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Post by Deleted on Jun 25, 2014 23:35:07 GMT -5
Honor.
There was a twisted word. Twisted like every thinning branch that Aurix displaced. There was a word that snapped and twisted like every crisping leaf that his snowy paws shattered to a million pieces. These thoughts rang through his head as the lean male spotted an elaborate insect enjoying its midday feast on the arm of an aging trunk.
Honor is a glass shield.
Propping back on his back paws, Aurix watched with a cocked head as the oblivious bug chewed on, and like a drunken bear he leaped into the air and dragged his muzzle across at the little critter. Landing with very little grace, he found himself lying in the thorny blanket of brush that he had previously evaded vigorously.
Even glass will stop a lost soul.
Aurix had never felt quite so betrayed by his faith as when he had waited in silence for Venec to return. His brother had never returned after the argument that they had. Morals. A touchy subject.
But he could still feel the silence
The silence that had watched him wait for days. The silence that had listened to him explain to his father that his brother was gone and it was his own fault. That he was so sure he would come back.
I've never been a liar before.
It was always his understanding that doing and saying the right thing would lead a wolf to the right places. This was not the right place for him, but now his family seemed to think that it was.
And where was here?
Away.
Aurix laid back into his bed of thorns and let his gaze drop to the crown of a tree that sat on the throne of a clearing that he had so blindly circled for an hour.
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Post by Cascade on Jun 26, 2014 0:23:41 GMT -5
Chandler shivered lightly as a cold breeze blew across her body. Though beautiful, her iridescent coat hadn't yet thickened for winter, and the autumn air was getting colder. It would be less than a month until the first snow, she estimated, and she would need to put on a layer of fat if she was going to get through it without freezing her tail off. That was the problem with eating nothing but rabbits; you got barely more energy from the meat as you spent chasing the thing. It was nothing she hadn't dealt with before. Still, it would be nice not to have to go it alone.
Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted when she stepped into the clearing. She hadn't really been looking where she was going, and it was only the sudden disappearing of trees around her that caught her attention. Looking around, she sighed in relief when she saw the Adoette tree. Thank goodness she hadn't wandered onto some evil pack's lands; there were two in the forest that she knew of and she was more than happy to steer far clear of both of them. The Adoette tree was familiar to her, though, and she had spent many relaxing afternoons sitting in its shade and trying to interpret its carvings.
It would seem, though, that she was not alone today. A male was sitting in the clearing...sitting on a thorny bush, it looked like. Chandler's brow crinkled with concern.
"Hey! You don't need any help, do you?"
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2014 0:50:47 GMT -5
Somewhere he must have screwed up. Every fiber of his being argued it so. And if not.. Oh the lies he was told. The lie he had lived and in many ways was still attempting to resuscitate.
Good wolves do the right thing. He repeated. So why did it seem like such a pup's tale? It was a simple concept, and perhaps life had never been so simple as the world that he had been living in. Aurix's thoughts were interrupted suddenly by a voice. A voice that, strangely, he was incredibly relieved to hear. It wasn't his voice, and it wasn't silence. And so it was to him, beautiful. He eagerly held onto every word, and hoped that it wouldn't end.
Until of course, he began listening.
"Hey! You don't need any help, do you?"
He felt a familiar glowing redness under his pelt as he remembered that he was in fact lying in a bed of needles. It wasn't pain that was pressing through his skin, however, it was embarrassment.
"No! Of course not!" He threw back swiftly, and began struggling violently to roll over and out of the dangerous nest. As he did, a new assortment of tormenting daggers found a home in his belly and he clasped his teeth together in shock, holding back a cry of anguish.
Worst of all was the idea that this was a public display. As he scrambled to his paws and eventually rose up without confidence, he was sure that her purple eyes had been enjoying every second of his show. Those purple eyes which he avoided as he once again opened his mouth.
"I was just... hunting." He assured her as his eyes trailed from her to the ground, and eventually back up to the thorns that he had come from. Gradually Aurix recalled that lying in a bush was in fact, not a viable excuse, and his entertaining was most likely at its pathetic peak.
"It's a strategy." He added feebly.
If there was ever a time that he had wished to disappear and leave no trace, Aurix decided that it was this moment in the universe. Yes, he had been playing with a bug when he discovered the bush. But, it was something much greater that had left him so exposed and nervous. For the first time he had asked himself a question that he simply could not answer.
He permitted himself one shameless analysis of the newcomer. She was thinly built, and an assortment of blues and purples that his eyes followed until he realized that he was staring and promptly pretended to survey the clearing.
Somewhere inside of him a glimmer of adolescence must have been so very content.
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Post by Cascade on Jun 26, 2014 1:26:24 GMT -5
Chandler blinked as he flopped around at the sight of her. She felt as though she had maybe walked in on some sort of strange alone time this wolf was having. His embarrassment at being seen was second only to her embarrassment at seeing him, and she could think of nothing else to do but stand awkwardly until he managed to get himself on his feet
"Hunting, huh?" she said, raising an eyebrow at his meager excuse, "Well, I mean this in the best possible way but your hunting strategy...kind of sucks." She couldn't resist the dig, even though he was a total stranger, but she figured it would be too cruel to make him explain himself so she did him the favor of quickly changing the subject.
"Well, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I intend to make your acquaintance, since you're the first wolf I've seen in three days and you don't seem evil. Slightly crazy maybe, but not evil." She laughed at her own joke, "As for me, I don't belong to any pack or anything, but I've lived in the valley all my life. The name's Chandler."
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2014 1:53:26 GMT -5
Strangely Aurix didn't feel that he had yet gotten to an opportune time to tell her about why he was here in the first case. She didn't ask, though. That was something. Who knew, maybe they would be able to just avoid that topic entirely.
"...your hunting strategy...kind of sucks"
His heart fell, rather efficiently, back within the confines of what little dignity he had left. Yet despite his own embarrassment and his disgust at his own embarrassment, he felt the need to push on and defend himself.
"Well see I.." No.
"A deer was..." Not that either.
"You wouldn't understand how...." What have I done?
He wasn't entirely sure how much of his sudden rambling had materialized into audible communication, but he was almost certain that he saw a flicker of pity in those purple eyes by the time he was through. Not exactly a trophy, but perception was key to enduring whatever he had just begun.
And this, coupled with the realization that she had chosen not to, at that moment shatter his confidence, he put on a new mask.
"You don't seem evil...Slightly crazy maybe, but not evil."
This time he was determined to play the game correctly.
"You never know of course!" He answered loudly with an unexpectedly large grin. Not exactly the projection he meant to triumphantly reclaim.
What the hell did I even just say? He wondered, almost aloud.
He had certainly never before been in so many different places at once. So it was decided, upon her next sentence, that he would return to the Aurix that had existed before he entered this clearing. No more games, no more memories.
"The name's Chandler."
"Aurix." He tried carefully, as though testing the water with a hesitant paw. This time he liked the temperature.
"Sorry for my confusion, you just caught me off guard, I think. I guess I've been out here alone for a while too."
Good wolves do the right thing..
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Post by Cascade on Jun 26, 2014 12:25:10 GMT -5
Chandler had to suppress a laugh as he dug himself deeper and deeper into his "hunting strategy" hole. It was pretty unfair of her, when she thought about it, because she was pretty sure she'd do the exact same thing if she sound herself in that situation. But the point was that it wasn't her, so she had to get her schadenfreude in while she could because she would probably be next.
"I don't normally hunt deer, so maybe you know something about them that I don't," she joked, then laughed awkwardly as he changed from seemingly loud and brash with his 'crazy' remark back to meek with his introduction. This guy was pretty interesting.
"I hope you don't get caught off guard often, I'd imagine it would get pretty exhausting for you." She nodded at his belly, where a few pesky thorns still clung, "Serious though, are you okay? You're kind of...bleeding, a little. It doesn't look serious, but you should maybe think of not doing that next time. It may be a bit cold, but it's still a nice day and you should be out enjoying it. Not that I'm, you know, telling you what to do. Except I kind of am, but you should do it anyway because it's clearly a better idea that sitting around in a thorny bush trying to somehow catch a deer."
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2014 14:18:27 GMT -5
There was, of course, a childish desire somewhere in him to just run off and hide somewhere. Yet, he had to remember that he was a grown wolf now, and he was probably too large and hopefully had enough pride left to not be capable of hiding in a tree from her. The bush hadn't done much good, anyways. He felt a strange privilege, the control to steer this conversation, his mind, and even his life. Perhaps his banishment was in fact, liberation.
Forgetting himself, he looked down at his belly and groaned with the knowledge that he would be very aware of each thorn this evening. It was her voice that brought him back.
"I don't normally hunt deer, so maybe you know something about them that I don't,"
"Well that's the thing. The deer never have any idea what's coming."
What an awful joke.
He couldn't be entirely sure whether he was cringing from his own jest or from the thorns that were calling for his attention.
"Serious though, are you okay?"
"Of course!" He sang once more. This time unable to keep from gasping as he stood as tall and proud on his paws as consciousness allowed. It seemed to him, however, that he would appear much stronger and capable if he just stood, puffed out with his muscles as tense as possible under the pain.
He could only hold it for so long, and so he made up another idea.
"You know, you're right. We just need to enjoy the day. It's so incredibly nice here." With that, he decided that the best course of action was to distance himself from the bush and the memories altogether.
The tree. The beautiful, majestic, strong, tree that dictated the clearing. Perfect. Assuming that she would accompany him, he spared only a quick glance back to toss her a grin and a playful remark. It was of course during that branch that he stumbled back over the bush as he moved towards the tree, and nearly collapsed in disbelief when he lodged yet another collection of thorns into his paw.
The grin shook but he didn't break it, and when he felt his eyes watering he turned back quickly around and hurried to the trunk of the tree, which he stopped to investigate carefully.
"I've never been here before.." He muttered softly as he let his muzzle brush up against the strange markings that decorated the trunk. With that, he eased back onto his haunches and let the carvings absorb him.
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Post by Cascade on Jun 26, 2014 15:17:07 GMT -5
'At least he is in on the joke now,' she thought, and then he stumbled onto the thorny bush again. 'Okay, maybe not.'
She gave him a worried look as she stared down at his visibly injured paw, wincing in sympathetic pain as she imagined how it must feel. "Yeah, I got the impression that you weren't from around here," she said, taking the initiative to lean down and yank out one of the larger thorns with her teeth, "That's gonna hurt, but it's better than leaving them in," she remarked as she spat the thorn back in the direction of the (now quite flattened) bush.
"Do you come from somewhere far away where wolves don't know what thorns are?" She was only semi-joking. The sheer frequency of his blunders in their short meeting seriously made her wonder. Chandler followed his gaze to the tree, noting that he had grown quieter. The tree had a relaxing aura about it, but she couldn't help but feel slightly disconcerted by the carvings whenever she thought too hard about them. Though they were beautiful, she had tried hard to think of a way that a normal wolf could have created them and come up short. It must have been magic. Chandler wasn't a huge fan of magic.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2014 0:31:02 GMT -5
Sympathy wasn't something that Aurix was truly accustomed to, granted that he was never often putting himself into situations that opened him to it. So it was with great surprise that he saw- and then felt, a thorn being tugged from his skin. Now that was a spectacle.
Surely this was the sign he had been waiting for. He had found his honor and kindness in the most unlikely of places: a stranger.
So what does this mean?
"Th-thank you." Aurix sensed his own uneasiness, not at the pain, but at the gesture. He was stiff, and nervous, ready to pounce as he had been whilst stalking the bug. So perhaps this was why he had been in the forest: he was not receptive to the very qualities that he hoped to inherit and emit himself.
Good wolves do the right thing.. why?
He glanced down at his paw, a throbbing mess of red spots on a plain white surface. Yet it felt smooth, soothed and quieted.
"Do you come from somewhere far away where wolves don't know what thorns are?"
This time he let out a burst of laughter that shot pain up his sides as strongly as the thorns.
"Mm.. and now I'll have plenty to bring back with me to warn the rest of my kind." He couldn't even help but to grin a little at how poorly his jokes would surface. Then, again the tree silenced him in wonderment.
Aurix breathed the bark in sharply through his nostrils, an oddly ancient and familiar aroma. It was comforting, and he wondered if it was again a sign that he was in the right place. It was overwhelmingly spiritual and pure, a symbol. It made the lean wolf shiver like a brisk winter wind.
"Do you... Feel that?" he wondered aloud, and tore his gaze from the elaborate carvings to meet her purple eyes.
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Post by Cascade on Jun 27, 2014 1:05:16 GMT -5
Chandler didn't feel so bad now that she was laughing with him and not just at him. He was a strange guy for sure, but she liked him. It wasn't everyday you could stand around having a conversation with a wolf who was basically dripping with blood and have it be a pleasant encounter.
She raised an eyebrow as he seemed to be overtaken by a sudden sensation. It wasn't unexpected, given where they were, but Chandler figured that many of the things she had long accepted as mundane would be fantastical to a wolf from outside the valley. He asked her if she felt the same thing he was feeling, and she huffed a little.
"Ugh, yes. The tree is probably magic. Pretty much everything in this valley is magic." Chandler said the word 'magic' like most other wolves said the word 'thorn.'
"We've got a magic tree, magic forest, magic ruins, magic caves, magic wolves who live up on a magic mountain and hand out magic powers. Oh, and the ghosts. You can hardly spit around here without it landing on something that just plain shouldn't logically exist, but don't worry. It isn't as bad at it sounds." She glanced up at him with a side-eye that suggested it was, in fact, pretty bad. "It's a good life here, though. When you're not getting shredded to pieces by a stationary and easily-avoidable plant, that is."
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2014 20:04:24 GMT -5
Magic.
There was another word. Not quite as meaningful to him, but perhaps every bit as important. It was humbling to be in a place of such fantastic roots. Everything felt strongly connected and purposely so. He liked that, it felt right, and therefore conclusive to his search. Of course, it wasn't home. Aurix wasn't sure that anywhere could be home anymore.
Home.
It was less about the place and more about the wolves. He would never see home again, and home wanted it that way. He had wronged the wolves that made his home, and so now he was homeless. To build a new home meant to replace those wolves that he had left behind. Aurix kept looking at Chandler, only he wasn't really looking at her. He was trying to decide if what he saw was a stranger in a strange land or a friend in his home.
Hard to say.
"Pretty much everything in this valley is magic." His eyes glowed with greed. Just the presence that he could detect was powerful and warm. Aurix wondered if he had, in fact, only scratched the surface of this feeling. It was soft and relaxing, yet absolutely overwhelming. He wanted more in ways that he could never describe.
"You sound like you take it for granted. He whispered, as though fearful to scare it off. Aurix turned his head back to the tree, and again he studied the markings... and what strange markings they were. He imagined that they were telling him something. Calling to him thunderously.
He felt as though he might float away to the mountain when her voice again drew him back.
"It's a good life here, though. When you're not getting shredded to pieces by a stationary and easily-avoidable plant, that is."
His mouth twisted into a knowing grin.
"No, I'm done neglecting what's right before me."
And I don't mean the bush.
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Post by Cascade on Jun 27, 2014 20:23:36 GMT -5
Oh god, another one. Why was it that every wolf in this valley was obsessed with magic except for her? She couldn't help but groan lightly at his awe, if for nothing else than the knowledge that he was probably about to lead her on a wild goose chase up a mountain to talk to Taboo.
"You're the one who isn't taking it for granted enough," she insisted, "Seriously, you never know what kind of weird stuff you'll be subjected to if you mess with magic. I mean, I heard," she leaned closer to Aurix, eyes widening, "that one of those power-givers will burn you to death to use your ashes as an ingredient in one of her wicked potions." Chandler had heard this from a guy who'd heard it from a guy. It was basically fact.
"Seriously, what kind of sicko do you think does that sort of thing? Trust me, you'll be better off staying away from that crap and living a normal life."
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2014 22:33:13 GMT -5
As much as he might have wanted to follow his manners and back down, he couldn't resist. Aurix wasn't always a curious wolf, but this was deeper than curiosity, and every time she pulled him away he felt a stronger urge to return to it. It was a feeling that felt like something that should flow through his veins like blood.
No, he didn't think he even could take it for granted. It was a precious substance, whatever it was. It was his gold, his silver, his heartbeat. There was very little that appealed to him more than the idea of lying down to bask in this new sensation.
Unless he could get closer..
"..You never know what kind of weird stuff you'll be subjected to if you mess with magic." That excited him more than anything. Perhaps it was still a lurking thought of adolescence or perhaps it was just his natural instinct. He wanted adventure. He wanted something new and something important. Except this didn't feel like something to just fill that void. It felt like it was something that was specifically missing, and that's what made his lean closer even as she did. He lapped every word up as though drinking from a fresh summer fountain.
"..power-givers...potions." It was all so absorbing, like the stories he had been told as a pup. This one, however, was too real to toss aside.
He wouldn't be deterred.
"How does one really go about wielding the powers?" He breathed in wonderment. There was very little on his mind beyond splitting desire, and even the purple sparkle of her eyes were illuminated by his yearning.
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Post by Cascade on Jun 29, 2014 13:10:22 GMT -5
"No no no, you aren't listening to me," she pleaded, knowing exactly where this was going but wanting badly to stop it, "We don't need any more super-powered freaks running around this valley. You end up getting this weird tattoo on your fur that glows. What if you got one and the tattoo was puke green? What would your mother think?" She furrowed her brow, not totally sure that she had the right to be meddling in the life of a stranger like this, but frustrated at the direction the encounter had turned regardless. There they were having a nice chat with this lovely young wolf about how he was an idiot who sat in thorn bushes, and then she had to go opening her big mouth about magic powers. This was exactly why she spent most of her time alone, at least the birds and squirrels weren't freaking crazy.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2014 14:26:08 GMT -5
"But where's your sense of adventure? He demanded. To him, she was afraid of this magic, and in a way her attempts at discouraging him must have been another way of attacking his pride. No, he could show her that he was actually strong, and neither a tattoo nor a magic potion would take away his new "home".
"What would your mother think?"
That stung a little. He hadn't truly talked to his mother since Venec had run off. Did he care?
"He was my son."
"He was my brother."
No, she hadn't done anything to defend him. She didn't try to understand.
It didn't seem like his new acquaintance did, either. "It doesn't matter what any of them would think." He found himself saying, aloud. "I'm here for myself now, and I do things because I want to." It seemed like a bitterly selfish thing to say, but in actuality he didn't have a family to do things for anyways. They didn't even want him near them. "How can you live in a place like this and hate everything that makes it special?"
That could have sounded a little friendlier..
Aurix raised an eyebrow even at his own outburst. He was usually strictly reserved and polite with wolves that he didn't know. Now, he felt exposed. He felt like apologizing, and he felt like turning back and running back to his old home. He wondered what it was that this stranger really wanted, and what had led her here at the same time as he had arrived.
Was it coincidence or something greater?
He dug at the groud quietly with a sore paw and avoided eye contact with her. Hoping that one of them would say something that he wanted to hear, hoping that she wouldn't be angry, he let himself deflate onto the side of the tree as he pawed at nothing.
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