Ankyra Sound I am the mask you wear
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Upon getting her hopes up about her brothers and then having them dashed into the floor, Wylla hustled back up the beach in the direction of home for several days, stewing. For her, home ought to have been Keokuk Glade, where the majority of her rearing had taken place, but it wasn't. She remembered it fondly for Lusca and Ingram, but she hadn't been plucked from Ankyra Sound early enough to not have memories of it. When she thought of home, she vaguely recalled the grotto as the first impression of that. It was there she sought to return to with every intent to wallow in the loneliness spurred by the broken promise of seeing her brother again—and meeting the other one.

She hadn't thought of Ingram much lately. She hadn't thought of him much since getting lost, in fact, and that was deliberate. It kept her from sorrow. But now he raced through her mind, a silver-hackled specter brought to life by her brief hope and crippling disappointment, and taunted her with the realization that she was all alone here. To quiet it, she sought familiar sights. That was how she came to be in Ankyra Sound's expansive sequoia forest, though truthfully, she herself didn't know where she was. She remembered the grotto and the strand, with the surf that glowed with soft blue lights at sundown, and thought she would know it when she saw it, but she was on a course to pass right by the path leading down to that very beach and was none the wiser.

Set sometime after she meets Sandpiper and Smokestep, forward dated some. Making a few assumptions about how that goes but being vague, the context of this thread may change accordingly. Wylla is up in Monolith Forest near Ankyra Sound's edge. For @Ingram and/or @Lycaon. This is rambles.
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cries of seagull pierced a hollow descant, banshies shrieking above the drum of metronome waves. it was a particularly blustering morning. inshore, resident orcas rollicked in the whitecaps. Lycaon sat reticent atop the siltstone overlooking the inlet, watching as they played and breached with stygian fins slicing across the surface and spouting fine mists into the air. he'd often watch them--perhaps the same pod, as he had come to recognize particular members of the unit--as a child, and consider what it might be like to join them. it was a piece of enjoyment he'd never shared with anyone -- it felt secretive and special and meant uniquely for his eyes.

he recalled early mornings of furtive retreat from the grotto, whist withdrawal from Caiaphas' somnolent flank, to slake his intrigue with the animals as they hunted. this time, he observed them at dusk. instead of hunting, they seemed to play with one another -- lobbing the surface with their flukes and rolling to reveal their white bellies and spyhopping to watch seagulls swoop and dive abovehead.

Caiaphas' return meant a wane in Lycaon's megrims to some extent, though in no meaningful way -- resentment bent upon the influence that female had exerted over Ingram. resentment and  feelings of betrayal inflowed from old and unhealed wounds freshly dehiscenced.

as Wylla sifted a path above the strand, her scent wiffled under his nose. he could not distinguish why, but something was different about it -- it wasn't necessarily familarity, in the sense that he could recognize Ingram coming from a mile upshore, but as with Caiaphas, it bore a faint kindling of recognition. fainter this time, even. so faint he didn't recognize the receipt of its purchase in his memory. 

he picked down the rockface with sluggish effort, mostly slip-sliding his way to the bottom. the interloper hadn't surfaced from the leviathan forest, but he could see shadows skewing and flexing in the dimness therein and began keeping pace alongside it from the strand. "looking for girls on the beach to creep on, huh pal? unfortunately, you just get me. though i am, admittedly, very bodacious." he hollered into the forest, eyes straining to make heads or tails of the figure distorting the darkness. "so very bodacious. don't you want a closer look?" 
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Maybe it was because she was getting close to her nearly forgotten homeland, or maybe it was just the windy weather, or the fact she never had to worry about seeing Raptor again, but she was in a better mood than she had been in recent days. The forest reminded her a bit of the glade and something else nestled deep in her memory, and she breathed deep the familiar scents. In summer it would be almost all moss and choking greenery, but in winter it was spacious and a little bit regal.

There was still enough cover that for a short time she didn't realize she had a companion, at least until his voice rang out nearby. Wylla drew up short and glanced around with a frown before playfully calling back to her unseen comrade, "so bodacious, it's so very efficacious." Who the fuck was this guy anyway?

She seemed to be asking that question a lot lately. Fortunately, Wylla wasn't always spineless, and she turned and headed directly for the voice, emerging from the deeper woods to find herself face-to-face with a thickly ruffed pale wolf, whom she shot a creepy grin and murmured, "sooooo vivacious," even though, for some reason, there was exactly nothing about him that she found attractive except for his eye colour.
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as the she-wolf emerged from the clutch of firth, Lycaon stared openly at her. not because his brain had error 404'd at having just succeeded in pinpointing the exact location of his long-lost flesh and blood, but because he was expecting a dude to come stodging out of the ferns. she crooned a rejoinder but he had no scintillating wit, just a lot of gawking to do.

"uh." unbidden, he swung his head away from her, backpedaling hamfistedly. "no hablo ingles, madame." he muttered with an undisguised lack of dialect (spanish or french, for that matter). his eyes roamed to scrutinize the silver bandings across her face. it still didn't register that this was Wylla -- in the brawn! -- but he did starkly remember childhood anecdotes about succubus living in the temperate rainforest and their seduce-then-execute shenanigans.
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Wow. Okay. Awkward. I mean, he had called her pal and all, but she hadn't really expected for him to be so gay that the very sight of a woman disgusted him so thoroughly that he pretended he couldn't speak her language. Hell, she hadn't expected him to think she was a guy at all. Things made a lot more sense now. Him claiming to be bodacious should have been obvious enough, but her black ears pitched sideways nonetheless and, flabbergasted, she could only say, "woooow."

After a beat she stepped fully out of the fronds in her full cinder-washed glory and stood opposite him, not once recognizing or even suspecting that they might be related. "Look, sorry," she said, "I uh, didn't realize you were into dudes. It's cool! It's uh... good for you!" And she smiled, and bit her lip, and tried to hide the fact that she really wasn't into the whole homosexuality thing because she knew how quickly that could go south.
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the girl’s egress from the bract had him stepping back with every forward advance she made, his ears yanking waspishly against his head as she cast doubt upon his sexuality. he squinted, eyes plainly regarding her slight frame -- dross of slag and matching Wylla’s description in every respect — but he wasn’t smart enough to conceive the idea that finding their mislaid sister would be as easy as her rapping at their door. it would be a pretty unmemorable conclusion to a prolonged inquest. 

overall, defending himself against her speculations was probably futile, and he didn’t really know what being "into dudes" entailed, but regardless, Lycaon felt compelled to clear the air. ”no soy “into dudes"… no soy, same as we, you see? ja?” german now, too. yeesh, guy. ”bears are, how you say, mi cosa.” he insisted with a wormy undulation of his brow. ”me gusta rough. ” the boy crooned in his tragic attempt at.. spangerlish?

deploying the ole "creep ‘em out till they slowly back away and leave the premises” was clearly the only strategy he had in his repertoire at this point.
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It took only one second for her to realize that she had the upperhand—for some reason, this fellow who openly approached her before didn't want to be near her now—and she took advantage of it instantly. She swept her bony ankles forward, taking slow steps in Lycaon's direction to back him further into the woods. She didn't know about the beach or the cliffs that could be found by venturing in that direction—there was therefore no malicious intent in her motions, only the seizing of a power he had given over to her.

"Oh, yes, bears," she echoed, nodding her thin head and smiling devilishly. What a fucking weirdo. "I like bears too. In fact, that's my nickname. The bear." She fluttered her lids over her eyes in what she thought was a seductive manner, but really just looked a little more like a brief seizure. "How 'bout you show me?" Ew. Wylla wanted no such thing, but wielding power over another being, even briefly, sometimes required taking a risk or three.
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Wylla sussed out, real quick, that the boy she had crossed paths with was not handling her reveal with a whole lot of confidence. she pounced on this advantage she had over him, commanding an air of control over the situation as she minced towards him. he froze, except for his hindquarters which began rotating reluctantly opposite of her as she drew up into his bubble, trying to crowd him into tho forest by the potent gravitational pull of female seduction alone.

he didn’t take the carrot. he, in fact, refused to look at the carrot. Lycaon was visibly on edge, his eyes focused on tracking her progress towards him with sultry overtures evident in her body language. ”heh,” he huffed quietly when she divulged that, by some great fortuity, her nickname was the bear. he blinked rapidly, head retracting into his shoulders like a turtle would recoil to a stick waved in its face when she fully approached and bat her eyes at him. "i don't think that's true at all" he wanted to blurt.

”should be ‘the Skunk’.” he interjected on impulse instead. to his credit, she looked more like a skunk than she did a bear--right down to the blaze on her face. he didn’t really think too thoroughly about what’d he insinuated however; that maybe she smelled offensive or something to that effect. you know, what girls really want to hear from a guy.

”show you….” he trailed off with confusion, then realized all at once the implication behind her words. ooooh. she wanted him to plow her? him? well, what a nice sacrifice to make for their species. this girl clearly had set no real standards for herself if she was willing to make her womb a plantation for his illegitimate seed. he never had much of a greenthumb, anyway. 

”eehm… no bueno. saving, how do you say… myself.” Lyc declined lamely, as though he hadn’t just claimed boisterous encounters with bears. the sham accent fell like dominos with the rest of his lies. ”b-buh.. hit up Ingram for a guh-for a good time.” he swallowed hard, differing a skirting glance to the coast. then, demonstrating the universally social cue for wanting to leave, began shuffling awkwardly away as if to say look at the time, i oughtta get going.

his intent may have been subliminal but the venereal vetoing couldn’t have been clearer. get away from me, you demon.
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"The fuck did you call me?" Wylla asked, crowding her ears forward over her brows and taking a far more menacing step in Lycaon's direction. What a rude bastard. Who commented on a lady's smell like that? Sure, Wylla probably smelled like some concoction of salt water, bird shit and reeking mangy mutt from her encounter with those barbed swains further up the coast, but skunk was putting it so harshly she almost felt a tear form in her ducts.

Wait, nevermind, that was just another tumbleweed.

"Ah, so what you mean to say is you're a total virgin loser," she surmised, baring a single tooth at Lycaon in a mocking smirk. Like, wow, who was still a virgin these days? Wylla for one, but how was he to know? Far as Lycaon knew, her fields had been plowed by every farmhand this side of the world, but he'd just openly admitted to how sad and lonely and pathetic he was. Small wonder. She nearly ducked her head to see if he had a purse instead of a pack, but stopped at the mention of Ingram. One jet ear flicked up instantly.

"How do you know Ingram?" she asked, voice ragged with suspicion, as her eyes narrowed on the "foreigner".
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*lusca sheds a single, proud tumbleweed*

"oh uuh, skunk, i think, was the word i used." he clarified as he made inching inroads towards getting the frick out of this zipcode;  but she kept coming back at him with ophidian tirelessness. he danced out of wylla's infuriated range of motion, arching his ears wryly. oh, the vision she had of herself didn't coincide with the imagery of a stripey, black and white nuisance? weird. she must have never inspected her reflection in the water, because the resemblance was uncanny to him. 

lycaon set to the task of soothing over her ire, but there was a critical failure in his reasoning. "but i could compare thee to a midsummer's day if... you'd like... but... like if someone got skunked on a midsummer's day? you know?" he squinched. no, no, that probably wasn’t helping matters. best if he just exited stage left. the palefurred boy started again moving in a direction that implied he wanted pardoning, even letting the virgin loser remark roll off his back (nonetheless in the way a cube might when pushed down a tree-ridden summit, but he really enjoyed all features being intact as they were).

her next utterance was sticky with suspicion, ”how do you know Ingram?” and Lycaon in turn became questioning of her acquaintance with his now, presumably, slattern of a brother. his eyes narrowed to dubious slits. ”how do you know Ingram? you his scorned lover looking for revenge? i can tell you his exact location if so.’”
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Wow. Wow. This guy sure had some balls, although the way he kept on inching away gave the impression that they were creeping back up into his body, seeking refuge. She pursed her lips and flashed her teeth at him, following with even steps, which only faltered momentarily when he began his sonnet. There was the briefest of moments where Wylla's eyes lit up at the prospect of a man saying something kind to her, but it fell flat when he opened his mouth again, and a low growl started in her throat.

She only relented in both growling and stalking him when Lycaon asked if she was Ingram's scorned lover. Ew. What the fuck? "His sister, you sick jerk," she said with a wrinkled nose. "Like that sad sack of crap could ever get a lover anyway."
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his sister, you sick jerk handsome devil, she spat at his feet like he’d just flashed her his junk in a parking lot. never mind—it took a minute for the realization that this is Wylla to upload, but when it did Lycaon’s mind was flushed with elation and oxytocin. she could have dubbed him “king dickiess of great manner of epicene frailty” and he wouldn’t know what it meant, but he still would’ve gawked at her like she was the biggest birthday cake on this green earth. ”NOWAYHISSISTER!” he shouted, descending to a play-bow as his tail whipped furiously against his haunches. ”Wylla! you’re Wylla!” he exalted, rearing up and slapping her shoulders with his paws (a little roughly and with no great consideration given for his strength).

”okay, this is exciting, wow, I didn’t… okay. actually I’m going to back up.” he breathed in to steady himself, pedaling his feet backwards to put some distance between them in case she decided to lash out at the news he was preparing for her. he’s my brother too! would you believe it! that makes us…. sisters—no, you’re our sister! we’ve been looking for you everywhere!!” 

his scummy brain decided to recall their philandering just moments ago, and his nose whorled into a grimace depicting a type of aversion that felt visceral and gut-churning. ”uhh, mm. eugh.” Lycaon groaned, ears falling to their natural state of droopiness atop his head.
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Wow, what the fuck, went Wylla's brain as the stranger's face morphed from discomfort into the biggest grin she had ever seen. She retreated a step or two, tucking her chin up along her throat and recoiling with a slow backward tug of her muscles. Her lips pursed and she threatened to show her teeth as Lycaon's personality did a complete 180 and suddenly he had his ass up in the air and was joyously calling her sister and being, in simple terms, a complete freak.

She knew Ingram well enough. She didn't think he would have fed some total stranger the false belief that he had a sister in the world, even if she was cruel enough to pull that sort of trick on someone. Ingram had never been cruel like her; in Lusca's words, he took after their "retard of a father". There was nothing wrong with that, but it lent some validity to Lycaon's words, and she drudged up a name from the deep recesses of her memory in an effort to seem as enthusiastic as he was, though she remained skittish of him as she asked, "your name's Lichen?"

She didn't know anything about him, but if he was truly her stolen brother, then he was as significant as Ingram. So she implored him at length to tell her everything that had occurred.
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feel free to close this ancient thread

his spirits deflated somewhat as she bungled the pronunciation his name--but then he perked up again when he realized she knew, at least tangentially, of his existence! and that meant his birth mother hadn't completely dropkicked him out of the family tree like he was the fuckin' brood parasite to her nest of blackbirds. "close enough, yeah!" he was agreeable and would take it. she was still understandably wary of him and his narrative, but he was determined to wedge their kinship into its appropriate cubbyhole by any means possible; he tramped over and attempted to force her into a hug like a housecat trying to embrace the family rabbit.

even if she harshly rebuked him and choke-slammed him into the ground, he would maintain a dopey grin on his face with a tail wagging like bell-clappers as he merrily suggested: "let's go find Gringle!!"
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Her self-proclaimed long lost brother had the right idea; it was getting drafty up in the woods, and Wylla had a lot to process. If Ingram was nearby, then she wanted to find him and reunite as soon as possible. It wasn't that she didn't like Lycaon, but he was too new, and their interactions were likely to be awkward for a bit until they established a rapport. He threw his arms around her thin shoulders as if they were best buds, though, and while her first impulse was to pull away, she gave him a tentative swipe of her tongue across his cheek and grinned. "Lead the way," she bid, and wearily followed him down into the strand.