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 Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 11:20 pm
Thrush was in the midst of a period of ugliness so bad that she had to go back to her previous life to find a rival. Pack life had been bad sometimes, yes. And certainly Adonai had inspired in her enough bile and revulsion that the days after sparring with him could be called ugly. But turning on Partridge had knocked something good and vital out from under her, and in the days after their parting she found herself tumbling down into an abyss of sadness, a long, poignant darkness punctuated by peaks of anger at everyone she had known.
So, really: ugly. Wandering again and this time without any appetite for her future, the little wolf spent her days hunting small game, feeling very much like a rabbit herself, and picked her way vaguely south.
Firdaws had long since given up on finding either the traitor or the god-alpha. It wasn't that he doubted they would be here, but he just didn't find it likely that he would run into them. If they wanted to be found, they would have been found already: That was his theory, anyway. Besides, there were more important things to attend to in this place, namely, the proximity of a pack full of delicious females just at the tip of his nose.
He smelled Rorret's scent here. He recognized the young upstart's smell by a certain peculiarity it held, a scent that reminded him of Rotiart when they had both been young together. It wasn't an odor easily forgotten. He knew the grey wolf had been involved in spying on some packs down here, but he had long suspected that Rorret's interest in the area was more than academic. The omega's smell was everywhere here, and his paths were well-worn.
In truth, Firdaws could probably punish the upstart. Kill him, even, or at least give him over to those who would do the job. But Firdaws understood the desire to fraternize with females, although it was not something he particularly shared. He hungered for them, yes, and with more than his belly...but his hunger was sated by the cries of death and the sweet-alkaline taste of blood.
He wouldn't tell, if Rorret didn't.
So he lingered in the area longer than he should have, building up the courage to approach the warrior pack, debating back and forth whether he should give in to his baser desires or resume the quest he had been sent upon.
Curiously, Thrush had never been very good with wolf-smells. She was used to living amid a riot of different scents, and apparently nobody had ever impressed upon her the use that this information had outside the context of the well-populated areas she had lived in. So she had stepped right over the lingering pawprints of Rorret, and over Azalea's as well, without giving thought to what the wolves those paws belonged to might be like.
She was near the YMCA, after all. This was a peaceful place.
So, she walked. Eager to escape and dreading what she was walking into. Her punishing mind obscured the sounds of raucous squirrels above her, causing her to focus instead on her own irrationality, and where it was taking her. What could she possibly hope for that might be better than YMCA?
Firdaws's nose was one of several attributes that made him particularly well-suited to his job as hunting master. He'd always had a keener sense than his peers, not just of smell but of presence. He could identify a wolf in the shadows even when all senses had masked it, and could somehow always sense life. Perhaps it was simply his deepseated desire to destroy life that made him so keen to recognize it.
What he noticed just now was a female scent. Not the used trail of a female or a ghost of a passer-by, but a bright, fresh odor of an approaching wolf. She smelled confused and vulnerable, two odors that made his blood pump faster through his lank form. A grin swept up his maw; perhaps he would not need to venture north to the Antianeira pack, after all. He might be able to satiate his hunger right here.
Shifting his path to collide with the femme he scented, Firdaws tried to quell the excitement that had suddenly enveloped his thudding heart. Why had she run Partridge off, anyway? It had seemed very clear at the time, but in the days since, her motives had been clouded over by layers of brooding thought. The hurt and disappointment were gone completely, and seemed like no more than conjecture, and in their place sat remorse and loneliness, looking nearly identical, and in no way likely vanish into ephemeral unsolvability. If she'd made herself be more objective about it, she would realize that she didn't miss him; what she was mourning was the loss of one person, regardless of identity, who had liked her, and cared in some way about her well-being. As a presence, he had been quite small, but his absence was as gaping as a mortal wound. And though she was missing the point, she felt that wound, the hollow resonance of complete aloneness. She made a small sound as she recited to herself once again this sad fact, an audible concession to her folly.
And there it was -- the sound of heartache. Oh, how he loved that sound. The blood rushed to his extremities and his paws moved him forward, slipping silently through the trees. He was a shark on land. He was an owl on death's silent wings.
She came into his view long before he would be visible to her. Behind her and down-wind, Firdaws paused in the shadows and allowed his gaze to linger upon her, drinking her in. She was small...petite, and delicate, his favorite quality in females. And the sadness seemed to radiate off her. He could smell other wolf scent lingering on her pelt, but she was clearly alone just now...alone, and vulnerable.
Licking his lips, he crept forward and contemplated his strategy.
Generally speaking, at least, one cannot probe a sore spot infinitely without pausing to let the pain die down a little. And anyway, this couldn't be the end of her. It was awful, sure, but winter was coming, and starving to death was no romp in the meadow, even set alongside heartache. She blinked, and as she walked the heaviness of worry vanished from her expression, leaving it as blank and glassy as a doll's. She would press herself into the earth with that attitude, an ending that simply didn't make sense given the story leading up to it. And if that pack was no longer an option, , that was all there was to it, it was time to find another one. Something to get her though the winter. She slowed as she began to work out her plan, those quiet, careful paws deftly avoiding the growing detritus of fall, and raised her nose to smell at the air.
It smelled...empty. A little like what had been her home, and a little unfamiliar, like a favorite sweater that had been worn around by a stranger, if wolves had sweaters. Not particularly encouraging. And also, hadn't Partridge been kidnapped by cannibals somewhere in the south? Her ears flattened, and she suppressed a minor tide of heebie-jeebies rising in her. Surely things would start feeling off by the time she wandered into territory that dangerous.
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Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2011 9:32 pm
He could take her, he thought, before she knew what had come. Sneak upon her like a doe in the wood, reach around and crush her throat before she had a chance to scream. It would be so easy.
But it would not be satisfying.
If Firdaws had a flaw -- and he was the first to admit that he had many -- it was a need to meet...to communicate...to soak up the presence of his prey. Especially when it was such a treat as this. Swallowing back the saliva that had welled up in his throat, he stalked forward, materializing from the shadows directly before Thrush, appearing as though from mist. "Are you lost, little girl?" He asked, in his deep rumbling drawl.
She screamed, and it may have been a miracle that her heart did not physically eject from her throat. Jerking violently backwards, she vibrated before him with the fear and rage exactly equivalent of a cornered cat, her hair on end, teeth glaring. A cannibal! How had this happened?! Her terror held her fixed there for a long, long moment, until it began to seem as if she was not under immediate attack. As she came upon this realization, his words settled in under her fur, cold and damp and unshakably disturbing. Her fear and distrust kept her quiet; by way of response she simply pinned her eyes to his.
His ears swept forward, drinking in the sound of her cry. She yelped in a way that suggested she knew what was coming. Had she heard of the Shadowclan? Was his appearance foretold? Perhaps she was simply on-guard, as any young thing of her beauty must be...He licked his lips again, hardly containing the thread of drool that slid from the tip of his tongue, and stalked stiff-legged toward her. He was close enough that she might feel his hot breath, and feel the unequivocal maleness of him. "Did I frighten you?" He asked, in a way that suggested he dearly hoped so.
Dread was welling swiftly up inside of her; the wet sound of his mouth, his looming posture, and most of all, his stare, sharp and wide and as palpable as a touch, were setting off a lightning-fast chain of physical and psychological reactions within her. Language had fled; she knew from the first words he'd said that language was a trap. And she was sensing that everything here was a trap, that she had already been snared, and what could she do? Not run, not from a wolf who had materialized as easily and silently as a visitation. Still silent, her thoughts ticked across the tight canvas of her face; little flickers of flight, doubt, rebellion and dread around the eyes and lips. She watched his face in mute anticipation.
Her silence gave him pause. He had expected a reaction. Another scream, perhaps; that would keep his blood pumping. Meat was so much more delectable when it put up a fight. Otherwise, without conversation, he may as well be eating some simple deer.
"Missing a few stars in your head?" He asked, brows raised. "Lights all gone out?" He circled, slowly, confidently, looking her over with the sharp eyes of a conoisseur. The tattered cloak shifted with his movements, falling over one eye as he ducked his head to sniff at her underbelly.
It only took a moment for the shudder of disgust at his appraising sniff to kick into a headlong, unguided sprint. Her speed was extraordinary, though perhaps not if you considered the intensity of her terror and the depth of her revulsion. For a few glorious seconds, her flight truly felt like an escape, until she realized even in the glare of adrenaline that she had no idea where she was, and even worse, no idea where anyone else could be.
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Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 9:28 pm
She was older than he usually liked -- that was obvious, now that he was close enough. The realization gave him pause. He stood, for a moment, dumbfounded by her inauthenticity as she fled. Then his prey drive rose inside like a ravenous creature, and he took off after her, cloak fluttering around his shoulders. The shifting of muscles beneath her skin, the tightness of her build...He ran his lips over his maw and ducked his head, pursuing her the way a wolf will chase a deer.
With her terror acting as a sixth sense, she could feel him in the distance behind her, intuit his pace as it aligned with hers. The language of her inner monologue had been pared down to a shrill s**t, s**t, s**t!, an interior scream that seemed both to motivate her and to cloud her thoughts perilously. Struggling to right herself, she forced her mind into what silence she could, and attended instead to being deft and swift, to angling strangely through the clotted autumn forest in the twin half-hopes of confounding him and somehow making it back to YMCA. I am small, she told herself, feeling the acid at the back of her throat, I can slip away from him.
No thoughts graced his mind. It was not the perverse hunger that pushed him forward now, nor any emotional reaction to her flight. He simply pursued her because he was a hunting master, and he was good at what he did. Hunting wolves -- small, petite, delicious female wolves -- was simply in his nature.
He closed the distance between them in small intervals. He had a loping, easy stride more suited to long-distance running than to sprinting, and he could not deny the appeal of stretching the pursuit out as long as possible. She would fall, in the end. They always did.
As she continued to run, and listen to the wolf keep pace behind her, a painful, cold sensation began to intensify in her gut - as if she had swallowed an impossibly large piece of ice. Her tongue lolled, flecks of spittle accumulating around her face, and again that pounding drumbeat of doom and terror began to well up inside her. Can't keep running, she thought, over and over, her rounded eyes straining for some miraculous hole to dive into...and straining, and straining, until the feature they picked up on pushed her to a new peak of anxiety and excitement. A ******** crevice! In this beautiful ******** forest, full of beautiful cliffs and shelves of rock! Physically shaking with adrenaline, she rounded on that promising little overhang, the scent of cold, wet, interior rock sending a certain undeniable ecstasy through her as she shoved her way into the cranny, pushing and clawing with a panic that left no room for hindsight or caution. She had disappeared into the rocks, as cramped and contorted and invisible as a mouse.
Firdaws was neither small nor flexible, and he skidded to a halt moments before slamming face-first into the rocky gap. The hulking wolf crouched, shoving his maw into the thin opening; dirt swirled around his nostrils as he snorted, and he pawed at the air with the one foreleg he could shove through the opening.
"Clever girl," he snarled, and in the close quarters his voice reverberated like words whispered into her heart.
A memory came to him, then, sudden and unbidden. Himself, a tiny, pup, cowering in a den not much larger than this...gazing up into the unflinching golden eyes of the purple wolf...a wolf with blood staining his violet maw, and a cold smirk gleaming in his eyes....
Thrush found herself siezed, as her hunter clawed fruitlessly at the gap, by a fit of manic, triumphant laughter, a sound as abrasize and sudden in its start and its end as the call if some raucous bird. She was still blinded by darkness, and pressed into an impossible shape by the unforgiving contours of the rock, but her victory proved to be as overwhelming as her mad flight. So, crouched in the darkness of a den worthy of an animal half her size, she laughed and laughed, and then fell silent.
So strange, he thought, as his paw scrabbled fruitlessly through the gap. He hadn't thought about his kidnapping in so long...forever, perhaps. Could he even remember what his mother smelled like? How many siblings he had? And why did any of that matter now?
"You can't wait in there forever, little bird," he said, in his low growl, as he withdrew his muzzle. He pulled back a few steps from the opening, rolling back to his haunch. "Do you plan to curl up and die all alone, to deprive me of my fun?"
The endearment, which in other situations had burned into her like a hot poker, seemed curiously appropriate here. Its connotations made it a fearsome blight on her normal life, but now, gone to ground before a psychopath, it seemed only natural to hear that charming title whispering down around her, the wolfish pronunciation implying both a remarkable gentleness and the feathery crunch of bones. Her pointed muzzle twitched into a reflexive, snarly grin, and she began to shift, osmosing into a less unreasonable position within the bowels of the rock. "Yes," she whispered up to the ghoul outside; she would die down here and be able to count it as a victory.
He smiled. "You are brave. And foolish. Or are they the same thing, I wonder?" He considered this, and shrugged it off. "Well, no matter. I can wait for you forever."
He watched the opening of the cave with sharp, cold eyes. It was more than just a game, now: he needed to make sure she was killed. She had seen his face...had seen the mark. She could not survive to tell the tale. Perhaps tearing her little pink tongue from her maw would be enough...
His words settled into her coat with the pressing chill of the rock around her; how strange, she thought, that a wolf could find herself in this kind of situation twice in one lifetime. Out of sight, the hooded wolf's identity had become duplicitous; she could feel him out there, his mottled coat and wide, muscled body, but it seemed that standing in his place was also an older ghoul, a warping memory composed of red slashes of fur, too-large teeth and a different thrilling rumble of a voice. Pressing her face against the cold loam and rock beneath her, she breathed a sigh and accepted for a second, less victorious time that she would die miserably, in cramping pain and weakness.
"You could come out and play," he offered, and his tail actually thumped at the prospect. Granted, an invitation to come out to certain death was hardly attractive, but Firdaws had never been a wolf full of common sense.
....He'd eaten his sister. The memory flashed into his thoughts, sudden and unbidden. Loki had found them both there, hidden. His mother was a lone wolf (a dead wolf), and she had hidden them away while she hunted. She never came back...and when Loki found the pups....he had forced Firdaws to attack his sister....to eat her while life still poured from her.....
His ear flicked, annoyed as though dismissing a fly. He returned his attention to the den. "I was born in a hovel like this," he said, conversationally.
She listened, in between struggling and kicking her way further into the rock. Listened, and began to wonder just what sort of monster had cornered her, here. From the outset, he had disturbed her in a way that no one from her old life now could; not even Jaipur, whose stares sometimes built up to an ominous degree of hunger. She had sensed, immediately, that the dark seam that ran through the hooded wolf was deeper and more raw than all those of the wicked wolves she had known. And so, safe and doomed in her little hole, she spoke back to him, to pass the time. "And how long ago was that."
His ear flicked forward, catching her words. Was that the first he had heard her speak, truly? More than a monosyllable or a scream, at least, and the lyrical nature of her voice pleased him and agitated him in turns. Something uncomfortable, like deja vu, passed through him, and he wished it would go away. "A long time ago," he said, and shrugged. He wondered if she could see him, from her little hidey-hole...if she was watching his looming dark shadow just outside her sanctuary. "Longer than you've been alive, I'm sure." And now he would live long past her, if he had any say in the matter.
Having finally mashed herself through to a gap spacious enough for her to occupy a wolf-shaped space in, Thrush idly pondered his words as she began to slowly, thoroughly lick at the side of her paw. Another reflexive grin briefly crossed her maw, as she realized that this was no Adonai out there; it seemed she would not die of a flood of biography pouring in from the shady light of the entrance. But then it immediately seemed sad that she was so completely done with that ineffectual old goat, so she pushed it out of her mind. "Well, be careful you don't die out there," she called, strangely, sounding almost friendly and inexplicably detached from the situation.
"I just might," he admitted. "Of hunger, anyway. Or maybe loneliness." His brow furrowed. "You ever hear of a wolf dying of loneliness?"
Now...that notion caused a strange tickle of fear to flicker inside her. She batted it away, and thought instead. "I haven't. But murdering strangers seems like a likely symptom, I'm afraid."
He laughed, then, a hearty and appreciative laugh. Firdaws had a sense of humor, as evidenced by his several clownish hunters, and he had a special taste for irony. He warmed to her immediately. She would be so much fun! "Oh, hardly. I haven't been lonely a day in my life." Well, not since Loki arrived, anyway.
"What should I call you?" He asked, suddenly. "I can make up a name for you, if you'd like, but it seems a bit awkward to stand about chatting without something to call you."
Queasiness roiled up inside of her again, an uncomfortable sensation similar one acquired from too many sudden drops and rises. She couldn't hear the slaver pooling in his mouth anymore, only the charm and ease of the likeable and confident, and the dissonance - the knowing that the end game had in no way changed - made her own mouth water with sickness. Little Bird, she thought, which made the sickness worse, and worked at shrugging it away again. Perversely, she felt herself grow more casual, more charming still. "You have to let me have something," she chided affectionately(!), feeling her heart skitter. "I'm not going to tell you my name."
"What kind of something were you expecting?" He asked, a flirtatious undercurrent in his voice as well, though he didn't realize it was there. Firdaws had never flirted a day in his life. When would he? When he was training his boys? When he was coursing down a young wolf like a deer? Still, some wolves come by certain traits naturally, and Firdaws was likeable enough, for a monster. "I could tell you my name. Is that enough?"
She closed her eyes, shuddering off the sensation that he was speaking into her ear, standing over her where she lay. "I don't want your name," she responded quietly, the liveliness retreated again from her whispery voice. "Only to keep mine."
He slowly settled down to his belly, resting his maw upon his forepaws. He had better things to be doing, certainly. He could be searching for Danel. He could be sniffing out the traitor. He could be watching Rorret fraternize with whatever piece of tail he had tucked away...but he had no particular desire to do any of that.
"Well, fair enough, little bird. It hardly matters in the long run. I wouldn't have given you my name, anyway." He smiled. "What sort of bird are you, anyway? Do you taste like dove, I wonder? I've never eaten dove, but I hear they represent peace."
...Just what sort of psychopath was this wolf, anyway?
It was the strangest sensation; she kept feeling the ice-bite of death at her throat, for a few moments, only to be buoyed up into a bizarre state of levity. Was this fatalism? She sighed, and turned her head to lay against her paw, whisking her tail around to warm her haunches. "Oh, stranger, this is so embarrassing! I'm not a bird. What a ridiculous mistake you've made."
"Oh...my mistake. You're just so small, and earlier I could swear you were flying." He grinned. The drool was gone, mostly; it was easier to contain himself when he wasn't looking at her tight-knit little body.
"It can be very misleading," she agreed quietly, back in the sweep of grim fatalism again. No quips or interesting questions occurred to her, so she lapsed into a nervy silence.
The silence stretched between them as Firdaws cast about for something to say. He wished, sometimes, that he were small and lean like Loki. But mostly only when he had chased a rabbit -- or a wolf who thought she was a rabbit -- into a tight spot. "I can dig you out, you know," he mused. "Or, I suppose, you might be caught in there with a badger. You really don't want to be locked underground with a badger. I'd be much kinder to you."
Somehow, somehow, this brought a twinkle back to her eye. "No, you can't," she returned, the hint of a smile playing, momentarily, through her voice. "And no you wouldn't."
"I'll show you," he said, playfully. "I'll show you how kind I can be." He crawled forward, and inserted his paw once more through the opening, groping around inside like a cat reaching for a mouse inside its hole.
She fought back the urge to retch, as the double image again presented itself, as she inhabited her mind and body at two disparate points in time. She could hear him pawing around for her, see the light altered by his shifting presence, and it made it a little easier not to say incredibly unwise things. "Think of all the other girls you're missing, with your eyes trained here," she tried, a little half-heartedly.
"Eh, there'll be time for them, later," he said, still pawing around inside to snatch her. "Why don't you beg, little girl?" He asked, then, and surprised himself with the edge of pleading in his voice. "Do you want to die?"
Thrush was beginning to anticipate those strange, feral smiles that kept coming over her; she managed to suppress this one. "Oh, I didn't realize I wasn't doing this right," she hissed, a little adder in her den. "Maybe you should tell me what to say."
He laughed, a disturbing little chuckle that shuddered and hissed through her snake den. He thrust himself forward, churning at the ground with his paws, seeking out the soft dirt rather than the solid rock. Someone had dug this out...there had to be dirt somewhere....his second forepaw joined the first, and there he was, head and shoulders inside, teeth bared, thin trail of drool clinging to his slack jaw.
"s**t," she whispered, her nervous system suddenly alive again with cortisone; she could see a new and grisly end, now, shredded piecemeal to death as his jaws locked around whatever part she could not hide in her little cubby. She felt so afraid she was in danger of losing consciousness, so she threw herself forward instead, squirming slowly toward him, through the pinch point of the tunnel. Tears sprung from her eyes as she wrenched her body forward, torso freed, hips and haunches trapped, into snapping distance of this invading monster.
He was caught with indecision. Thrust forward, and risk getting stuck, or pull out and resume the stalemate? He hesitated, and locked his eyes upon her. His hood tugged uncomfortably against his throat but he shoved himself forward as best he could anyway, clawing at the dirt with one paw, swinging his other paw out toward her in the claustraphobic space.
And it was at precisely that moment that the stressed dirt off to one side collapsed, a stone shoved loose and tumbling away from the opening. It left a small, fox-sized opening to Firdaws's right, scattering dirt and dust everywhere. It invaded his eyes and nostrils and he coughed, temporarily paralyzed by surprise and the tangle of his cloak.
Thrush's answering snarl was marvelously vicious, and also marvelously short-lived. She felt her body seize up independently in panic of being crushed, and it took sometime and courage to open her eyes to the noise and dust and see - marvelous, miraculous - that new white shape of light. Further precious seconds had to be used to process this act of a benevolent god. But finally, after many endless slow-motion seconds, she wrested herself from the last hard grasp of the rock, bruising her hip so spectacularly that pain erupted in euphoric fireworks before her eyes, and dove with great vigor into that wormhole of light.
He tried to whip around to catch her, but he was obstructed by the quantity of dirt that had caught in his cloak. He could barely see her though the settling dust, and his clogged nostrils burned. "Don't run, little girl," he snarled, his voice choked with a cough. He struggled to free himself, to pursue her, but he moved sluggishly by comparison to her panic-stricken bolting.
The light was blinding, though more from the unthinkability of its presence than any visual contrast. She could feel him writhing just next to her, finally truly at a disadvantage, and she felt an even keener sense of victory rush like liquor through her veins. His snarl brought on something like fury, although it was cooler than fury; some other day, she might be able to identify it as justice. Slipping free of that stony refuge, she turned in ugly silence on the straining, bucking hindquarters of her agressor, and lunged.
He was trapped. Goddammit. Exactly what he had hoped wouldn't happen, had; he should have been more patient...should have waited for her longer. He was helpless against the graze of tooth and claw on his flank, and though he struggled against the inevitable, he could not claw his way out of the cage in time to avoid the attack that landed upon his most sensitive flesh.
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Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2011 9:58 pm
She felt the feral grin tic across her face once more, and to her surprise, it was accompanied by a rough and monstrous voice. "Don't run, little girl," she snarled, and leapt, and bit, and her aim was true. She closed her eyes against the violent barrage of kicks that struck her face and neck and chest, focusing only on the small, tender shapes that had found themselves suddenly pinched into her hot mouth. It took only a moment to assure that her grip was true, and to wrench, a task no more difficult than ripping an ear off a rabbit, than opening the belly of a fawn. Blood erupted in her mouth, and a vicious tremor began its circuit through her limbs. Her white cheeks bloody, mouth dripping, she dropped whatever vastly unfortunate shreds of flesh that had come with her and began to back away.
Firdaws unleashed an unholy scream, a yowl of pain and confusion and misery -- and even a little heartbreak. They had been getting along so well! He had been attacked by his prey many times, of course, but never so...egregiously.
He collapsed, his bulky frame caving in the soft loam he had been digging just moments before. Blood soaked the inside of his legs, and he retched, violently, temporarily blinded by pain and shock.
She wavered there, a few paces away, caught for a moment in the momentum of that scream, of the righteous cruelty that had taken hold of her. Her fear had burned away and left her hard and bright and shining, and she had just begun to jump forward again, to see her move to its brutal end, when the memory of three other bloodied, butchered wolves hit her with the force of a physical blow. She grunted, and flickered her gaze onto and away from the hooded wolf's bloodied haunches, and felt the shifting grounds of morality and emotional health begin to give beneath her feet. Enough, she whispered, and pelted away.
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