[Halla]

Content Warning: Halla's dream has some minor gore and it's pretty morbid. Just thought I'd put that out there in case anyone is squeamish.

Last night, she had dreamt of her mother again. 

Trapped under black ice, her somber face and still hands clear and visible, but the surface dense as stone. Halla knelt over her, desperately scratching and pounding to set her free. But the woman underneath, the person who carried her and brought her into this world, made no attempt to escape. She simply pressed herself as close to the ice as she could, occasional bursts of bubbles circling around her as she slowly drowned. She couldn't see any emotion in her expression, not a hint of fear. Halla only felt a sharp pain in her heart as it staggered, watching her mother die helplessly right before her eyes. The one-eyed girl hated her mother. She despised her so much that whenever she thought of her she could only think of hurting her feelings as much as she had hurt her own; to cut ties with the very knife that stabbed her in the back over and over. But seeing her like this was not what she desired. She could feel her breathing become rapidly uneven as she began to wheeze and cry out. The murky black water started to engulf her mother's face, her eyes closing willingly and her fingers dragging away from the frozen wall between them, her long graying hair wisping about as she sank into the depths below. Her daughter screamed, fists clenching and tears streaming down her cheeks while pummeling the frozen lake. She struck it with all her might, weeping as she realized that nothing she had done had even made a dent. Don't go! Don't go!!! Her fingers clawed furiously as soon as her mother was no longer in sight, until--

tchk.

There was a sharp ringing in her ears, forcing her to stumble backwards onto her rump and lift her hands to examine them. The nails of some of her fingers had been chipped backwards, barely hanging on by threads of flesh. The ringing in her ears grew louder, louder, until she couldn't even hear herself screeching in pain.

---

The subtle light of day seeped into Halla's nightmare. Her eye fluttered open as she woke and sat up from the willow tree she leaned against. She didnt mean to doze off, but she could never find the urge to sleep at night. Thankfully, no dreams haunted her during the day. However, it was the dream from the night before that lingered in her mind and she couldn't shake the thought of her mother being in such terrible pain and... doing nothing to help herself. And she wondered, why now was she having these feelings of remorse and... why did this make Halla miss her?

The girl frowned and glanced down at her hands, stretching and wiggling her digits and gazing at her palms. No use in dwelling on it, she supposed. She was here now, in Gemini, and this was where she would stay. Drawing in a short breath through her nose, she reached across to grab a green apple from the pile of snacks she had gathered and bit into it, chewing thoughtfully. She found strange comfort in the gentle waves of the tree's branches, allowing only little blinks of sunlight to filter into her new haven. The shadows beneath the willow were beautiful and soothing, so it was no wonder that she had drifted into a brief slumber. But she had found interesting things beneath it, and she wasn't done sketching them.

Her legs gathered beneath her in a crisscross and she placed the half eaten apple in the small space between her legs as she snatched up her pile of thick parchment paper and charcoal. Looking up, she could see that the canine skull she had set in the patch of flowers before her was undisturbed. She let out a sigh of relief, grateful that she hadn't kicked it and fractured it in any way while she was napping. She wasn't the biggest believer in spirits, but she certainly didn't want to disrespect whatever animals passed here. The remains seemed to be placed here deliberately, and whoever did so must have been very fond of them when they were alive. Halla bit her lip in concentration as she sketched, eyes flicking upward intermittently to check her lines and angles. Her art was not perfect, but she wanted to admire the nature of Gemini as much as she could. Minutes passed, and it was already beginning to help distract her from her worries.

[Akki]

The snow is gone, revealing new green shoots under the ice. Life clings so stubbornly, doesn't it? Not even the frost can kill everything forever, and places that bore gore, horror, oily tears that might never stop no matter how much time passes now sprout flowers. The skull in the center of Halla's artwork cradles a bed of little blue flowers, the petals delicate and soft under the willow. Under the teeth that guard their progress. They peek out through the eye sockets and gaps in the teeth, knocked loose by time. Do flowers dream? Do they realize the empty bones once held life so exuberant it rattled the world? It's such a sad loss of potential, but the flowers are probably just grateful nothing will step on them.

The snow is gone, but here is snow still traversing over Gemini's rolling hills. He is long in body, limb, and tail, a specter that makes no sound in the cushioned grasses. He had been watching the human woman while she slept, silvery eyes following her movements as he crept closer. Akki is not a coward, but he is cautious of new things, even ones that seem peaceful. Sometimes especially those. Appearing soft is a good technique, and he's seen it deployed several times over when he lived among red flowers instead of blue.

The girl is doing something with her hands. He's seen Gaven move his fingers expertly, crafting details the wolves and their kin couldn't dream of reaching. There's beauty in the clever wrist turns, the joints bending and twisting. It reminds him of a dance, and it's hard not to feel admiration for them. Eventually, curiosity overtakes his caution. He is a big monster, and he's certain he could over power her if he needed to. Boldness comes at a price; it's either recklessness or looking at people like they're maps to be solved and conquered. He's still not sure which is worse. Either way, he approaches her directly with his tail low, his head between his shoulders. Not a hair bristles.

"What are you doing?" asks a smooth voice, wintry and cold and a relic from a passed season. "Would you show me?"

[Halla]

"What are you doing?"

Halla gasped dramatically, nearly letting out a startled scream as she hugged her papers close to her chest, but stopped immediately as a rather elegant white creature appeared from behind the hanging branches of the old willow. Her muscles loosened, and she let herself relax as she realized it wasn't an animal that meant any harm. And it understood her.

She glanced around briefly, wondering if any of their friends were near. She looked back, staring curiously at the little horns on his head, but returned his gaze as she tried to answer his question in a way he would comprehend. "I'm... making this--" she gestured to the old canine skull laying peacefully in the bed of flowers and grass, then to the paper in her lap, "-- but on this. It's called art." Her gentle blue eye stared at him as she waited for a reaction or response, wondering how a sentient being like him could interpret something that a human created. You could not consume it, nor physically feel it, or use it for warmth or shelter. Rather, it was something primarily appreciated for beauty and power for bringing on emotions one could not begin to explain. Did wolves of Gemini know what that is like? Could they perceive things like she did?

"Would you show me?"

Halla gulped, her eye shifting from the strange wolf to the drawing she had attempted to make look nice. Well, I never said I was an expert but... "I can try. I'm not very good. It's something that takes years of practice." She scooted a little sideways to allow the other to come closer or sit beside her as she tried to provide an example. By doing so, she had already broken a crucial rule of drawing from life, which was to never shift your point of perspective while sketching. But of course, Halla was a child and self taught, so we can't expect her to be perfect from the get go. After all, tHeRe ArE nO rUlEs To ArT.

She glanced between the skull and the paper, making little markings as she went and looking at him from the corner of her eye occasionally (not so subtle since she only had the one). After a few moments, she had managed to make a tiny little blossom and its shadow creasing along one of the skull's fangs. The movements of her fingers were light but agile and with purpose. She looked at him and smiled. "See? It's hard, but it's fun. Do you wanna try?"

Picking up her charcoal, she snapped a piece off of it long enough for the canine to wield in his teeth or in his paw if that's what he was comfortable with. She doubted that a wolf could do it, but she was curious to see what he would do. Halla reached under her work in progress and slipped him a sheet of her paper, placing it below his feet with the charcoal on top and her half eaten apple in the corner (so it wouldn't blow away in the wind).

She stared, grinning at him, unafraid. "I'm Halla. Who're you?"

HELLO WELCOME TO MY WOLF ANATOMY TUTORIAL BY HALLA DO NOT STEAL PLS ANYWAY THE FIRST THING YOU WANNA DO IS DRAW A CIRCLE WITH A CROSS IN THE MIDDLE--

@Witch.

[Akki]

ooc: YIKES IM SO SORRY RUK

---

Her scream knocks his composure out the window. Legs splayed and mouth ajar like a spooked cat, the elegent monster becomes something ridiculous and worthy of only mockery. Akki is bad and this is his punishment, declared by the almighty above the volcanic plumes in the shape of a probably harmless human girl who is likewise probably mortal and not a god at all.

He clears his throat and fixes his posture, legs politely stilted beneath him and a cool, detached expression on his face that says he will deny what just happened at the cost of several murders. Instead, he leans forward to examine the girl's handiwork, at first unable to comprehend how the lines on the paper were supposed to equal to the skull under the tree. And then, like a bolt of lightning, he understands the picture and what it represents. The little square ears angle forward, his head tilting to the left, then to the right. She was... representing the skull, as he represents trap designs in the physical world and Saboro declared ferocity through red tattoos. The flowers arranged by the bone could be considered art too, since they meant something to the person who put them there.

"Ah," he says, tail lifting, sparing him slight dignity by not wagging. But not that much dignity. "Art. How curious. I've seen some do things like this, though I admit it's escaped meaning for me before."

She tells him it takes years of practice, and he takes a seat beside her as a diligent student, watching her like a hawk. A piece of paper is set before him and he comes to that white page with............. trepidation. This was weirdly more intimidating than life or death situations where he might get his throat ripped out or just, launched off a cliff by an irate Serrate. He lifts a paw, taking the charcoal (she may notice how his wrist twists, the toes bending in uncanny angles that could remind her of stumpy fingers), and though displeasure is visible on his face with how it stains his fur grey, he puts its tip to the center and... beGINS... his wolf macaroni art.

"Akki, a hellhound. You are human, yes?"

[Halla]

ooc; lmao no worries!

Halla hesitated, perplexed by his question, but quickly remembered he wasn't quite your everyday run of the mill canine. And, she supposed, she wasn't quite his everyday run of the mill packmate. "I-- yeah, I am. I guess you've never met one before?" she asked curiously, tilting her head at him. She was learning new things everyday. And what was a hellhound, exactly? Whatever they were, they were very interesting to look at indeed.

Long moments passed as she occasionally glanced at Akki before she could think of something else to say. How would one carry conversation with a hellhound? Despite herself, should she be scared right now? The girl just wasn't sure how to properly socialize with him and other packmates of Gemini. It was quite awkward, especially for a child of her unfortunate background. Making normal human friends was hard enough. Dogs were good. But any variation of that was purely intimidating at the very least. Come to think of it, Halla didn't have any friends beside her dog companions. How she missed them. She wished they could talk to her like Akki could.

She took an eager bite out of another apple in her snack pile and gulped it down, her eye darting back and forth between hellhound and the grass below her. Her fingers tapped rhythmically on her lap. She felt anxious to take a peak at what he had made so far, since she knew how irritating it felt to have a head looking over one's shoulder. Perhaps this was the time to make casual chitchat, even with the nagging feeling that this didn't feel ordinary at all.

"I, um, came to Gemini about a week ago. I'm sort of... new here. An elf named Gaven brought me." She paused. "I'd never met an elf before. Or a hellhound. I'm sorry if I'm quiet, this is just really... weird for me." Her hand brushed a lock of her red hair backwards and scratched her scalp, really absorbing what had occurred in the last month. "I mean, I'm actually sitting here talking to... a hellhound!" Her wrist flicked in a sort of "wouldya look at that" gesture, her hair falling back over her scarred eye as she pursed her lips. "It's just crazy. I didn't picture freedom like this." 

@Witch.

[Akki]

"Only Gaven. Supposedly one hid in my old home, but I did not meet them." He does not mention that the Saborian tattooer was probably a captive. That was a poor way to make friends, and Akki was more interested these days in positive interactions than terrible ones. He was tired.

But not too tired that he couldn't make a cartoonish replica of a Prince's skull. The eye sockets are too big, skewed, and the teeth are too small. He glares down at his handiwork (pawdiwork?), looking between it and Halla's sketching, and is torn between thinking art is stupid and feeling competitive. This is how you get into expensive art school, Akki. Being really angry.

He sighs, passing the paper to the girl, though the perk of his ears betray interest.

"Were you a prisoner?"

[Halla]

"Huh... Old?" the girl muttered, almost have to herself after nodding. Did he run away too?

She found herself pondering once again of where her mother was, and if she was even thinking of her. Maybe things were better, easier now. She hoped it was for her at least. As for Halla, she wasn't so sure anymore, and she knew by now that she had just been avoiding the question ever since she came here. Was this life really easier than the one before?

She blinked, the flap of paper snapping her back to reality. She glanced down and saw that Akki had slided over his sketch, and she couldn't help but let out a delighted chortle and snatch it up to examine it. The little lines were scratchy and dense in some areas, but it was really cute. Halla wasn't really expecting the ominous looking canine would even attempt it. She mostly just thought it would be funny and adorable.

It was only a short moment before he spoke again, and her grin quickly vanished.

"Prisoner?" She had never thought of it like that. But thinking about it now, she supposed she might have been. "Well, no... I--" Akki's sketch was lowered to her lap as the other hand brushed the back of her neck, feeling sweat and embarrassment creeping along her spine. Letting out a sigh, she gazed at him and clenched her teeth. "I can tell you, but you have to promise you won't tell anyone." Her eyes scanned the woods beyond Akki, as if she was keeping an eye out for anyone passing by who could possibly hear them.