OOC: Figured I might as well get Vlar out in the open again. Time: Prolly early evening. Temp is 31 and fallin' as night arrives. Fair warnin' - Vlars being extremely mopey and morbid. Don't ask me why :/ x.x
Months - it felt like months since her return to the borders of Grizzly Hollow.. and her subsequent departure from the same. In reality, it was a few weeks.. maybe a month - maybe a little over. Vlarindara couldn't remember, she couldn't be sure anymore. The days melted into one another, her time being spent simply scrounging for food - a means to survive. The heated den that she'd claimed upon her original trek into these lands had once again become her home - but every day it became harder and harder to drag herself out of its confines to forage for sustenance.
She'd grown used to the blindness in her right eye, the lack of depth perception and vision it had once offered. She'd found, however, that simply canting her head to the left a bit seemed to help - and when in doubt she simply took things slow. The vision impairment made hunting impossible... As repeated failures proved to her that her loss of vision had been more detrimental than she'd imagined. Constant misses of the prey creatures she'd thought to hunt - near misses by flailing hooves of the occasional deer. As it was, she sported a bruised shoulder from one doe managing to nick her in the midst of a chase.
Long, thin legs carried the ivory female through the trees, once again simply.. meandering where they may choose to take her. Her stomach had long ago lost its pinch of hunger, a feeling she knew far too well. At least, the last time she'd been this hungry, she'd also been sick with fever - recovering from wounds earned prior to arriving in Relic Lore. This time, she was neither ill nor recovering from wounds - if one discounted the bruising on her right shoulder. Her right eye had healed, the amber color having faded into a muted, cloudy silver.. Both scars on her face had healed quite nicely - including the one she'd earned long ago from Kiche. Both left garish red lines across her otherwise white visage - but she seemed not to mind.
It had taken her the better part of the last two days to force herself from her den.. to come find something to eat. Thoughts of Raigo, of Borden.. the pups.. they kept her mired in a constant fog of doubt, self incrimination and disgust. Not at those that occupied her thoughts, but at herself. Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda.. all played a myriad of broken tunes in her mind.. Each thought a shiv to her already feeble heart.. Each instance of her own betrayal, ineptitude and flaws further driving the point home. Such thoughts made for a rather listless hunt, her steps slow, not really worrying about taking her through the high ground with less snow. After all, she'd successfully pushed those she knew and still loved away - leaving her alone with thoughts and memories of what had been.. and what she wished it could be..but never would.
Her feelings for Borden would never abate - if anything, they'd grown stronger the more her thoughts turned to the masked wolf. Her hopes for Raigo - that he would grow into himself, find his niche in life and become the strong creature she knew him to be....They'd never weakened - and she hated herself for leaving him, but she wouldn't have him seeing her like this - best his last memory of her was a far happier one than the reality.. At least in her own mind.. But then again, what exactly did she know of what was best? Here she was without a support system that most wolves had during the cold winter months, wandering alone in waist high snow.. scavenging on the unfortunates that the winter had consumed.
How long would it be until her own hide was sustenance for the next one to come along? A morbidly amusing thought, and it brought a sardonic curl of her lip along with it. That would just be her just deserts, wouldn't it? But.. a death far too nice for the atrocities she'd committed. No, to succumb to the snows clutches was not a..fitting way to go for the ivory wolf. It was far too gentle and calm. Vlarindara lowered her head, the bite of the icy wind cutting through her lackluster fur and wracking her form with a shudder. She froze in place, simply shivering until the wind stopped.. and continued to shuffle around in the snow she'd initially stopped in. It was the smell of rotting flesh, drifting up from underneath the ground cover that had brought her pause.
After digging a few feet down, she found what she'd been looking for - though it appeared she was not the first to the remains. It appeared to be an herbivore of some kind - little enough meat left on the bones.. but enough that the remains of the carcass that had been buried under leaves had smelled enough to call her attention to it. For a moment, the white wolf blended in with her surroundings as she shoved her head into the hole and closed yellowed teeth over a bone. Jerking the thing out, she was pleased to see it was a femur, and had come loose with a few scraps of meat remaining. Shifting her prize in her teeth, she began the slow trek back to her den - pushing through the snow, following the path she'd earlier walked. Even as hungry as she was, she knew it wasn't safe to eat her meal in the open where anyone could and probably would wander up on her. Meager as it was, she wasn't keen on having her meal stolen.