Barrow Fields i need not one thing more

for @Caiaphas. set for tomorrow at mid-afternoon, derp. whenever you have tiiiime <3

nothing could have ever prepared mona for the great grey expanse of the ocean, a churning, icy brine that stung her nose and eyes with its scent and threatened to drown out the pounding of her heartbeat with its roar. she stood transfixed, in a snowy field studded with odd mounds; a more careful wolf might have sniffed out the bones buried within the earthen tombs and departed the eerie place, but mona stood trembling with wonder and an unexpected terror.
her red fur lifted in short spikes along her thin shoulders and narrow hips; the mayfair turned and stalked slowly along the edge of the winter-blanketed meadow, never taking her eyes from the ocean; eventually mona sat and continued to drink in the detailing of the scoured cliffs, the foam at the edge of the breakers, utterly fascinated by every bit of maritime structure.

ankyra's most miserable scullion found herself alone that day, and relished it. she had taken a rare, delightful excursion to the strand south of them -- and on her return, expected very little trouble. until she ran into a brilliant russet sylph, who seemed enraptured by the snarling sea.

caiaphas set her glowering gaze on the yearling -- she was long-lined and thin, not built unlike a wolf borne of this very beach. something about her was unsettlingly familiar, but the siren queen could not place it. "what, never seen a beach before?" the wretch queried once mona had noticed her.

mona's joyous contemplation of the sea was roused by a rasping voice, and in horror the girl turned her wide murkwater eyes upon the dark visage of a sharp-featured, dark-headed wolfess, the burn of the witch's eyes scalding mona into a gasp that gathered her to frightened paws and backed her along the edge of the meadow.
"y-yes! i mean, no. no, i haven't," mona bleated, attempting to both draw in the details of the other wolf and keep her posture deferential, so confident was the other's demeanour. but the other had offered no threat; now the mayfair stood ashamed in front of the newcomer. the small silvered lining to the aggrieved cloud that had settled over her features was noticing the swell of the small-boned woman's sides. mona flushed with delight. "i can't wait till i'm a mother," she blurted dreamily, and then true horror at what was surely a blunder overcame her countenance.

a certain satisfaction stirred in the siren queen's heart to witness such alarm cross the soft features of the girl --she had caused that and a content smile played briefly at the corner of her thin lips. her gaze flickered back out to the white-tipped waves, and then pulled along the cheerless features of the shore before once more resting on the auburn female. it seemed such a contrast -- cold to warm, dour to bright -- but it was the murkwater depths of the female's eyes that perplexed caiaphas the most.

they seemed intimately familiar and once more she was hounded by a sense of skepticism that she tried to quell. not even the girl's blurted faux pax diverted caiaphas from scrounging of her memory -- surely, she had never seen this woman before. surely, she would have remembered her.

"and i can't wait to be rid of them." she commented at length dryly, having exhausted the deep springs of her memory and having dredged no remembrance of the woman from their depths. "who are you?"

the woman was brash, assaulting mona with a brisk statement and a sharp question. the mayfair, who had never before in her rather sheltered life been addressed so, found herself dumbfounded and stumbling over sentences that would otherwise easily come to her. "uh ... m-mayfair! mayfair, lasher's ... daughter. one of them. the last ...? one? i think. by rowan mayfair." the girl gulped a bit, shifting nervously in the snow. 
she hadn't a moment to consider what the woman had said about her own brood — but as the seconds ticked beyond their lifetimes, mona swept her scarlet ears forward. "rid of them? but why?" and here she flushed with a smile she could not hide, thinking of what she and her eagle had done, and knowing one day she too would look as this woman did, carrying children about, a mother.

caiaphas had already mentally prepared herself for some boring introduction she would be swift to forget -- only this introduction clawed her heart and she fell back with a startled and half-stifled cry, her countenance pained by the revelation. lasher.

she had attempted to bury her memories of him long ago -- and occasionally they washed up in the shores of her conscious, dredged by some idle passing of an old place of theirs, a feather, some twisted and gnarled branch. even the luschyon trio occasionally evinced distant memories of his face, for she knew their father had been part of his covenant.

she was quick to regain her composure, but the slip had been evident. brusquely she sought to cover the lapse in her cold stoicism. "he's dead, you know." she stated matter-of-factly, though even announcing it still caused a grave lance to her heart. it was obvious that mona had known of his passing, for she had mentioned she was likely the last of his offspring -- either way, caiaphas assumed the coldness of her utterance would at least prevent the young girl from feeling as if she had the upper hand.

her own words soon brought mona quailing once more, but this time due to the unexpected and flaring reaction of the dark-headed woman, her exultation bringing a gasp from the scarlet girl, who found her steps moving her some wary distance from the grim wolfess.
yet she did not depart her companion nor earshot; the rejoinder was flung into her doeish features with the force of a crushing stone. mona could not hide the tremble of her small chin; the murkwater eyes that were her only birthright from a dead man turned unseeingly toward the sea, and the visible contractions of her throat evinced the girl's fierce struggle against tears.
"i know," mona murmured with a cold tone she had not heard in herself before, and the sea-wraith was given a cooler expression, though the little mayfair was too saddled by her own emotional consciousness to keep the glitter of saltwater from it. "i've been wandering this entire fucking place looking for anyone who knew him." presently mona's lips thinned into a dark line and she rounded on the woman with an aggrieved whisper. "you did, didn't you?"

o mona ;-;

caiaphas admitted, in her own way, that it had to have stung to hear from a stranger that her father was dead. had she a heart, or a conscience, she might have felt bad -- instead, she gloated as she evinced a sense of frigidity from the russet woman. she had always had that affect on people -- drawing forth from their secluded reserves a prickliness that ought to be hidden.

caiaphas had always delighted in drawing forth from strangers their ire -- for whatever reason, she was a fire-setter, an instigator -- her gaze lit afire as she witnessed mona's crisp change -- a chord was hit, a nerve struck -- and she was here to drive her thumb inside it.

"yeah, i knew him." she answered, somewhat uncharitable with her contribution. "you didn't try donnelaith?"

<3

"everyone says it's burned," mona responded, a bit taken aback by the witch's crispness. and yet — "you did know him!" the crimson girl exulted, perhaps cutting off whatever the dour woman would have said next. "please ... please, tell me everything you can." her eyes searched the dark features of the wolfess momentarily before she dropped her gaze and arched her paws awkwardly in the snow. "it's my fault i don't know."
mona's brow furrowed and up her small muzzle flung again, studded with some expression of wary curiosity, but found the words she wanted to speak had flown her tongue like proverbial birds.

for a moment caiaphas studied the way mona fretted her paw in the snow, sunken pawprints muddled with each passing imprint. caiaphas had not returned to donnelaith since news of lasher's demise, and had not known of the fire that sundered it. she hide her surprise well, electing then to scowl as she stared across the stony face of the sea.

"why is it your fault?" she asked ostensibly, curious in what world a whelp would be at fault for the absence of their father. "what would you like me to tell you? he visited my shore a few times - and i his -- nothing more." a vestigial twinge of sadness lingered in her tone, cut crisp as she thought of kierkegaard. perhaps a different life, things would have been different -- but that life was no longer, and she was still here.

madly, mona wanted to fall upon caiaphas' narrow shoulder and beg all manner of things from her dark lips. but she swiftly corrected such an erroneous thought — she would be more likely to garner a clip to the ear than a story about lasher. but the yearling did not miss the undercurrent to the cold water of the wolfess' tone.
turning her murkwater eyes on the woman, the mayfair paused for a long moment. "anything. anything at all. how he walked. how he sounded. what he said. i don't know — i ran away from my parents before they could tell me much of anything. really, only that i had a father and he was dead and ... and —!"
mona bit the inside of her cheek. "and that my father wasn't actually my father, the man who raised me. but .. you see. that's why i'm here. i should have stayed."

the she-wolf studied the fair girl, the brightness of her coat, the rich cerise that dappled her shoulders and flank. "you have his eyes." she commented at length, draw to the deep murkwater of her irises; a dead give-away of her heritage. "otherwise, you look nothing like him."

she meant, of course, the brilliant russet of mona's pelage - a stark contrast from the deep shade of damp earth and dulled silver that interspersed lasher's hide. she thought of their first meeting on the shore, and the subsequent ones after --of how she had discovered one of his children far from donnelaith's keep, and had lead her back rather than keep her.

"he seemed a careful man. full of great trouble, but he loved his family. i do not know of his life in donnelaith -- only what he showed to me, on the shore." she was aware that she did not have much information to give - she could tell mona how he made her feel, but would that truly matter to the mayfair's daughter?

the woman confirmed once more that mona wore his eyes — as had the family she had left behind, as had constantine. and now the girl knew it to be truly real, that she wore the gaze of some unseen spirit. but from this woman who had once known lasher, mona found clarity in the claim. 
mona realized that the she-wolf's answers had unfurled with grudging slowness — she offered more than clipped words now, and the girl gleaned images from them. so lasher had been a mystery of sorts to the shoreline countess. the girl watched her elder for a somber moment, noting the strength beneath what many might see as a sinewy, sharp-edged body. the plane of the woman's cheekbones came beneath her gaze next — but mona shyly snatched it away, not wanting to stare. curious, curious; she recalled what finley had said.
"how ... how often did he come to the sea?" mona inquired gently, beating with a newly budded curiosity but not wishing to sunder their perilous connection.

caiaphas had not caught the mayfair's gaze, for she herself had been drawn into a pensive, distant stare -- she looked over the sundering depths of the oceans, troubled that the whitecaps she saw today, would never be beheld by lasher's eyes. perhaps through mona, maybe -- but she was not a wolf that believed in spirts, not anymore.

"not often." she answered, though the siren realized this was a most indeterminate measure. "often enough i would not forget him -- but not so frequent his visits were burdensome." for a moment the wretch studied the fairness of this creature, and wondered jealously who the mother had been. certainly, had mona been her own, her complexion would not be so mesmeric. "if you wanted to know your father, why did not you go to the woman that he fucked? she dead too?"

her father — he had visited these shores, and mona turned her gaze upon the sea-serpent for whom he had come. the other's sharp words did not now torment the mayfair as they had some minutes before; her mouth curved in a wan smile that for a moment belied her years, heavy with a weariness that did not yet show upon her youthful visage.
"alive, my mother. but i ran away from them both." running her tongue along her jawline, mona rolled her narrow shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. "i wanted to know about him from someone other than her," the girl responded in a tone that trembled at its edges, so immediate and great her guilt for dismissing beloved rowan in such a manner.

at this juncture, mona had suffered greatly under the sharp whip of caiaphas' tongue. yet she did not crumble -- instead, mona seemed to adopt an air of long but patient suffering.

it irked caiaphas. not that it took much to irk the siren queen, but she narrowed her eyes suspiciously at that smile, which to her, seemed incredibly self-assured.

mona's tone, however, conveyed a different emotion -- perhaps the face was easy to steel or command, but the voice -- like the eyes, the voice was its own willful subject to master. caiaphas smiled knowingly to herself, for it had taken her great pains to master guile implicitly.

knowing mona ran away was not the most exciting answer to her crudely launched barb, but it was enough to still her tongue a moment. she ran it thoughtfully between her sharp teeth, responding in turn after a weighed pause. "bet you regret that now." she crowed triumphantly, a shade of mirthful malice in her eyes. this pretty girl might have been lasher's daughter, but she was not lasher -- caiaphas felt no affinity for the woman (that was in no way or shape possibly derived from the fact mona was far more beautiful than the hawk-faced siren -- that was just pure coincidence, promise).

there was a crystalline break of something glasslike within mona at the continued barbing of the sea-cow; internally, the young mayfair boiled with a fair cauldron's weight of growing anger and pain from a wound continued to be torn open. so easy it would be to show her strife to the other, to give vent to the frustrated tears that threatened to give her away with their acrimonious salt.
but as was the birthright of her clan, mona had been born with a deep and faultline pride. tempered by her youth, stoked by the exhaustion of all she had undergone since departing her parents, the girl straightened and turned her murkwater eyes upon the harridan.
"the same way you regret not fucking my father," mona floated on pointed tones. it was of course a guess; zeus aiming thunder-bolts at arrogant mortals below, not knowing if they struck their mark. and she was no god, only a grieving girl discovering thorns beneath her tongue.

the sylph sucked air sharply between her teeth, feeling the cut of mona's words. her ears swept back, her molten gaze hardened -- wretch, cow! there was a pause, as if she was gathering her skirts to stormily leave -- a snarl rippling from her thin muzzle in stifled outcry. "bitch." the siren queen hissed, lips curled back and sharp fangs revealed -- yet it was for naught; her tie to lasher forbade any vicious recourse, and instead the woman hatefully departed.

faaaade <3

mona flinched, her own lips slipping back from her teeth in case the the seawitch should attack. but in the next moment, all she beheld was the narrow hips and rounded sides, the proudly tensed spine of her father's bitter companion. and when the woman had quit from eyeshot, mona slumped to her haunches and began to quietly weep.