Sex: Male Beasts that hunt never can forget the smell and taste of blood - the sharp, metallic cloy on the back of the throat, thick as whispers and dark as dying when the violence recedes and leaves scabs to close up or maybe just leaves pools on the ground, rotting, filled with the most distant echoes of a beast once alive. Vafri's cuts already clumped into uneven scabs beneath his fur but still the dark stains on his chest, his face, glared like livid tattoos at a sky wrapped in thick clouds. He ached - not for the first time - to see the burning eye above his mountains, to feel it cut through his retinas in an angry burst. He ached for the numbing burst of an icy wind or the oppressive silence of the falling snow - for the keening slash of a familiar voice rising on slow ribbons toward the low sky. Nothing Vafri needed came to greet him though and lonely, the white wolf padded up familiar mountain paths. He paid little heed to the path he took and subsequently marched too high at first and spent the better part of his day backtracking, looking in vain for the narrow path up toward the higher peaks, that suddenly would switchback, fall away amongst the pines, and become the sandy shores of a too-deep and too-silent lake that sung in muted colors when the aurora lights began to burn. Vafri's shoulder complained in the weary language of repeated throbbing while he walked - limped - out across the sand and let his dark eyes watch for nothing but the path ahead. Gods damn that entire pack, and his, too, for living so close to a raving bunch of zealots. The hard lines of the brown male's face swam sharp in Vafri's memory and he took care to fix it on the very insides of his skull, that later when he needed it he would still know the face, the fight, the trickle of warm blood that smelled now like scabs and like clotted hair. It wasn't so much blood but Vafri always flinched away from his own; memories of tragedy long past made him wary, imprinted on his mind lost scenes of crimson bright and treacherous across the hard snow, of antlers and teeth unattached to a handsome face, and the brilliant awful yodeling that tore from Vafri's own throat... There was no one here to trust. He lapped at the lake's cold water and it burned down his esophagus, hot fingers digging into every nerve and speaking words of pain and comfort and of life. Thirst gripped the white wolf and he drank for a long time before looking up, dark eyes expecting someone, maybe - one of the lower females driven from the den site where Naira lay giving life to new cubs, cubs Vafri didn't care about but would inevitably care for and tell stories to, and do his own part in shaping. He sighed and waded forward, lips drawn back in a quiet snarl as cold flooded his ankles. With a brittle sigh then Vafri slipped his face below the surface and worked at it with the rough pads of his right paw - scraping and scraping - until the soft scab broke and started bleeding once again and he gave up, and sat back - wet, bloody, tired, lonelier than he had been when only stars sang down at him and the only greetings he received were bared teeth and flat, angry words. |
