Sanguine Cove where the heart is? [m]

This felt good.

Physical pain was vastly preferable to whatever she'd been feeling emotionally, so when sharp teeth connected to her shoulder, Nori laughed. It would scar - as would the chunk taken from her ear - but she didn't care. Her eyes burned, her ear burned, her shoulder burned, but it didn't matter, because it still felt better than what she'd been feeling for weeks.

It was pure instinct that led her to roll over the girl. She wouldn't bite back, but it was only natural to try and dislodge something attached to you - something causing you pain. It wouldn't matter to her if the girl took a chunk out of her shoulder when they separated - it was nice, to carry pain on the outside rather than whatever cavern had opened in her chest recently.

Her fur was sticky with blood. Her muscles ached, her wounds stung, her head throbbed, but she felt more connected with her body now than she had since Archer had been bitten.

She wondered if this kid had felt the same, or if this anger she expressed was all she'd become.

She wondered if she was helping or making it worse.

She didn't care.

"Feel better?" she asked, out of breath, eyes locked onto the kid's own. "Is this what you wanted?"

(This post was last modified: Jun 04, 2024, 04:21 PM by Nori.)

Being rolled into, dislodged, did some good. If only because the shoulder met her head and the impact was enough to give pause in what might have become violent assault after violent assault. Granted it did not remove the venom that welled within her mouth like the blood of her own kin.

No.

Only she realized that it wasn't this woman she wanted gone. It was herself. She wanted to be away from here, from the constant grief and turmoil. The mountain had become nothing but a place of fear. Every week it seemed a new fear came to life here. She was a year old.

A year.

How many lives had she seen torn apart? How many times had her own heart been turned over until it hardened like a stone?

It wasn't her she wanted gone. She wanted to be gone.

Now, with the taste of blood in her mouth and a battered stranger on their doorstep, she realized there was no other option. If not for her, then for her family. Maybe they could grieve her absence on top of the other ones they already had. Maybe they wouldn't notice if they were too busy with the loss of her grandmother and now a baby sister. That was a naïve thought and she knew it. It was just a selfish comfort to think they'd be too busy to notice if she just...left.

How could she have ever said any of this to a stranger she had just attempted to maul?

Very abruptly she moved, but her path thought was not to head back in towards the Cove. It was to go away from the Cove.

Instead of receiving any response - teeth or otherwise - Nori was left reeling as the kid turned and bolted in the opposite direction of the Cove. A flutter of fear - genuine fear, because Nori wasn't sure who this kid's parents were, but she was willing to bet Nash was one of them - started in her chest, and she made to chase after the girl.

Except... her body had had enough.

Her legs wobbled and her new injuries burned. She'd not been eating enough or resting enough to handle running immediately after a fight like that, and so, she only made it a few stilted steps before her limbs gave out and she sank unceremoniously to the ground.

"Fuck," she hissed to herself, watching a few small droplets of blood fall from her chin to the stones. She hadn't even joined yet and already she'd fucked up royally.

Part of her wanted to bolt, like the girl had, but not only did she not have the energy or stamina to do so, she also found that she didn't want to do something so cowardly. If that really was Nash's kid, then wasn't it Nori's job to at least tell him the direction she ran off in? Maybe go help look for her when she was able to do so? Inadvertently or not, Nori had caused this problem.

She'd like the opportunity to fix it.