11-24-2013, 11:05 AM
This scar could be linked back to being Lola's fault if you decided to go that far down the chain of reasoning. After all, if she hadn't broached upon the topic of an Alpha that beat then abandoned him, Hector wouldn't have felt so strong a need to go hunting beasts that would try to consume him body and soul. If things had gone differently and Hector hadn't returned that night, she would have blamed him and herself equally with bitter, sharp-toothed hatred and stomach-turning guilt and sadness.
But Death had not defeated him, and he instead returned to her with blood staining his face, having spilled from his eyes and ears and mouth and nose and a still-healing wound punched through his abdomen. He was exhausted and only half-healed, but he was alive, and he brought home this scar to prove that not even killing blows would take his fight away.
A few days later they stood to commemorate it, to call the spiritual essence forward and celebrate the scar and all that it stood for. The night was cold, as they were going to continue being for the next few months. Lola stood with the Celduin pack, not bound to Fog as they were, but an equal part of the heart that lived within the crew. She wore a dense, heavy brown wool cape rather than her canvas jacket tonight, as it served better at keeping the cold at bay. The garment fell to a few inches above her ankles, and all that showed between the hem and the earth were the broken-in hiking boots that carried her around the territory.
She'd greeting Tamsin and Thomas with familiarity and affection. Tamsin would get a hug that opened the cape to reveal several layers of insulating sweaters and shirts beneath, and Thomas would get the same neck-and-jaw clasp that he often did. The unfamiliar Wolf that joined them was regarded carefully, curiously, but not cautiously. So this was the Jack wolf that she was told about. Her nostrils would flare and she'd huff a cloud of white breath from them, much like a bull. So, she thought, it takes his Alpha dying for him to finally come back and see what's been going on. I'll have words with him another time.
Another time, but not tonight.
Tonight, they were here to be together, not for Lola to start shit.
So, the ceremony would commence. Phoebe had been at work while the pack waited patiently. Lola had a travel pack with her, as she almost always did when traveling by foot, and shared her grog and a thermos of hot soup to help keep all parties warm, but when the time came she was straight backed and attentive. Unsmiling, but that was simply her way. Light-hearted and pleasant was not her default expression.
When Fog came to join them and swirled about her ankles, pouring in from a hole punched between This World and The Other, Lola closed her eyes and breathed deep through her nose. She didn't have the same intimate spiritual connection to this spirit that the other wolves did, but she felt and appreciated the presence none the less. Her eyes would open again when the half-touch of the Totem had engulfed and passed over, and fix her gaze upon Phoebe and Hector and the ashes that were being spread.
When the ceremony was concluded, after she'd been directed to stand to Hector's east -- the direction of the rising sun, the Dawn, of renewal and Things To Come, Pheobe had donned her wolf form and let forth a howl that burst into the night sky and echoed off the mountains that stretched toward the sky to their West. Lola could not howl along with, but she breathed deep so her breast would fill with the sound and closed her eyes and tipped her face back to the sky, as though she too could join her voice to the chorus to come.
She couldn't Howl.
She couldn't love Fog like the others did, or be a part of It.
But she was there, and she would support and celebrate to make up for it.
But Death had not defeated him, and he instead returned to her with blood staining his face, having spilled from his eyes and ears and mouth and nose and a still-healing wound punched through his abdomen. He was exhausted and only half-healed, but he was alive, and he brought home this scar to prove that not even killing blows would take his fight away.
A few days later they stood to commemorate it, to call the spiritual essence forward and celebrate the scar and all that it stood for. The night was cold, as they were going to continue being for the next few months. Lola stood with the Celduin pack, not bound to Fog as they were, but an equal part of the heart that lived within the crew. She wore a dense, heavy brown wool cape rather than her canvas jacket tonight, as it served better at keeping the cold at bay. The garment fell to a few inches above her ankles, and all that showed between the hem and the earth were the broken-in hiking boots that carried her around the territory.
She'd greeting Tamsin and Thomas with familiarity and affection. Tamsin would get a hug that opened the cape to reveal several layers of insulating sweaters and shirts beneath, and Thomas would get the same neck-and-jaw clasp that he often did. The unfamiliar Wolf that joined them was regarded carefully, curiously, but not cautiously. So this was the Jack wolf that she was told about. Her nostrils would flare and she'd huff a cloud of white breath from them, much like a bull. So, she thought, it takes his Alpha dying for him to finally come back and see what's been going on. I'll have words with him another time.
Another time, but not tonight.
Tonight, they were here to be together, not for Lola to start shit.
So, the ceremony would commence. Phoebe had been at work while the pack waited patiently. Lola had a travel pack with her, as she almost always did when traveling by foot, and shared her grog and a thermos of hot soup to help keep all parties warm, but when the time came she was straight backed and attentive. Unsmiling, but that was simply her way. Light-hearted and pleasant was not her default expression.
When Fog came to join them and swirled about her ankles, pouring in from a hole punched between This World and The Other, Lola closed her eyes and breathed deep through her nose. She didn't have the same intimate spiritual connection to this spirit that the other wolves did, but she felt and appreciated the presence none the less. Her eyes would open again when the half-touch of the Totem had engulfed and passed over, and fix her gaze upon Phoebe and Hector and the ashes that were being spread.
When the ceremony was concluded, after she'd been directed to stand to Hector's east -- the direction of the rising sun, the Dawn, of renewal and Things To Come, Pheobe had donned her wolf form and let forth a howl that burst into the night sky and echoed off the mountains that stretched toward the sky to their West. Lola could not howl along with, but she breathed deep so her breast would fill with the sound and closed her eyes and tipped her face back to the sky, as though she too could join her voice to the chorus to come.
She couldn't Howl.
She couldn't love Fog like the others did, or be a part of It.
But she was there, and she would support and celebrate to make up for it.