Paranoia [Draco]

[Freyja]

[bg=d3d6e3][atrb=width,500,true][atrb=border,0,true] There was an unmistakable chill in the air, the first sign that summer's reign was over. Autumn was finally here; she could see it in the way the flowers were dying and in the way the leaves were becoming tinted with reds, oranges, yellows, and browns, dotting the green trees with a wide array of warm colors. Though the turning of the leaves was as natural and expected as breathing, the change still frightened her. A shiver traveled down the length of her spine, not from the falling temperature but from the icy cold fear massing within her like an iceberg, a stone of gathering frost in the bottom of her already-frozen heart. Soon the scenery would mirror the snowstorm that raged inside her, soon winter would blanket the grassy grounds with white sheets and the sun's heat would be close to useless. And of the winter months, she was afraid. Like a tidal wave, memories crashed into her, overwhelming her with visions of the past. Wasn't it bad enough that her dreams were haunted by the days already over? What injustice had she committed to be reprimanded by her younger years? Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the bloody, torn bodies of her loved ones. The image of Rykale's dead body, a picture burned into her mind forever, taunted her the most. He had stolen into her heart, her body, and her soul, had reached into her very essence and touched her, captured her, and most of all, he had loved her. Thinking of her mate, remembering her times with him and Hache Hi, and recalling her litter of three with Ry reminded her of just how bitter her existence was, how solitary and deprived she had become since the second massacre. She couldn't even remember how long it had been. The days blended with the nights into seamless hours; the seasons merged together, and the weather all seemed to be cold, rigid, and unforgiving. It was all the same. It was all lonely. She sighed, her breath forming a nebula of heated water vapor as it billowed into the frigid atmosphere. It would most likely be wise to keep moving, she told herself, grime-encrusted, dirty gray paws dancing across the earth's surface; best to keep the blood flowing in her constricted veins, best to keep her limbs from freezing up, and to keep her mind from ceaselessly tormenting her anymore. With a glance skyward, she noted the position of the sun, at its peak in the middle of the vast blue expanse above. Was it really only the afternoon? A rumble in her stomach confirmed it. As the temperature plummeted, food had become more and more scarce, and she had never been that great of a hunter to begin with. She was small, lithe, built to be a fast-moving fighter. But her bedraggled, unwashed pelt, once silver, now washed into an almost disgusting stone color, clung mercilessly to her sides, her ribs almost protruding the filthy skin. Where was she, anyway? The sounds of a stream flowing brushed her ears and with narrowed, aquamarine eyes she glanced around. She was surrounded by the forest, though she had no recollection of entering the swath of trees. Had this happened when she'd been assaulted by the visions, or had she just unconsciously followed the sounds of the river? Blinking, her nostrils flared, the various scents wafting into her nose, tickling the delicate membranes, and she sneezed at the wash of different smells. And she still had no damn clue where she was. This place stank of wolves, other wolves, and the thought of others being around petrified her. It was all Freyja could do to keep from running.

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[-{ Ðracowulf }-]

[bg=0d100e][atrb=width,500,true][atrb=border,0,true] Destiny likes to play favorites. It's the ones she loves that she lets alone. . . . The changing of the seasons always held wonder for her - a strange sense of something more than herself. But she had not been alone then. At least, not as alone. Loneliness and joy and war and peace; all things separated by little more than a few degrees of perspective. Hers had been skewed for a long time, and she was just beginning to wonder at it, just scratching the surface of how veiled her eyes were. But the truth was not allowed to dazzle her gradually. The world she thought she knew was ripped away, and it left her reeling, tumbling like a stone dislodged from a high place, flipping end over end in endless acceleration. She had felt the shove, but the fall was a blur. Damien could do little more than grapple with the boulders that blasted away at her shell. . . . As entranced as a pup with its first gawking gaze into its own reflection, her lanky frame stood motionless beneath the drooping bough of a pine, staring up through the needles and into the clean-cut sky. Autumn, she thought, trying to stitch memories, voices, and memories of voices together with the scents and sounds that flooded her senses. It all seemed so overwhelming to her, to process it on her own. She pressed her eyelids shut over golden eyes, then set her gaze on the forest floor. In the autumn, her thoughts pressed back as her light gray paws disturbed the fallen foliage. "Watch your back." Her mouth finished the lesson of its own accord. There were so many lessons to remember, so many gifts of life, so many pieces of him to hold on to. She had already begun to forget the nuances of his scent - though it had once lingered over her just as he had. But... What color were his eyes..? . . . There. A sound. She froze stark-still. Her ears stood erect atop her mottled gray head; the darker tearstains around her eyes made their round, golden surface seem all the larger. It took her heart crawling up into her throat for her to realize she was holding her breath, waiting for something. The place was too full of old scents and new, too populated by blood, sweat, and tears - her indiscriminate, untested nose could make no sense of it all. Oh, where are you now? - it was her heart that pleaded, ignoring the will of her brain, and pushed its way out as a thought and a pained, childish whimper. It was too late to stop it - but by then she did not want to. If there had ever been a strength she had over him, for all he gave her... she alone cried tears for the both of them. . . . "Just move, silly pup." Her voice would be his too. "It's just the wind. The stream. There's nothing. Keep moving, Damien," she told herself. Light-socked paws flecked with mud, she leapt across the chilling stream from stone to stone, balance challenged, claws splayed. Her tail splashed into the water as she landed on the opposite bank. Cross a stream, enter another world, she thought distantly. She thought herself so very wise, so tried and waylaid by destiny and fate, so mature beyond her years. Yet she knew herself to be a fraud - a child, a pup still in the guise of a young female. She had no concept of how much danger she could be in, no real understanding of the fears she had been spared, or the tragedy that left her in his paws... paws that abandoned her. She could not understand that. It would take time and a greater awakening. . . . An awakening like a stranger. Like a sleep-walker, she had pushed through the shrubbery, unconcerned and untouched by reality. And there she was, Damien, wanderer alone, foolishly set before a strange female in the forest. There was little instinct in her - only innocence and a fear indoctrinated by a life of wandering under his wing. Reflexively her head sank and tail pulled close to her haunches. Her coat fell flat over her body - perhaps a nice touch, but nothing more than the evidence of the shock and trepidation that came over her. She swallowed hard, unsure of what to do, having come upon the unkempt female with the grace of a wild boar. There were no words he had taught her to escape a place such as this, no guidance he had offered. She was on her own, and all she could do was stand and stare at the blue eyes that transfixed her. Where do I go from here? Someday you'll understand.

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[Freyja]

[bg=d3d6e3][atrb=width,500,true][atrb=border,0,true] Carried upon a gentle zephyr was a new scent that did not belong to the surrounding topiary, nor did it originate from the brushwood underfoot. The smell conveyed a sense of something more than mere foliage; this was the pheromone of something with locomotive capabilities, far more alive than any plant in the thicket of trees sheltering her. Inhaling deeply, she detected a hint of purity to the aroma, as if whatever it belonged to had yet to be perverted by age and experience, as she had been, even as a young pup. Her twisted, aberrant memories manifested, forcing her painfully empty stomach to churn in discomfort as she tried to remember if, once upon a time, she too had been naive. The knowledge that Kiba had always been there, looking over her shoulder, manipulating and using her since the beginning of her life made her mind cloud with doubt that she had ever been innocent; the dismal thought made her spirit fog under a veil of uncertainty. Ears pivoting, she listened for the telltale signs of something moving out and about. The sounds were easy for Freyja to distinguish from those of the stationary life of the forest. The crunch of fallen leaves; the gasping, labored pant; the snap of a twig; the slosh of displaced water from the nearby creek. Head swiveling in the direction of the harmony of sounds, she once more tried to determine what was out there. It was close enough for her to discern its scent - wolf. And the wolf was moving steadily closer to her current position. Adrenaline releasing into her bloodstream and mixing with burning fear as her anticipation grew, the she-wolf's body became stiff and rigid. How long had it been since her last encounter with another of her kind? She'd spent her recent existence dodging and avoiding the eye-sights of her own species, fleeing with her tail between her hind legs from the thought of conversing with someone after such a long span of silence. Did she even have a voice left over with which to speak? Hearing a voice, the breath caught in her throat, followed by what seemed to be every organ in her system in a mad rush of vomit. Bowing over and retching, she threw up the meager contents of her stomach, mostly just stinging acid, and stumbled away from the bile. Her head spun, light as a feather and twirling in merciless circles, toying cruelly with her equilibrium, and her mind felt as if it were stuffed with sheep's wool. Was she sick? Praying that she wasn't, Freyja steadied herself at last, lifting lackluster turquoise eyes to watch the advancing figure. 'No, no, no!' she thought in desperation, her terror widening her eyes and her legs inflexible, as if made of pure concrete. There was no way to move, no method of escape, and should the stranger launch an assault, she would be at a loss and, in the worst case scenario (or is it best case?) she would lose her life. Or, perhaps the other wolf would go easy on her and scare her off? One could only hope and pray that mercy would be displayed come the impending battle that she all but convinced herself was sure to come. Shock lanced through her still-unyielding form when the stranger lowered her skull, the light playing games with the dark shape and making the foreign she-wolf look far more virgin than she had originally concluded. It took longer for her to realize that the transient had tucked her tail beneath her posterior. As much as Freyja wanted to prick up her unclean ears and tilt her head, she was still unable to move, unable to command her limbs to listen to her. All she could manage was an apprehensive blink of the eyes, her anxiety skyrocketing from being in such close proximity to someone else, someone new. Mighty heavens, what had she gotten herself into? Would it have been better to remain behind in Hache Hi and let Kiba reunite her with her dead lover? Or was that just the panic talking? Incapable of differentiating the two apart, the tiny wolf simply stared blankly at saffron irises, pulled into a reverie that she had to struggle to break. What must this she-wolf think of her? It was bad enough that Freyja was an intruder, not to mention one from countless leagues away, but to be a loner in such an ungainly semblance must have struck the alien wolf as far more threatening that she'd have been as Evita. But Eva was gone, buried so deep within her that nothing could ever resurface the estranged identity. Struggling, she glanced down at herself. Her fur, packed with dirt and smut, an obscene display, covered the pine cone embedded in her chest and the twigs caught in matted knots along her coat, hiding behind snarls of repelling gray fluff the remains of her year of aimless, erratic wanderings. She was a vagrant, a rogue, homeless, weakened by famine, deprived of liquids, and out of practice conversing with another wolf. Her fate had been sealed when she first stepped foot into the woods. It came as a surprise when she found herself able to swallow air, her throat scratchy, her mouth parched and dry. The rushing of far away water taunted her, and the more she listened to the sound, the more dehydrated she felt. Spew threatened to rise but settled before it could make an exodus, and she gulped at the penetrating atmosphere, searching for her voice. Finally, words spilled from her mouth, so hoarse from lack of use that it scored the roof of her mouth and her arid tongue. "F . . . F . . . Fre- Frey-" she gasped, jolted by the desperation in her tones and the way that it felt when the name, unspoken for so long, stumbled haphazardly from behind black lips. Giving a hacking cough, the she-wolf tried again. "Freyja," she wheezed at last, spittle following the spluttered title. It hurt to speak, it hurt to breathe after talking, and her thirst still wasn't quenched. "N-no harm," Freyja urged passionately, hoping the other wolf understood, hysteria climbing. She tried again. "Friend." With her entire body and soul, she hoped the point had been made.

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[-{ Ðracowulf }-]

[bg=0d100e][atrb=width,500,true][atrb=border,0,true] Destiny likes to play favorites. It's the ones she loves that she lets alone. . . . A peculiar breed of panic tied her thoughts into inextricable knots. She was stuck taking in the sight of the creature before her: matted fur, dirty, and carrying half the forest with it; distant eyes, and an underfed frame. Only a few degrees separated Damien's fate from the spectral wolf that stood before her. So easily could their roles in the great spectacle of life have been the same. But Damien did not consider this. She could only feel the strangeness and uncertainty of the foreign face staring back at her. The acrid sting of bile hit Damien's nose then, and her eyes wandered briefly - and then the confusion registered at last. . . . "Trust no one." His voice echoed back to her as it often did, and her ear tingled, as if he was whispering there, the gentle motion of his breath tickling her fur. "But I trust you," she had told him, with that puppish grin playing across her face. She could still remember the strangeness of his silence, the illegible expression on his face - a strange combination of joy and pain. He had never explained the realities of the world to her - the truth of how a lone brute might gaze at her and why, the harsh effects of insanity and loneliness on wolves meant to live with their brothers and sisters. It was only ever nameless dangers and faceless terrors; he only ever spoke of "unspeakables." Secrets he protected her from, warned her of, but never helped her to understand. What did she know, really? Why did he care - if he had? No, of course he cared. The thought managed to solidify in her mind. There was a reason. A reason he saved me. A reason he hid me, raised me. A reason he didn't tell me. A reason he... he... Damien could not force the thought through to completion. She stared at the wolf that stared back at her, making her feel small and foolish. She wondered, what had he seen in her, the day he found her - a pup cowering and pathetic? . . . There had been mercy there, in her youth. Mercy Damien would never understand. She did not know what came before - only the vague secrets he told her; ethereal whispers, strangely omniscient tales of a father and a mother, of siblings, a tiny runt of the litter, and some cruel tragedy. She had asked him repeatedly, as any young one will, what it was. "Death," he would say sullenly, distantly; "and destiny." Then they would fall into silence, and her young mind would be left to grapple with the intangible complexities of one infinitely cruel syllable: death. Damien secretly came to call all sad things by this cold, whispering title. The long, cold nights she spent alone, deposited beneath the cavernous roots of a tree while he hunted to feed her ravenous belly - those moments of terrifying loneliness, when she would convince herself he would not return - those nights were death. The anger she saw in his eyes, and the chilling rumble of his growl when he would order her to "run," as his eyes drilled into the gaze of a wet-lipped brute - when she would sprint off obediently, remain alone for hours, until he would return bloodied and sullen, and they would never return that way - that sound was death. The day he turned toward her, his wrath mixed with fear and pain, the day he chased her - that day, oh yes, above all, that day was death. . . . And death was what Damien called the look in the wolf's eyes. The coarse growl of words caught her by surprise, and she flinched, her ears flicking back tight against her skull. What was she expecting? It took a few moments of confusion before the sound registered as speech, and despite the gravelly sound of it, Damien found a comfort there. Talking was not growling - and if it was not growling, then it was not, immediately, at least, intending harm. So her reasoning was, as Damien cocked her head towards the sound, daring to listen, desperately trying to put the whole picture together. Freyja... She is giving me her name? Damien continued to stare, incredulous. At his side, she had never given her name to any other creature - in fact, names had almost never been spoken between them. Somehow, she had come to believe that names held some kind of uncontrollable power, or some secret that she would forever be denied access to. . . . She had asked a question: "Who are we?" He had looked at her silently as they walked, but he did not answer for himself. "Your father's name was Damien," he had told her on a crisp fall morning. There had been no names between them, and she repeated the strange word, wondering what a "father" was, and what a strange creature a "name" must be. It took the entire afternoon for her to understand the concepts, to pry her protector's name from his own lips, and to realize she herself had no "name" to go by. "I want to be 'Dem' too," she had declared, unable to remember or pronounce the name of her father, taken by the terrible concept she called "death." And so it was - she became Damien and Dem, the daughter of her own name, the follower of a shadow named Ephram; but in all ways silent. She was untouchable for so long. No one said her name. No one, save him, had that power over her - and even he refused to wield it. . . . Damien watched the thick, sticky saliva flicked from Freyja's mouth, and flinched - though slightly less - at the dry sound of the wolf's cough. He had taught her some vague lesson of sickness, of rage and frothing mouths, but this was not that. Behind the veil of "death" in the female's eyes, Damien heard the outcry - a desperation that she had found in his eyes, but not near so silent. Damien's spindly legs quaked beneath her, inexplicably stuck somewhere between rushing to the aid of this strange wolf and running away in terror. "Friend." Damien knew the word as a face, as the warmth of a hulking body that had protected her. On the lips of the creature before her it seemed foreign and strange. But the words "No harm" stuck with her. I trusted you, Damien thought, a forepaw lifting slowly, as if on its own. I have to trust someone. . . . She breathed deeply the female's scent. It was hard for Damien to pick it out from the tangle of scents in the air, but this close, staring into those strange blue eyes, it was somehow easier. She nodded slowly as her paw touched the earth once more, a step closer to the strange figure. "No harm," Damien whispered, her own voice sounding raspy with anxiety and the unexpectedly low volume. She cleared her throat and licked her lips slowly, her head still low and uncertain. "No. No harm," she repeated with slightly more confidence. Her name stuck in her throat, wanting to escape, but some part of her trying to clutch it back. But she choked it out. "My name is... Damien." Where do I go from here? Someday you'll understand.

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[Freyja]

[bg=d3d6e3][atrb=width,500,true][atrb=border,0,true] It had been a chilly winter day when she had first arrived upon the loner lands back in Raynes territory. The ground had been plastered with at least two feet of snow, a thick, crunchy white overlay that sparkled in the cold sunlight like a glittering diamond. When she had first stepped onto the snow, she had broken through an icy patina that was solid yet thin and immediately sank so that she was belly-deep in the stuff. Her first thought had been that she was going to drown in the pallid powder or freeze to death first. Off to the side there had been a deep laughter, a deep baritone chiming with amusement, and then there had been a voice: "First time in the snow?" It was hard to believe that she still remembered the first thing he'd said to her. And what had she done? Normally the memory brought a knowing smirk to her face, but now, as she pictured herself, a dark, dusty cloud of gray, reaching out and attacking a male wolf so much larger than her, she wanted to cry. She had flippantly switched from shamelessly flirting to striking maliciously, first lulling him into a false sense of security and then shattering the protective pretense with fangs dripping with saliva. And every step of the way he had played along like a trooper, first diving into the role of being a sweet-talking charmer, then suddenly on the defensive. Not once, she recalled, has his hackles risen, nor had he actually growled. He had, of course, called her a crazy bitch, but by then she had already known what exactly she was. And it wasn't a crazy bitch. The days spent with him and reeled her away from her own coat of protective armoring, the aegis she'd formed over what to her had been a lifetime shattering as slowly, Rykale reached into her and dragged out her soft inner core. And all the while she allowed him this foible, this need to fumble for something real inside her that she was convinced didn't exist, wouldn't exist, had probably never existed, because she knew he needed this just as she had needed to know he wasn't about to purge the last threads of her withering sanity. They hadn't courted each other directly, meeting through sheer coincidence and keeping their interactions solely platonic. They had been celibate friends, nothing more, nothing less, despite her misgivings on their first meeting. But still they needed each other; he needed her to need him, and she needed him to keep her from losing her mind and being. It was on those grounds that they had discovered more about one another than believed possible, more about themselves and about life and hell, even death as the two slowly began to love. It was love like they never knew before, not merely deep and passionate but so intoxicating that neither knew what to do without it, so inebriating that they both fell into its throes without any verbal or even mental desire to do so. And now they had both paid for it. Rykale had been released, let free from the tortures of hell on earth. And Freyja? She had regressed from what had taken her so long to evolve into, and now what remains was a cracked shell of her former self. Unable to speak, to have normal interaction, unable to live as she had done with her lover. The words Damien whispered seemed to be in an alternate language. Her muscles were locked tight, her breath short and shallow, the panic boiling and percolating in her empty stomach. Nausea ripped at her insides, her throat clogged with vomit that wouldn't come, and words seemed to be an impossibility that she longed for so badly. This wolf, this Damien, had promised her no harm, that which she had begged for, pleaded for, so badly needing the reassurance that she would not die here and now, and still she was trying to retreat into herself before she could be mortally wounded again. Chest clenching, she tried to take a step back, the advancing wolf striking fear in her racing heart, but all she could manage to do was fall to the ground in crippling anxiety. Wide, imploring eyes met Damien's and for a heartbeat, she felt safe, shielded and protected from danger. Whoever this was, she was far younger than Freyja had ever been, far more innocent then she'd have ever dreamed of, but even Freyja had returned to puphood now. It was like living a new life, relearning the lessons life had thrown at her so long ago, still trying to figure how to walk and talk, inept to heal herself and endeavor through the pain. It did hurt, it still hurt, even after four full seasons of blocking the anguish out, it was still there. And as she croaked her name again, reassuring Damien that that was who she was, the horror and agony burned through, two syllables encumbered by emotion. She gasped, "No Kiba?" There was no way he had followed her this far, no way he could pop through the bushes unexpectedly and rip her throat out, but some kernel of paranoia inside her refused to believe the rationality that he wasn't coming. It didn't even occur to her that there was no possibility that this she-wolf even knew who he was, and she begged to be told, she implored, "Kiba gone?" Yes, she had returned to being a suckling cub at her mother's stomach, taking her first look around the world. She had reverted into ignorance and stupidity, sticking to rudimentary phrases that even a yearling would have progressed past, mind adulterated and soul mangled until she was unknowing and afraid of all things around her. Four years of experience surged through her mind, but all she could remember was right now, how weak and scared she was, is, and how alone she felt as she trembled under a confuse yellow gaze. She couldn't run, her body had made that quite clear, but somehow, she didn't want to, somehow, she felt connected to Damien, maybe through pain, maybe through oblivion, most likely through abeyance. "Out of danger," she whispered shakily. Yes, safe - but where? She had no idea where her travels had taken her, especially in her current shelled state. Maybe Damien knew. "Forest - where?"

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[-{ Ðracowulf }-]

[bg=0d100e][atrb=width,500,true][atrb=border,0,true] I have no fear of drowning, It's the breathing that's taking all this work. . . . Though she had no word for it in the strange scope of her lexicon, Damien felt entirely alien. She froze again, aware enough that the mass of flesh, bone, fur, and foliage was uncomfortable with Damien's proximity - a fact that, quite frankly, did not much bother the uncertain young wolf. Damien blinked dumbly in response to Freyja's broken but emphatic speech. What is... "kiba?" She couldn't even begin to consider the possibility of multiple languages, but somehow Damien began to wonder if this wolf knew how to speak properly at all. She half opened her mouth to ask a seemingly impertinent question when it finally clicked - "Kiba gone." Kiba. It was not a thing, a creature, or some scrap of insane rambling nonsense - but a name. Damien remained that way, jaw dangling off-kilter, silently staring, one mirrored thought pounding on the inside of her skull. Ephram gone. . . . It was early summer - early enough still for the nights to be cold. No clouds were in the sky to hide the stars or the empty blackness of the new moon. "Stay here," he had said, depositing her firmly but not unkindly in an abandoned badger den. He had made explicitly certain of its "abandoned" status, warning the little runt of the dangers of what she understood as "badder." She had whined pathetically in her tiny, high-pitched voice, begging him - "Stay!" He had pushed his cool, wet nose at her, forcing her back into the recess of the burrow. She remembered he had reprimanded her harshly - but Damien's memory chose only to record the reasoning that had finally prevailed over the tiny pup: "If I stay, you will stay hungry. Which do you want more?" The pup's whimpers had quieted then, and he took his chance, disappearing into the night. Her young eyes could not discern his dark coat from the murky blackness, and she retreated deeper into the cavern of soil. . . . The memory stung her. But it was not the fear that she remembered, of being left alone for the entire night, that hurt. It was the way she had allowed him to leave. "Which do you want more?" His voice echoed back to her. She had chosen the idea of a full belly over his presence - and she chose it over and over again for the two years he had been with her. She had taken what he had to give, what he offered, what he sacrificed for - and ignored the giver of the gifts she so readily devoured. Had she managed to bury this thought, this guilt, in the months since he had chased her away? Oh yes, she had buried it, locked it up behind reasons that seemed more pleasurable. She could not touch it, this notion that it was she who had chased him. . . . Freyja's emotions were not guilt, not hope. "Danger" - that was the principal word in Damien's vocabulary. Reflexively she shrank back and looked right then left then behind, sniffing the air desperately - but uselessly. She could barely untangle her own scent from Freyja's, let alone pick out any subtle note of another presence lying in wait. Damien relaxed in increments, returning her eyes to Freyja. Tentatively, she sighed and nodded; "Yes, safe. I hope so... I... I mean, I think so." The damp, dark tip of her tail twitched - the most sure-fire tell of her self-deception. She was about as confident in her own abilities as a hare in the jaws of a wolf was sure to see the next sunrise. To her credit, Damien knew her own telling habit - thanks to many laughingly harsh reminders from her once companion. She took her cue from Freyja, what cues there were to be had, and sat down promptly, wrapping her long tail around her haunches. . . . Damien wondered about the creature before her. How long had she been alone? What was the spirit behind the strange name she had given? Had her companion abandoned her too? Was she one of the strange things Ephram once spoke of, an "outcast?" Damien had only so many words at her disposal, only the words in the stories he had been willing to tell her - a collection she somehow always felt was only the tiniest of fractions compared to the truth of what he knew and experienced. Damien knew almost nothing of pack life, instead knowing only the title of "alpha," which had been taught to her as being inextricably linked with danger, and therefore Damien's catch-all title, "death." Family was altogether foreign. Ephram had spoken to her of fathers, mothers, and pups - but each were little more than words to Damien, ethereal spirits consumed by death. Truth be told, Damien was ultimately unsure of whether or not everyone had "mother" and "father." To her, both were invisible - perhaps gods of creation. Pups were things found in the forest and raised by strange protectors. Then abandoned. . . . "Where?" Damien cringed. The question was one she somehow learned how to ask, but never to answer. "Here," was the only answer she had ever been given. Place had never mattered to her or her guide. "Here" had always been in his shadow; the location of "stay here" when he would leave her to bring back sustenance for them both; the place of death when he demanded, "get out of here." No matter how many times she had asked as a pup, "Where are we going," his answer would invariably be "There. Where you can't see, just behind the thing you can." The concept of "where" was never a stable thing, and so, rarely an important thing. The only time it mattered was when he would be alarmed by a scent, some tree or stone he would sniff, then wide-eyed, push her away - and then the place was "not here"; a pack land, forever forbidden to her. . . . And so she had no real answer for the wolf's question. She offered the only information that had ever mattered to her: "Here, yes, the forest. We are here in the forest. By the stream. Yes, here." She was already emulating the broken syntax of her audience. Damien donned a feeble smile, trying desperately to be kind while not seeming too foolish. Only she did not know the truth of how foolish she was. Do you know what I mean when I say, "I don't want to be alone?"

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[Freyja]

[bg=d3d6e3][atrb=width,500,true][atrb=border,0,true] The lucid way Damien replied sent confusing plunging into the mangy wolf's mind, forcing her head to spin and dizziness to tingle in her limp extremities. She knew now, for it had been verified, that there was no assurance that the two were safe; Kiba could burst from a shrub at any moment and neither of them would have seen it coming. Not with Freyja too shell-shocked to scent her own excrement and Damien too mentally young to know how to test the still air. Shifting against the undergrowth, hearing it rustle at her minuscule movements, and lifted her empty gaze to meet the other's. Impending danger could be waiting around the corner, and they'd never know it. But hey, at least they wouldn't die alone, right? The thought gave her no comfort and it even chilled her a little. She may not be physically alone, but in spirit, she was a barren field, not even her insanity there to keep her company. Devastation at its strongest, most vicious. All she was was a victim. Shakily, with sharp pains of protest jack-knifing through her body, the she-wolf stood, her sides heaving with the effort and her eyes screwed up in concentration. It was an uncomfortable chore to keep herself erect, her eyes level with Damien's, but it was better than cowering on the ground like a worthless piece of fodder. As she rose, she considered what she knew about their location. She had no references to tell if they were near any packlands - the forest was far too stuffed with floral smells - and no way to tell if there were other loners about. That meant that all she knew was they were around trees and water. Which told her absolutely nothing except that Damien liked answering in roundabout ways, or had no clue how to respond otherwise. So basically, her knowledge was limit to the obvious: they were in a forest and there was a stream. At least she knew they sky was blue. Glancing skyward, she realized it was coated in gray clouds. Damnit. Slowly, her confidence was building. Had Damien wanted to hurt her, she was sure it would have happened by now. With a trembling breath, she rasped, "Safe here," as if to explain to the shadowy gray wolf that she would exact no harm on the wolf. "Food?" Freyja asked, her emptied stomach tormenting her with famine. "Freyja hunt. You hunt. Eat together." Had she once really been able to speak full sentences? It was difficult to remember, but it had been true. Maybe with time, she'd be cognitive once more. Maybe. ooc;; -stabs post- x.x

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[-{ Ðracowulf }-]

[bg=0d100e][atrb=width,500,true][atrb=border,0,true] I have no fear of drowning, It's the breathing that's taking all this work. . . . Damien fidgeted, shifting her weight from one side to the other, as she watched Freyja. She couldn't shake the feeling of strange fascination. It marked a collection of firsts for Damien: the first conversation with someone other than Ephram (if it could indeed be called a conversation), the first adult female she had ever really seen, and the first time she had ever exchanged names with someone. It was turning out to be a fairly big day for her already, and it was almost certain the surprises would keep on coming - Damien didn't want to miss a beat of it. . . . "Safe." Freyja having said it, declaratively, somehow made it feel a little more real. Being another one of those things Damien knew only in terms of a now absent presence, she could not be entirely convinced of its veracity - but she sensed a shared desire between herself and the strange female, and Damien was more than willing to accept that for what it was. She dipped her head slightly and tried her luck at a sheepish smile, letting the tip of her pinkish tongue loll out over her black lips. And then it came - the proverbial, eternal dilemma: "food." . . . Damien's smile relaxed into a rather saggy expression, and as if on cue her stomach growled obnoxiously, as if to say, "Ah yes, I'm still here. You can't run from me." For the first time since she stumbled upon Freyja, Damien took her eyes off of the wolf's blue irises. She could think of a handful of cardinal sins she had committed since meeting Freyja. You're probably somewhere, laughing and correcting me, aren't you? she thought bitterly. "Let's list the rules," you'd say. "One: never approach another wolf -" especially not without you. "Two: never look a wolf in the eyes -" except you. "Three: never give your name to another wolf." And of course... "Four: always keep your belly full." I suppose you couldn't have taught me better. I'm just... Damien sighed, and looked back at Freyja out of the corner of her gaze. Useless? "Choice." She whined a note of indecision. You'd say, "Choose," and that'd be the end of it. Damien's face felt hot with embarrassment, and she slung her ears back. Even as she stood up she seemed somehow even smaller, lankier, and almost gaunt. "I uh... Don't know how much help I can be." She stared at the ground and turned over a dried leaf with a snort. Her latest meals had consisted primarily of carrion and what small rodents she managed to outpace in a clearing - loners' scraps - but hunting as a team was a great rarity, even when Ephram had been with her. Damien never had the chance to master it. . . . "But I am hungry," Damien said sheepishly, "And I do want to help. I've been alone a while and -" Damien clamped her words shut. Being around another wolf, someone who could see and hear her, made her suddenly and acutely aware of how often Damien's thoughts and spoken words tended to blur together. Wandering alone, there was not much difference between something said and something thought, but here, with an actual audience, it made her recognize the distinction. She wanted desperately to trust someone. But she could trust this strange, dirty wolf with fractured communication skills only so far. She had to remind herself, again, in terms she knew: She's not Ephram. Damien flicked her tail. "I haven't really hunted with someone before. Normally I... I eat squirrels." Do you know what I mean when I say, "I don't want to be alone?"

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