
The Notebook: END
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 1:39 pm
s**t s**t s**t s**t s**t
Shehk was running as fast as her little Pricolici legs could carry her through the trees, the fog feeling as though it was blowing past her as she moved. Despite the fact she couldn’t even see a foot in front of her face, she couldn’t slow down; the fog was thick and there were trees everywhere. However, she knew sooner or later Marianne would catch up with her as she plowed blindly ahead if she slowed down. The fog itself was as pleasant as it always was, sarcasm unimplied, even when it smelled of suffocation, but her problem with it was that it didn’t just hide her as she ran through it.
It hid everything else, and she still wasn’t sure how many creatures actually lived out in the fog with her. She’d only met a handful of them.
The one thing that the pricolici had been worried about happening hit her in the face as she ran; quite literally; There was a loud yelp that pierced the near silence of the forest as Shehk smacked into a tree she’d been unable to see, recoiling away from it and shaking her head as she turned to look back through the thick haze. Where was she now? Which direction did she run in? Was Marianne right behind her? The cleaner was there somewhere, Shehk was fully aware that she was. Her eyes glowed like horrible fog lights in the haze before she just picked a direction and went running again. If the cleaner happened to be in this direction, Shehk would just have to keep running and hope.
Keep running.
Keep running.
After several minutes, Shehk slowed to a slightly less eager pace, looking over her shoulder paranoidly. Was she over there? Dammit, she’d kill for a nice breeze to blow through Hollow Creek sometime and just get all of the fog out. She’d not had much of a chance to panic out there in the fog, but oh she wished for it. The fog dogs may have not liked it if she did such a thing, however. Summoned the wind, that was.
Then again, Shehk’s tail wasn’t a magic paintbrush to make wind and trees and fire and s**t with. It would have been cool though! She wasn’t sure how useful it would have been in a productive sense, however. She couldn’t run and draw at the same time, so that probably wouldn’t have been helpful at all except for some embellishment.
The fog began to lift, and it wasn’t long before Shehk stumbled out into a familiar clearing, nearly keeling over as she ducked down into the grass, her glowing eyes turning to look behind her. She could feel the ground moving beneath her paws and it made her uncomfortable. Even with her ears perked as alertly as they could go, the shuffling of the cleaner’s body was buffered by the fog and everywhere was faded with dark shapes; were they trees or where they Marianne? Shehk let out a whine, before clamping her mouth shut; tightly. If she whined now, the cleaner would hear her for sure and she had nowhere to hide without that fog.
She had to move. The fact Shehk bypassed a lot of possible meals as the fled out of the clearing again was not lost on the Pricolici. Food wasn’t important. She needed to keep moving. Why?
She wasn’t sure, actually…
It had all started when Decebal rolled Shehk out of bed earnestly, practically down the stairs to the kitchen. Sleeping in wasn’t something the vampire allowed now that she was able bodied and he fully expected her to be taking advantage of every waking moment she spent inside of that house. The pricolici grumbled, dragging her chair to the corner of the room, as she was so wont to do, sitting her butt down in it as the vampire brought her a slice of toast. Shehk immediately shoved the piece into her mouth. Toaaasssttt. She was still somewhat exhausted from her less than restful sleep she’d been getting for the last couple of days.
That was probably why it had taken an extra 30 seconds for Shehk to turn…and look…..and see Marianne sitting at the breakfast table as though she fully belonged there and there hadn’t been any conflict of interest in the ‘family’. The pricolici had nearly choked on her toast (thank god for not needing oxygen!), and Hati, who had come downstairs to see what Alpha was up to, had yelped in terror and fled back up the stairs to hide underneath Shehk’s bed with Skoll.
“What the hell!? It’s too early for this!” Shehk protested immediately. Marianne grinned her toothy grin back at her and the pricolici’s tail prickled up, flicking from side to side in an anxious manner. She could just tell the cleaner’s eyes were following it. Oooohhh, she didn’t like that Marianne was zoning in on her tail. It was horribly suspicious. Everything in this place was suspicious.
Like the scrapbooking vampire with his pineapple kitchen and no electronics.
Decebal was always suspicious. At least, Shehk couldn’t wrap her head around him. She wasn’t sure of his motivations, or what his ‘caring’ for her really consisted of. It mostly consisted of him making suspicious faces and being suspicious.
As far as she was concerned, anyways. Though there was a part of her that felt a pang of guilt about him as well.
The Pricolici stared back at the cleaner for a long time, before Marianne finally moved to get up. She had jerked out of her seat and towards Shehk so suddenly that Shehk nearly toppled over the chair as she jumped out of it and broke out into a run out of the kitchen; she was already on all fours by the time she hit the front door and ran out into the fog. Which was how Shehk had gotten where she now was.
Had she actually checked to make sure Marianne was following her? No. But Shehk had felt the monster woman lumbering after her and hadn’t wasted a single instant in getting the hell out of there as though her very unlife had depended on it.
Which actually had begged the question to Shehk about if she had been spending the last long-period of time (it had to have been under an hour, but she didn’t have a watch on her) running from absolutely nothing. The pricolici slowed to a halt, bracing herself before she pushed herself up onto an awkward balance of her hind legs to try and get a view somewhat above the fog. She couldn’t see anything.
It seemed like the fog just went on forever, up and forever.
She sat and crouched low, checking to see if she could see any feet. She couldn’t feel the ground moving underneath the weight of any large bodies, so she gained a small amount of relief from knowing that if Marianne was there, she wasn’t moving quickly. On the other hand, there were vibrations of movement and she could feel those. Slight, bare, cautious. She almost would have questioned if the wind was blowing if it weren’t for the lack of movement of anything. Her ears perked up.
Was she OK?
Shehk relaxed, allowing the idea of relief to settle in and standing up at her proper height before the sound of a tree cracking spooked her causing her to skitter a bit. The pricolici looked up and between two of the curled trees was the massive form of Marianne in her true body. That single eye glared down at her judgingly and when she reached out to grab Shehk, the pricolici shrieked and went off running again.
She’d only made it about three feet before Marianne grabbed onto her tail and dragged her back by force, lifting the pricolici off of the ground by that same tail. Shehk yelped in pain and discomfort, attempting to get any piece of flesh she could sink her teeth into. She barely got a hold of Marianne’s elbow with her teeth, but the Cleaner seemed to not feel a thing.
She just stared down at her with that one huge eye and from up close, Shehk could see the pulsing of blood through large and disgusting veins in it. It was probably not a surprise when the mouth lined set of teeth on the Cleaner’s chest began to move, speaking; it was as though Marianne’s body was actually a giant…segmented head….. yeah, that made a bit more sense in Shehk’s mind, but it was an accurate comparison to things.
“Are you done running?” the cleaner spoke, drool seeping between the rib-like teeth on her torso, a slight slur to her words. It was horrible to hear, grating like metal. Shehk yelped, but tried to not move, as though fearing that if she had it would hurt her tail more. She was already wondering if it was going to dislocate. “PUT ME DOWN!!” she yelled back through her canid teeth. Marianne dropped to the ground, the earth shaking beneath her massive weight before she slammed the pricolici to the ground. Shehk could feel her still sore ribs throb and protest, but they seemed to be intact. She didn’t want another period of ‘bumming it on the couch’.
She hadn’t enjoyed the first one in the least.
That single eye-cluster seemed to be judging her.
“Why did you run from me?” Marianne asked, that head unmoving. There was no body language, nor was there inflection in that horrible steely voice. The pricolici grunted and tried to dig away at the ground to free herself from the cleaner’s grasp as she fumbled for an answer; “b-because..” a growl punctuated the beginning of her answer, “You came at me.” She answered, finally wiggling out from underneath Marianne’s massive hand and turned her head up to growl, but made a point of shying away from ‘getting up’ in the monster’s face.
She didn’t want to be near Marianne or her hideous mouth.
Marianne seemed to consider Shehk’s words with a sort of twisted amusement to her posture.
“Did I?” she asked. “I don’t recall being inclined to harm you or even do anything to you…” she said. A horrid stench oozed from her mouth and Shehk recoiled from it, her nose burning from the scent of it. Auughghghghh! Marianne smelled like deaaatthhhhhhHHhhhhhhh!!! It was horribly distracting, and Marianne took the moment of distraction and recoil to flip Shehk with one hand, before putting her ‘face’ up close to Shehk’s.
She was studying her.
“It seems to me like you do a lot of illogical things because you don’t think before you panic.” She assessed. “You hurt yourself over stupid stress that would pass. You don’t see what is coming towards you through. You pine for people who seem to not or will not return your affections; which, might I add, is very much like your sire of you to do. You ran from me and you had absolutely no reason to.”
Shehk frowned, stepping away from her again.
Marianne seemed unbothered by the fact the wolf was offended by the scent of her body.
“If you react to every smell as you do this one, you won’t be able to keep your attention in one place for long.” She mused. Shehk frowned, her ears flicking as she assessed what was going on. Finally she growled again.
“So what is it you want me to do, then?” she asked, her tail creeping down between her legs. She had an idea of what the answer was going to be and she wasn’t liking where it was going.
Marianne probably would have been grinning if she was in a …more convenient body. She spoke in as close to a ‘whisper’ as her voice would ever be;
“I want you to run and not get caught. Now that you have fled, I wish to chase.”
Shehk didn’t approve of this idea. She’d just spent…god only knew how long it had been she’d been out running. Was she far from the house? She wasn’t sure. But she didn’t want to go out running again. She was tired. But if she didn’t run, she was probably going to get flung around like a b***h… but if she was caught she would be too. It was a catch-22, so Shehk had to settle for what pressing concern she had to deal with first……
“No. I am not in the mood for it.” Shehk answered. There was a FEARhealer at home, she could probably be put back together if she was beaten up for rebelling. “I want to sit and rest and go home.” She said, though her tail didn’t move from that spot it hit in between her legs. Marianne got up in the pricolici’s face, reaching out with an arm to swat at her. Shehk planted herself, bracing for impact, eyes closed. She knew it was going to hurt. But she wasn’t in the mood to expend unneeded amounts of energy. She’d wasted enough. Shehk rolled away with the force of the cleaner’s blow.
They were like a twisted game of cat and mouse. Marianne wouldn’t kill her as long as she still wanted to play. Shehk didn’t want to play, so she simply laid there, waiting to be flung about again. Marianne flipped her again. Shehk just ragdolled; it was easier than trying to do anything else, and all she had to do was make sure she kept herself from getting hurt by more than a bit of ground-contact.
She was flung a couple of more times before the monster finally lost interest in playing.
“This isn’t fun anymore.” She said, picking the pricolici up by the tail and draping her over one shoulder like a mother would a sobbing child. Shehk just sighed against the mass of muscle and flesh.
“It wasn’t fun to begin with.” She replied.
Marianne would have shrugged if she could, but she didn’t. Probably because it wasn’t a gesture her body would have handled nicely and because it would have flung the pricolici off of her again.
“Watching you panic and flounder is fun. Don’t you like it when your meals run from you?” Marianne asked. It was probably the most amicable the pair were going to be with each other; analyzing everything. Shehk seemed to realize what it was Marianne was talking about.
“Yeah. The chase is fun and it makes the meal more satisfying.” Her tail wagged a bit and the cleaner paused in her walking, tugging on the extremity. Shehk flinched, so Marianne did it again. Two for flinching!
“Stop that!” Shehk said, and Marianne just chuckled. It was more of that same idea. Shehk had to force herself to not wag her tail and not be bothered by the fact she was being toted about like some sort of toy-child and/or Marianne’s b***h.
The pair remained mostly silent as they continued to walk. Well, as Marianne continued to walk while Shehk just flumped where she was. She could have gotten up to walk on her own, but she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to go running off again, nor was she actually sure where Marianne was taking her. Home? It was sort of a dull lull about things. Maybe it was because the excitement was over and she was tired again.
The porch was soon in sight, which only confirmed for Shehk that they were indeed heading home, and Marianne picked up the pricolici by the back of her neck, setting her on it and nudging her forward with one arm. The wolf shook her head a few times to work the small kink of ‘blaahhhh’ out of her body and then looked at the cleaner.
“Go back in and have your breakfast now. Decebal was…upset when you bailed on him.” She said. Shehk grimaced as the image of a very angry vampire sitting abandoned at the table danced through her head, knowing fully well that meant he was probably going to tell her off for doing something, but nodded.
Shehk shifted, body creaking and cracking as she moved from four to two legs, headed towards the door.
“Oh.”
The pricolici looked back as Marianne piped up again.
“Once you’ve eaten, come back out. Or I’ll drag you out.” The cleaner said stiffly, “You have a thing or two to learn about this forest, and I’m going to have to teach you a thing or two before I can really beat some sense into you.”
Shehk sighed.
“Fine.” She said, opening the door and stepping inside the house.
First step: Apologize to Decebal.
Second step: Go get the forest tour.
She imagined the first would be more painful.
Run, Doggy, Run: END
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 7:01 pm
A clean envelope that has been handled with care. It is much cleaner than the first one. It reads ‘TO SAMMY’ Dear Sammy, Thank you for the blood! It was fabulous and delicious and Decebal dumped it into breakfast. That's OK, I hid one from him. It is like..my secret stash or something. Ha ha. I feel like one of those underground mafia bootleggers right now. Nom nom nom~! I figured it was about time for me to write you again to let you know I’m still alive out here. It has been pretty bad these last couple of weeks, but Decebal finally let me come into the house! Well, I say he ‘let me’, but in truth he dragged my maimed body inside to fix it up and I haven’t been living outside since. Have you ever had your ribs break and screw something else up in your system? Really glad I didn’t have to sleep on my stomach on that hard porch after that. I...guess you couldn't really get on a train any quicker than you already are, so it isn't like I'm telling you something that is going to turn you into a woman on a mission! Well..any more of a woman on a mission, anyways. I’m surviving, somehow! Really! I can only imagine what Marianne would do if she saw you. Besides possibly try to eat you. I’ll admit I’ve never seen her try to eat another creature bigger-than-a-minipet, but her only option for that out here is me. I’m really glad that b***h hasn’t been trying to eat me. On that note, I’m thinking I still might slit Marianne’s throat while I’m here. She likes to tell me that she thinks that what I’m doing is completely insane and pointless and that I’m wasting my time and talents. Apparently I have talents? I don’t see it. I will say this though, Sammy. I’m going to force you to do FEARleading stuff with me when I come back and get back into doing that. Do you know how many times it has saved my a** to be able to twist myself mid air and know how to land on my feet? So. Many. Times.Seriously, it is more useful than I ever thought it would be. After this summer, that may be the only reason I go back to doing FEARleading at all. I’ve come to realize that I’m not as quite equipped to just be some popular hot chick that dangles off of some jock’s arm as I would have been pretending to be previously. Not to say I don’t… well…y’know. Nuk is technically a jock, isn’t he….. s**t. Well he wasn’t one before! Where did that come from? Not that it matters right now, I guess. I guess I’m going to ask about it: Do you know if he misses me at all? I mean, have you seen any signs of it? I’d really hate to come back to school just to realize I just didn’t have a chance anymore. For all I know I just can’t believe it ended so badly that I’m fooling myself into believing that all of what I’m doing now will make him magically want me to be his again when I come back to school. I mean, I’d like that result, don’t get me wrong, but if it isn’t possible I don’t know if I want to keep believing that it is blindly or if I would like to know. That entire thought just made me feel really sick to write. I think we should just settle for answering the ‘does he miss me’ question. I’ll admit that I’ve decided that if I don’t get back together with Nukpana, I won’t be pursuing another relationship for as long as I possibly can without seeming weird about it. It may seem extreme, but I don’t want to end up in another rebound situation like Prom felt like. s**t, my first school function I actually went to and how do I spend it? Moping and probably bringing down the mood for poor Christof. I hope he still had a good time with it, even if I wasn’t the best date to have for it. At least I can say I tried to go and have a good time. Anyways, I’m still alive out here and I’m being fed a proper meal on a daily basis, thank jack. Sire needs food about as much as I need it, but it gives us time to sit and chat and learn to protect my meals from being stolen by Marianne. I’ve come to love roaming out in the fog since I realized that it was safer than I thought it had been those first few days. Nothing has tried to eat me since that first incident (Well, outside of an incident involving Marianne and Hati and teeth… I will clarify this for you in person so you don’t come out here as a girl with a mission), and everything else I have met in the fog has been relatively nice to me. I have even made a few friends mingled in amongst all of the creatures! I have discovered FogDogs are really nice if you give them leftovers, and that a Strigoi, like my last name, is actually the name of a subspecies of vampire. Who’d have known? The strigoi I met and I got a good laugh about my last name when I found out. Good thing she wasn’t like, offended by it or something. Things have started looking up with my progress in the last two weeks. I hope soon I’ll be able to master the ability to not land on my torso when I’m thrown out the bedroom window, ha ha. Again, please don’t freak out and come out here and a girl on a mission. It might end up disastrously for one of us and I have a feeling that one of us would be you. Sorry. I know you’re capable, but things out here don’t exactly work the same way as they do in Amityville. Then again, living in the fog for a few days might do you some of the wonders it has done for me! Maybe it would be worth the trip? Or I’ll try to bottle some up and bring it home with me. We’ll see, we’ll see! I hope to be home in one piece in another five weeks! Sincerely, Shehk This letter has remained unsent. It is not even in an envelope, but it has been edited repeatedly. Dear Nukpana, I opened a fortune cookie the other day, though I didn’t get to eat it because someone else who is staying out here with Sire and I stole it, and what it said on that little slip of paper sort of made me think about what has happened between the two of us, as well as what I’m doing now. It said, “When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.” Which as a literal phrase was sort of a ‘no s**t, Sherlock’ thing, but my sire told me to think thought about it a bit harder than that and realized that in as bad as everything turned out, I have found some good things in it. I will start explaining by saying that I’m still not happy you broke up with me. I still don’t entirely understand why it had to happen at all. If it had to happen again, I’d want to change things and not have to go through all of the heartache and suffering and spiteful stuff I did because of it. try to fix things before we ever got to that point ever again. I feel like I would have enjoyed prom a lot more if I had been able to spend it with you instead of feeling like I was just sort of there as an accessory for someone else to be happy with. I’m not happy with how I handled anything during that period. I think most of the time at school between the break up and leaving after prom was spent crying. I’ve spent a lot of time out here crying too , though I’ve had to be subtler about it. If I’m caught sobbing by certain people they like to hit me and they hit really hard. No sympathy about it whatsoever. , because I still really miss you. There are a lot of things I miss about you. I miss how you’d let me crawl into your bed at night if I got too cold by myself, listening to you breath when you sleep, and that cheeky grin of yours whenever you did something, even if it bugged me that you did it. I miss your smile in general, I hadn’t seen it for a long time before things fell apart. It almost feels like the you I really loved had been gone for a while before it happened. I’m still not sure what happened before then. I even miss how you smelled a little funny sometimes, even if I’d tell you to go take a bath because of it. Did you know I can’t take a bath because it could cause problems to my body?I’ve done a lot of things while I’ve been here hoping that there is a part of myself that I’ll discover that will somehow magically make me amazing enough to win you back. So far, it hasn’t happened. Sire says it’s because there isn’t one single thing about a person that makes them amazing. I think hHis words were “If you know what you have, you don’t have much.” I think this is very true. I didn’t realize what I had, and I’m not sure I know what I could have now, because there is just too much of it to fully know all of it. I wonder if I even tried to know all of it. Or even any of it. I took advantage of just having someone who loved me so unconditionally that I didn’t think anything more of it. That is where the mistake was, because now we both have had to suffer for my own idiocy. I keep hoping that I’m not being assumptive in sending you all of this, or even that you’ll humor me enough to read this. I’ll say I forgive you if you don’t though, even if you won’t read this part unless you don’t throw it away, which in that case… I still love you, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t a better girlfriend for you. Well, I guess that still applies whether you read this or not, it isn’t conditional.Summer has felt extra long out here in Romania. Part of that is because I haven’t slept in weeks. Literally have not slept. I never told you that I don’t require sleep because I liked having an excuse to lay in bed with you I think I miss it a little bit, but sacrifices just have to be made in the name of self improvement. I am working hard. I’m working hard and hoping that when I come back to school that you’ll want me back. I’m hoping even now that is still possible and that you haven’t just moved on. Not that I’ll blame you if you have, but I’d like it if you said it’s possible to me. Y’know? s**t. This letter kind of sucks, doesn’t it? Okay, not sending this. Because it is a really bad letter. Even if I rewrote it it’d probably be bad. Boo! A neatly packed box with several yards of fabric, thread, a handful of patterns and . . . . candy? It is labeled ‘TO JUNKO AND TOMOKO’ Dear Junko I hope it isn’t presumptive of me to assume you’ll take on this request and just send you everything I have managed to get a hold of ahead of time, however I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to send this to you later or even when you would be able to get it if I wrote, waited for you to reply, and then replied again. Romania is quite the hectic place I have found. However, I’ve also discovered that because of a certain somebody around here (If you’re interested in details, I can tell you when I get back from the middle of jacking nowhere) I’m going to uh… need some wardrobe help. I realize we weren’t that close before I left, but you’ve been working really hard to be supportive of me during this entire mess, so I figure I’ll share my battle plan with you: I am going to win Nuk backSin probably will facepalm at me if she heard that, but I have to try. So for that, I need to cut up some of my previous boundaries. My clothing is one of them. I’m not saying I’m going to be a slut when I come back, ohhh that is not what I intend at all! But I do want to be able to strut a bit and maybe catch his attention… since I don’t know how easy that will be on my own. I included a few magazines I stole from the Sire’s bathroom (I know, I know) and circled things that kind of were going in the direction I liked. I’m thinking something that mixes old Victorian with roaring 20’s mafia with a bit of modern flair thrown into it. Does that make sense? I’m mostly looking for a few skirts, since I can get my hands on other things I’m looking at without having to hunt too hard. But I have a somewhat specific look in mind for these skirts, y’now? Not saying they have to be exact, but the idea of them struck me and I went ‘Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!’. I hope the patterns I’ve given you will be good enough for you to mishmash ‘em into something that works out! Decebal made me hold still while he took my measurements too. He marked them down on a measurer that should be in there in marker. I can survive the humiliation again if it isn’t in there! (Or it will show up in a few days once I’ve realized I’ve forgotten it!) On a less bossy and demanding note (Sorry, sorry! This is important to me, but don’t feel pressured if you’re not up to it!), how has your summer been? I hope you like the candy I included in the box and it hasn’t mutated beyond recognition in transit! Decebal and I had a field day in the kitchen the other day (Decebal is my sire, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before) and we were making candy and I thought ‘WHY NOT’ and tossed a handful into the box for you! I thought it turned out well. I can’t eat much of it myself, but it’s pretty nice for stretched taffy! Woo woo! There was another batch of it that I personally thought was better, but it was blood-filled. I literally mean filled. Eating here with Decebal is awesome! The meals are like, 80% blood! Oh, and he can cook. Which is a bit better than eating rabbits I’ve caught. Though rabbits are delicious, don’t get me wrong. Nom nom nom nom! I dunno, I just think after a long day out here I’m totally not up for running out to catch food. Especially with the earlier mentioned company. I hope things are going well at Tomoko’s house! From what I’ve heard her family is pretty nice, so as long as you’re not getting thrown out of windows as a wake up call, anything is better than here! Ha ha! I think it may be better you didn’t come home with me. sad Might not have been suitable to any sanity to be had. Not to say you guys aren’t sane and couldn’t handle it. I just think that this is me needing to get a level-up in awesome and fix a lot of flaws I have. Not easy with company. Anyways! I think this letter rambled on a bit too much as ‘Me me me’, but I want to hear about your break with Tomoko when I get back to Amityville! The candy I included is for both of you, and I’ll bring more back to school with me when this whole shebang is over so if you do like it I will have more! Always willing to share it too. Or if you want to try the blood-flavor I can bring that too. Just let me know! Five more weeks, five more weeks! Have a wonderful break! Sincerely, Shehk
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Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 3:53 pm
“So what are we going to do today?” Shehk inquired innocently at the breakfast table as she stretched her arms high above her head to try and ward off the previous night of sleep. Breakfast, while not something Shehk had dabbled much in previously, was quickly becoming a consistent part of the day; if not for the nourishment it gave of whatever slight requirement, but because it warranted a discussion about things that were going to be happening over the course of the day. Mostly it had been things such as ‘You’re going to run naked through the forest and cackle like an idiot while doing it’…. Which had happened, actually. Shehk would have never allowed anybody back home to know about that, however, but it had happened.
But without being incriminating, the tasks she was put up to were mostly stupid things to lower how much she limited herself and up her idea of taking risks. It was….interesting, to say the least. So the answer that Shehk had been expecting to get was that she and Marianne would be going out to run through the trees while… s**t, she didn’t know. Drenched in chicken blood or something. It was something of that variety, really. That was how the daily run was going thus far. The answer she got was…less expected:
“I’d like it if we could spend the morning filling out some adoption papers, Shehk.” Decebal answered. Shehk nearly choked on her bloody milk, sputtering like an idiot to keep herself from choking before her eyes turned on the vampire, looking slightly confused, baffled, and overall surprised. He seemed a bit more miffed at the mess she’d made, rather than the reaction to his suggestion that had caused said mess to begin with. “Adoption papers?” she asked, eyes widening. “Why do we need to fill out adoption papers??” she asked. Why did he need to adopt anybody? Especially her?
The vampire sighed, his humoring of the pricolici’s behavior particularly short that day; “I have been physically responsible for you, psychologically responsible for you, and taken care of all of your fiscal needs, Shehk. I’m as close to a father as you’re going to have in your undead life…” he said. Shehk frowned, leaning on the table, brows furrowing together. “That doesn’t tell me why you want to fill out adoption papers, Decebal.” His nose crinkled a bit at her and the corners of his lips turned downwards into a frown. A very terse and unhappy frown. Shehk frowned back at him.
It was possible that Decebal was offended by Shehk’s inquiry. The pricolici’s ears drooped and she shifted in her seat at the feeling of disappointment that seemed to come from the vampire. What was she supposed to do to fix it all? She could hardly fix the relationship with the first boy she’d pissed off, and now she was angering another one?? There was a long and unsettling silence that fell on the room and Shehk shrunk underneath it, before Decebal got up, put his dishes in the sink, and left. Shehk entertained herself by fussing with one of the pineapple shakers that were out on the table, idling with it. He hadn’t even said anything. Somehow, the fact he had remained silent had just made everything all the worse.
Had it been what she had said that had set him off instead? Shehk’s lips tightened a bit as she looked over her shoulder in the direction the vampire had retreated in. Maybe he’d cool off in a bit and they could try having that conversation again. Yeah. She’d wait until he was ready to talk again. That would work out, right? That was ultimately the decision Shehk came to, leaving her to sit at the table alone as she finished eating (she refused to waste food), before she had excused herself from the table.
Not that there was anybody to excuse herself from the table to, but it was a matter of manners, she guessed.
Shehk had gone upstairs afterwards to write a couple of letters, or at least a first draft of some letters for Decebal to crit her on later, but after about an hour of that it had lost it’s interest and the amount of progress she could make on them dwindled with her being unwilling to go down into the lounge to talk to him again. She put one of them into a drawer, giving it a long sad look. She wasn’t going to even let him look at that one. Once she was sure she just wouldn’t be writing letters anymore that day, she headed back down the stairs. She paused at the bottom of them, looking towards the lounge of the vampire (she was pretty sure that was where he’d gone off to) and calling out towards it;
“I’m going out for a bit!”
There was no answer. Shehk wasn’t surprised, but she only waited for a few seconds, hopefully, before she headed outside. There was a pause for her to shift between her bodies when she was on the porch before she bounded off into the trees yet again, a faint trail following along behind her as she ran. Day by day, the fog got ever so slightly easier to move through, even if she was still blind to where she was going. She would possibly always be blind to what was in front of her, but Marianne had been forcing her to memorize the trees, where they were, how the ground felt when she was near them.
Though if she’d been in enough of a panic she knew she’d forget all of it.
Running into trees enough times early on in her forest-y runnings had warranted a small amount of frustration from Marianne who had felt it was a trait that needed to be redeemed. All the while, her head and legs still ached from the cleaner taking up most of her morning awakenings. Shehk was so sure there was an impression of her head left in that house, she really was. Not that she was feeling abused by any of it. After those first four weeks, things had started feeling more like a routine of tough love than beating the snot out of her because they had nothing better to do, and she knew she needed that tough and necessary roughness from both of her resident ‘adults’.
Though sometimes she still wondered if they were having fun.
Shehk had found herself heading towards the same familiar clearing as she always did when she had a break as of late. The long grass and lack of fog was still as suspicious as it had ever been before, but she strode out into it confidently, her head held high, feeling the grass tickle her belly before she flumped over into it. She rolled over onto her back and wiggled on it, paws flailing up in the air in a happy manner. For a long time she laid there, just breathing and smelling the grass; it was strange how much she missed those scents while she’d been indoors and in the fog that devoured the scent of everything. She’d even relaxed just a little bit.
And that was when the animals fled past her.
Normally the fleeing animals would have brought nothing to Shehk’s attention, give or take that she was hungry and the possibility of catching one for the sake of noms; she was their predator, after all, they were supposed to run when she was around. But when they would rather run towards her, rather than something else…that was when things got suspicious. The pricolici rolled over in the grass, ducking down as much as she could while peering around through the dark stalks of grass to see if she could see anything else. Around the edges of the clearing, there was… something. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was… but it was something. It was a dark shape that moved through the fog like a lumbering mass of despair.
Something about the way it carried itself said it really didn’t give a flying ******** about who was around or even what it was; it was just walking along as though it owned the place; no worries about the fog, or the trees… Shehk wasn’t sure she wanted to see what that dark shape looked like when it was outside of the fog. She was sure she’d cry if she did.
Shehk’s first instinct was to run like the other animals had and get the hell out of there as quickly as she could. However, Marianne’s own chase had caused Shehk to stop before she did. To think. What if it hadn’t seen her yet? That idea planted her near immediately and she forced herself to stay down in the grass. Don’t move. She had to keep her tail from wagging and leaving after image, in case it caused that thing to notice her. What was it? s**t.
s**t.
s**t.
s**t.
Shehk’s ears remained alert, waiting to hear what happened next. However, it seemed like, after a while, nothing was going to happen. The pricolici slowly lifted her snout above the grass to look around. She couldn’t see that dark shape anymore. She turned to look behind her as well. No, it hadn’t magically appeared in the grass to terrorize her. That was good. Knowing that, with a slow and cautious creep, Shehk crawled back towards the fog. Once she was sure she was hidden, to some extent, within it she broke out into a dead run. She didn’t want to know what that thing had been. She didn’t, she didn’t, she didn’t. Something in her just knew that she needed to get the hell away from it.
She had nearly crashed into Decebal as she ran back into the house through the door, every hair on her body standing on end. The vampire made a confused face at the pricolici’s panic, and Shehk just clung to him, shivering and saying nothing. Shehk knew what terror was, there was no doubt that she did, but the unsettled feeling she had in her gut was something she just couldn’t handle. She didn’t work under pressure.
Decebal seemed unsure as how to handle what was suddenly going on, a mug of tea in one hand, the other hand on the girl’s shoulder. It wasn’t the frightened female part, but the inexplicably frightened female part that got to him. Shehk just said nothing and gave him no information to work with in how to solve the problem. The vampire just sighed and ran a hand over the back of her head. More silence. Decebal said nothing to try to alleviate the mood, nor try to pry into why Shehk was panicking. She was panicking, he was just going to stare at her until he spoke.
He didn’t pry.
He also didn’t try to do anything more to make things better. They would stand there for a very long time before Shehk finally let go of the Vampire’s shirt, sniffling pathetically. “Decebal… there’s something out there…” she said weakly. The vampire’s expression changed slightly, but he didn’t seem bothered enough by the statement to be worried. “Shehk. There are lots of things out there that you haven’t seen.” Shehk’s tail was beginning to curl between her legs as she answered him again, “But this one seemed…… I don’t know…”
The discussion stopped there. Shehk didn’t want to talk about it any further, and Decebal wasn’t interested in pushing the topic any further than he probably could have thrown his entire house. The vampire just put his hand to the small of her back and herded her along to take a seat with him while he worked.
It would be the first time Shehk was allowed to go back into the lounge since she’d been caught snooping through the vampire’s stuff. She settled onto the familiar couch and sighed, leaning against it while the vampire settled at his desk, the mug of tea set aside with a single sip, watching her from his seat. Shehk stared into the fireplace instead of looking back at the vampire. Fire was horrible, she wasn’t sure why he had it in his house, but she sighed and watched it. It was a pleasant distraction, she guessed. She crossed her arms across the back of the seat and laid her head on top of it, sighing deeply.
“I didn’t even get a look at what it was.” Shehk said finally after a long time. “It just…didn’t feel right.” She admitted. “I couldn’t even let myself move until I was sure it was gone, Decebal.”
The vampire frowned, looking up from his resumed work now that it seemed Shehk was in the mood for sharing what was on her mind with him. “But you didn’t run from it, Shehk. That’s progress, compared to when we started.” He said. Shehk looked back at him at last, ears drooping a bit. “That’s true.” She agreed with a sigh. “I hope when I find out what it actually is though it doesn’t…try to bite my face off or something.” She laughed, finally sprawling out on the couch, relaxing. She was much more pleasant once the panic had worn off of her and she’d recovered her mirth. She enjoyed being able to be happy about something after moping for so long.
“So Decebal…?” she asked suddenly. The vampire put his pen down and leaned back in his seat, looking back at her now that it seemed like a prolonged conversation was going to happen. “What is it?” Shehk sighed. “Why do you feel like you have to formally adopt me in order to prove you care?” she inquired, head still laid on her arms, tail thumping twice against the couch, before it stopped, the pricolici making a face.
The vampire froze momentarily, then scratched his temple. Shehk tilted her head to one side. “The reason why I’m asking, if because I don’t like where we left our discussion earlier off, so I want us to have this talk now.” She explained for further conversational ammo. The vampire slowly rose from his desk and walked across the room to sit on the couch with his ward. It was obvious to Shehk he was wording his answer to that inquiry as he walked and it was only when he sat down did he actually had an answer for her.
“I don’t feel like I ‘have’ to adopt you to do anything, Shehk. I feel like it’s something I should have done 14 years ago when I first brought you into this house and put you underneath my care.”
Shehk frowned. “So you’re saying you feel obligated to do it?”
Decebal reached out and ruffled the pricolici’s hair, his hand looming in the patch of hair that was growing in nicely. Maybe she’d be able to smooth it over and hide it properly before going back to school. She’d clean up nicely, now if he could put enough pressure on her to be sure he was getting a diamond out of her before he did said cleaning…
“I’m saying that it’s something I want, Shehk. And it’s something you deserved long before now. Would it be so bad? To be Shehk Iordanescu? You wouldn’t even have to marry me for it and then you could stop being named after a race of creatures.”
Shehk laughed.
“I’m not going to lie, Decebal. That’s a very... permanent change you’re asking me to make. I don’t know if I’m ready to…make such an immediate decision.” She sighed, leaning into the vampire’s hand, closing her eyes.
Decebal seemed bothered to hear her answer. Was it because she was exercising a practice in not throwing herself into things as she always did? Or because he really wanted to know her answer?
Shehk sighed again.
“How about you give me a bit? I’ll…” she scratched the other side of her head. “I don’t know. I just need to think about it. I’ll admit that it’s a very tempting possibility though…” Shehk mulled the name over in her head. Iordanescu. Iordanescu. It wasn’t a bad name. It went well with her first name too. It wasn’t like she needed to wear his name like one would an accessory though, would she? Well, that would have been stupid. She really just needed to think about what sort of life changing experience it would be to suddenly have like..family. She’d never really been able to relate to other people on that front before.
“So, can I give you my answer in the morning?” she asked. Decebal removed his hand from the side of her head and scratched the side of his own in a hilarious mirror of the pricolici’s own gesture. He thought for a small time. “Very well. I can’t rush you into giving me an answer.”
Shehk smiled back at him.
“Great!” she beamed, popping right up off of the couch. “Now! I think the two of us should go do something, Decebal.” She beamed. Decebal’s brow lifted slightly. “What about what’s outside the house?” he asked. Shehk froze up a bit and crossed her arms before she shook her head. “Well, we can always run back inside if we need to!” she beamed, grabbing the vampire’s arm to tug on it.
Decebal got up at the younger girl’s insistence and ruffled her hair again.
“How about we go sweet up the front yard then?” he suggested. Shehk made a face. “Well..that doesn’t sound very..fun…. But I guess it’s better than nothing!” she grinned, flashing her fangs at him. Decebal reached out and pressed his fingers to one of her lower teeth, investigatively. When he pulled his finger away again he was bleeding. Hmm, that was new.
“These are getting pretty big, little lady.” He said with a tease. Shehk bumped her hip against his side with a joking scowl. “Hey now. Don’t make me use them on you!” she teased.
Decebal faked fear from the girl before starting off across the house in a casual run.
“Only if you can catch me!” he called back. Shehk grinned and went running after him.
Stand Still, Move Forward: END
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Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 5:02 pm
A voice mail Shehk left on Nukpana's phone At first it doesn’t sound like Shehk has realized that what she’s saying is actually being recorded. “ Well he’s not picking up. s**t, should I hang up? Should I leave a me- Was that the beep? s**t! UhhhhHHhHHhmmmmmmmMMMMM!!!???….. ……… Hi.It’s.. uhh….me…. ? PLEASE DON’T IMMEDIATELY DELETE THIS. I just….. I …want to maybe try to talk to you a bit this summer. Well, I wanted to try it, anyways. It doesn’t seem like you have your phone on you….… …..” A heavy sigh. “ well… either that or you just didn’t answer because you knew it was me. Which I hope isn’t the case…” Another sigh. “ I wish you’d give me an idea of how to make things right again. Make things right between us, I mean. I…God, this whole voice mail is going in the notebook, isn’t it? Yeah, I’m going to have to write this down…hmmmgnnghhnnnghh….So uhh…. I guess I wanted you to be the first person I told my big news to.…. For the record: No, I’m not getting married. However, my last name will be changing to Iordanescu – That’s Decebal’s last name. As of this morning we filled out the paper work for the adoption, so I’ll be…I guess ‘officially’ part of a family of two people.” There is a small, but awkward laugh, that punctuates that statement, and then another long pause of silence. The sound of shuffling and Shehk scratching the side of her head can be heard, but she doesn’t say anything. After a while it sounds as though she’s actually sobbing. “ Jack dammit, I miss you so much.…. ……. Anyways…I..guess I don’t know what reaction I’m really hoping you’ll have to hearing that. But between this and the letters… … …. Well, I guess I hope somewhere you’ll realize you still have the same feelings I do, Nukpana.” Another long sigh follows. “ I’m sorry….
I still love you…….Bye….” The tone in Shehk’s voice was pained and confused as though she was doubting that she should have even been talking. But it’s too late. It’s been sent.
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Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 5:50 pm
((NOTE: THIS SOLO HAS REALLY STUPID DRAWINGS. SHUT UP. I"M AMAZING. Ha ha. <3 )) If sleeping had been something Shehk had done out of leisure and comfort before, it was no longer the case. Sleeping had now become something that she did to simply reboot her mind. Shut it down for a few hours after a long and stressful day. It wasn’t something meant to do for a long time, nor was it meant to be peaceful. Especially once Decebal had started letting Marianne in the house. Shehk had discovered that nowhere was safe for her to sleep peacefully the first time she’d been attempting to do just that. She’d been dozing in the early hours of the morning just to suddenly be flung out of her bed, out the window, and into the front yard, rudely awoken from what Shehk would have considered to be a very nice dream. Shehk still wasn’t sure how she’d made that landing without re-breaking a rib, or a leg for that matter, but there had been no wait for the pricolici to recover, even from the slight limp that had come to follow from the surprise.
As it was, it turned out that outside of the week she’d been given to patch up her ribs under Decebal’s watch, her well being wasn’t allowed to limit how much work she was put to in being active and doing something every day. Shehk had learned that frankly Marianne didn’t care about the status of something, or somebody’s, health if she could throw it around.. or throw it into her mouth and walk off as the hulking beast she was at core. The Pricolici had never quite been able to let her eyes meet the Cleaner’s face after the incident with Hati, even though Marianne's face was covered and eye contact wasn't possible. It was the type of paranoia that only came from witnessing such an event. Hati had stopped even trying to be in the room with the Pricolici in the morning unless she was cowering underneath the bed with Skoll.
That morning, however, when she was pulled out of her bed from a deep-as-a-puddle sleep, Shehk rolled easily out of Marianne’s long reach, having done it several times by then, her body shifting quickly in mid air, exploding into near-white fur, before it hit the ground, paws first. Her joints complained about the landing as the shock of the ground shot up through them from the ground up, but overall it was less painful than any of the ones that had come to pass before that morning. Many images of having slammed into the ground and gone rolling off, or even botched up landing on her paws just to end up spraining something only to be told to walk it off flashed through the Pricolici’s head. She’d been going through this same treatment for the last four weeks once she’d been allowed inside of the house. Today, all it was were sore knees and ankles. She could walk that off with a gritted grin.
Shehk shook her fur out, her body re-shifting again back to bipedal form as she walked. She ruffled her hair a bit as she climbed up the steps onto the porch barefooted, stirring up the dust that had somehow managed to cling to it as she walked. Some of it remained there, some of it clung to her feet as she climbed up onto the railing, then attempted to scale it up onto the roof. She failed three times, sliding off, scraping her forearms and elbows on the shingles to mar her flesh, before hitting the ground below. Finally, she managed to clamber up with minimal bleeding. The skin on her knees scraped as she crawled across the shingles on her hands and knees back to the window of the bedroom she had been flung out of. She ducked in through the window then sat on the window frame, giving Marianne a long and tired looking stare as she scratched the side of her head, brows lifting ever so slightly. After a long moment of the pair staring at each other, Shehk yawned before she finally got up to cross the room.
“Good morning, Marianne.” Shehk greeted, stretching out lamely and offering one slightly flailed arm as a wave to the older monster as she sat right back down onto the bed. “We should try that again.” She suggested as she sprawled herself across the half-covered bed, crossing her arms across the pillow and propping her chin on top of the entire pile.
The Cleaner gave Shehk a long stare before grinning. She complied willingly, again picking up the Pricolici to fling her out of the window in a single gesture. She’d learned to aim well, given Shehk had yet to have hit the frame again after the first four incidents, instead sailing out of it. She went sailing through the air, tucked her limbs up against her body, a gesture which was familiar in and of itself from FEARleading, as she whirled about, exploding back into fur before she hit the ground. It felt slightly more natural that time to land and the idea of how many other effective ways she could use her FEARleading skills in a practical way started to play through her head. Her knees and ankles again whined at her for the force of the landing, however.
But none the less, she would remember to work on the FEARleading things. She’d have to suggest it to Marianne. Again she shifted back and walked back over to the porch and climbed up into her bedroom, it still taking some effort for Shehk to climb, as her dog nature didn't exactly make her a climber.
“Yeah, I guess that one was OK.” She shrugged a bit, before adding "We should go through my FEARleading routines and see if there is anything I can use for more than just entertainment," she suggested while twisting a bit to get a kink out of her back. Her spine sort of complained, seeming to debate if it wanted to do what she was asking for it before it cracked back into place. Marianne’s arm reached out to scoop up Shehk once again. However, Shehk hopped onto and over the Cleaner’s shoulders and ran out her bedroom door and down the stairs.
“AHHHH!” she screamed fakely, and quite amusedly so, as she fled. Mornings were sort of a fun-and-game thing at that point.
Shehk ran past the kitchen, where her sire had been cooking breakfast, the yell earning his attention. The vampire looked up to see the fleeing Pricolici and grinned slightly as he moved from where he was. Decebal caught Shehk before she could run out the door, possessing better tempered speed than the pricolici did, scooping her up from around the waist and lifting her high up into the air above his head, using his fingers to tickle at the smaller Halloweener’s sides. He grinned the entire time.
Shehk, on the other hand squirmed the entire time in an attempt to wiggle away from him. “Ahh! No no no! Put me down, put me down! Stop! Stop! Uncle!!” She laughed and flailed.
"It's DAD, not Uncle to you!" Decebal grinned, leaning his weight back and forth to hold onto the pricolici, but Shehk succeeded in rolling over off of the hands that held her up and landing on the floor on all fours, scrambling away from him, as well as up onto her feet, in the opposite direction from which she had just come from. She passed Marianne as well as the stairs while making her second getaway.
She couldn’t help but laugh while running down the hall the entire time. Her destination for escape was close at hand as she grabbed the familiar red door that led to the first door she ever passed through while inside the house. She ducked into it closing the door of the vampire’s lounge behind her. She took a quick glance around the inside of the room; quickly grabbing up what options she had at her availability while she was in there. Her mind raced about as she looked for a hiding place. She had less than 30 seconds to get out of sight. HMMM.
It was nearly 10 seconds when the vampire followed behind her into the lounge. However, once he had caught up to her, Decebal found that the sight to meet him behind the door was quite different than Shehk had been greeted by. The furniture had been moved about, all pushed up against one wall (how Shehk had moved so quickly, one would only have to guess), but the pricolici herself had vanished. Watching him from her own vantage point of hiding, Shehk observed as the vampire paused, walking over to the window to see if she had fled out of it. From what he could tell, she hadn’t. He made a face before turning to look back at the room, crossing his arms and looking at the mess she’d made of the lounge. He set about fixing the arrangement, seemingly wondering if Shehk had hidden herself in the pile to save her time from being caught. As things were put back into place, this seemed to be less and less likely. He sniffed the air, pondering if his less sensitive nose could pick up traces off her. It couldn’t. A slightly wry grin came over his face. He was fun to watch from where Shehk had seen him.
Was she winning? Ohhh, the child was becoming the master! And it was all quite fun.
“Alright, kid. Where did you run off into hiding now?” he asked and Shehk's tail wagged just a bit in hiding, not ready to move. There was no shuffling to give him the gratification of her scooting out of hiding anywhere and she didn’t giggle to give herself away either. In fact, all he could hear was the sound of his own moving of the furniture about. Hmmm. He paused, walking over to the door and checking out of it again, seemingly wondering if she’d snuck out past him. Marianne was on the other side of it, sniffing about on the hunt herself. He tapped his foot against the floor thoughtfully as he took a moment to wonder where the pricolici had run off to. There was a loud shriek outside of the house, however, to soon answer his question, as Shehk took a tumble off of the ceiling and hit the ground right off of the cover of the porch.
The girl quickly turned into a white wolf and then went running out into the fog, leaving a trail of ashes behind her.
Decebal looked to the fireplace, then out the window again, his eyebrows lifted possibly as high as they could be without making him look too surprised by things.
“She actually went through chimney to escape me, hmm?” he mused, grinning. This was going along a lot more successfully than he would have liked…..
Three weeks earlier he’d set about fixing Shehk and her grand aversion to fire. While Decebal had been fully aware that the undead were typically fire-fearing (he himself had few problems with it unless he himself was set aflame), he hadn’t been actually aware just how extreme the case had been until he’d set to cook outside one night.
He and Shehk, after talking about her adoption a bit, had brushed up the front yard a bit and cleaned out a fire pit that was buried underneath the dried needles and leaves that practically infested his front ‘yard’. For Shehk, it had been nice to see the house getting a bit of clean up, however sometimes it seemed like the entire forest was his yard and the train stop of Shady Hollow was just the neighbors. Then again, Shehk also had the impression that Marianne was also a neighbor. A very crazy neighbor who liked eating dogs. From what could be told, Marianne didn’t actually have a house. She just lived in the trees and borrowed Decebal’s house on occasion.
It hadn’t really made all that much sense to the pricolici.
“Shehk. Come eat with me.” The vampire had requested once he’d gotten things going, looking to the girl behind him.
The pricolici had stood on the porch of the house, watching the vampire as he set about his yard (Shehk had never seen him outside before they'd gone out to do yardwork, besides when he'd exited to retrieve Shehk and Hati previously), brushing all of the dry pieces out of the front yard and into a nice hefty pile. Without a visible thought about it, Decebal had set it to flame. It was then he had discovered that the aversion to fire ingrained in some people was far deeper than it was in other people. Shehk’s reaction had been to shriek and promptly run to the other side of the house. She practically took herself out rushing around the side of the house, tripping and slamming into the porch, before stopping to look around the side of the house to stare intently at the bonfire that had been started up, as well as the vampire standing by it.
Her ears drooped and she shivered, but Decebal continued to call for her to come over. She hadn’t. So the first day, he’d eaten by himself. Shehk had gone hungry, staring at the fire anxiously and watching him. It was as though she was waiting for him to randomly burst into flames because he was within a foot of the fire. Which was her expectation, and she let out a keening whine whenever he had reached out to grab something by the fire, whimpering pathetically.
Anything could be set on fire, not just the undead, but that idea hadn't passed through her head yet.
He had tried the same thing again the next day, making a point of making the food over the fire so he had to reach up within inches of it to pull it out. Shehk had sat on the front porch and still staring into the flames, frowning and seeming to ponder if it was worth it. She wasn’t going to starve to death if she didn’t do it, but it looked so good, but what if he set himself on fire and what if, what if, what if, what if, what if!!!! She was panicking and keening at him none the less.
It was teasing her. She could tell that much. Shehk still hadn’t been able to bring herself to be able to drag herself off of the porch to try and approach the fire. She had instead resorted to catching a rabbit that first week. The vampire gave the pricolici’s meal to her companions instead. Skoll and Hati had been most appreciative of the meal, though unsure of what to make of the alpha’s uncertainty. But it seemed if she didn't earn her meals, Decebal wasn't going to pity her and just let her have things easy.
Shehk could vaguely recall Decebal telling her the story of a woman who tamed a lion by slowly approaching it day after day to try and get the ingredients for a magic potion to make the stepson like her. Kenyan or something like it. It was sort of what was going on right then, with the pricolici staring at him on the porch day after day. It felt like Shehk was reverse taming the fire and it was an entertaining thing to watch.
It had taken Shehk nearly two weeks for her to actually be wiling to brave the fire from the safety of the porch. Even then she’d sat several feet away from it and had forced Decebal to actually hand her the food rather than get it herself. He couldn’t not reward her for doing so well, in her opinion. The vampire felt like he was training a dog. Though Shehk would have insisted she wasn’t a domesticated pet by any means and probably stormed off in a huff if he had suggested it.
In Decebal's stated opinion, she was somewhere between being a wild animal and a domesticated dog; in her blood she was wild, she thrived outside and had no problems acclimating as quickly as she had that first night. But in her mannerisms she acted like a house pet, wanting belly rubs, table scraps, and other attentions. The vampire seemed like he wasn’t sure how much of that would have been amendable without turning her into something that simply couldn’t function as it was meant to. If Shehk needed to truly be a wild animal once she finished her way through school, a few weeks alone in the woods would instill her wilds more strongly than they were already settling into her system already.
However, it had only been a few days previous to that day in the lounge that Shehk had actually been willing to use her jack-given brain to tell herself; ‘As long as I don’t fling myself into it, the fire won’t be a problem’.
Thinking back on it now, Shehk was developing quickly from that if she’d thrown herself THROUGH a fire to shimmy up the chimney in a mad escape so soon.
This boy of hers had better have been worth it, or Shehk had a feeling Decebal would descend upon the school and possibly gut the skinwalker into putting himself through similar pain as Shehk was putting herself through. Not that Shehk felt she was suffering. It had taken a bit, and maybe she moped a lot of it, but she was having a good time!
It was in another 30 minutes of running through the fog before Shehk returned to the house, barking and bouncing about in the fog, laughing as she shifted and walked back onto the porch and in the front door. She could have come in through the bedroom window, but she really wasn’t in a mood to scale the house right then, plus it wasn't worth the effort.
Decebal and Marianne were sitting at the table eating breakfast when the Pricolici walked in, covered in filth. She trailed it through the house before she camped herself at the table with the duo, dishing up a plate of food for herself beforehand. “It’s harder to climb out the chimney than I would have expected.” Shehk commented, sharing the strange observation with her ‘social network’ was they were at that moment. Shehk had learned rather quickly that Decebal didn’t care about the Internet and thus didn’t have it. Which was fine. Shehk didn’t have her computer anyways. She then moved over to the table, sitting down with her plate of food and then rubbing her palms together.
Decebal made a face, crinkling his nose up at the filthy canine girl now sitting at his table after she had tracked ash all over the place, “I would imagine…please wash your hands before you eat, Shehk. If you're representing my name, I want you presentable.” He added that last thought as less of a suggestion and more of a demand. Shehk frowned at him, but got up anyways. She walked over to the sink and set about washing her hands, her tail twitching from side to side in a casual manner. The cleaner reached out to grab and tug on it. Her fingers would barely miss as Shehk’s tail would twitch to avoid the grasping hands, frowning. Once, Marianne got too close to it and Shehk glared over one shoulder at her, growling in warning. She had gotten to the point where she had to assert herself clearly. Being passive in this house simply got her walked over and picked on by people who were stranger than her. Not that her assertions made her any stronger.
She was getting better at keeping herself from being abused all over by Marianne, however.
Three days earlier the cleaner had been finding a lot of appreciation in pulling on Shehk’s ears and tails, just for the satisfying yelp that would follow. Shehk hadn’t been enjoying it as much, having been trying to make breakfast when the teasing had started. Every time she looked back at the monster at the table, however, she’d play innocent and pretend to be fussing with one of those pineapples on the table. When Shehk would look away to resume her work, the woman would again reach out to pull on her tail. Shehk barked and scooted a bit away from the hand attempting to offend her rump.
It hadn’t taken long for Shehk to figure out how to listen for the hand’s approach and move her tail appropriately. Unfortunately in turn, her tail wagged less predictably and with much less enthusiasm. She wondered if anybody would miss the gleefully wagging tail she had before the wagging got it picked on. Maybe it would come back for the rare occasional visit.
As she was washing her hands in the moment, however, the Cleaner did get a hold of the Pricolici’s tail, yanking on it hard. Shehk forced herself to lean back into it to prevent herself more pain than she would have liked. In exchange, she ended up throwing soapy water all over herself as well as Marianne. Okay. Perhaps avoiding grabby hands wasn’t something Shehk had quite mastered yet. But she was improving. A little bit. She had to take another 5 minutes to clean up the soapy water as well as rinse off her hands. When she finally got to sit down at the table again she was covered in streaks where water dripped down her body, washing away spots of ash.
She looked hilarious, and Marianne pointed it out. Bluntly so.
Breakfast in and of itself had turned into a battle of Shehk keeping the older halloweeners off of her plate and in their own food. Mostly this had consisted of stealing back food if they nabbed it, but there had been one or twice that she had stabbed someone in the hand for getting too close to her plate. She would even growl and bare her teeth. That alone had taken more than a week for her to develop into a habit rather than her previous bad reaction to food harassment.
For several days she’d flown into the corner with her meals immediately after dishing it up, rather than sit with the pair at the table and chat. Even with her growling she’d learned that Marianne would still come over to the corner and steal her food right out from under her nose. A few meals of Shehk chasing the cleaner around to get it back, as well as making a mess, was what she had to show for that. So she’d given up on hiding it and just worked better at defending it while sitting at the table like a normal person.
On cue, Marianne reached over to jab at the eggs on Shehk’s plate and the Pricolici scooted the plate away from her, crinkling her nose and growling, putting her arms around the plate. If she had to, she’d dive into it face-first. Marianne grabbed at the plate again and Shehk quickly stabbed the piece of food that the Cleaner had been going for, shoving it in her mouth and chewing on it. Shehk stabbed the offending hand when it reached again.
Marianne retracted it and rubbed the stabbed spot of flesh, frowning. “You’re getting a bit better at aiming…” she grinned a bit. Shehk grinned back, flashing her fangs back at the monstrous woman. “I’m learning.” She replied cheekily, before shoving a few more bites of food in her mouth. Hati and Skoll bustled about underneath the table licking up any scraps they possibly could from the floor. Somehow it seemed less disgusting to watch them have at it on the floor after a few weeks in an entirely dusty house than when they’d been on a much-cleaner train.
Then again, Shehk’s poor sensitive nose was already numbing from all of the horrible scents of rotting that seemed to come from everywhere in Hollow Creek, it becoming harder and harder to be squicked about things. She still smelled it all, but she had forced herself to mentally block all of the horrid scents out, if only to keep from reacting to them. They were most unpleasant in that way, but she’d learned one major thing from it; the bad smells were highly distracting and it was keeping her from her from being effective. Also, they left her open to getting attacked by fog creatures. Even to that point she hadn’t run into her first offender again, though the image of Marianne's arm not too long before....
After breakfast and helping clean up, Shehk had followed up by taking a shower to clean off the last of the ash. She had then dragged herself down to the lounge she’d gone hiding into earlier, throwing herself onto the couch while Marianne and Decebal discussed their next course of action they would be taking, given how much time they still had to work in.
“So she goes home in another four weeks.” Decebal thought over this time limit with some stress. It sounded as though he didn’t think that was enough time for him to groom Shehk into a proper and terrifying young woman who would make head turns. Shehk really only wanted to make one head turn. She wasn’t in princess (vomit vomit) training, after all, nor was she in Spartan-bride training.
“How much more are we going to be able to get through with her in that time?” Marianne replied, also seeming bothered by having less than the whole summer to work with. Shehk had been aiming to be home a few weeks before the break was over, but if she waited for one more train she’d miss the first week or so of classes. She wasn’t sure if that would be worth it or not.
“I’m not sure how much we can get done, or even if we can get anything productive done in that time.” The vampire crossed his arms, seeming to be thinking quite hard about it.
Shehk, who would have noted she felt rather spoiled, if she’d been asked about it, leaned over the arm of the sofa, yawning and propping her hand in her palm. “Four weeks? That’s what, 28 days, give me 24 hours a day…” she paused in the middle of her attempt to contribute to the conversation, counting on her fingers to try and do the math. She crinkled her nose after a moment and pulled out her skellyphone, plugging the numbers into the calculator function.
“2….4….times…2..8…” she spoke as she typed it in. “That’s 672 hours.” Shehk looked to the two adults. “I don’t have to sleep, so that’s plenty of time, right? I mean, Decebal doesn’t sleep at night either. So it’s not like we can’t spend some time at night working on things.” She offered as a solution to the time crunch that seemed to be going on.
Decebal frowned.
“We can only work your body so hard as it is though, if we break it we have to spend more time letting you recover and then we don’t get as much done.” He assessed her suggestion as frankly as he could. It wasn’t a bad one, it just wasn’t as practical as Shehk seemed to want it to be. Shehk frowned. “Well, I could work on active stuff during the day, spend the night doing less active stuff?” she suggested as a further compromise on the diea. Decebal half-smiled. “Like writing a proper letter?” he teased. Shehk flushed and frowned at him. “Oh shut up about that. My letter writing isn’t that bad.”
He quirked a brow at her, seeming amused by her rebellion. Shehk sighed and rolled over. “Fine fine. I’ll write some letters tonight and you can help me butcher them into submission with your fine writing eye.” The Pricolici sighed. Following that reneging, however, the pricolici rolled off of the couch and up to her feet, stretching out as she walked towards Marianne.
Marianne was still an acquired taste as a person, but if she had to spend time with a personal trainer away from school, Shehk would have picked the cleaner first and immediately. The school resources were better, but she was going to take what she had and Marianne was blunt and would not accept less than her all.
The cleaner put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Well then. Does that mean I own you all day, at least until the sun goes down?” she grinned horribly and Shehk’s stomach sunk as she was pulled over against the monster’s side. She felt the woman’s hand press against her side and she squirmed out of habit; Shehk hadn’t trusted Marianne with her ribs since she’d nearly killed her. Her mere presence had this way of making her skin crawl without any effort.
“i-I guess so.” Shehk replied, knowing she’d just signed a death warrant.
The monster threw the undead girl over one of her shoulders like a caveman would a snagged wife from some other group of people, holding onto Shehk’s legs and taking a moment to pull on the tail that was in her face. She nearly shoved it in her mouth to chew on it and see how the pricolici reacted. Marianne decided to save it until later.
“Well then, I’m going to go and beat your girl up for a bit, Decebal. I’ll be back before nightfall. Promise.” She grinned. Shehk grumbled a bit. “I’ll bring back all of her pieces too.” Marianne added as an afterthought as she started walking towards the door.
“We might need to write my will when we get back too.” She sighed, her final thought to Decebal as she was carried off.
Progress; Plain and Simple: End
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Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 4:26 pm
A letter from Sammy written by Miliardo Kason Dear Shehk, I knew you would love it! I asked around the school for some, had to haggle a few vampires to get some really good stuff for you, but it’s worth it to know you’re doing okay with it. Well you did like to wear grey a lot, add some pinstripes proper and you would look spot on for the job. Little blood smuggling mafia puppy. Bad? You mean the first letter didn’t describe all the crap the first time proper? You’re killing me here Shehk. Seriously, each line is like a cliff hanger in a book where I thankfully know you aren’t eaten alive because you managed to write and send this so you MUST be okay for a little while. As for being dragged inside with broken ribs, yeah I’m sure I’ve had it happen. Remember my exams? Yeah, I had a sword poking me through a few ribs and other things. Trust me I know how it feels. Then again I do have the pleasures of Crickets lovely healing facilities rather than a hard porch. :C (Also you might be right about the train… stupid train times.) Why is she saying your wasting your time? Is she talking about the school? Or about Nuk? Context here is vauge, but I’d say your learning just as much as any of us are. Except Maladore, he’s always studying something it seems. Though I’m not feeling this FEARleading thing, I have fitness club can’t I just stick to that and normal gym trips? I guess I really can’t say no though. I owe you for my little splash of color to my hair. I can’t thank you enough so on the condition that we’re even I will go to FEARleading with you! Just don’t tell too many people, alright? Also are you sure you don’t just have some cat in you? I hear they land on all fours, maybe I can find a mini or something to test that on… never mind that though. Go back to Chearleading if you want, you looked happy doing it and that skirt was cute on you. You hear me? Cute. If I’m going to sit through a few sporting events or play on any teams I at least want someone to wink at during the games! And Nuk is, Nuk, always. Jock or not he’s the same fleabag he always was when I first met him outside the gym. As for how he is, I don’t know really, I don’t talk to him much right now. The whole, ‘you ex-ghoulfriend is my best friend’ makes facing him a bit awkward. When I see him around I just try not to talk about it. I know you want to know but, I just don’t want to be the one nosing about and delivering you horrible news, or listening to him whine about something. Does he miss you? I honestly don’t know. Maybe? I think part of him might, but I never wanted to ask him. Depending on his answer I might have tried to kick his a** on the spot. If you can’t have him back you can get whoever whenever you want. You’re awesome Shehk and I’ll always tell you that. You’re my best friend and I’m behind you whatever you do. I think Chris had a decent enough time, after all he did get a kiss out of it. As for rebounds, yeah it probably is to avoid that. Hey at least you showed up and tried to have some fun? I promise next dance we can go together, no dates, just friends. We can make it a little party of us too. You, me, Junko maybe if she isn’t seeing anyone, any other ghouls you wana invite? Jack I sound unusually girly in these letters lately. Good to hear that Jacking p***k finally started feeding you, I was going to gather some more blood to send if things didn’t turn up in the next letter after I sent the first batch. That’s my puppy, becoming one with the trees, the fog, and all that lives in it. It almost sounds ilke you might actually be enjoying your break in the long run. New friends in the woods has to beat sitting on a porch being miserable now. Kinda funny about your name, does that mean your part Strigoi? Have to be with how much blood you drink. Look you keep telling me not to be a girl on a mission but you do little to convince me otherwise! Window tossing? Porch bed? Eating you or something? I’m going to be on a train up there and if any of them are around I’m going to give them at least an ear full before we leave for treating you badly! Don’t die (again) on me! Sammy A letter in the mail from Junko. (written by Eight) Dear Shehk, Hi! Hihi! Don't be silly it's great to finally hear from you! Really! A certain somebody? Who would wreck your clothes?! Or anyone's clothes?! That's just...so...MEAN! I can't even imagine someone so cruel! But if you need wardrobe help I'm more than happy to be of assistance in any way possible! I made five dresses for Riley; surely there can't be anything harder than making five dresses. Don't worry, Shehk! It wasn't presumptuous of you at all to assume I would accept your request. I am more than happy to make anything you want anytime! Do you not have a skellyphone anymore though? Did something happen to it? You could have called~! But it's okay, it's not a big deal or anything. These fabrics are quite lovely! Of course I support you! You two were are made for each other! You're so sweet to watch together, really you are! I can't stand seeing you apart like this, something about it just isn't right. It's like it shouldn't happen or something, you know? It just seems..wrong! BUT YAY WINNING HIM BACK! This is a very, very good idea! Considering you managed it once it shouldn't be too hard to do again, right? I have faith in you! I'll do whatever it takes to help! Subtle hints, flat out saying things, tricking you two into a locked room together...anything! Why will Sin facepalm? That's silly. And..okay! I can do that! I was looking at these magazines and this style is very interesting! I've never made anything like this before, but skirts? I can totally do skirts. I promise they won't look like ruffled tutus like the ones I prefer to wear do. I think with a bit of studying through these magazines I'll be able to whip up some things you'll like! Would it be alright if I perhaps made more than skirts? You gave me enough for skirts, but say if I went out and found materials and patterns I think you'll like I could make other things too! Of course I'll send you swatches to get your approval and stuff first...though it'd be a lot easier to do in person. It's okay though! We can do this. And thank you very much for the measurements! Having the marked up tape itself is actually a huge help since I don't have my usual dress forms with me here at Tomoko's house. I'm no stranger to not having them though! No worries! Don't apologize, silly duppit! I understand this is important, and I will take it very seriously and work as hard as I possibly can to help you! Would you like me to send you everything finished or should we wait until we're back at Amityville and sneak you into my room without anyone seeing? If we do that we can do final touches and fittings much easier in person than through mail. Whichever you're more comfortable with! My summer has been great! I will admit I'm actually very, very glad I'm not at my own home with my mother and father or it would be a very depressing break. I'm in a house just full of kitsunes! I'm not sure Tomoko's father is happy I'm here though; she said he'd been grumpy ever since she returned. He's kind of scary. But she has so many siblings and her mother is so beautiful! I'm having so much fun here! We did find the candy! It's delicious! Thank you very much! Consider it part of your payment for what I am going to make for you. Haha! I'm alright with...not taking the blood-filled ones, however. You may keep those for yourself. Decebal is an odd name; it sounds decimal. ...Thrown...out of windows? Well, no..I haven't been...is everything okay over there, Shehk? I mean, I'm fine with coming to visit! I don't think anything can be worse than living 16 years with a selfish, neglectful father, an empty shell of what used to be an amazing woman for a mother with a verbally and physically abusive second mouth and my own verbally and physically abusive second mouth. I understand needing to sort things out on your own though. I just worry! I'll be sure to tell you lots of stories when we return to Amityville, yes! Yes, five more weeks! Take care, Shehk! You're more than welcome to send as many letters as you like! Wishing you all the best, Junko Another small package. This one is filled mostly with candy this time. It says ‘TO JUNKO AND TOMOKO’ Dear Junko, Thank you, thank you! I’m cool with whatever you want to do! Feel free to do more than skirts if that is what would make you happy. Like I said ( I think I said it, anyways), I trust your judgment. I’m not color-picky either. I think I’d probably look good in anything when it comes to that. I would like to see some of what you’re looking at fabric wise, but nothing has to be done before school starts up again. If you think final touches would be better done in person, than I’ll agree and we can set up a date to meet up. I’ll actually be back at school about a week before the break is actually over to settle back in, so if you get back around then too we can do something before then. I think I need to pay you in more than candy, however. Because you are just far too nice to me! Or maybe I should just make a lot of candy before I come back to school and dump it all on you. That’s a possibility! So much candy you wouldn’t know what to do with it all! Then again, that might be counter-productive, wouldn’t it? I appreciate your support on the boy-front, by the way. Although, I don’t know how being locked in a room with Nukpana would go over. It could be good, or it might even be disastrous depending on the timing. Then again, nothing will seem like a disaster after these last few weeks. I haven’t broken anything else since I last wrote you though! Bravi, Bravi, Bravissime! As for who has been ruining my clothing, there is a woman who somewhat borrows Decebal’s house (It does kinda look like the word decimal, doesn’t it? I promise it is pronounced differently). I think she has made it her goal in life to troll me horribly. She also has made a point of throwing me out of the window of my bedroom as a morning ritual. From this experience, I have learned that FEARleading has helped me gain a sort of spatial recognition that helps me land on my feet even when partially asleep. This might reflect a bit in what happens during club activities when I come back. I promise we won’t suddenly be Spartan FEARleaders, but it’ll be a bit more of us leading the fear, than letting the fear lead us. Does that make sense on paper? It makes sense in my head. I’m glad to hear that things are nice over at Tomoko’s place. Sounds like a lot of fluff to be had, ha ha. I’m not sure what to make of her dad though (or yours, for that matter, but I’m not going to think too hard into that). Maybe adult men in general are just weird and require some training that is specialized to whatever woman they marry/get trapped with? And that is why the grumpiest of men seem to have the nicest wives and whatnot. How many tails have you counted in that house? 3 +… how many? Even if it was just one per other family member that’s a lot of tails! But I imagine there are more than that! Goodness! Do you sleep bundled up in a pile of tails at night? That would be quite the sight to see! Ha ha. I hope you two have been having fun though! I think I’ve said that already too, but I still hope it! Maybe next summer we can have a wandering break between Tomoko’s house and sire’s place and then…well, wherever we go after that! Wouldn’t that be a fun thing to plan out? I think it would be amazing! Especially if we got a big group to go around and do it with, it would be like a slumber party that wouldn’t end! What do you think about that? We’d definitely have to see who all was interested in something like that, but it could be pretty fun! Though it would have to be either a group of all girls, or a split group so the boys could have their own room too. Hmmm. Because I think a lot of parents would protest if we had a big mixed group and didn’t split them up. May require some planning, but I’d so be up for it (anything to not spend another summer with Marianne. Yick!) Anyways, on the note of Marianne she’s starting to tap her foot in the doorway and looks like she may attempt to rip me away from my writing soon. Or just pick up the entire desk and chair I’m sitting at and walk away with it to plant us in the middle of the woods. That would make writing difficult (but fortunately I’ve been developing fog-vision. Woo woo!) I’ll try to call if I think I can get away for long enough to manage one without hounding in the background. Sincerely, Shehk
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