Wolf RPG

The scent of cat is in her nostrils -- she stand amid sharp peaks that jut up to bite at the sky. The lapis of her gaze sweeps the barren land, and her heart wrenches at the ugliness wrought by the hotland insects. She knew them well, knew their twitching bodies by name and by the destruction that they brought with them.

Senmut was dead. He had been the one man she had loved in her rigidly cold life, and Thutmose, jealous of the man's great affections for his wife, had murdered the gentle wolf. Oh, Senmut! How I failed you in so many things! she thinks, but steels herself against the threat of tears. There had been enough of those.

Upon her departure, Thutmose had taken her daughter for wife, as was their despicable custom. When Hatshepsut had gone home, Nefurere's belly had been filled with another litter while three sons from her first gamboled about her paws, heirs to the throne.

But I am Pharaoh! she hisses to herself, wending her way down a steep path to the flat arid land below. For had not the Mighty Bull made it so? She had only taken Thutmose as her husband to secure her rule, and the snake had robbed it all from her. 

The rise of her daughter's taut stomach was burned into Hatshepsut's inner eye; her ka writhes at the images that rose darkly before her. Such a wicked way to get sons. 

She would not go back.

His thought that perhaps there was some corner, some nook into which the locusts had not descended proved incorrect the more he snooped around. Even the eastern crag, sheltered by two great mountains, was stripped. Nonetheless, his blunt claws dug into the rugged surfaces of the rocks as he wound his way down into it. He was not alone in this; his nose skimmed across the stone and noted the fresh scent of someone not far ahead of him.

His stay here would not be long, he decided. Cougar scent was also prevalent and he deigned not to be made into a meal of desperation. He loped ahead, coming to a pause as he spotted the female whose path he tread. He woofed to her, hoping to draw her attention.

She glances behind her at the sound of summons; he is a brazen beast to approach her so, and his eyes glitter like gems from his dark mask as he draws near. Hatshepsut does not bristle, nor does she warn him aside from her. What has she come for, if not to indulge herself with others? A smile plays along her lips as she pauses in her steps to fully appraise this man.

He has not spoken, not yet, and so she cannot examine the cadence of his speech to glean from where he hails. But she is a patient sort -- the courts of Karnak called for no less -- and so the woman waits, gazing directly into the man's eyes as she waits for him to speak.

It worked. She turned to face him. Her eyes, of a similar blue to his own, came to meet his. This did not bother him as it might another wolf, and he gazed back nonchalantly, holding the silence between them, and wrongfully expecting that after checking him out a moment she'd say something. She did not. Rexxar leaned forward, turning his cheek toward her a degree as he said, "this is the part where you say hello," paired with a wink.

He leans closer, a roguish glint to his eye, and his masculinity is beautiful, though Hatshepsut scarcely has an eye for any other wolf aside from herself these days. The familiarity with which he greets her would have brought her hackles alight had she not often heard the same since traveling through these lands, and she arches a brow instead.

"You are very forward," the Regent rejoins in an accent he would not be able to place, not unless he had visited Karnak himself, and her tone is merely observant, not scolding. Hatshepsut moves on, though not so quickly the man could not keep pace. "What is this place?" she inquires at length.

"Being backwards is generally considered a bad thing," he commented, and she started to move away. Though his paws were leashed to her own, he followed suit, one languid step after another. "It's a crag," he answered, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. If it had a proper name it was unknown to him. If it had any use to a wolf, this was also unknown to him, although the same comment applied to many territories now. "So," he drawled, "are we looking for something or are we just out for a walk?"

He responds with sarcasm -- Hatshepsut leaps lightly to a lower crag before answering: "A home." She intends to be clear that she is not searching for a pack -- she was not made to be a subordinate, and would be a horrid one indeed if forced into a lower rank. Lapis eyes search for any signs of the cats whose scent lays across these rocks like a cloak; seeing none, the woman moves on.

"Why do you follow?" she inquires after a heartbeat, for his legs have found her gait, and their presences are well-matched. Perhaps he believes she can locate food in this famine, and her lips curl into a tight smile.

Rexxar bobbed his head, not that she could see as she continued to forge ahead and down as she leaped to the next crag below. He did not glean from her short answer that she was not looking for a pack or that she was not subordinate-material; he took it at face value and did not question it.

"Oh I'm not following," Rexxar quickly corrected as she posed her own question. "I just happen to be going in the same direction." He, too, leaped to the lower crag, and as her eyes scanned in one direction his own gaze tended to cast in the other. It was up to her to discern if there was a hidden message in his statement like her own, or just more of his roguish humor. "I don't think I'd live in a crag," he commented, and his left ear turned to the sound of loose gravel tumbling down the rock.

He looked but saw nothing.

He follows, his tones denying the trot of his paws. She too turns an ear to the shivering of gravel against stoneface, but her lapis eyes betray nothing, and so Hatsheput turns back to the man. Her lips part -- words tremble there -- but they are never said, for in the next moment she looks beyond him to see the hateful stare of a cat.

The Regent is not foolish; a puma driven by hunger and enraged by the encroachment of wolves is unlikely to stand down from a fight, but it is not one the Egyptian plans to give. Golden hackles bristle momentarily; she pauses where another step might be taken and instead looks behind herself for a trail back up along the crag.

The man she gives a long look, wondering what he will do.

He had seen nothing, but she had, and he folded back his ears as he watched her expression shift and her lips part to form words that refused to leave her tongue. He turned, shifting backward a pace as his eyes fell on the cougar. "I take it he's not a friend of yours?" he quipped, casting a sidelong glance to the area around them as she too looked behind for an escape trail. There was only one option, and he would hesitate no longer to take it.

"Time to go!" He called, and he spun on his heels and sailed past her with a quick nip at her haunch to spur her, making split-second decisions on which way to go as he weaved around the stone and navigated the crooked planes of the crag.

She would have snapped at him for daring to touch her royal person, but his nip is the spur that is needed, and Hatshepsut flies after the ash-hued man, their steps carrying them swiftly beyond reach of the cat. Their trail is quite precarious, but his movements are sure, and so she follows, until her own pace slows. 

The panther is nowhere to be seen; Hatshepsut searches for it silently, before her eyes alight upon the man. "What is your name?" she inquires in her cool fashion.

He ran far and long enough that the cat decided its energies were better spent elsewhere, for the beast knew that the wolf, though lacking the same armament, would nonetheless put up a fight after the chase. His paces slowed in tandem with the female who had ran just aft of him, and as he comes to a stop he turns broadside to her, slack-jawed and panting as he looks behind her after the cat that was no where to be seen.

"Phew," he breathed, shaking his coat to dispel the tension that had collected in his muscles as she asked his name. "Rexxar," he answered, gazing back expectantly in anticipation of her own name.

She too takes the time to shake out her pelt, dust motes soaring high into the air -- her eyes fall upon the man as he speaks. Rexxar. The word is unfamiliar and so she does not attempt to repeat it, though the edge of her mouth quirks with an ironic smile. Her own name is much more difficult, the Regent suspects. "Hatshepsut," and she aches to put her titles to follow.

But this is not a place of titles; the woman pauses to take this Rexxar's reaction before one gold-hued ear flicks and she presses on, determined to discover what it is she wishes to find. He is welcome to follow if he so chooses.

Hatshepsut. Rexxar nodded, with lifted brows and a smile that bridled laughter. That was a mouthful, and not one he dared repeat having only heard once. He would butcher it, he was certain. Yet, he would be surprised to know she felt similar about his own name.

She moves onward, and Rexxar considers her path for a moment, before his paws start to turn in another direction perpendicular to her own. He had seen all he needed to see of the crag, and had no reason to pursue the slight female. So, he would take his scouting elsewhere, in search of more nooks, more crannies, more corners.

He does not follow, and Hatshepsut chides herself for the brief sting of disappointment that comes upon the heels of this realization. Yet she is not one to beg; she chooses her own path and moves slowly upward, determined to find her way out of this "crag," as Rexxar called it, ripe with the stink of cat. 

And yet the Regent pauses, eyes falling upon the sinuous smoke of his clutching form. "If you are otherwise unaffiliated, Rexxar," the wolfess intones, calling to him, rolling the middle syllable of his name with a clipped tongue, "travel with me. A creature is better off with another in the midst of all this pestilence."

His ear turned back as she called to him, and soon followed his body as he quartered toward her, offering her his attention but retaining and displaying his intent to go his own way. Yet, for a moment, he considered what she offered. Under most circumstances, her company would have appealed to him, but in these times, he disagreed with her logic. He shook his head slowly.

"'Preciate the offer," he responded, sincerity in his tone. "But I think I am best alone or with a pack. I wish you the best. Perhaps we'll walk the same trail again in the future - fed and fat." He winked then, and once more turned away. He walked on, because he felt that small game was best hunted alone, especially when so few remained, and that even as a pair any large game was not likely to be theirs to take down, nor keep if they were able. He would survive this famine on his own talents, or by calling on the strength of a pack.