Speed (Open)

[Journey]

White fur flashed through the grassland at an alarming pace, the wolf attached to it merely a blur as she moved at top speed. Deftly she slithered through the tall grasses, dodging the occasional tree and bush, hardly disturbing a single thing. It was practiced grace, and though the thudding of her large paws was not particularly quiet, the rest of her made no noise at all. Journey had learned at a young age that speed and silence were two of her biggest advantages, second only to strength and practice. It had been years since she had first been taught how to navigate, but she would never forget. If she forgot what her father had taught her, she would forget him in his entirety, and that was something she refused to do.

Seemingly at random, the wolfess slowed to a fraction of her previous pace, masked green eyes sweeping back and forth as she moved to nearly a crawl. Her full size could now be appreciated, as well as her beautiful brown markings that broke up the whiteness of her coat. Journey's slightly barreled chest heaved with effort after her sprint, but she quickly calmed her breathing and regulated it back to normal in an effort to maintain her stealth. She was stalking nothing in particular, but from her crouched body language and attentive stare, any onlooker would assume she had prey in mind.

In reality, the female was simply training; keeping her stamina and skills up was something she had essentially programmed herself to do in order to be the best she could. Before he was attacked, her father used to impress upon her the importance of training and motivation, for without practice there would never be progress. Journey was young and perfectly healthy, and if she let her fitness get away from her, she would need to work that much harder to get back to it. So, instead of spending time lying around, she trained every day--running, climbing, avoiding obstacles. Sometimes she would rush a prey animal far outside of her abilities to take down alone simply to sharpen her defensive and evasive skills.

Journey had joined a fresh pack only a week ago, and thus far had not spent very much time interacting with them. It wasn't as though she was anti-social; the large wolf had no problem speaking to strangers and making conversation, but she did not typically go out of her way to initiate contact. It had been ages since she had shared her life with others--one other in particular--and she was not eager to form close relationships after losing her darling Sunny.

That beautiful and perfect creature, with her contrastingly warped mind, had been everything to Journey. The two females had traveled for a year, sneaking through pack lands, stealing and taunting and getting away by the skin of their teeth. It had taken a lot of convincing on Sunny's part to get Journey to participate--their first heist had been underway before the white female had even realized it, but the rush had been incredible all the same. After that unintentional cooperation, she never needed coercing again.

Sadness touched her eyes as she thought back to her days with Sunny, and the female shook her pelt out as though she could shed her skin and her memories and become whole again. The piece of her that Sunny had taken when she became lost to her was shrinking slowly, but it would never go away, she knew; Journey would miss her partner until the day she died. She would forever feel as though she had been wrong in abandoning her, but there had been no other choice. The pack that had kidnapped them was too strong, and Journey too weak; it would have been the death of them both.

Words || 644
Tags || None
Notes || Feel free to pop anyone in here guys, I'm just putting it out there in case anyone is bored. (:

[Deleted]

It had been days of journeying that found them here. Days of finding food as it ran across their path, wandering until their bones ached with weariness, and always south. Farther and farther south Abyss had taken her until the young she-wolf began to detest everything about the direction. What was so good about the south? The weather grew hotter, the forest gave way to flat lands and no shelter, and what was with these bugs? Lyssa snapped her fangs testily as a gnat the size of an Oryx, her shoulders bristling in annoyance. She hated this "south" and everything that lived in it, and if her brother thought he was going to take her away from the forests in lieu of this place then he had another thing coming. But he was determined to make it to the pack they had heard of from the mouth of that old drifter. Abyss wouldn't relent until he'd found them, and Lyssa would do nothing to hinder his desires or leave his side to see to her own.

Every step that had carried them southward had sent another ping of retched foreboding through her muscles like ice caught fire, but she had done nothing to state her alarm or anxiety. What could she say, anyhow, that had not already been said? When Abyss had first wanted to track this pack down it had been a topic of much debate. Lyssa had clung to the forests of the north and the mountains which harbored them, considering them as much a home as any they had ever had; but her brother would not stay, and every excuse she offered to warrant rooting themselves in that place had been met with a calculated and reasonable counter. In the end the fae had relented, unable to deny her beloved denmate anything. Even so, in the back of her mind she knew Abyss would do nothing she didn't want to unless it weren't beneficial to them in at least some way. Say anything you wanted to about the male, but you could not say he didn't love his sister. Some days it had been that truth, and it alone, which had spurred Lyssa on behind her brother, trudging along day in and day out.

The pace had never bothered her, though, and in some ways the endless wandering had felt familiar; like returning to an old habit you haven't committed in a while, or feeling the embrace of an old friend. She had been raised among tireless runners until she too had become one, able to chase from one end of the horizon to the other as long as there was light in the sky. Sunlight, starlight: it made no difference to her, her paws would carry her to the ends of the earth if she needed. But there had always been an ache somewhere in the back of her consciousness; a steady gnawing thing which seemed to grow each day of their travels. At first she had ignored it as nothing of concern, simply nostalgia for territory she had grown fond of; it would pass as all things did. However, it had continued to fester and boil beneath her skin like a diseased bite, all infected and swollen with heated tenderness, and she had been forced to address the problem. Silently, of course, and in her own mind so as not to worry her brother whose excitement was hardly a secret. Lyssa started by thinking of the northern lands they had left behind, and the small den they had found in the forest. It had been a simple home, but a home nonetheless and it had been a disappointment to leave it. While the thought of the place tempted a smile to her maw she felt no sorrow at the departure any longer. Confused and unsure of what the cause could be the she-wolf had returned to the habit of ignoring the feelings for the next few days, and had simply enjoyed the open air and the return to the nomadic styling of their previous life.

'A still wolf is a dead wolf.' Lyssa had thought to herself, constantly repeating one of her mother's sayings to drive away her discomfort. Almost immediately anguish had hit her with square force, stuttering through her heart with painful tightness. It had been over a year since she and her brother had left their old pack, and their mother along with it, but returning to the wanderings which had raised her brought back an entire flood of memories she had all but forgotten. She had been raised on endurance and stamina, and the bitter grit of stubborn resolve; now it seemed she had returned to those pillars of her puphood, and she wasn't ready for the rewind.

That had been days ago, though, and Lyssa had come to cope with the long buried memories of her family and pack, spending each day running with the ghosts of her past. Abyss was a comfort to her, his driving force keeping her from turning around, but there were some moments when even he seemed more a phantom of a time long gone than a physical presence. Of one thing the darkly shrouded fae was certain: she would be happy when this migration was at an end. They had been on their path for far too long.

Their arrival in the southern regions had proven adequate enough that a slower search had begun for the Ananke wolves, with most days finding the siblings miles apart with their own tasks. While Abyss tirelessly searched for the wolves, Lyssa occupied her time with more reasonable pastimes. Like hunting for example. Apparently, her brother seemed content to survive on sheer will alone, while the fae was trapped by the mortal need of a full stomach. More often than not, like today, she found herself quite alone at the job of finding a meal for the both of them. It wasn't as if she begrudged her brother for placing the responsibility on her, though, if anything she savored the solitude as brief respites from the male's undying need to hunt the pack down. She got tired of playing as if she too cared that they found them when in all honesty the femme couldn't have cared less. They had been on their own for so long, looking after each other before all things and all others. Lyssa wasn't sure how to return from that selfishness; she wasn't sure she could.

All worries of her brother and this mysterious Ananke pack fled her mind, though, at the succulent scent of prey which came drifting across her snout on the blessed current of a breeze. Lyssa paused in her trot and opened her mouth to the tantalizing aroma, letting it pass across her nose and tongue to decipher what she would be hunting this afternoon. Disappointment came in the tell-tale traces of a rabbit, and for a moment she debated continuing on to find something else. Perhaps a nice deer to feed both she and her sibling. 'But that's a long walk on an empty stomach...' Second thoughts whispered in her mind, reminding her of the distance between her and the small den she and her brother had made their temporary home. It also seemed to spark the hunger in her belly which had seen food since the day prior when she had managed to snag a small meal. Perhaps it would be wiser to take this prey as her own and continue her hunt after vitality had been returned to her muscles.

The decision made, Lyssa dropped into the marked gait of a huntress: her head and tail low, paws moving swiftly but silently. As the scent grew stronger her pace began to slow and her body crouched lower and lower until she was hardly above the waving grasses of the plains lands. She stilled for a moment, auds twitching at every noise, nostrils flared to catch every scent the wind might carry her way. It wasn't an ideal situation, long grasses made smaller game more difficult, but to fail meant another night on an empty stomach and she could already feel the beginnings of a mood coming on.. No, failure was not an option.

A small scritching noise to her right caught the fae's attention, and the wolfess shifted her head to hear better. The rabbit was closer than she had previously though, but it off to her side and slightly behind her making a quick dash unlikely. She would lose time in a turn and who knew how close the creature's burrow was. With her luck it would leap down a hole and she'd never be able to reach it. Irritation tugged at the back of her mind, encouraging brash decisions, but she merely tightened her muscles and focused on the stiffness of her legs bunched beneath her. She refused to lose her calm and composure, doing so would only tempt failure further. The odds were already not in her favor. Perhaps she could risk turning about, and hopefully the rabbit would be too absorbed with feeding that it wouldn't hear her? Lyssa clenched her jaw, it was a long shot but it was the only shot.

Inch by inch, paw by paw, Lyssa painstakingly began to adjust her position in relation to her prey; trying for all of her worth to face her nose in its direction. At just the moment when she had her front half twisted about, the wind shifted for a fraction of a heart beat and blew instead toward the rabbit. The she-wolf's blood surged in her ears and there came an eruption of movement and a panicked cry from her quarry. There was a thud as it fled, and the chase was on. Lyssa raced through the grass, no longer concerned with silence it was speed which she needed now. She zigged and zagged and called upon every ounce of strength in her reserves. Unfortunately it would not be enough and the beast escaped her, leaving her to slow to a panting halt.

'Stupid rabbit... It was probably tiny anyway.' The fae thought to herself bitterly, more to drown out the chorus of 'You failed.. Failure...' than to find any true comfort. However, it wasn't but a few seconds before she found a new distraction, and not one as docile as her own mind. Somewhere during her mad sprint she had crossed a scent marker; she was standing on pack territory. Dread hit her when she realized she had no idea what pack, or what wolves might stalk these plains.

She was turning to see herself out when the streak of white blurred across her vision: a wolf. Lyssa hesitated, immediately conflicted. Had she not seen the wolf she would not have felt driven by her brother to address it, and now she was left with the option to flee as she wanted or try and speak with this stranger to see exactly whose territory she was trespassing upon. On one paw were her own desires, on the other her brother's along with the knowledge that he would be furious if he found out she had found a wolf and had forsaken the chance to gain information about the whereabouts of Ananke. With a low growl, Lyssa resigned herself to the inevitable, knowing she would only suffer through betraying her brother. Besides, maybe this wolf would have no idea of what Ananke even was. Maybe they would be just as ignorant and just as foreign to this territory as she was. 'Maybe deer will fly and lakes will freeze in summer.'

Lyssa offered a short howl to pull the wolf's attention before making her way toward the pale creature. The wind carried a story of identity, telling of a female with the scent of many wolves clinging to her pelt. It seemed she had not found another loner such as herself as she had hoped. Still, duty to her brother demanded she investigate, so she forced herself to continue onward. As Lyssa came nearer to the white wolfess, assuming she didn't simply run away to assemble her pack to chase out this stranger, the outsider would find a dusky sort of haze to the snowy pelt and a mask of grayish-brown which colored the other femme's face. In size they weren't much different, though Lyssa kept her head low in a lazy mock of the submission she had often displayed to the higher ranked wolves of her birth pack. It might not have been the most appropriate form of greeting when she was wandering where she wasn't meant to, but the fae refused to beg for approval and would not let this wolfess thing she would be cowed into anything.

If the pale wolf would come near enough for conversation, Lyssa would begin with the niceties, "I apologize for my trespassing here, is this your territory?" She assumed it was, but better certain than guessing. "I am Lyssa, I've traveled from the north searching for a pack called Ananke, have you heard of them at all? Where they might be?" There, her obligations were fulfilled. She could take whatever information this wolf gave her and return with it to her brother. Hopefully this wolf would know nothing of the pack her sibling hunted for, and Abyss would grow tired of his search and allow them to return to the cooler climate of the mountain forests. Though even as the hopeful thought crossed her mind, a ticking sense of disappointment began to leaden her gut. She did not expect welcome words to fall from the white fae's maw.

notes: sorry this got so long >.< and that i rambled a lot.. lol still trying to sort out her character so my writing style might shift a lot too blaaaaah it's crap im so sorry *is ashamed* >.<;; - REVAMPED! sorry for how long it's taken me x.x
words: 2311
tag: Journey, open

[Journey]

Journey continued to stare intently at nothing in particular, her eyes trained on a leaf while the rest of her senses alerted her to a coming presence. There was another wolf around, one who likely could see her immensely white coat, and while she was aware of it, the wolfess did not immediately react to the situation. She could tell that the stranger was not quite within reach, and these were marked pack lands; any wolf fool enough to attack a pack wolf on pack lands would not be long for this world. However, it was always possible, and with that thought in mind, the warrior turned to face the trespasser.

As she was turning, the other wolf lifted her nose in a short howl, as though Journey had not already focused her attention, and the white female scowled, an expression that would be visible even from the distance that still lingered between the two. That distance began to shorten as the darker female began padding forward, but Journey remained where she was, standing tall among the jade grasses that filled the forest floor. A hard expression replaced her scowl, for she had not been part of Ananke long enough to want to be dealing with even more strangers. She hardly knew her pack, let alone some loner.

Her duties as a crusader did not necessarily extend to such situations, but if this new wolf posed a threat, she would quash it. They were similarly sized, at any rate, and as the brown wolf continued to close the distance, Journey began calculating her odds of winning, strategies, and where she would strike first if needed. She did these things at a lightning-fast pace, and only her roaming eyes made any movement. This would test her still-rusty social skills, she knew, but despite her training she did not necessarily want this encounter to end in bloodshed. Even harsh words were easier to deal with than a scuffle.

Feigning respect with her posture, the new female spoke in a disinterested and curt voice, inquiring as to the nature of the land and even mentioning her new pack by name, which surprised Journey. "How is it that you know the name of the pack that occupies these lands, but not that you crossed all of their scent markers in order to reach them?" she asked coldly, unimpressed so far. Lyssa admitted to her trespassing, but that did not excuse her. "The borders are very clear. Ananke is a new pack, and the founders have not been shy about marking."

New as it was, Journey could not bring herself to refer to Ananke as her home; the pack was still a separate entity from her, and it would be a long while before she would count herself as a part of it. "Ananke is here," she added after a beat, gesturing lightly with one of her paws to refer to the area most wolves had been gathering. "I know precious little of my pack mates, and even less about whether or not they will be as welcoming to you as they had been to me."

Words || 533
Tags || @lyssa
Notes || Sorry about the delay, and Journey's attitude. She's kind of hard to get along with. x)

[Deleted]

The dark wolf, her pelt dappled with smudges of ashen gray, had spent the morning patrolling the periphery of her lands, though she was not certain what she was watching for. She breathed in the air greedily, taking in the scents of Aveline that were already becoming familiar to the fae. Thus far, it seemed the outside world had not yet discovered the existence of the pack – or so Morrigan believed, but today, she would learn that news of Ananke had slowly trickled across the plains of Anikira, perhaps whispered on the lips of the countless wanderers. Some were searching for a home, while others were content with the freedom to roam the lands. For those who sought security and equity, Ananke waited. Though she was considerably larger than most of her comrades, that didn’t diminish their abilities or her esteem.

She wanted to know each of Ananke’s members personally, to begin to build the bonds that tie. With some, it was an easier task than with others. Morrigan couldn’t blame them for holding onto the secrets of the past, keeping their own traumas and troubles carefully tucked away. Hopefully, one day, they would find her a trustworthy confidante, as well as a confident leader. Until then, she had a lot of work to do to fully gain their allegiance. It was challenging to trust wolves who had so swiftly shifted from strangers to pack mates when she had scarcely trusted her own relatives. But she had to take that chance, she had to give consideration to each of those who desired to be accepted. She was certain that the loyal outnumbered anyone within their ranks who may have joined with ill intentions. She wasn’t suspicious, exactly – more cautious. No one had given her cause to doubt his or her motives. It was a possibility, Morrigan was not wholly naïve about how packs worked, even if her interactions with one had been confined to Kairos.

Her wandering came to a halt when the sound of a howl, faint but distinct, caught her attention. Blue eyes turned to look in the direction of its source. Seeing nothing, Morrigan began to take long strides towards the unknown caller. The females that came into view were matched in size, being of equal height, but their pelts were unique, vastly different from each other. The mottled pelt of Journey, white splashed with pale gray and brown, was immediately familiar to Morrigan, though the two hadn’t interacted much yet. Journey seemed… distant in a way, as far as Morrigan had experienced. Now, her posture suggested that she was not thrilled to be encountering someone new. The other she-wolf was entirely unfamiliar, her dark head bowed, just barely.

A newcomer.

If the stranger was just looking to pass through, then Morrigan thought it was only right to allow her to travel by Aveline, though it could be dangerous. Morrigan was far from being a highly skilled warrior, but her size afforded her some sense of safety as she approached. The female had a new appreciation for the challenges faced by loners. She knew that every wolf had their own story, one that was tainted by sorrow and loss, more often than not, and each wolf deserved the opportunity to tell their tale.

As she drew nearer, Morrigan smiled at the pair, though it became increasingly clear that the meeting was tense. She didn’t overhear what was said, but the body language of the pale female spoke for itself. Clearing her throat to announce her presence, the giantess paused to allow them both to notice her presence. She gave a nod in greeting toward Journey, but her focus quickly turned to the unknown wolfess.  "Greetings to you both. We haven't had many visitors here in Aveline. What purpose brings you to these lands?"  After a moment, she offered up her name, head lifted and posture firm: "I am Morrigan, chieftan of Ananke."   

words: 664

tags: @lyssa + Journey