[ i'll get around to prettying these posts up later. ]

Quote: Talon left. It's what he does best.

 He left his children with emotional and physical scars, left Nava with twice as many. Pink eye swivels in its socket as he looks around him, paranoia growing, not stopping for longer than it took to eat and shit. His skin crawls with anxiety but the pride in his heart will not allow him to believe it's because he's running away, that he is being hunted. Slipping through the trees of Oukoku-Kai while the resident guard was off salivating over a young soul in the night he ran, not stopping until dawn turned to day. He had collapsed in a pile of matted fur and rotting insides, eye rolling back into his skull as he baked in the open sun.

 Now he walks, more hydrated, but with less purpose.

 Wandering alone for days he finds himself lost more often than not. The land between his captives -- both old and new -- is unfamiliar. When he fled Alteron he did so without direction, and history repeats itself in his flight from the Valley. Scarred and disoriented, he strides through the plains. He hates the lack of cover, the sensation of being watched. Everything in the corner of his tired eye is an enemy looking to strike him down. Every shadow is his past catching up with him.

 It was only a matter of time.

 Continuing through the field of flowers he stops dead at the sight of someone in his path. His eyes narrow and he considers for a moment that he can turn around, that he can turn to the side and bypass the stranger completely. There was no need for interaction. And yet -- he holds his head as high as he can and moves wordlessly towards the stranger, pride rumbling in his chest. They would move for him, most likely out of disgust at his appearance, but they would move.

 "Excuse me."

Quote:They all lived out the same recycled stories, far out upon the starless moor.

She fed upon what she pursued and caught. Left the bodies of little Tesni's depopulated tribe unrecognizable, burying a generous bounty of their flesh and bone close to home-for-now, nothing but the teeth and hair and clothing going to waste. She convalesced for the better part of a year, though the frayed pelt still hung loose on her belly and cheeks, and the right side of her face was still no face at all, and she still felt the chronic, phantom pains of pieces that were no longer there... and the silvery hairs on her muzzle continued to multiply... and she viscerally resented, on some clandestine and inaccessible level, the eight years too many that had been forced upon her.

Even monsters grow old.
Even abominations become weary.
Even dragons reflect back on all the sound and fury and terror...

... and muse high upon their hoards why they'd ever wanted it all so much, once upon a time.

The quarter-moon shone bright in the sky above a renegade on her prowls. Its light met with her last living eye and was snared, turning the opaque green to a point of fire that reflected only this. This and nothing else. Those paws, so big, made no sound as they moved her down a winding, foreboding little path that led up to a midway peak of the snow-capped mountains -- and was it there she chose for a time to den? There she could smell everything coming; there she could look down dizzying heights upon the spanning forests. If she wanted. Today she didn't. Today --

she pursued, today. A scent. Familiar. In her brain ignited the only promise she'd ever deign to keep in her brutal life.

Sanctum didn't know. Thought she was meeting an old friend here. He didn't ask questions, her golden boy, and she preferred people that way, when she chose to prefer them at all. When he too left her to have his silly tryst with a jungle girl, Dragon as well had welcomed him back with no questions. It was their way, perhaps. The two soldiers.

In the sunlight, the field of flowers -- buttercups, in specific -- was strikingly bright, a sea of stunning yellow that took the bottom of the mountainside by storm in these parts. Now... the night took them in its hands and turned them drab and gray as anything else it touched, as the stranger now, ragged as she... crossing paths with her... demanding the old wolf move.

The single lime eye blinked slowly, listlessly, and seemed to turn cloudy; she let the hard lines of her face fall slack. But no matter how harmless and hoary she deigned to appear, she was still Dragon. She would not excuse herself. She would not move for him or any other. Unless. She felt. Like doing so.

"I don't see well," was her response, soft and hoarse, the voice of a malevolent Old One at work, "in the dark. I apologize."

She tilted her head to perceive him. Could see him as well as she could smell the buttercups, cloying and heavy in her nostrils.

"Would you consider... leading me to water?"

Quote: Her voice is old and hoarse, and someone with a heart might have thought anything other than; worthless.

 The moon shines overhead, dulling more the soft yellow buttercups below their feet. His eye scans her face for anything, ever paranoid, ever correct. He sees nothing in the old gal's aching face, the scars and hard lines seemingly softer in the quarter moon. Her eye, however. Lime colored and supposedly sightless; he stares into it, a crawling fear growing up his spine as the void of her pupil swallows the light of the stars, leaving everything to the imagination.

 "Would I," he sneers. Face twisting into distaste openly despite her disability. Talon considers her for a moment more, looks over her scars, into the space where another eye should be. Her body screams weathered battle maiden, even if her voice and language whisper that she has been beaten. "I don't talk," he snipes, "I listen."

 Was that not his job once, long ago? To listen to the whispers on the winds. To know everything, anything, to use it to his advantage?

 Talon stands still for a moment longer before huffing, not shy to show he was put out by the gal's request. "Nearby. If you're going to follow me, tell me a story." He pads through the thick flowers and out the other side, heading towards a river in the distance, growing clearer in scent without the thick smell of the buttercups. No wonder she couldn't find the water on her own.

 He listens, he waits. A growing feeling of being watched sends shivers up his spine but he shoves it down to deal with later.

Quote:A mangled, reeking, days-old roadkill of a wolf looked upon Dragon and deemed her worthless; an audacious pot called the kettle black.

But even he salvaged a kernel of wisdom weighty enough not to trust the cadaverous absence to her last remaining eye.

"We have that in common, my friend," imparted the renegade of his preference for perceptive silence over speech, though her own words rolled from her tongue with the sort of unbothered smoothness that suggested some innate lack of social fright. A question she'd never ask herself: what does this little wanderer think of me? A worry she'd never feel: do I appear wrongly to him somehow? Like something etched from another time, an older time, and dropped into this one to breathe the dry air.

He seemed irritated with her, as a matter of fact. He disliked her request. That he chose to honor it anyway was all that mattered to Dragon.

"I appreciate that," she thanked him simply, and off they walked, her blind side facing nothing but the bitter night's wind. He smelled vaguely of hot sand and boiling tar. Talon wanted his favor returned, quid pro quo, and he asked her for a story as they approached the distant river. Dragon considered this, reaching absently into herself for something with which she could possibly use to fulfill his request... They were too far from the water for her to evade it somehow.

"There was once a boy," began Dragon, watching the horizon as she spoke, "who was born half-formed. Were his mother only but merciful, that she could have smothered him as a babe. But she did not, and the boy grew all wrong, like a weed-choked blossom. He seemed haphazardly fashioned of nature's unused and unfit pieces, for his features were mismatched, he was constantly ill..."

(She toyed with him, wrapped him in the silk of her web, and he was not even father enough to realize it, was he?)

"... yet he'd a lovely mind, this wretch. A talent in mending. None knew. It was squandered not to his own weakness, but the ineptitude of those who both raised and tormented him."

(The river loomed into sight; she could smell the brine of it.)

"One day, he was set upon by another wolf, and his eye was taken. Perhaps it alone had been beautiful before. The boy grew bitter at this irreversible loss,  and sought to mend only monsters, for in their faces he now saw himself. When once he brought one back from the brink of death, it asked what it might do to repay him. The boy looked into its face without fear and said this: monster, bring me the head of the one who hurt me first. punish the one who started this all and could have stopped it."

(Here it was.)

Dragon bent briefly to scent the water. Licked some of it up. Turned back to Talon, droplets of it lingering about her mouth, before resuming. "It's a story about how we are shaped by the lives we live... and how in the end... we cannot much help what we are. It was inspired by a friend of mine."

She moved closer, as he either drank too or stood waiting. Just a little. But enough.

"You resemble him a great deal, actually."

That feeling of being watched was her studying his face for a sudden flinch, the barest hesitation, a giveaway --

"Talon."

Quote: The night howls around them with bitter wind and dying starlight.

 His passenger walks with her good eye to him, and for a moment he thinks himself the assassin from his youth. Yes. Do not trust me. Something ugly crawls up his spine, an itch in his paws to send him knocking her to the ground. Paranoia and a need to satisfy his wounded ego has him taste her blood in his mouth, wet and metallic as it slides down his throat. Would he go for her eye? Blind her completely and leave her more desperate and helpless than he found her?

 Or did he finally grow tired of playing games -- was it her jugular he covets?

 She starts to speak, and the noose tightens. Her description of the boy does not phase him; he does not care. The weak and the ill were meant to be smothered, ruined, broken beyond repair. Was that not the way he had been taught? Was this not how he taught his children? His mind strays to his children for a moment, not quite recalling their features but seeing them more as wriggling things he had to care for at one point. If he had ever cared at all. Perhaps they were all dead.

 Maybe it was for the best.

 The river draws into sight and his paranoia spikes with it. He could leave, he's fulfilled his part of the deal. She got water and he got company -- they would be looking for a lone wolf, not a pair. It was done, and yet. "What use is a mind if there is no body to see it through?" Disgust curls his lip, a restless sense of needing to leave itching through his belly. It's either pride or arrogance that has him follow her to the water, stopping behind her as she continues.

 He's not a dumb wolf, despite his many many mistakes. He knows. Perhaps he knew this whole time, but refused to see it. Refused to believe it.

 That fucker.

 He was going to win.

 "I think," he says, "you need more competent friends." Face riddled with the ravines of age the swirl of his eye in its socket seems slower as it passes over her face. "He really thinks this will make up for it all?" Quieter, more wistful. His jaw itches, remembering what it was like around tiny throats. In his sleep he can still hear them suffering. "So be it."

 Talon inhales; the brine scent of the river, the coldness of the night, the sound of his old heart beating vile blood. The last things he has. Unless.

 "Tell him I'll see him in hell."

Quote:She had grown used to the murderous intent of nipping little dogs. How sweet a nectar the blood servicing her wicked heart would be; how satisfying a victory to take away the life of an infamous conqueror. She knew, even without being privy to Beryl's thoughts -- oh, that ruthless, exquisite woman, Dragon would never find another quite like her, and the lament was as close as she'd ever come to missing someone dearly -- that she'd considered such deadly actions upon her stoic lover on many occasions. It didn't unsettle her. It caused her no pain or sense of betrayal. To live is to devour others.

What use is a mind without a body in good repair to pilot it? But she'd never elevated Isaiah's memory above those of the healthy animals who'd moved in and out of her life, had she? He was only something intriguing. A tiny gem, buried among the rough. Dragon's motivations for all that she did were deep and sometimes alien; to explain why she chose to honor the boy's debt where she'd forsake countless others... it would lose something in translation. And she cared not to explain it. To him. This not-a-father. Talon.

Talon, Talon, Talon.

The name a loaded pistol against his temple. The name his fate spelled out at his feet. The name his every sin crawling on his back.

She stood motionless before him as he condemned her choice in "friends" for the absolute nothing his insults mattered to her. That imperial neck straightening to lift her head far above his own, that facade of dimwitted absence sliding away like liquid metal -- it was all the response he'd need as one by one he walked the steps of the gallows. He was admitting his situation, it seemed. He had dignity enough not to beg her for his life. It was as over for him as it one day would be for her paladin rival. And. He knew it.

Encircling him a moment, closing in, towering over, Dragon doubled back with no warning and shoved him full force, effectively toppling the far smaller wolf to the ground and rolling him toward the awaiting river. The renegade moved fast, and before he could find his feet or try to bite her or any other desperate reflex animals in his predicament tended to have, she snapped him up by the scruff, teeth sharp teeth inexorable, and heaved him bodily those last few inches past the shore before she dropped Talon face-down

and forced his gruesome head underwater

and held it there

and waited.

Quote:[11:13] -- corpseAgaric [CA] began pestering renegadeDragon [RD] at 23:13 –

[11:14] -- corpseAgaric [CA] Isaiah sat by a hollowed out tree near the river, piles of strange herbs and fungi around him –

[11:18] RD: She approached as dusk moved into night, sifting through overgrown sagging greenery to find the medic already there. Beyond them, the sound of rushing water, unbalanced to her single ear. Regarded him coolly, as though patiently awaiting a cue he'd missed.

[11:27] CA: At the sound, he turned his single eye and enormous ears to the source. She was a colossus, comparatively, with green eye as dead as his gold was bright. "Infection," he said, guarded, awkward. "We have to clean it. If we don't, it will poison your blood." Little did he know how poisoned this stranger already was, how he might save her body, but somehow it was already a corpse for the soul it failed to house.

[11:31] RD: If the strange boy was stricken by the size of her now, starved and mutilated and weatherworn as she was, perhaps he'd never even have approached her only a year ago. She'd been monstrous, unstoppable... healthy, in a manner of speaking. No matter their similarities however, Isaiah was still far more whole than she.
[11:33] -- renegadeDragon [RD] spoke, in the first instance any of these brutish foreigners would hear her voice. “It subsided, for a time." A short pause. "What can you do.”

[11:41] CA: He cautiously motioned her closer. There were medicines for infection, but there was no substitute for cleaning the rotten skin. "You have to wash your face in the river, and then there are salves for the wound." He was very unsure of himself, directing this... this creature. She might have reminded him of the violet and black beast that had once lurked, putrid, in the jungle's core. But no - this one was much more dangerous. She was much more self-aware. "You have to scrub it clean. It might bleed again."

[11:52] -- renegadeDragon [RD] observed him for a loaded moment. It was a searching look, as though she could pry something incorporeal out of him -- some proof of competency in his work? She must have found whatever it was she sought, for she heeded his orders without another word, descending to her underside and crawling a pace or two forward until she was half submerged in the river. A brief hint of cervical spine was visible as she inclined her head, pushing it here and there, scouring it with nails, removing what debris and oozing scabs she could.
[11:54] RD: The numbing cold of the water was not enough to counter the incredible pain of this, though when she withdrew from it at last to stare at Isaiah again, it was with diluted blood trickling down her face... but no apparent agony. If there had been a reflexive snarl or hiss of breath, the river had swallowed it up.

 [12:08] CA: The bedraggled boy was almost entranced by this creature, so hideous and scarred, carrying the blackness of her soul around her as though it were a cape made of someone else's skin. Perhaps he even related with her, related with being hideous, related with staring death in the face but somehow refusing to die. She cleaned her face and it oozed first its black blood and then its red, a first step fixing this monster so that it could be released upon the world again. Isaiah, of course, would not understand the consequences of his generosity.
[12:08] CA: She looked at him with an eye like that of a snake, somehow void and keen at once. The effects of her scrubbing, clearing the foulness away, the chunks of dirt and meat removed from the scab so it could heal fresh.
[12:08] CA: "Now this." He said, and now more than ever he was on edge. He would gesture to a broad leaf covered in a thin, sappy paste. If she allowed, and lowered her head to his reach in some way, he used the leaf to apply the substance on the newly opened wound. For a moment, it would likely sting ferociously, but then it would become numbing. "Keep the area clean," he'd add, after having stepped away as soon as he applied the paste, knowing that it would hurt.

[12:26] RD: Perhaps she already knew that he knew. About why she'd come here, that is. Had seen it in his grim face as they'd made short work of the young man Azuhel had brought home, some knowing that had been absent from the faces of said southern belle, from the shaggy blue girl, the fat ex-prince, the lean father and daughter. They had talked about their own business amongst themselves, things that did not concern her, but nevertheless were trapped in her immediate memory like a flytrap snares an insect.
[12:30] -- renegadeDragon [RD] considered, in her savvy way, what this could mean, as she lowered her head for him, water and blood drizzling from her chin, her face momentarily close to his. --
[12:32] RD: "You haven't named your payment." Not that she felt obligated to such things. Yet why use up precious resources without it, unless Isaiah did this altruistically... or to poison this trespasser? "Surely you don't do me this kindness for free."

 [12:58] CA: Isaiah knew she was not from Alteron, he had known from the moment he had seen and smelled her, the lack of recognition on the other faces, the scent of sunlight still clung to her coat, the smell of grasses and dust, and rolling in the ferns and fetid soil of Alteron could not mask her origins from him. Isaiah knew the flora of Alteron better than the leaders knew even the fauna. Neither new master nor former slave had dared to question Dragon's presence here.
[12:58] CA: She lowered her disgusting, bleeding face to his, and he could smell the rankness of her breath, mixed with the freshness of the cold water and the warmth of her blood. She wanted to know what he demanded as payment. He had not considered bargaining in this, his actions motivated not by greed nor generosity so much as curiosity. Coming to the beast like an ugly kobold come to admire the larger and more fearsome.
[12:58] CA: "My wounds looked like yours once," he said, the gaping socket shadowed in the darkness. "This work is interesting." Save whatever of the monsters face he could. Maybe that was vanity. Or maybe that was shame. Maybe it was that he didn't want the world to contain any mirrors through which he could see himself. Had he claimed that the gesture was out of the goodness of his heart, Dragon might have thought him a fool, or she might not have believed him, but it didn't matter. This wasn't out of the goodness of his heart. It was something out of his bad memories.
[12:58] CA: "If you want to pay me back." He said nonchalantly. "When you leave," And they both knew she would "If you ever see a black wolf named Talon, give him... my regards." He carefully removed the leaf now that its sticky contents were congealing to the wound. Sticking a paw into a pile of dark powder, he then gently touched it to her face - the powder stuck. It would dry the wound and keep it from sticking to anything else it shouldn't. As for his regards, Dragon could read his face for herself and decide what message she might want to convey to Talon should they ever meet. Isaiah's face was had never been a particularly cheerful one.
[12:58] CA: "You're done." He said coolly, observing his work. "For the pain, that." He gestured to several dried plants that would intoxicate her and ease her pain for tonight. Tomorrow she could take the rest, the more mild anesthetics.

 [01:08] RD: Not altruism, not treachery; this glum knobby boy did this for other, murkier reasons. Some desire to by mending another animal who resembled him so in his wreckage make this world that much less ugly, even as he reduced her to a practice cadaver in his mind, one dead and disfigured by a rare and terrible disease. Such a nightmare end for the patient; such a delight for its doctor.
[01:10] RD: The concoction on her torn, miserable, pulsating face tingled and faintly burned. Incuriously she turned back to the river, peering with her remaining eye upon the surface. Stared into her reflection for a number of heartbeats. She made no remark upon the subject of payment, though these details (blackwolftalonregardslookonhisfaceunkind) too were retained. Had this other wolf taken Isaiah's eye? Would she keep this promise, if not only just to pass her own empty life by taking it where she still could?
[01:18] -- renegadeDragon [RD] retreated from the river once more, lying down with head rested upon paws in his general vicinity. Sniffed the dried plants a bit before consuming them unceremoniously. Watched the boy still, gaze bright but unfathomably tired. --
[01:20] RD: "I wonder," said she, "what sort of kingdom allows one of their most valuable to suffer as you have." And if he hadn't known, he surely did now. "They can always find more soldiers. More kings."

 [01:51] CA: Isaiah didn't much care if Dragon would keep her promise. He could have asked her to find and kill Hartigan instead, the one who had actually taken his eye, but no - that was Isaiah's battle alone. He could have asked her to keep an eye out instead for one of his lost loved ones, his missing sister, Epee's grave. But no, he would not trust this stranger with those he held dear. So in the end, it was only the one he did not truly care about that he would leave with this stranger. Wherever the dark wolf was, Isaiah would feel neither pride nor sympathy at any fate that might have befallen him.
[01:52] CA: The monstrous wolf laid herself down after eating his herbs, and stared at him from her paws. Her lids drooped almost imperceptibly, but her green eye was still bright and unnerving. Why was it that green eyes in particular were always so eerie? Isaiah had once matched amber to green before his disfigurement.
[01:52] CA: "I wonder," her voice croaked, dragging Isaiah from his memories, "what sort of kingdom allows one of their most valuable to suffer as you have. They can always find more soldiers. More kings." This musing bordered on philosophical, and Isaiah took a step closer and then sat, pausing for a moment to wipe his bloody, sticky paw upon the greenery below him. He had certainly never been compared to anything valuable except by naive children and a biased and blatantly lying mother. He was disinclined to change his self-worth based on the cryptic musings of a drugged stranger. But the sentiment, sadly, was one of the nicer ones he had received in his pathetic life.
[01:53] CA: "When your soldiers are replaceable, why bother fixing them?" He answered simply though hypothetically and frankly it came out bitter. Why should a medic receive fewer accolades than the soldiers they heal? It was a fair question, but in reality, no soldier, healer or king had ever avoided suffering here. They suffered in their separate ways, but they all suffered. Of course, the reason for fixing them had always been the fixing itself. Isaiah had always hated soldiers and kings, but he'd healed a great many not for the love of the patient, but for the love of their wounds. "This kingdom is built on suffering." He added. "There is really no reason for you to stay, once you heal. It can't offer you anything."

 [11:49] RD: "The capability alone sets you apart. I have met many destroyers, all of them alike. I've never wondered what goes into their making. Menders, however..."
 [12:00] -- renegadeDragon [RD] trailed off, swinging her head heavily from her paws until it rested instead on the loamy earth. The side of her head that still retained an eye pressed down, her muzzle making slow, odd, metronomic movements that swathed a shallow furrow into the dirt. There were tiny supernovas bursting somewhere around an optic nerve and she willingly shut herself off to them, seeing nothing now, turning Isaiah into voice alone. The image of her then, a collapsed living body attached to the slimy, mangled part of her face left visible, was deeply unsettling.
[12:04] RD: "Then I won't." Not for long, anyway. And then, a moment later -- "Tell me your name."

[09:57] CA: Menders weren't so much different from destroyers. No wolf could ever be like a plant, truly providing and existing without feeding on others. Healers were more like mushrooms - they could give you medicine, or they could poison you, but just like wolves they had to eat and drain and destroy to thrive. Isaiah may have been a healer, and he may even have been relatable and sometimes even heroic, but it did not make him good or special. So very few people were special.
[09:57] CA: "Think of menders as really shitty destroyers, and it makes more sense." He said, his voice a little self-deprecating. She'd lain her head down at her feet, closed her eye. The drugs were likely taking effect. He could have left now, but he felt as though he should stay, watch over the beast he had sung to sleep with his doctoring. She was so ugly, even now as she approached something peaceful. In fact, her peace was almost more unsettling than her pain. She accepted his advice, promising to leave the borders soon and return to the world beyond Alteron.
[09:57] CA: She asked for his name. "Isaiah." He answered truthfully, for what reason did he have to lie? "And yours? If you care to give it." He felt pretty noncommittal about the whole thing. Her face was more interesting than her name could be.

[10:16] RD: And yet she considered him neither good nor heroic, did she? Those were only words, flighty concepts a great many creatures of the wild adopted like a too-old child clutches a stained, tattered blanket. Special meant only that here was something she might deign to observe and take apart, nothing more. Destroyers had always claimed their uses, but menders – those who built and created and healed – had ever been the ones to challenge her, complete her in a most perverse way.
[10:18] RD: “Isaiah,” she echoed hoarsely, without moving her head, paralyzed or apathetic to the tidal waves of boiling black frothing up somewhere in her skull, manifestation of a waking dream. “Come here, Isaiah. You don’t want my name. You want to know what made me like this.”

[10:28] CA: Destroyer, healer, in the end it never really mattered much, there was too much gray in between those poles, and Isaiah had made his nest in the middle. There was something good in him, something that made him want to defend Ryuko, something that had made him love his sister and laugh with Epee. But there was something evil, too, the boy had bitten holes in rats just to see if he could heal their fatal wounds, he'd have gladly poisoned Blade had the prince been foolish enough to accept an offer of food or drink, and he'd have set the whole of Alteron on fire if it were some ritual to bring back those he loved or destroy those he hated. Isaiah lived in the chiaroscuro of Alteron, where light was only cast down in stray pieces through the dark canopy. It was not surprising that he could find no purity here.
[10:28] CA: She repeated his name with a rasping tongue. She told him to come here, and he did, bolder now that they'd shared some piece of their stories, and now that she was all but immobile with the relief only narcotics could offer. Yes, he did want to know what made her like this. He wanted to know who had done this to her, because he knew all too well who had done it to him. "Yes." He answered simply, ugly, overlarge ears pricked forward, curious and curiouser, willing to go down this rabbit hole at least a little ways, to find out who had dug it.

[10:49] RD: Abruptly she did move then, with a fluid suddenness, the end of her muzzle (and the teeth inside, oh the faithless killing teeth) close enough all at once that he might feel the cold, ragged rush of breath from either nostril rustling the glum hairs on an available body part. Mad little semicircles of starlight wavered in the blank lime eye.
[10:50] RD: “So many wolves lose perspective. They believe that they are in control of situations where they are not. I thought the same, perhaps…” She watched, unconcerned and unfazed, as the outline of him – this poor dear martyr of a boy, this meager talented runt – began to thread and meld into the canopy above his head. “It's an unforgivable mistake. I should not be here with you.”

[11:24] CA: He had been foolish to assume he was safe, he of all people should know that no one is ever safe, the vicissitudes of this ugly world would stir and swallow each and every one of them like so many tiny shreds of meat in a thin soup. Her muzzle snapped upwards until he could feel her breath on his own crooked muzzle, the chill humidity in the air causing the vapor in her breath to appear as smoke.
[11:24] CA: He did not know her name, so he could not know how accurate it was. They were mirror images, these two wolves who seemed to understand so many things and yet both failed in so many others. Eyeless sockets, hearts either absent entirely or sickly and strained. He was not afraid of her, even if she had bitten him, she would be so slowed by Isaiah's cocktail that she'd have never managed to catch him once he began to run.
“So many wolves lose perspective. They believe that they are in control of situations where they are not. I thought the same, perhaps…” Her gaze swam in its own delirium. Isaiah knew the feeling. Painkillers were his most familiar self-prescription. “It's an unforgivable mistake. I should not be here with you.”
[11:24] CA: "You probably would have died." He said calmly. "It would have taken a while. But infection will catch up to you." He leaned back away from her and sat just out of striking range. "This way you can repay whoever took this from you." He knew he wanted to return Hartigan's favor, he imagined she must feel the same. He couldn't know that it had been Dragon who had done the lion's share of the taking. "I can leave, if you want." He flicked an ear calmly. "Or if you want, I'll stay and stand guard." Either way, in the morning she'd feel better.

[12:02] RD: “Yes,” deigned she to admit, as if this was something she did not already know, “I suppose you are correct.”
[12:02] RD: Even death, in all its finality and cold fairness, lacked the power to frighten her. It did not mean to her what it meant to others of her kind. But there was discontent nonetheless at the idea of this slow whittling decay, this quiet purposeless fading out, this inexorable /succumbing/. Pain was a monster, infection its fangs, and if there was any reason she was still alive, perhaps it was only to avoid it swallowing her whole, leaving her without resistance to be digested.
[12:02] RD: She’d been denied so much – not that anyone should ever feel sympathy for that, given how atrocious her former desires. She would not be denied dying on her own terms, headed quickly to nowhere at all with no business left unfinished… and no absence of a souvenir in the slackening jaws to take with. A pretty golden one, if she were truly blessed. It was a vow made in cruel spite and solemn dignity intertwined.
[12:02] RD: “Stay, my generous little friend. Don’t back away – I would not hurt you.” Nor could she, suspected Dragon. “I want to know if it was much the same, when you too were robbed.”

These days Inaria's ghost was hard to pinpoint, even if you knew where to look.

Tonight she was haunting a lesser known section of the garden that was kept away from the general public in the interest of health and safety, a section secreted away past purposefully planted thorn bushes where toxic flowers coiled and bloomed. Even as isolated as it was, she was no stranger to this part of the woods- always fascinated by the bright, beautiful pigments but knowing not to touch by a caretaker who knew that knowledge and respect for dangerous things were the only ways to truly teach a child preventative caution. Curiosity if not delicately pruned over the years by experienced hands had its own consequences, and Merope was one such believer.

Weiss padded over in that silent way of hers from the lilies to stand near the foxgloves, the light of the crescent moon painting the sharp angles of skeletal ribs and prominent hips under too thin fur in thick, unforgiving swaths. Nothing had changed; pretty promises were always going to be just empty words in the end. It was unclear just how much of a secret it was that her weight had begun to dip into life-threatening numbers more suited to the jackel Marquis than the Jacana Dire she was, but above everyone else there was no way it couldn't be one to her family. It couldn't be one to Ghost who had been near coerced by Luxord to help her find something to fill her stomach, and couldn't be to her mother who knew of her worsening condition at least in its budding stages and had to find outside help to try to raise her in the sire's absence. It couldn't be a secret, and yet in the end they like everyone else always left her alone.

Perhaps she should accept that alone was the way she was fated to stay.

She curled her hand just around the flower, and breathed- imparting the warmth she herself so desperately needed in favor of saving those flesh-velvet petals from the frost creeping at their edges. To take care of these often forgotten flowers was a task she had bestowed upon herself in the night hours long ago when she had no one but herself for company, and still the spirit to this day tended to them like they were her own children. Mismatched eyes traced the flare of trumpets for any sign of creeping fingers of ice to see where she could help next. Maybe it was because there was a beauty in them from being so toxic that perhaps she identified with or maybe because they too seemed forgotten- both possible explanations for why she would help them instead of holing herself up away from the chill in the air, but to a keen eye there was something off about her behavior. It seemed less motivated by heavy introspection and more of a sleepwalking routine, as if she was a marionette held up and moving while someone else pulled on the strings.

With an embrace as warm as the one dissociation wrapped her in, it was easy to forget that she was freezing to death.

Historically, Nardir hasn't really had set-in-stone rules on challenging, so we used the default forum rules for fight challenges. Thing is, that's not super Nardiri. Nardir's culture emphasizes harmony, so now we'll have challenge rules to match!

1. A member of the pack challenges a rank captain³ for their rank
   
2. The members of that rank⁴ assemble for the debate
   
3. The challenger and the challenged party both give a speech on how and why they would lead the rank better than the other
   
4. The members of the rank⁵ ask the challenger and challenged rank captain questions, if they have them
   
5. The members of the rank⁵ vote on who they want to lead them
   
6. The loser assumes the rank they held prior to the captain rank⁶