06-16-2017, 11:43 AM
Pangea has fallen --
Reclaimed by magic and mountain, the summit of which hears their pleas for the return of lands and missing pieces of themselves. She is fortunate to have been born long after the Reckoning turned it all awry, and is fortunate still to be as she is meant to be - fanged, invisible. There are others less fortunate than she will ever be, thinking that the mountain’s will is done and now, they are a now generation of it’s children that are perhaps not quite as free of their parents’ sins as the mountain likens them to be. Femur does not think she is free of her parents’ sins, but rather, is the byproduct of them, like the leftovers from a wolves’ kill, all tissue and bone that they’ve cracked open to suck the marrow out of.
She feels marrowless, or perhaps that is directionless - light and lacking, bereft of a sense of belonging now that the kingdom to which she was born is gone, back to dust and never-was. Because of it, she has no place here and knows it keener than a hawk’s cry for it pierces her breast with a sharp beak and rips right through the meat of her thick pulsing heart. So she shares in that feast, drinks long of her own blood and sups on her own self until she claims a thicket near a stand of birch trees for her own in the midst of the forest. Let the trees and the dark keep her, she’ll become their own secret wild thing, she thinks.
And for a time, she does - she is ill-kempt and unclean, when she is visible enough to see the smears of dirt on her skin and the trinkets of moss and burr that burrow deep into the growing knots of her mane. Mostly, she is a fanged cheshire grin that haunts the trails, floating absolved of all flesh and reason above the footholds of root and earth. She is a fright and feeds on their screams as they tuck tail and run away from her, and she floats ever onward to her own ruined keep of grass and branch. Even the squirrels and rabbits flee from her, and if she had to admit - and that takes much, like swallowing a thick lump of emotion - it, she is a bit lonesome.
Only the wolves smile at her from a distance, but she thinks their smiles are more leers. Their keen noses can sniff her out but are met only with a glimpse of a fanged mouth opened in warning but they wait, she knows they do for they are crafty beasts and given the smallest chance, they’ll make a meal out of her but she is unafraid of them. Scares her own kind towards their dens and hungering bellies, and they leave her to play with the bones of their kills until Femur’s own nest is something of branch and bone, sharp and scratching but familiar.
Still, the quiet is enough at times to drive her out and she climbs to her small quick feet and blinks herself invisible with but a thought. If she wills it, she leaves hoof prints in the dust of the trail to confuse those that she encounters and sometimes, she turns that fanged grin towards them and is nothing but an exposed mouth frozen in a sneering smile.