Having been giving the training rank of artisan, Alue had possibly been neglecting his role as a halo. The way he saw it, no one was running to his den asking for help. He checked on Phillip, having kind of claimed the elder as his own patient to look after, and made sure his stores were stocked and that he was up to date with anything that was going on within the halo ranks. Before he had been doing above average as a halo, and now he was just doing average. It felt bad, but he couldn’t stop himself from getting excited as he went out foraging for random items. The things that interested him the most were crystals and rocks. He almost always carried the crystal Kestrel had carved out, filled with basic herbs out of anxiety, and commonly compared what he found to it, and what he tried to do. So far, he had not done so well in trying to copy his friend. He had started with some basic rocks and crystals, and ended up ruining them. He felt he was making progress, but it would be easier if he could learn from someone.

   But right now, he wasn’t thinking too much about crystals. Winter had really started to set in, and the cold somehow brought life into his bones. The summers had been hot, and had drained him. But when he felt the soft cold breeze roll over him, he felt the excitement burning in his marrow. For what, he wasn’t sure. But it had always brought forth happy times. It was really the only season that brought back old memories that he had almost forgotten, and it brought some happiness to his heart. Even if life was no longer the same, the reaction remained. One of the things that stuck out about winter had been sledding. With his newish interest in crafting, he knew this was around the perfect time to seek Puffin out, learn how to attempt to make a sled. As a child, he had learned about sledding, but it had been the humans that made the sleds, not the dogs. Now they lacked humans and Puffin had made up for it, and Alue wanted to continue along with him.

   They had already set up that the lesson was to happen today, and were planning on meeting where Puffin had been working on sleds. Alue had ventured into the forest where the other worked before, but not that far. It felt almost haunted, if the walker didn’t know who made the sleds. Now as Alue walked further into the forest. As he went, it was almost like walking through a show. As he went along, the sleds progressively changed, progressively got better. In all honesty, it made the boy feel a little more confident. Everyone started somewhere, and the starting point was not really pretty. But it was something, and the more they worked, the better they got. Alue knew the first sled he’d work on would be awful, but it would help him learn. He sped up as he saw the other dog standing not too far off. When the half dog approached, he dipped his head happily to his friend. “Hey, Puffin.” He started. “This forest, it’s cool. You made them all? The sleds, that is.” Small talk before the lesson. Alue had too much anxiety and couldn’t just leap into something.

Gaia Wrote:Silver eyes gleamed in the darkness only when the moonlight streaked through the thinning canopy, the whisper of the bones around her neck touching the earth the only sound as the predator crept closer to that antlered creature that would soon be her prize. A wide, rough tongue swept across her nose at the thought, her mouth tingling as saliva began to pool in it, and round ears flickered forward to keep track of the deer she had been lucky enough to find when she had seen it hovering uncertainly at the edge of the forest. Like it wanted to run.
Had she the ability to smell she would have realized that this was wolf territory and she would have kept a wide berth, aware that despite her superior strength over a wolf or two that a pack of them would spell out absolute disaster for her. Despite it strangely not making any noise as it moved except for soft sounds she assumed were more emotional than physical, Gaia never lost her from her sights. She was a sloppy hunter she knew the other lionesses would say (with a pang of longing in her heart their words rang in her ears), but she got by with the little knowledge she had. Perhaps she would have gotten better had she more time to spend with Sekkai, with Collenia, with Belle, but by the time she had found her way back to Aryion after her capture her home had disappeared and her family scattered when those sabertoothed cats moved in.
A breath exhaled from between those thick lips, a translucent plume in the chilly air.
She swallowed against the sandpaper that was her ruined throat and watched as the creature settled against a rock after indecision made her seemingly wear a trail into the cold ground. From afar she had only been able to see the antlers and the longleggedness of the figure, but from this close, from brush just behind the girl, it seemed as if it was carrying some woolly pelt over her shoulders. Her toes flexed, her tail trashed in frustration. If only her nose worked she could see exactly what was going on!
But she was a lion, and a hungry one at that. A last twitch of her whiskers, a jiggle of her rear, before those thick muscles in her thighs exploded and she covered the ground in an instant with her lunge, claws extended toes flexed as she made contact all near four hundred pounds of her a wrecking ball as she grasped on that wool cloak and wait where was the body in all that fluff where was the everything what the fuck I didn't ask for this is this dirt in my mouth did I miss
"What the fuck?" she wheezed as she begins to shake herself off, all this while a wide-eyed Equinox still in shock freezes like the deer she is and has no fucking clue what to do except glow but she doesn't even control that really.[/size]

---

[size=undefined]I'm not gonna post separately with Equinox so this is open to maybe 2-3 people? Spot save for Jonas and maaaaaaaaybe Akira, depends on what she commented on Weiss' blog this time also tell me this is not the laziest post you've ever seen
- Gaia stalks a deer who is actually Equinox.
- Equinox who, after Aeon's death, is thinking about running away and is hovering around the borders but is indecisive.
- Gaia pounces but instead of catching a body to hold onto she misses and lands in the dirt because Equinox is all fluff.
- She gets up and starts to shake herself off, and Equinox freezes. She is probably gonna attack again.
[/size]

Quote: The moonlight bathed everything in a pale blue light as it filtered through the branches above her head. The night was relatively calm, the only sound the occasional call of an owl or the screech of a bat. Well, that and Aela’s footsteps as she patrolled the border. She’d been home long enough to feed the pups and soak in their love and warmth until they’d fallen into a milk induced coma one by one. With practiced ease, she had slipped away from their tiny little bodies and went back to work. The Strider was making it her personal mission to eat, sleep, and breath patrolling.
So it wasn’t long before she came across Gaia’s scent and froze in her tracks, nose going low to the ground as her hackles slowly raised. Cat. Big cat. Like the lion Akira had appointed to her court, the one who’d journeyed with him from the swamp. But this was not that cat, this was someone else entirely. Another assassin sent by Saboro? Alarm spurred her into action and she ran as fast as she could while following the trail. She heard someone curse in the distance and growled low in her throat, a growl that gradually built until it was a ferocious snarl when she saw what was happening.
A small pup with twisted horns stood frozen in terror, the moonlight illuminating her brilliantly so that Aela could see the big cat bunch its muscles as it made ready to pounce on its prey. Tauro’s face flashed through her mind, his chubby little pup cheeks, his not so chubby adolescent smirk, his blood-stained face frozen in death.
[size=undefined]“Oh no you don’t!”[/size]
She roars as launches herself at the gray stripped lion, aiming to sink her teeth into the tuft of its tail and pull her away. At the very least it’d serve in getting her attention. The Strider hops away from the lioness’s reach, her tail fluffed up twice its size and a thick ridge formed on her back as her hair stood on end. “Run.” She told the terrified child who seemed to have gone deaf with fright. “RUN!” Aela screams as she desperately tries to keep Gaia’s attention from going back to the puppy. She would die before she let harm come to another child while she was on duty.

Quote:It was a clear, crisp night.  The only reason he knew this, was because he was awake, again, walking the territory.  It hadn't been long since the day everything seemed to go so wrong, and Echo had found himself a bit more on edge, as of late.  He'd been scouring the mountains, the cliffs, and the border, even though that wasn't particularly his job.  The scene had stuck in his head, and he wasn't going to shake it easily, so he used the time he couldn't shake it, to make use of himself. 
Tonight was no different.  He thought he'd let some of the others rest, everyone knew how on edge absolutely everyone was, the slightest hint of violence and it was a god damn fiasco.  Who was going to die this time? Was everyone going to go into the fury? Were there going to be more dead kids lying on the border of Gemini? He didn't know, though he certainly hoped to be the one to stop it if it came down to it.  He was so tired of hearing about dead children.  Kids were supposed to be happy, and annoying not- still and lifeless..
“Oh no you don’t!”
"Aela?" Echo's ears perked up as Aela's voice rang clear as a bell through the night. And in seconds took off to see what the hell was going on, within his first few bounds, his mind went to the day they found Tauro, and went into killing mode.  No. More. Dead.
It took Echo seconds to reach where the skirmish was happening, Aela was launching herself (her newborn mommy self) at the lion.  Eyes shifted to the pup, a flash of Tauro and Serrate and Hawthorne and Kariya, then back to the horned child.  Leaping forward, Echo put himself between Equinox and the large cat, desperately looking for somewhere to place her until they got this under control.  But he couldn't allow Aela to attack the cat herself, so, he did the first thing he thought.  He grabbed her by her scruff, getting a horn tot he face, and with all his might, flung her to safety (as far away from the lion and the cliffs as possible).  While she was suspended in the air, Echo would yell at her "RUN WHEN YOU CAN!"  And also sorry, but there was no time for that. 
He turned back to the fight, and launched himself straight at the cats face, acting as a shield for both Aela, and to block the cats vision. He wasn't about to let pup, nor new mom get reckt tonight. If it came down to it, Echo would rather throw himself in the line of fire before seeing another one of his pack mates- his friends- dying on their own land.  Fuck that.
And fuck you too, cat.

Quote:Equinox:

Quote:Round eyes flashed emerald in a sliver of moonlight as the enormous predator began to stalk towards the child who shook, fearless and confident in her power now even now that she was exposed from the shadows that she preferred. Thick cords of muscle rolled with every movement of her shoulders under thin fur as the lioness lowered her head and dared the little creature to bolt, pupils narrowing to slits as her entire body tensed ready to pounce-
“Oh no you don’t!”
She growled, a noise with a terrifying amount of power despite the jaggedness at the end that suggested it tore her throat raw like a wildfire, and curled her heavy lip as a wolf of all things lunged at her, ready to meet it. So this was how it was going to be, huh? Gaia allowed its teeth to sink into the end of her tail even if it made her jerk reflexively, as she knew the lure of it would pull her attacker close enough to land a bat with paws that had enough strength to snap her neck like it was a toothpick. But the female danced away just as her claws grazed cerulean fur, and she moved to advance before another one popped up from the trees and herded the animal away.
Those terrible creatures, they weren’t even trying to eating it!
The lion retreated a few steps as the male had tried to disorient her by getting in her face and began to prowl along the edge of the clearing just out of their reach, circling the two that were trying to stand between her and a warm meal as she looked for an opening to get at their throats. Whereas usually she'd try to con the wolves out of their meal with soft words and harmless tricks, the fuse to her patience had long been shortened by cruelty and hunger and she knew that brute force was the only way to win this skirmish as two wolves were not yet enough to pose a major threat to a lion such as herself. ”Get the fuck out of my way, dogs.” she spat as those pupils in silver eyes narrowed, long tail lashing out behind her with with a feral fury fueled by the emptiness of her stomach. ”That deer’s MINE!”
Dirty lips curled to reveal fangs like scimitars, and claws engaged the ground underneath with every frustrated flex of her toes until finally holding fast and giving her the traction she needed to lunge at the male and use her body like a wrecking ball to try to break his back, his legs, anything by pouncing on him and aiming to puncture the skin of his neck with those teeth as claws gripped to take him down.
She wasn't going down without a fight.

Quote:She’d never been more thankful to see someone than she was the moment she realized Echo had arrived in time to help the child get away. The feline had retreated to a relative safe distance, displeasure plain on its face as its tail thrashed about behind her. She didn’t seem to be taking the loss of her meal ticket very well. Aela’s sharp blue eyes never left the feline as she stood waiting and alert, body tensed to throw her into action at the slightest hint of an attack.
In one last attempt to keep things as civil as possible and avoid a potentially dangerous battle she tried to reason with the big cat. “Listen, lady, you can’t just show up in someone’s house and start attacking people. That’s rude.” Those emerald eyes narrowed into narrow slits of jade and her tail twitched with pent up aggression, ”Get the fuck out of my way, dogs.” She hissed and all hope of resolving the problem peacefully vanished. ”That deer’s MINE!” Deer? The resemblance was faint, if you didn’t know anything about hellhounds she supposed they could be mistaken for deer.
“She’s not a deer she’s a pup!” Aela barked but it seemed to fall on deaf ears. Either she was too dense to understand or the feline was already beyond reasoning. Lips peeled back to unsheathe mighty sabres, long with a slight curve. The moonlight glinted off them, highlight the edges to give them a more sinister appearance. Her sapphire eyes sharpened and adrenaline filled her veins and she shifted her body weight, changing her stance to be able to move as quickly as possible. Aela focused on her opponent, trying to anticipate her strike, there it was the unsheathing of the claws, thick and cruelly curved scoured the earth before she launched herself at Echo.
With a mental curse she pushed herself into motion, aiming for the cats ear that was closest to her, deciding to take full advantage of her attention being focused on the male. If she broke the cats focus and it tried to take a swipe at her she would try to leap out of range, and let out a cry of pain if she was too slow. But if Aela was able to sink her teeth into the cats ear she would growl through her mouthful of flesh, “Hon’ess’y c’nt we justh ta’k ab’ow dis?”

Quote:He was never far from her. Particularly now when evil lurked in shadows and the razor edge of smiles. He has seen war and blood spilled. He has seen wolves forced under the heel of his overlord of a father. He has seen a family torn asunder. The echoes of the days before still haunt her eyes, and he knows he will do everything he can to chase the ghosts from her words. One day he would see that head unbowed. Today was not that day. Tomorrow would not be, either. But it would come. It had to. She was the Don. Horror comes and horror goes. She would persist. So, too, would he.
He laid the King to rest. She protested. There’s so much to do. There is always so much to do, he told her, and only one you to do it. The moon is rising and she must close her weary eyes. He would find something for her to eat. No, he did not need help, Akira. Rest. He will check on you later.
(He would chase her back to bed if she left it. That part goes unsaid.)
He, too, needed to rest. He could feel his bones sagging and begging to go to ground, but he told them No. Not today. The buzz between his ears rattled and he swore he could taste ash on the back of his tongue. These, too, he knew, were falsehoods. It is just one more day. One more day. You are strong and the red boy bleeding is so new to his grave of fireflies and mourning widows. The Don must rest, and when she bounces back, so too will you. One more day. One more night. One more step. Then another. Follow your feet and ignore the stinging in your eyes.
The night opens before him and he dives into it, a silent wraith on the wind. The lowlands smell like an oncoming storm. He will beat it. He will bring home something fresh. He will guard it until she has woken and eaten her fill. Then he would do what was asked of him. This is how it was. This is how it will always be. He lifts his head, parts his mouth, and drinks in the night. Rabbits. Too small. Goats. Possibility. Deer. Too far. Lion. Not food.
Wait. Lion?
His lips curl and something deep within him urges him onward. He is no Don, but this is his territory still. He coexisted with the wildlife (wolves… so many wolves) that called this land their home, but he would not allow a rogue in—he knows what rogues could and often did do. He stalks towards the border and the inevitable struggle that came floats towards him on dark wings. He does not know their voices, not tonight. They are simply wolves involved in something that was beyond their understanding. Growls and cries urge him on.
He explodes from the nearby brush that we can only hope Equinox wasn’t calling safe haven, a grating growl rumbling deep in his chest as he barrels straight into the fray, heedless of the wolves that may or may not be in his way. He aims to crash into the intruder, eyes aglow in the low light and lacking the soft disinterest or empathy the smaller creatures had seen in him before. He intends to knock the lioness—he recognizes that much, now—over, heavy forepaws flying and hanging on where they could.
Gemini surrounded themselves by giants.
(Some were more giant than others.)

//

Clover was tired. She didn’t know how far she’d walked, or the last time she’d slept. Her last foray into dreams had left her with hazy, floating images of her...she wasn’t sure. Siblings? Children? Unrelated kits that just happened to look like her and knew her name? Whatever they were, they hadn’t been far from her thoughts since she’d last dreamed. The solution for this, she knew from past experience, was to starve them out. She would go as long as she could without sleep, and when she finally collapsed there wouldn’t be anything, just the deep black of exhaustion. She could manage it, as long as she kept moving.

Distantly, she noticed that the grass around her was very near the color of her own fur. Like she was blending into the land around her. Disappearing, slowly, strand by strand -

A strong scent caught her nose, distracting her from the frankly delirious line of thought. Someone lives here. A lot of someones live here. Other creatures were also a distant memory, besides the visitors in her dreams. This realization unsettled her, as the gaps in her memory always did, but it unfortunately also made her pause in her endless, steady pace, and exhaustion hit her like a falling log. Her legs buckled, and her muscles refused to go any farther, and she collapsed into the grass. Amber eyes drifted slowly shut, despite her every effort to force them open, to keep moving, to keep awake. Finally recognizing the struggles as fruitless, she curled up as much as she could. She really should have found somewhere more sheltered to sleep, but even shifting her limbs into a more comfortable arrangement had felt like dragging rocks across the ground. She let her eyes close and fell into slumber, with a final plea drifting through her mind.

Please don’t dream.

Forum Name and Link: Sordid Secrets http://sordid-secrets.com/index.php
Type of RPG:  fantasy wolf rpg
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