Cedarwood Forest before you bury yourself alive

For @Tomen only.

She had thought she'd reached the peaks of her rage the first time Duckweed had been attacked. It was a swell of heat within her chest, flames licking at her paws and urging her to move, begging her into confrontation. And when the moment came, and she looked the draconian beast in the eyes? It was resolution, a dead calm like that of the eye of a tornado. It had been pressing but containable, she had been in control.

Now, like true fire, it was all consuming.

She hadn't been able to stay after being told the story. She had wanted to, a piece of her knowing that she should have gone to her friend and at least spent time with him. However the horrid twisting of her stomach, the red haze that overtook her mind, drove her away from the thickets to stumble into the Cedarwoods. The emotion was so much that she felt it would tear her apart from the inside out, like she might break open or vomit out every organ and feeling.

All she could see was his face. All she could ask was why.

Unable to think clearly, she was uncertain of which home she was heading toward. Regardless of where her rigid legs were trying to take her, however, they didn't make it far before the flames reached their flashpoint and she combusted.

A snarl so harsh it tore at her throat ripped through the air as she collided with the nearest timber, claws shredding and fangs gouging. From tree to tree she threw herself, a whirlwind of destruction and all it did was goad her anger on but she couldn't stop.

She wanted them to be the ones at the mercy of her fangs.
She wanted to kill them both. She would kill them both.

would totally love a Ninweed thread on this topic too, and the whole leadership thing, he could do with it <3

While she was away visiting the thicket, Tomen had spent some of the day with his siblings, and the rest fulfilling menial duties. A quick run around the pack's borders later (which was a very ineffective way to mark it, but quite good at letting him see that nothing was unusual) and he had chosen to go for a meander through the forest, perhaps to look for Prudence, who he hadn't seen since the early snows. Hardly beholden to the Hollow, while he worried about her, he knew that she was more than capable of looking after herself... and after her clutch of owlets had grown and left, maybe she had just felt lonely...

But he couldn't help but look overhead at the circling eagles and feel suspicious.

The sound of movement caught his ears, though he only paid it half-attention, for the forest was rarely entirely silent, but there was a ferocity about it that made him pause and glance in its direction... and then he thought he recognised the voice behind the snarls...

Instantly he was on the move, running towards her before he had even formed any possible theories as to what might be happening, but even so he did not expect to see what he did. "Nineva?!" he barked, startled by the rampaging fury which had overcome her, staring at the carnage in her wake as she had bitten and trampled and torn down everything within her reach.

Vaguely he recalled being told of the great sickness which caused a wolf to go mad, and for a moment his heart stopped.

Her body was not accustomed to burning through its fuel so quickly, but even as her lungs began to ache and her dull claws crack, she couldnt stop herself. It took Tomen's voice, the last wolf she would have ever wanted to see her like this, to break the hold the primal violence held on her. She wheeled to face him, breath ragged as it hit the air heavily. Her eyes were wide and her thoughts cloudy, the impulse thundering throughout her body with each brash heartbeat to lash out again.

It got the best of her, and she whirled away from him, striking a sapling that had only just begun to stand tall amongst its peers. Nineva toppled and maimed the poor plant with the last of her energy before it was gone and she backed away from all of it, panting. Her gaze softed only briefly as it regarded Tomen's shock once more betore falling to the ground. Hate burned along every inch of her skin.

"Bella was murdered," she explained, her voice low and raw. He would likely know her as Duckweed's mother, as the girl had always filled him in on the details of her Woodlands visits.

"By a stranger. For no reason. He just tore her apart. Duckweed was there."

She only had the details that had been uttered to the thicket pack, but they had painted a plenty vivid picture within her head, inspired by Zerxes' crime. Hers jaws clenched until her teeth hurt and then harder still before she brought herself to meet Tomen's gaze.

"What the fuck Tomen? What did they do? Why did this happen to them?"

She could envision it, but she couldnt fathom it. How could such evil truly exist in the world?

(This post was last modified: Jan 06, 2017, 04:28 PM by Nineva.)

Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't that. While he'd never really met the woman herself, for Tomen didn't have nearly as much interaction with Secret Woodlands as Nineva, he certainly knew the name. Knew her runt son, who Nineva had saved before, who they had both saved once after the weird guy had gotten himself trapped by a log...

Blinking, he listened to her explain, struck by the barely-controlled fury in her voice, by the horror she described so bluntly. He struggled to understand it, to believe that something so violent and evil could just happen to their peaceful neighbours. If it happened to the Woodlands - and this was not their first assault - then what would stop it from happening to the Hollow?

A small voice at the back of his head pointed out that Duckweed seemed to be a common factor, but he chose to keep that to himself, thinking that Nineva wouldn't exactly appreciate that kind of victim-blaming.

"Ancestors..." he breathed, unable to muster any more of a reaction than bewildered horror, stood straight and stiff and suddenly very, very aware of his surroundings. While exposed to certain kinds of life's woes, this kind of gruesome violence was not exactly one of them. Abandonment issues seemed rather tame in comparison. "Is... I mean, the pack, did they, uh, find..."

(This post was last modified: Jan 09, 2017, 01:31 PM by Tomen.)

When the heat of her words dissipated from the air she could no longer hold still. Despite exhaustion settling into her muscles, the young woman needed to keep moving. So she paced, eyes distant as they swept continuously between Tomen and the circle of decimation she'd created. Nineva was trying not to get lost in her thoughts, in her rage, but it was difficult. If only she knew more about the man who had did this, or even where Zerxes had disappeared to. If only she could do something about any of it.

As she walked, it was hard to ignore the tightness across the skin of her left leg, a constant reminder of the scars that were there. Even if she knew, would it be good enough? She needed to be stronger.

Tomen had whispered something, but it barely registered with her. It wasn't until he was tumbling over a question that her ears perked back up and her gaze found him once more. She did not stop her pacing even as she answered.

"He's still out there, all they know is what he looks like."

Her fangs ground together again as her lips lifted in a silent snarl.

"He can't just get away with it. He needs to be found, and put down."

She managed to interpret his fumbling question, her own reaction so polar opposite to his, something which struck him quite plainly; there she paced, back and forth, all sharp edges and tension and focus, and there he stood, blinking dumbly and fuzzy and confused. This was why she was the one destined to be a leader. His jaw fell open slightly as he listened to her curt reply, stuck between reactions, but the more he stared and the more he processed what she was saying, the more one feeling bubbled to the top amidst his bluster.

"Nineva, you..." Nobody told her what she could and couldn't do, he knew that, especially when it came to what was right - and it wasn't as though he contested that this was wrong, that it was awful and horrible, but he heard her meaning loud and clear and that made him more afraid than the idea of some killer lurking in the woods.

"You can't just - we need to fix it together, all of us, protect each other, find the... You can't - these wolves are dangerous..."

That first word, together, it elicited and image of just her and him, and it froze her in place, eyes flashing. Absolutely not. She could barely get herself out the last time, if Tomen was there, if anything happened to him and she couldn't stop it... Breathing came only a fraction more easily when the next beat in the cadence of his words clarified that he meant the pack. Her legs began to move again, but only for a short while before they started to shake and at last she gave in. Dropping gracelessly to the ground, she tucked her tired legs underneath her and stared at the forest floor before her.

That would be the smart thing to do, if hunting them was all she really intended. Even that, though... it was unreasonable to think any one wolf could get the better of a mob, but something within her heart refused to give. She didn't want this burden to be anyone else's, didn't want to risk another wolf getting hurt. Not when it was something she could take care of on her own. And she could, she just needed... she had to get stronger.

"That's why I need to be dangerous," she answered him, her voice quiet and lacking the force it had held just moments ago. If she trained hard enough, so would never need to rely on someone else.