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 Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 5:02 pm
This is Mire's quest to discover and (hopefully) attain her seer potential. This is a solo quest, and only I plan on posting here. Jade and Reivan are the exceptions and can post whatever they like.
O RLY?
YA RLY.
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Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 5:49 pm
He spoke in words she did not understand, smelling of grease and sweat as he approached, a chewed leather strap suspended from one meaty, hairless paw.
He was angry...the rage wafted off of him almost as tangibly as steam from freshly-cooked meat.
Her matted brown tail thumped the ground twice apologetically before curling between her haunches, her ears folding back as her head lowered.
He was angry with her again.
Always with her.
The human began to yell and roar in his familiar language that she had never understood and the emaciated brown female flinched back noticeably as the leather strap was thrust in her face, his voice crescendoing in volume. Whatever he was angry with her about was linked to the strap somehow, and its gnawed state.
But she hadn't chewed it!
She would have happily told him so if she were able to convey it in ways he might understand. But the language barrier between them was far too great to cross.
She had learned, and learned well that the only hope she had in these particular situations was to quickly put herself out of sight and out of reach until her human's rage had ebbed.
Shying away, the little female slunk toward the ramshackle bed in the corner, set upon crawling beneath it where he could not strike her.
It was not to be.
A familiar stinging pain erupted in her flanks as she yelped, balance faltering. Never once, did he stop yelling as he swung both the strap and his fists, attempting to hit her with both as she scurried toward her goal.
No doubt she deserved his hatred somehow. No doubt she'd done something to incur his wrath. In spite of knowing her punishment was somehow warrented, however, she still feared the pain. The yelling, the fright....these were all tolerable in comparison to the pain.
Claws scrabbling at the floor, she crawled beneath the bed, shrinking as far back against the wall as the cramped space would allow. Her attacker cursed and swore as he attempted, first, to lift the bed. When that failed, to push it. When that, as well, failed, he dropped to his knees, glowering beneath it at his terrified lupine companion.
Her soft pink tongue ran out of her mouth briefly as she swallowed through a dry throat. She was safe now, she assured herself. It was over, now, and he would calm again. He would--
She saw his arm c**k back a moment too late. A brief flash of silver whickered past her face and pain exploded over her right eye. Again, she yelped, the small iron hook attached to the other end of the chewed strap having rended open her flesh.
The human said something else, in what seemed to be a satisfied tone of voice as she blinked hot stinging seepage away.
She'd never been hurt this badly before...never before. He had never gone beyond beating her, but now...
now....
Crimson pattered on her forepaws, looking black in the shadows. Staining her fur. Filling her eye.
The blood....it was everywhere. The blood...
Mire jolted awake, her breath coming in shallow gasps as she took a quick assessment of her surroundings. The cramped space she resided in was not beneath the human's bed. It was the shallow den that she, herself, had dug only a week prior.
That part of her life...that was done now. In her heart, she knew it, but in her dreams she would live it again and again. He had left his mark on her -- both seen and unseen. The puckered ugly scar that ran down the right side of her face told much more of her tale than she was comfortable with the others knowing.
She was tainted. Broken. Why Choma had extended an invitation to someone as filthy and hideous as the likes of her, she would never know. Pity, perhaps...it was as close to friendliness as she could get, and she supposed she ought not to question it. Even if the others DID hate her.
The omega's nostrils quivered along with the rest of her as she sampled the wafts of clean forest air that filtered in through the den's entrance. Slowly, but surely, her heart calmed itself from the rapid hammer it had become in her chest as she struggled to her feet and padded out into the crisp early morning.
There would be no more sleep this day.
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Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 3:25 am
Her footsteps carried her to the edge of the stagnant pool that hid among a halo of trees as she crouched at its edge and lowered her head to drink. Fragments of the dream, like evenescent fingers, clung to her mind as she gave a faint whine.
She would never know that most humans saw it as a blessing for a wolf to be their companion. She would never know that most wolves were afforded the chance to CHOOSE to be a human's companion. From birth, she was given as a gift to one of the foreigners who kept her in the way that others kept their dogs. She was not allowed to come and go as she pleased...in fact, she was not permitted to roam free at all. And she had learned early-on that if she presented him with anything but her complete and total obediance, there would be punishment.
"Good morning." a voice stated matter-of-factly, making Mire start so badly that water found its way up her nose. She coughed, pulling back from the water's edge and lifted her eyes to the source of the voice.
Myrl watched her, his face betraying nothing except complacance as she immediately hunkered low to the ground in a submissive manner.
"I--I'm terribly sorry..." she whimpered, turning to creep back the way she'd come. "I didn't know..."
The green-marked gamma cocked his head at a questioning angle.
"Didn't know what?" he questioned her retreating hindquarters. "I do not own the pool. No one does."
Mire froze as he spoke, wavering uncertainly. Why must he torment her so? And fill her head with the delusion that she, somehow, stood on equal ground with him? She was well-aware that the only thing she was an equal to was the very dirt they stood on.
"Come back." Myrl said quietly and simply, though the way she jolted, one would have thought he had barked the order. Abruptly about-facing, she slunk toward him, belly nearly dragging through the soil as she went. Stopping a polite distance from him, she cowered, awaiting whatever horribleness he intended to inflict upon her. Myrl, however, looked skyward, winking one eye at a fading star.
"I don't care much for rank." he told her placidly. "Tell me, why are you here?"
"I..." she swallowed hard, keeping her eyes warily on him. "I couldn't sleep. I--"
His ears perked a bit in invitation for her to continue.
"It was a dream." she allowed, deciding that this was not revealing too little or too much.
A long stint of silence passed between them, broken only by the early-year crickets that chirred listlessly in the surrounding woods.
"They say," Myrl began, stretching out on his belly and reclining at the water's edge "that bad dreams are telling of an unsound mind. Perhaps you have things to atone for." He was not sure who 'they' were, or how exactly one would go about atoning, but then again, Myrl never had these problems for the simple reason that he didn't dream.
Mire's legs became jelly beneath her at his words. The nightmares meant that she was crazy? She'd had them as long as she could remember...and whiel she considered herself to be many unfavorable things, crazy had never been one of them.
"Perhaps you ought to talk to Choma." he ventured as Mire's blue eyes snapped wider than they already were, if possible.
"I couldn't...!!" the omega squealed, her tail clamping between her hind legs and all but vanishing from sight. In spite of the alpha female of Risen Ashes graciously accepting a lowly worm like her into her pack, Choma frightened Mire horribly. The golden female exuded authority...it was in her voice, her walk, even the way she held her head up.
It was terrifying to be in the presense of such surity and confidence, because she could only imagine what Choma must think of someone like her...surely she hated her. Surely she regretted ever inviting her to come here.
"Mire,"
The brown wolf looked to Myrl once more, a low whine escaping her throat.
"You mustn't fear the others so." Myrl told her matter-of-factly as green eyes bore into her blues. "You have no enemies within your own pack and you will only gain respect if you demand it."
"As you wish, Myrl." she murmured, waiting uncomfortably to be dismissed from his midst.
~I do not wish it, though I -do- long for it...~
The voice seemed to have come from nowhere and yet everywhere at once as she started, looking about herself in bewilderment and seeing no one.
"Mire?" he inquired politely, seeming puzzled by her sudden reaction.
"May I go...?" she asked in a barely-audible voice, her body having picked up a tremulous quake. "I...I want to try and rest again."
To this Myrl said nothing, save for a slight dip of his head in compliance as she scuttled away, wanting nothing more than to be out of his, and any of the others', presense. Perhaps she WAS crazy. The dreams had been the first warning, and the voices her second.
It would certainly explain things, she thought dismally, and would also, sadly, be just her luck.
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Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 5:33 am
She remained in her den for the rest of the day, curled tightly into herself, head pillowed on her tail, and yet still unable to rest. When dusk fell, she could hear the stirring of the others in their dens and faint wisps of their conversations. She didn't pay attention to what they were...it didn't concern her. It never did.
The muffled padding of paws passed overhead and she tensed, relaxing only when they continued past her den and out of earshot.
Crazy
The word pinged about in her head like a cog that had come loose from its workings. What did it mean, exactly, to go crazy? Would she feel an exhiliration as sanity faded from her world? Would it bring her freedom? Or perhaps it would make her even more miserable...
If she was, indeed, going crazy, then it would not be long before the others would scent her madness. They would begin to talk...she would feel their eyes, none with a trace of kindness, on her no matter where she went. They would want her to leave, and she would surely have to go...she was in no position to argue.
Drawing a deep breath, the pathetic brown omega vented a long sigh that filled the small dark world of her den.
To her left, there was a tiny scuffling which made her ears p***k alertly as she turned in its direction. Sand and dirt flew in tiny fans as a small grey something dug furiously in a corner of her burrow.
The squirrel, sensing her gaze upon it, whirled suddenly, tiny nose working the air furiously around the awkward mouthful of nuts. She immediately recognize the little beast as being a resident of Aboki's den...wherever that was. Sometimes it dared accompany that hateful snake-pelted wolf to the packgounds, trouncing about his paws as though it had every business being there.
"what are you looking at?"
She blinked forcibly at the strange, squeaky voice. It was happening again...!!
Lowering her head, she buried it in her forepaws with a groan. "Nooo..." she whimpered.
"yes you were!" the voice insisted. More scuffling and then the squirrel was standing before her, nose and feathery tail both twitching indignantly. "i may be small, but i'm not blind, lady!"
Slowly, very slowly, Mire lifted her head to regard the little rodent in confusion.
"...are you talking to me?" she asked it. She couldn't say she'd ever heard a squirrel speak before...come to think of it, she'd never heard anything speak in ways she could understand it save for other wolves. Perhaps this was yet another thing she'd been left in the dark about.
"i sure hope so, otherwise we're -both- nuts." the squirrel quipped. "y'know, not all of us have the luxury of chasing down something slow-moving and sick every night. some of us plan for our food."
Mire opened her mouth to speak, and instead remained silent, unsure of what to say.
"anyway, what're you doing down here sulking?" it pried, grabbing up one of the nuts it had spat aside and beginning to tap it against the wall of her den to fault its shell.
"I--I'm not sulking..." she admitted grudgingly. "I'm frightened."
"frightened??" the little grey beast exclaimed. "you're as big as twenty of me, you've got sharp teeth and claws, and -you're- frightened??" Mire felt a brief and ugly flash of guilt at his question. He certainly had a point...and yet here he was, miniscule and nearly-defenseless, and he had treaded into her den without fear to bury his cache of food.
"The others...they--they hate me." she began. Odd that she had less trouble opening up to a cheeky little tuft-tailed rat than to any of her bretheren. If the squirrel minded, however, he didn't show it. In fact, he didn't even seem to be listening as he concentrated his efforts on cracking the nut open. "I'm nothing. I'm not a hunter, I'm not a fighter, I'm not even worthy of a mate to bring the pack cubs."
"hmmf. if that's all that's bothering you, you have no place being bothered." the squirrel grumbled. "take me for example. last three rutting seasons came and went without a single prospect. not a one. you have any idea what that's like?"
"I don't--" she started to say, but his chittering interrupted.
"you don't know the meaning of frustration, lady. tell you what, though. if we both strike out next time, how about i come back here? sure, you'll sleep right through it, but hey, it'd solve both our problems."
Mire blinked forcibly, trying to decide if he'd just implied what she thought he had. Apparantly even someone such as she had unspoken limits as she felt, quite unexpectedly, the last remaining shreds of her indignation surface from whatever cranny they were hiding in. The fact he could even -say- such a thing....!!
"You--you---" she tried to form a coherant and properly-offended sentence.
She would never get the chance, however, as a shadow fell over the entrance of her den.
"Mire...?" a familiar voice inquired, making whatever courage she'd plucked up in the last couple of moments deflate immediately.
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Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 6:20 am
Choma stood at the entrance of the den, a dark shape against the blue of early evening, but undeniably the pack alpha.
"Mire, are you all right?" she asked again.
"think about it, lady, all right? i won't tell anybody if you won't!" the squirrel told her, stuffing the nut in his mouth and scurrying toward the entrance of the den. The golden alpha lifted a foot disinterestedly to allow him passage but didn't pay him much mind as she awaited a response.
From within the shroud of shadow, Mire crept toward her alpha's feet and cowered there.
"I--Forgive me. Please, forgive me.." she grovelled. "I did not mean to disturb you, Choma..."
"Who were you speaking to?" the alpha inquired coolly, ignoring the lesser female's prostrating.
"The squirrel." she explained. "...the one that just left." When this was met with silence, she added "H--He was being rather rude..."
"The squirrel was being rude..." Choma repeated, seeming to digest this statement as Mire flinched, hoping she would not have to relay what he'd said. Instead, the alpha sighed and seated herself at the den's entrance, her tail curling about her paws. "Mire, I'm worried about you." she stated matter-of-factly.
"B-But he was...!" she said with a panicky tone in her voice, her mind racing for a way to convince Choma she was not lying. "I heard him...! I--"
"I will not deny you that the other animals of the wood all speak just as we do. However, they all speak in their own language. To understand even a handful of their words takes great concentration." Choma explained sternly. "One does not converse with them in the way one converses with their packmates."
Mire wisely did not argue with this, hanging her head with great shame.
"Yes, Choma." she murmured.
"What worries me," Choma continued "is that you came to us during the worst of the whitecold season and still fear everyone so terribly. Even Toboe and little Finster have become comfortable enough to leave their dens regularly." She fixed Mire with a look that fell somewhere between critical and upset. "They have attempted to form friendships, Mire, while you live in forced seclusion and talk to yourself..."
The Omega gave a shuddering whine and braced herself for the inevitable ejection from Risen Ashes.
"No one is perfect here." she went on. "All of us have come from our own shames, tragedies, and upsets....but those are the past. As long as we pull together, we can recover and become stronger than before. What have we done to you that's so terrible, you would refuse to be in our company, Mire?"
"Its not you, its me...! Me!" she squealed frantically, hoping to appeal to Choma's sympathies. She couldn't be on her own...no matter how much the others frightened her, it was much more frightening to be alone.
To this, Choma said nothing and fixed her expression into one of careful blankness as she waited expectantly for an explanation for the omega's behavior.
"I've had bad dreams." she whined. "Of things that happened to me once..." dropping her voice to a whisper, she added "He won't leave me alone..."
"And this effects your judgement of myself and the others?" Choma questioned.
"I--I'm not like you." she admitted. "I grew up with humans. It makes me less than the rest of you. I--"
"Where and how you came to be were not your choice." the alpha interrupted, eyes narrowing at the mention of humans as she rose to her feet and turned to go with a snort. "And if you are wise, you will stop that foolish thinking immediately."
"I'm sorry, Choma..." Mire said again, daring to peek out of the den after her. The golden female paused in her gait briefly, but didn't turn to look at the omega behind her.
"So am I." came the flat reply.
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Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 5:21 pm
She had tried to do better. She really had.
Following her brief confrontation with Choma, Mire had pried herself out of her den on several occasions to attempt to socialize. However, it was just as she had suspected...her other packmembers, if they didn't ignore her completely, scarcely spared her more than a glance before continuing on their way to tend to whatever business of their own they had.
To her credit, she had made an honest go of it, in spite of her ragged nerves and the sour pit her stomach had become. The scents, the smells, the tones of voice -- all of them were overwhelming, but it was not until Kryn loudly remarked on her presense and ordered her out of his way that she was sent scuttling back for the safety of her den.
No one had tried to stop her, no one had admonished him....and why should they, really? He was right. She had no business getting underfoot. It had been quite a relief when the majority of them had abandoned the dens to go and hunt, leaving the above ground in relative silence.
Her chin pillowed on her forepaws, Mire was left alone with her thoughts, which were always depressingly the same. The same voices of insecurity, and the same assurances that she was a filthy stain on the world she resided in.
...brought it down with....
...ut of my way....
....does that one more time I'll....
That was another thing...the voices, over the past day or so, were coming in much greater quantity and volume from all corners of the world to torment her. It was never anything more than a few words before fading out just as quickly as it had faded in....and it was never anything relevant.
But it was maddening...it was like helplessly watching her sanity slip away from her one grain at a time with no way to stop it.
Listing onto her side, her head a muddle of confusion, Mire stared into the darkness with terrible fixation, eyes narrowed as she tried to concentrate.
Stop. Her mind said aloud to the intrusive presenses in her head. stop, Stop, STOP, oh won't you please just stop...??
For one beautiful moment, there was silence, and hope swelled in her chest as all she was able to hear were the shrill twitters of birds and the wind sighing through tree boughs.
And then, in unison, the voices all battered within her skull once more like confused and upset moths around a flame. She could no longer pick out invidual voices in the turmoil and didn't try. It must have taken real talent, she mused sickly, to irritate one's own personal crazyvoices.
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Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 7:23 am
The night, which was usually brief, seemed to drag on for ages. The others remained out and active above until Mire could scarcely stand it....until, at blessed last, they all began to retreat into their dens in the face of the early morning.
Only after all had fallen silent and remained so for several minutes did the little she-wolf dare to venture out of her den. She stood for a long moment, wavering a bit on lanky limbs, before venturing forth to what remained of the carcass the others had brought back from the hunt.
There was scarcely more than bones, but she patiently salvaged whatever tiny scraps of meat still clung to them until the gnawing in her belly was more or less sated.
The buzz of fragmented voices had begun to die away, and for that she was grateful. They did not go away entirely, but they were moreso subdued and at a lower volume, making her own thoughts foremost once again.
Tonight, she could almost have believed she was sane again.
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Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 7:35 am
Unbeknownst to the little female, she was being watched. Not threateningly so, but watched all the same.
Drik focused on Mire with his one good eye, his blind and milky one staring with terrible fixation off to the left as he did so. Though he did not often involve himself with the affairs of others, he'd overheard Choma voicing her concerns about the omega's increasingly odd behavior these past few days.
It had undeniably intrigued him, the prospect of one slowly losing their sanity for no seeming reason. He had known Mire to be a tormented soul from the day she had arrived, much as he was, but he had not known the extent.
Anything that was enough to drive another mad was, at the very least, worth knowing. It was by complete chance that he had seen her emerge from her den on his way back to his own and now he watched her from the seclusion of the brush.
Choma had said Mire had been reluctant to speak of anything but bad dreams...but perhaps she would have been more willing to speak with someone who had walked the path she was just now setting paw upon.
Perhaps he could guide her. Perhaps...perhaps, they were not terribly different, she and him.
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Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 8:10 am
Mire's hardwon feelings of relief withered and died away as something undescribably unpleasant began to prickle at her. It was like millions of tiny needlepoints were suddenly touching her all over...not enough to cause pain, but enough to be quite uncomfortable.
Unaware of her observer, she padded a few paces in one direction, stopped uncertainly, and then padded a few paces in another.
Something...something wasn't right.
A wafting breeze brought her a scent, one that she had smelled before on dead or dying creatures. The cloying stench of sickness on an animal that was beyond help...that had been eaten from the inside-out by disease.
Nostrils flared with alarm, she turned abruptly toward the brush that Drik currently concealed himself in, ears perked and limbs rigid.
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Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 8:22 am
Drik's tongue lulled out of his mouth in slight amusement as he watched her. Jumping at shadows, the poor little rabbit. Well...not that he was helping things much by skulking out of sight in the foliage. They never HAD been formally introduced, after all, and it was unlikely that she was familiar with his scent.
His one remaining ear perked in mirror image of Mire's, the tattered stump of the other making a perverse attempt to do the same.
What was she so afraid of, he wondered? And, more importantly, what was she hiding? Surely something terrible...perhaps not as terrible as the things that he had done, but all the same...
Rising to his feet, Drik began forward slowly, head and tail both lowered to look as unaggressive as possible.
No good scaring her away before they could chat, after all...
"Hello." he greeted her as he emerged from the tangle of leaves and shadows.
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Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 8:33 am
To have seen Mire jump, one might have thought that she really WAS a rabbit as she landed, legs akimbo, and turned enormous eyes on Drik.
The stink was stronger now...that sweetly-sick rotting stench. It seemed to becoming from him, somehow, and seeing as how the wolf before her did, indeed, look to be half-dead, she could not say that she was much surprised.
"H--Hello..." she greeted him meekly in turn, shrinking back as he drew nearer. She did not care for him to come too close, she decided, finding both his sight and scent to be vastly unsettling.
"What do you want?" she asked worriedly when he continued to advance. The urge to flee burned in her legs and she forced herself to quell it, Choma's words filtering through her head once more.
He was her packmate, she assured herself. Her brother. There was nothing to be afraid of.
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Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 1:47 pm
"To talk." he told her, sensing her growing urge to flee and stopping where he was, seating himself on the carpet of pine needles and dead leaves. "And only that." he added.
Now that he was closer, he could study her better. She was little more than a dusty hide stretched over a skeleton, and where had that ugly scar over her eye come from?
Not that he was one to speak of ugly scars, of course, as he was scored with them both inside and out.
"I seldomly see you." he continued when the little omega didn't offer any conversation after a brief pause. "My name is Drik. And you...?"
He severely hoped she had not heard of him...or that what she HAD heard of him was favorable. He had been extremely lucky that whatever horrid rumors his previous pack held about him had not migrated to neighboring packs. It was extremely nice to belong again.
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Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 1:56 pm
"Mire..." she whimpered, silently willing him to just leave her be. Now that he was closer, he was even more terrifying. The waning moonlight seemed to focus itself on his blind eye, turning it into a milky white-blue beacon.
On his breath was his share of the kill she had just finished picking her meal from and she felt her throat tighten dangerously, threatening to vomit what little she'd taken.
Stop that. STOP THAT. she chided herself.
"...I don't venture out much..." she admitted, hoping that perhaps if she spoke, it would continue to keep her fight-or-flight in check.
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Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 2:05 pm
"Oh? But why not?" he countered, cocking his head with genuine curiousity. "The others don't bite."
This was somewhat of a lie...the others DID bite. Aboki, in fact, was often bitten on the rare occasion that he descended from on-high to mingle in the packgrounds. However, one had to provoke them into it and Mire looked like she was incapable of many things, the most of which being provocation of any sort.
The grizzled Beta found her voice pleasing to his good ear...like a faint spring breeze wisping through the newly-budded leaves and blossoms.
What a pity she was losing her mind...a pity for the others, perhaps, but perhaps it meant a companion for him. He had not known a kindred spirit...not since Tawna....
Drik pushed those thoughts out of hand for the moment. Those were things he felt best unthought of these days...why muck up a clean slate with old scribbles, after all?
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Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 2:26 pm
A picture began to form on the edge of her mind...something alien and unpleasant, but it was gone again before she had a chance to bring it into focus. It made her all the more uneasy, however.
"I--I don't--its not my place." she faltered. He would lose interest in her soon, she assured herself. He would continue on to whereever he had been going before he ran across her and she would, again, be left alone. "The others...I don't believe they're fond of me."
Perhaps, her mind thought deliriously, it would somehow convince him that he, as well, should not be fond of her. She would have given the world at that moment simply to see him turn and go, taking with him his stench of death and the horrible sightless stare of his eye.
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