09-04-2018, 05:41 PM
 He slinks with the wolves – shapes flickering through forest shadows, their going muffled by drifts of snow. His head is low, his breath released from flared nostrils in a huff when one dog nips at another, causing a scuffle. At the sound, the canines fall quiet again. Where he had once invited their obedience, he now commanded it. There had been a time when Daemron had resented control without choice – but that was before. Before his first pack (his family) had disintegrated, picked apart like the frayed edges of a rope. Before he had met Pyxis – before he had burned for her, and she for him – before they had burned out of control. The image of her leaving is seared in his memories. Her form, mahogany-and-white, dwindling against a dark horizon, never looking back. The maned wolf going after her, never to return. He remembers the cold emptiness that had followed in the wake of incensed rage, gnawing through him while he stood rooted to the place where they had left him. Even still, it grinds and grates, scraping away at the hollow space in his chest where a heart should be. They had both made their choice – and it hadn’t been him. In the years since, time and solitude have made sharp edges of him. The sorrel of his body is wire and sinew, the grey of his eyes cut from steel. They glow faintly in the half-dark as the pack moves, and the scent of prey drives them through dawn. The hunt has become his lifeblood – an all-consuming rush that he can drown himself in over and over again. Of course, it can only ever be a vicarious thrill. In those few minutes between the life and death of the kill, Daemron lives and breathes through the wolves – and however temporary it may be, it is enough to forget himself. So when daylight falls through thick branches to illuminate blood-spattered snow and wolves chewing on gristle and bone, Daemron’s own satiation has come and gone. He stalks the woods in a black mood, his mind ill at ease with the emptiness, his stomach queasy with the almost-taste of coppery blood between tongue and teeth. And so when a sharp pulling sensation tugs at the back of his mind, he dismisses it as part of the recurrent visions that plague him at times such as these (waking flashes of Pyxis’ nightmare, reimagined and relived since the day she’d left, dreams of skin and blood and ruin). He gives a rough shake of his willowed head, snapping his jaw closed irritably at a grey timberwolf lying nearby – but when the old sense does not fade, Daemron halts abruptly – and then an animalistic growl is ripping upward from lungs to throat, and he leaves the pack (not his, never again his), moving instinctively toward an all-too-familiar pull with a mixture of dread and maddening expectation roiling in his gut. He doesn’t know how long it takes to find the river, nor how long he follows it as it brings him to where he knows his once-companion will be. All he knows is the way the old anger lashes through his veins until he is vibrating with it – because while he is certain Red will be there, he has no such certainty that she will be, too – and he hates that with every step, the not knowing is slowly killing him. And so he is nearly in a rage when he comes upon them. He stops some yards away, shaking, and his eyes bore into hers. Yet when the ruddy wolf pads forward as if to greet him (just as she’d done so many times before), he lunges at her with teeth bared, ears pressed back against his skull and the acidity of betrayal in his throat. The she-wolf retreats, though when she doubles back to try again he channels his power and freezes her in her steps. She huffs indignant, unused to the exertion of his control. He ignores her and instead hisses, “What are you doing here?” It’s almost as if he’s asking himself this question – after all, he was the one who’d come looking for them (for her). He will not let himself believe that his presence was any more welcome than it had been all those years ago. In a cooler voice: “You left.” An accusation. He looks first to Red, whose bright eyes have fixed upon him, and then he lifts his stare to Pyxis. He feels a pounding in his chest as he takes her in, retracing the lines and curves of her, remembering the softness of her lips, hating that she was the reason he could feel his heart beating again. He masks the pounding with sarcasm. “Tired of the dog yet?” His voice is gravelly with disuse, low and tainted by the anger that still consumes him. “You’ll have to find someone else to take her off your hands if you are, Pyxis.” Her name on his tongue feels reminiscent of the hunt – all-consuming – dangerous. “I was done with her a long time ago.” (A lie.) With that, he releases his hold over the she-wolf. In its place he creates an invisible perimeter which Red would not be able to cross to get to him. Desires are at war in his chest, but for now he stands still upon the riverbank – though after all these years, history should have taught him to turn and run before she does. daemronlost to the hunt as I was to you |
okay so this is like the longest post everrr >_<
feel free to continue to play red out as your muse leads you, it's kind of fun to share!
eeeee daexis <3333