[private] Infection;

[sinew]

Sinew wakes beneath the redwoods; She feels a strong compulsion - blood calls to blood, but it is not of the matriarch of their line, Scalped’s blood does not beckon her forth. No, it is something far more sinister than that… The chestnut overo climbs to her feet, shakes the moss off her back that has collected there. She has slept longer than she is accustomed to as of late, and dreamt for the first time in a long time. Her dreams are tucked away carefully in a cobwebbed corner of her brain, pushed back and far into forgetfulness, but strange noises still ring in her ears (the left is a tad bit shorter than its twin) until the quiet of the night calms them. Tarnished will be mad when he finds that she is not in his forest, that she has escaped it for a few hours but she looks forward to the punishment that comes of her disobedience - it forces him to focus on her for once, instead of the madness that drives him, it will drive him to concentrate on her and she shivers happily at the thought of how he’ll hurt her this time (the scar on her neck throbs in remembrance, delicious and achy). But blood and defiance fuel her, and she leaves the redwoods at a run - blood calls to blood! She runs long and hard, heedless of the branches that grasp at her fur and draw thin scratches against her skin. Rivers think to stop her, for a drink or a fast current, but they are no match for her relentless pace and she is driven over and through them until at last, panting with exhaustion, she comes to the edge of another forest. Trees seem to be a theme for her; the forest is dark in menace, and she pauses to sniff the air for anything that might a scent familiar to her. There is none, but the smell of rot hangs thick and heavy on the air. Hm… she muses to herself, rot? Her mother told her in brief detail about the stallion that helped make her, he reeked of the grave - like what she smells now. Sinew tracks the zombie-stallion down; he is truly hideous! A sight to behold from talon to ear-tip and she has never seen anything so despicably beautiful (besides her mammoth-horse pet, besides her telepathic daughter with the burning owl-wings, besides Tarnished), that her mouth gapes open - not impolitely, but in awe of him. “You,” she manages to murmur past the wonder that crowds her tongue, “are my father, I think.” Him, in all his maggot-infested gape-fleshed glory is the thing that rode her mother’s pale immortal back and made her, Sinew. She smiles shyly, flattered to have found him so easily that she overlooks the putridity of him as it clogs her nostrils, and comes closer - probably closer than many have ever dared to come unless begging for their death at his teeth and talons. He is so beautiful, so cruel to look upon that she has to shut her eyes against the sight of him even as she savors it. Looking at him is the equivalent to biting into a plum that has gone sour, and Sinew finds that once she opens her eyes, she cannot look away from him.