Swiftcurrent Creek there is nothing for me to burn, nothing but myself

maybe @Cupun? but all welcome! :-)

Baal shivers as the chill of the wind tears right through him as if he is little more than tissue paper. He might as well have been; though he has managed to steal from a few frozen corpses and hunt his own prey that is a little bit bigger than the scrappy rabbits and other small woodland creatures he’s been used to he is still rawboned. He is cold. Too cold to be tired but he thinks he is tired; or at the very least that he should be. He is tired of the endless plague of nightmares …of the terror that lives inside him screaming and demanding that he just give in. That it would be easy and wonderful to pursue the pomegranate once more …to sink teeth into the flesh that is expressly forbidden. Each wolf he passes Baal discreetly eyes them up and just for a second goes through the processes of imagining how he would kill them. How he would eat them. Slowly, of course. He would not devour but eat as if they are a masterpiece and he is to honor them.

Baal is startled from that train of thought, jolted back to present as to which he has unintentionally zoned out on as he steps in a small puddle of ice melt. The water is cold, so cold that it is monetarily painful and he withdraws his paw abruptly, giving it a few swipes of his tongue to collect as much of the moisture as he can. It is still wet, the fur now mussed from his rough and haphazard grooming. It has broken the compelling spell that the bêtes noire has begun to weave, exposing that visible fissure within Baal’s will. Baal does his best to patch it up each time but it is swift and sloppy and each time the fissure expands like the weight on thinning ice whose breaking point will eventually be breached and collapse exposing the dangerous and frigid water beneath.

He draws dry salmon tongue against his lips after he takes a few drinks from the very same ice melt puddle he stepped in seconds ago, savoring the frigid chill as it slides down his throat and settles in his belly, clinging to the chill that has begun to seep into his bones, that drives him to search for some sort of shelter to warm up in for a few hours he uses the cold to keep him grounded, to keep his mind occupied and to pin the objective of this venture to the forefront where it belongs. Find shelter. Baal begins to repeat it to himself like a mantra lest he risk losing himself in thoughts that he does not wish to revisit anytime soon.

How dare he subject her to all of this. To be forced to trudge through the snow in search of him, starving and alone, when they could've both been stronger together! Cupun knew she would make him pay for this disservice - this was no way to treat family. Not that.. Family... Was a particularly prominent aspect of her life, or anything. Whatever! She was pissed, she was tired, and she needed some way to vent that involved blood. The snow had made a powerful attempt to skew her path. Certainly it had ruined any chance Cupun had to hunt down a meal, and even frozen the rare carcass she'd found into hunks of useless material unfit for consumption. Yeah, this was all Baal's fault. He would pay for this.

His path had led steadily west and she, eager to reunite with him for nefarious purposes or otherwise, had kept up a good pace. That had flagged a few days ago when hunger urged her to detour; then, having frustrated herself enough by going in circles in the snow, she'd picked up his trail again and fervently given chase. The river she came upon was sluggish from the frost - the slowest parts having frozen over, encasing fish and other things within its depths. Cupun did not linger long in any one spot. She trailed the bank and sought a way across. That was when her luck changed.

That was when she spots him. A lonesome, haggard figure with his head bowed as if in prayer to the water. He didn't see the grin spread like a fine line across her face; the look faded within seconds as she charged along - quick and fleet of step, silent through the snow - until he raised his head. Cupun ducked and held herself low to the icy soil, merging with the snowscape in case he had spotted her; the girl's pupils dilate like a hungry cat's as she watches, but her brother turns away and begins a slow escape.

Cupun cannot let this chance escape her - she leaps from cover and charges straight for him, gaining ground until she is flanking him, and lets that dangerous grin return to her gaunt face - Brother. she snipes through her teeth - wild, violent, and hungry for recompensation for all the trouble he has caused her.

Find shelter. Find shelter. Find shelter. Over and over he repeats, pausing for the merest of seconds as he swears that out of the corner of his eye he sees a shadow move. Is disappears as quick as Baal thinks he sees it and the rawboned man is left with instead the consideration of what it actually is, the consideration that hunger deprivation is causing him to hallucinate. It would not be the first time. Just the other day he’d seen Hann staring back at him when he peered in the distorted, mirror-like surface of a partially frozen lake — and while this is not irrevocably uncommon as they were “identical twins” in the manner that they were born very close together and grew up looking like one another: a equal dispersal of the same dna. dna that makes them look more like their grandfather than their father ever cared to admit. He swallows and turns his head away with dismissal of what he thinks is his imagination running rampant — also not the first time.

Yet steps falter once more as he is struck with the feeling that his heart had lurched and stuck itself in his throat as a sniped brother in a familiar voice, drawing nearer until she is flanking him. Baal struggles to breathe, threatens to choke on the fear and the unbridled joy at seeing Cupun again. Baal’s life has been hell ever since Hann has been murdered for their crimes but it has been measurably worse since his fight with Cupun and his brazen exit. A boldness that Baal could not repeat, he was confident. It had been a rare occurrence for the one that has always been an omega all of his life as it was. A fluke. A glitch in the system that had otherwise always operated to optimal efficiency in his designated role among his siblings. He slides to his belly before her in total submission, ready to grovel, ready to beg her for forgiveness like a sinner prostrating himself before a holy priestess to absolve him. “I’m sorry,” He gasps, ears slicking back to lay flat against the curve of his skull. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He repeats it, his tone choking and thick, looking to lick her chin in submission, to signify that he knows his place and that he would be disobedient again …if she accepts him, that is. Baal still grieves for Hann. He will always grieve the loss of his stronger half, the half of his heart that will never know anything but the unforgiving cold of grief and unimaginable sorrow. Baal still grieves for Hann but he knows now that he cannot allow that grief to diminish the importance of his sister to him. Cupun is irrevocably just as much apart of him as Hann was and he needs her. His current condition is proof enough of that.

“P-please Cupun,” He begs. “Please forgive me.”

He is just as she remembers him. A few pounds lighter, but the same. Her teeth miss their mark only because Baal is crumbling before her like the ruins of babel; a mighty tower fallen to the far mighter voice. With a word he is returned to her as if summoned from the great pits, and from the earth he grovels, put to heel by her very presence. It is with a sense of relief that his behavior settles the air between them - relaxing her to some extent, stroking her ego as well. Cupun had half a mind to rip him to pieces upon finding him and feasting upon his remains. To pay tribute to their old gods, to their father, to their fallen kin, but in seeing him stripped of his power like this... This is enough. For the time being Cupun is satiated and she stands tall over him, tail arching across her back and posture hearkening back to the days when they were three. She had never been the strongest, but now she had to be.

Still, his plea for forgiveness fell upon ears that had little patience. Cupun's reaction was basic: she saw him laying there sprawled upon his back and positioned herself above him, forepaws set on either side of his face, and bowed with teeth flashing across his wagging lips, his yellowed teeth. It occurred to her then that Baal had no use for that tongue of his - and she was hungry. It would serve a purpose to rip it out now and save her ears from the further bleating of this sheep; there was a malevolent gleam in her sharp eyes as she considered the validity of this. A dangerous moment builds, but she merely grapples at the bridge of his snout as penance for his crime - whatever crime she has bestowed upon him at this point, anyways.

She scores his face with her teeth and then, as quickly as she was there, she is away again. Their issue having been resolved, it is as if Cupun had not spent the previous few months trailing after her runt of a brother; as if perhaps, Haan is still with them. Her mood has improved within seconds, although that doesn't mean much.

I am surprised you are alive, Cupun's voice is monotone as she states this and yet her sharp eyes, they speak volumes as her brow raises. She paces around his figure as if he had already become a corpse to be picked clean, and again her eyes flash dangerously with consideration. You know you cannot hide from me.