Quote from Indy on April 11, 2019, 10:47 pm

Jackie's gaze moved from Ulric to Kratos.  The expression was full of wild fire, animal-like yet unreadable.

"Logan and I both saw it"

She kept her palm on Ulric's, but tightened instinctively tighter.

"Ulric did not see it.  He was still unconscious, and I caught Timothy's smell on the wind so I went to investigate..."

She did not flinch, insomuch as there was hesitation in the tone of her voice.  The fire in her eyes seemed to dwindle, and what remained was a kind of fear.

Her voice dropped, soft and low, "I don't know what we saw"

Quote from Kaqurei on April 17, 2019, 1:33 pm

Kate couldn't quite believe what had possessed her. Compassion, maybe, she thought with a snort. Soft, Katie Thompson, you're just too soft. One minute she'd been trembling over the excitement of that big old alpha knocking down her door and all the adrenaline that had come with it, cursing his name and wishing a pox upon all his future generations--then suddenly she was making tea. For herself, she'd thought. Calm down a peg. But she'd made an awful lot of tea. She'd made enough tea for a couple of horses. And while she was brewing it, she was thinking. She was thinking of poor little Toby Buttermilk--unrecognizable as he was under moonlight, propping up her door and fixing it. Looked like a soaked rat of enormous proportions. And then she was wondering. Wondering about where the boy would stay for the night. And the she realized. Realized he was just going to keep on shivering out in the rain with his friends. She'd seen them: a pile of oversized half-drowned puppies huddled together as she threw a tizzy  and waved her rifle around. She thought of that miserable kid Sabrina had brought in, who ran out and she dragged him back looking little better than an old teddy she'd found abandoned in the rain at a campsite--limp, drenched, and wretched.

And just like that, the tea was poured, the blankets and towels laid, and the door open as she invited three werewolves into her HOME. The first entered and Kate clenched her fists, trying not to let her nerves show. She watched warily as the sodden tan body slunk past her to go lay by the fire. She's pretty, real pretty--Kate thought to herself, forcing herself to imagine this creature as someone's lost dog. It was only a little bit of a stretch. If she looked at the head and the ears--no, the back, the tail--yes, that could be a dog. A handsome Golden Retriever / Wolfhound mix of some kind. Someone was missing that dog. That's... why they dressed her up... yep. Some diva from California had lost their oversized dressed-up designer breed (what would they call it, a Goldihound?) in the woods of Reknab, and taking her in and giving her shelter was the only proper thing to do. Yes.

She averted her eyes, half-appeased by her imagination (though, she noted with some self disgust, her jaw was still clenched and her hands felt colder than they ought to be). She looked to the others. Poor Toby. The only thing she could picture him as was a giant drowned rat--and that birthed no compassion. So think of him as the little Buttermilk boy. Don't look at him. He's the little Buttermilk boy. When he spoke, pulling along his grizzly bear-like companion, that was easier to manage. And just don't look at or think about his grizzly bear. This was going to be fine. Just fine. Everything was fine.

Yep.

For only a second, she thought of the first time she'd laid eyes on a werewolf. She'd had to do a lot of imagining and pretending since that day. Pretend it didn't happen. Pretend mother and father just got lost out in the snow... they never came back. Pretend it was a bear. Pretend it was Em's choice when they took her away.

She was an old pro at this.

Quote from Mae on April 20, 2019, 10:42 pm

As Jackie's hands again tightened around his own, Ulric finally looked up. At first, he feared she did not want Kratos to know about their prior experience in the cave. Then, her words caused him to doubt. He felt a protective reassurance under her hands, and felt her heart tremble through his own. She was afraid. It confused him. So, he looked up to see the answer in her eyes.

*****

Kratos looked between Jackie and Logan darkly. His countenance seemed to change ever so slightly into something more brooding and dangerous than before. But the sudden air of intensity was not directed at them, but rather in what neither of them had mentioned.

He unsettled his position and leaned over the fire before passing it on his hands. He followed the curve of the mountain out of the fire's light, and stood for a moment with his long black tail just outside the camping circle. He stared into the darkness.

"What did you see?" He said at length.

Quote from Adriana on April 21, 2019, 1:58 am

Logan rested her head and neck against the tree, staring up into the boughs. "What I saw? I cannot say... It seemed a werewolf, but it was not-it had horns, like, ah, bull. It stood on two legs, and used it's arms like a man, with a spear. It was powerful.. it threw me over it's shoulder." she knit her brows, thinking.

"Timothy called it Gathen."

 

 

Quote from Indy on April 21, 2019, 11:06 am

Theo’s paws resisted Toby’s tugging. If he’d wanted to, he had enough strength to resist, but he knew he might hurt Toby or worse, hurt his feelings.  As the glow of the firelit cabin came to view, suddenly all his terrible feelings magnified.  He felt an awful lot like a grownup trying to fit in a dollhouse.  His massive paws, his thick shaggy pelt, and his imposing frame were all the benefit of generations upon generations of powerful ancestors but not to the benefit of sheltering in this cabin.  He had to squeeze so his shoulders passed through the door, and the grain of the wood felt like something his claws could dig into if he wasn’t mindful.  He didn’t belong here. He ducked his head away, his green eyes looking at Toby in a pleading, helpless way.

The firelight caught the green of his eyes, making them glint like emeralds.  Nothing in his countenance suggested he was a teddy bear, however much he wished to the contrary. 

Quote from Kaqurei on April 23, 2019, 3:36 pm

Taste the earth, for your nose will do you no good here. Do not touch the poison. Do not travel the roads you've used before. Ah, the little fox did not lie. Even if you had not been here before you would recognize it by her word. Yet she did not tell you everything. Where has your little fox gone? Do you know her still, as you did when she was small? But you've not come to speak with her. There is another. Steady on.

Quote from Mae on April 29, 2019, 1:01 am

By now the nightly vista was gone. A dense fog covered the valley, rolling through the trees around the camp. Even Logan's meager shelter could not keep the moisture from dimming the fire. Condensation dripped off Ulric's nose as he looked between Jackie and Logan. His fur was soon saturated in the cold wet mist off the distant moor. Kratos, meanwhile, still stood with his back turned, and his overcoat collecting water from the air.

"Kratos," Ulric said, at last breaking the silence. "We've been wandering around in the wilderness for three months, and never met anything dangerous - aside from cliffs and highways. Its only when we come back here that all these things start happening. I get the feeling that maybe someone doesn't want us here."

Slowly, Kratos turned around and looked at his brother.

Ulric continued, "Do we really have any claim on this mountain without Zeit? And what about the hunters? ... " His voice died in his throat and a shiver ran down his back. At length he pulled his paws away from Jackie and curled his arms around his shoulders.

"Ulric," Kratos said. His voice sounded deeper in the fog, but he spoke gently. "All lands belong to someone."

A silence followed. Ulric was quiet. He knew Kratos did not mean the dominion of men alone, but of all nature. He also knew that there were many other werewolves in the world, and not all strangers were like the Calagathorm pack.

While Ulric sat silently, Kratos turned aside and looked at Logan. "I do not know what you think you saw." He said, "But I know that Gathan is dead, and that Timothy will believe all his fears to be the embodiment of his torturer."

The Alpha turned his back on the fire again and stared out into the fog, but whereas before his face was toward the peak, he now gazed downward on the invisible valley. "I don't believe ..."  The Alpha added after a moment. " ... that there is anything closer to the thoughts of his mind."

Quote from Adriana on April 29, 2019, 7:34 pm

Without responding, relaxed against the tree just out of the dim fire lights reach, Logan traced the Alpha's eyes are her mind went to faraway places. Her expression, for the first few moments, remained stoic, but became furrowed and her fists tightened. A long plume of terse air was exhaled from her nostrils, and she shook her head vaguely, if subconsciously.

Quote from Indy on April 29, 2019, 10:11 pm

Theo's beetle-green eyes moved around the room slowly, resisting Toby’s tugging though allowing it to draw him an inch forward.  Even that inch seemed to reveal more, and the temptation to move further inside was terrible.  Even from the entryway, the enticing flavors of and warmth of tea and wool and pages of a half-read book wrapped around him like a blanket… How it called to him to settle beside the hearth with Bianca and forget the night.  

But he looked closer at the passage of the battered book on the table, the consideration put into all the strange multicolored patterns on the blankets, and the hint of cinnamon in the smell of the tea. And suddenly at the woman in the center of it, her eyes peering into his own. For an instant he was a frozen, wild half-drowned beast looking back into the eyes of a fearful human woman in her delicate, human home.

A whine gathered in his throat, near undetectable, before dying as quickly as it had begun.  He shifted his sight away from the poor hermit woman, past Toby, until his nose pointed to the door. And then in a great jolt, he tore himself away from Toby's grip, spun on his heels, and disappeared out into the stormy night without another sound.

——— 

The mist rolled over the small fire, sending the hearty flames into little more then embers.  The flames sheltered beneath the logs, occasionally daring a small leap through the oppressive vapor, though all it could manage was survival.   As Ulric’s paws wrenched from her own, her first instinct was to hold tightly in spite of it, though she at last relinquished her hold and stared into her struggling flames.

"I don’t care what it is," she snapped lowly, "I don’t care about Gathen, or about Timothy, or any other ghost stories"

Her bright eyes glared vaguely into the swirling mists, then turned back to the dimming glow of the fire. She prodded it without hope.

"What I do care about is that we’re just sitting here, waiting out its mercy and patience," she flashed a testy glare in the general direction of Kratos, though it’s target never quite reaching the mark, "You’re the alpha. What are you going to do about it?"