The Wildwood A wanderer

Hollow had been walking for he didn't even know how long, exhaustion and hunger pulled at his odd lurching gait created solely because of his condition, he stopped and sat beside a tree, put his head down,sunlight dappling his black coat, he closed his blue eyes with that strange ring of green in the right one. His mind was on fire, from the time he had set out from his birth home he never stopped, he was too young to cope with their loss, until now he had literally relied solely on stealth and care to live this long.

Soon his racing thoughts came to halt, yes his heart was wounded from his terrible journey, and the hardships he did not know he was still too young to face, he was here now, wherever here was. He liked the feel of it, it was more of an inviting place for his guarded heart, a place of healing maybe. He threw his black head back and howled into the air his voice sang a song of great sorrow for his lost parents and kin, and his aching heart and stomach from his long and taxing journey. he was tired now and he let his drop first to his chest then to the ground. Hollows eyes closed for a moment and when he re-opened them he sat bolt upright his mind hit him with a hard realization and his heart almost left from his chest.

It was an end, the loss of his parents, he knew they had loved him, had he known he would be slaughtered by the rouges with them he would have stayed, but he went to play alone that day. It was an end to his parents, to his siblings, to half of his heart. But it was also a beginning for here stretched before him was a new land and a new heart lay somewhere deep in the soul of the woods that he may hope to one day find, he threw his head back once more to howl a song of hope.

Lonely, sing the wanderers, but    Have hope! sing the brave.    The shadows compose silence, or the crack of bones.    (or both)    Djinn turned to face a haunting music. Like the wind a voice tumbled between the trees and she answered in silence, throat closed. No daylight, no circumstance, no giddy moon ever convinced these teeth to unclench or this voice to grieve.    The world is empty, she once said. The night sky swallowed voices and gave nothing back.    The shadows listened, prowled, coalesced – as she did now.    On cracked pads the black wolf slunk from one tree to the next. She knew the smell of bird and squirrel, deer and earth. She called these things her neighbors and she sometimes chased them through the light, but here – something both strange and too familiar called.    She bent to sniff the evidence left in a shallow paw print or an upturned leaf. Young, said the scent. Careless. His voice spoke clearly if his scent did not.    He prowled too near the shallow hole she called a den. Dead, his corpse might say tomorrow.    Or – unexpectedly received. Djinn thought back to a time of lonely paws and starlight, when a black wolf crawled from hungry valley folds up into the foothills and found something there. A name? A home? Philosophy?    All three.    She walked, heavy, toward a little shape crouched in the shadows of a tree. Her posture held such little grace – but no display of fearsomeness today. Only a cocked ear and the blink of empty eyes conveyed her knowledge of him.    “Pup,” she said, her gravel voice as toneless as the day. “What do you want?” A question now repeated from another brief encounter with another creature wrapped in black – that one more dangerous by far.    “You sing on my doorstep. It must be attention.”

(This post was last modified: Oct 07, 2012, 12:32 AM by Djinn.)

This was a little off from what he had hoped to find in these strange lands, his thoughts wrapped around his instincts had cleared and he realized with a jolt, he'd been too obvious and hadn't thought of any unwanted attention, the black wolf that had approached him was slightly, less receptive than he had hoped. Deep in his mind a tiny voice seemed to remind him, <i>You have to prove your worth to the wolves who dwell here already, show them you wont not one to be so easily frightened off</i>, then he spoke with a sort of southern twang to his voice.

"You are surely observant, I don't have much age on my side, attention yes of sorts, I don't seek trouble but information, this place, what is it?"

He tried to sound as if he was just casually asking a question, yet he hoped the bad tempered she wolf may be less inclined to remove his fur if he made it clear he was new to the land. His mind continued to fight for something that didn't sound sour, he needed to at least make a good impression upon whomever he found seeing as a fight with a chipmunk would be a terrible battle in his weekend hungry travel weary state. So with at least a slight hope in his head he raised his ears and locked his Blue eyes with the opposites yellow orbs and added hastily.

"I don't mean to intrude on your land if you are a pack wolf, or loner like me, I hope that there's no trouble in my being here"

There was something in this wolf he seemed drawn to, maybe the dark hardness of her voice, or the way this voice seemed to speak directly from a broken soul. <i>much like mine?</i> But whatever the reason this wolf had Hollow's attention and if the wolf could read others as well as she seemed she could look into his blue eyes with the strange green ring in the right and see his facade

(This post was last modified: Oct 07, 2012, 03:47 AM by Hollow.)

She once said, “The world is empty,” and like Nietzsche, declared herself a god.    She carved her own identity from monoliths of bone, watched water gather in the skull of someone she once knew,    said, “I am empty, too.”    A month of travel and only the pain to say yes Djinn, you are alive. Somehow exhaustion spat her un-luck here, into the bowels of a living earth.    She thought, you’re too polite. The world will eat you. But in his eye she saw a color like the trees. Perhaps she’d make a better meal.    “The Wildwood,” Djinn said, giving a name to something old beyond words. Something in her thought the forest laughed, to be named so. It would be green and and ancient still when she was dust. Yet…    Her empty eyes returned to latch onto his face. She thought there must be meaning in a flaw like his, to poison eyes that otherwise gleamed like clear lakes. He said “trouble” more than once. She wondered if he meant to ward it off or bring it in. She knew, thinking too much about anything would only serve to call disaster down.    “Trouble follows us,” she said, “when we go without the pack. So we are trouble both.” Djinn curled around him, sniffing mangy fur and matted tail. “Listen with your nose,” she said. “I smell of Wildwood, not wolves. Don’t ask dumb questions.” Her tail floated, lofty, high above her back – but never bristling.    What sport lay in killing children? None. The harder game, by far, lay first in suffering their ignorance. Or dodging mothers. Djinn blinked and wondered just how old a normal pup left home. Not so young… Then his formal words and yielding manner clicked on something in her brain.    “Where is your mother?” Djinn asked. “Aren’t you young to be alone?”

It was a direct question, <i>where is your mother?</i> but it almost hurt to hear what he didn't want to think about he knew he would have to answer that, and maybe reveal more of his nature,young naive he knew, afraid yes but brave.He checked himself, she didn't smell of wolves as she had said. he felt his eyes traveling across her black pelt,much like his she was certainly more experienced and hardened than he. He felt the words to the core of his soul as they came from him without hesitation.

"Dead, my father, sister and brother too. Murdered by rouges while i went to play alone away from our old den, the moment I saw them dead I ran and since that day I haven't stopped."

His mind broke, Images flashed through his mind, his mothers body, throat torn out, Still protectively lying in front of his siblings who fared the same, and his father teeth bared in a final snarl of defiance at his murderers the long treacherous journey through the mountains dodging other wolves, bears and everything else, the scavenging eating rotted meat to stay alive until he could hunt. Then this place, the wildwood.

"Please, I don't want the "Oh you poor thing" bit I've had that too many times I do not need to be fussed over anymore"

He raised his tail,to match hers, not in challenge but to show he was equal, acknowledged her angry cold wisdom, and to show he hadn't let life knock him out just yet, He stood there, still as stone, letting her judge. He didn't want the memories but he knew he would have to relive the nightmare with everyone he met. He spoke his name which sounded strange, he hadn't told anyone his name since he left his home.

"My name is Hollow."

Horror – lingered in his voice: an imprint of some memory beyond.    She thought of wolves dead, bodies gleaming black beneath the moon. She thought, I am like the rogues. They had the right idea: take all they wanted, shred the rest.    Still, Djinn thought: they must have been quite stupid, wasting energy on murder and then running off, and even leaving one behind…    Ears canted up, she cocked her head. Djinn read the poison of true fear in every nervous muscle twitch. She read a kind of emptiness though, too – that he still walked alone. Perhaps tragedy bred evil, too.    Or, as Djinn called it – truth.    She barked a hard laugh and stepped toward him, thick and heavy and suddenly intruding on what little space he claimed. That little pup-tail held high was like a thorn obscuring otherwise clear vision, ruining his handsome little picture. Step down, read her body language, or I will put you in the dirt. Between two individuals, one always takes more. In this instance, the master of the conversation would not be a pup.    Pups are meant to lie still in the dirt and hope nothing devours them.    “I don’t care,” said Djinn abruptly. Laughter colored still the rocky tenor of her voice. “Sloppy work, to let one go.” Her lips curled back along her sharp eyeteeth – in what might be understood as threat, and certainly as warning.    “If you want life,” she told him slowly, body tense still, waiting for his to relax and step away, “don’t tell anybody else.” Behind those empty eyes of hers, the she-wolf relived one of her own bloody nights: the night a dead thing woke and hauled its carcass up to safer ground. More interesting helping cubs than killing them, she thought, knowing his thin fur would be nothing up against these teeth. “The hunter fails. The child dies. The wood lives on.” Briefly, she glanced around them at the trees. Be like the wood, she thought. ”Careless. Impervious.”    Knowing: what rogue is proud of simple slaughter, pointless and imprecise? She disdained these phantom killers. She thought, if she ever found them she would show them how to really kill.    But: Hollow. Djinn smiled, too, at that name. “Fitting,” she said. Approval rang hard in her voice. She thought, learn to be like your name. Perhaps the rogues then weren’t sloppy – just overturned by fate, or circumstance.    She said, “I am called Djinn.” Not quite the same thing as a name, if Djinn felt technical. Every time she said the thing she thought of where it came from, saw the old wolf standing there, fear bright inside the yellow of his eyes.

Hollow read the motions of the wolf, he knew he would have to retract his stance to an extent in order to avoid a conflict, he would not shed his own blood for foolish pride. He lowered his tail just so to a relaxed position, he studied her, weighed her somewhat cryptic words. His mind turned over and over,wondering weather or not he should just keep moving. But he saw no obvious direct threat of attack from that hard yellow stare, only memories. His momentary fear faded almost at once as he spoke.

<b>"It is life, is it not? Curious thing, that haunts us, gives hope and then takes it away. I guess we're nothing to it"</b>

Even as the words found their way out of his muzzle they shocked him, he hadn't realized his own thought of it, that it was uncaring of its participants, that it would leave him to die, that if it felt so it could put the thought into the opposites mind to rip his throat out at any second. Strange he thought looking past the wolf to the trees his thoughts beginning to chain together, <i>that life has so easily taken my home and family, left me alone, maybe just so I can die here</i>. But on the other hand maybe it was so that he may meet this wolf to open his eyes, to shake him from the strange dream he had lived in in his journey. He felt his eyes return to her face for a moment and almost by accident he opened his mouth again.

<b>"But we create our own story and make it ours. Thank you Djinn, you've helped more than you know."</b>

He knew the loner would never care that she had helped him, this wolf could care less about a wolf as young as he, she was a hard one, cold and callous uncaring, but wise in a strange almost insane way. It was odd no doubt, the meeting with this wolf, that she may say the simplest thing and it open his eyes so. He knew though that he would remember it, it would make him stronger to accept the cold uncaring wild, knowing in the end he meant nothing to the trees or the wind, and so far not even to the living wolves that walked the land.

He moved to yield – not yet the fool time sought to make him. Something like approval weighed in the slow nod of Djinn’s heavy skull. She stepped back, coarse fur rustling in the shadows.    He seemed to understand, she thought – at least a little. Perhaps he would never act on understanding as she did. Perhaps he’d choose a different path; she knew of those who did, who still subscribed to some modicum of “goodness” despite all proof that such things were mere fantasy.    She could not begrudge them that.    With such resolution falling over them, Djinn felt her own interest waning. She realized, though the realization irked her, that this cub was already his own enough that he could not be hers. She studied him a moment longer, black mind deep in what-ifs and might-haves. She realized she was lonely, and she shook it off.    “Hmph,” was all the answer he would get – thrust from an unkind throat, but not from such a void as Djinn would call her heart. She thought, I should not help them that must learn to help themselves. She moved away then without warning, bored and irritated and at odds with her philosophies for this single, bitter moment.    Not all things made sense. Not all things were understood in a moment’s lapse – but still the lack of understanding was a thorn between her teeth. “Try not to die,” she paused to say, coarse words thrown over one coarse shoulder. It was not sentiment, exactly, but a sort of hope – however things like Djinn hope.    I want to see you again, she meant. As an equal. Then she wouldn’t feel bad if she mistook the boy as someone else and accidentally killed him.

ooc// augh, sorry about the wait and about this awful post :x

ooc don't worry about it, i was just waiting to wrap up anyways ive got a pretty short post too.

As Hollow stood there watching Djinn disappear he thought, of hope, she in a strange cynical way had given it to him, there was a way that she spoke that almost said, <i>I don't want to kill you</i>, that made his heart and mind reconnect the way he meant them too, now in telling his short story his pain began to well up but he knew that everything could turn out right.

She in very strange and harsh way had done good for him, by shaking him out of it, he pondered a moment longer before walking in the opposite direction, with purpose, he felt as a wolf again moving silently, stalking through the trees head low eyes bright and alert . His pace quickened, until he was racing silently through the trees, he knew things would not be easy but he would last the dark wolf had given him something that she knew not, hope. He wanted to see her again sometime as a wiser male, stronger and more of an equal, and to see if she ever found something to still the tempest that seemed to constantly boil over within her. She could be a good wolf but maybe he was wrong and naive he thought as he raced through the woods and away.

(This post was last modified: Oct 19, 2012, 12:15 AM by Hollow.)