Wolf RPG

The barrier of rock was less of a deterrent, and more of an obstacle to the intrusive needs of Furiosa. She might have climbed them and continued to the sea, had not the stringent aroma of wolves curbed and bricked her confident approach. The wicked Xanthippe stilled at the borders of Blackrock, peering through sand and stone to the imagined heart of the land— a place she thought could not be unlike Orca's Beach.

Suddenly she missed the wild and cold sands, the tumultuous summer winds, and the charring chaos of the seawolves she was born among. She could feel her scars begin to quiver, her entire body becoming pious in remembrance of every fight and every rival; every spar and every genuine spat she had ever had. The reverence she felt for such bedlam was palpable. She craved constant entropy, though had to mold such emotions now in order to accommodate the wolves here that were of a weaker kiln. The creatures here preferred words and harmony over teeth and nihilism, a fact that was miles beyond the wretch's grasp but not unattainable.

She lingered too long— lost in thought and bathed in what sunlight could be sparred through an overcast sky— surely to be discovered by a patrol.

The weather continued to cool, but Doe's coat was already growing thicker. Much of it was pulled out to line the floors of her nest in the den-cave she'd found, but a fluffy scarf now bristled around her neck as a strange scent came to her on the breeze. A picture-show of the last several wolves she'd encountered on the border flickered through her mind, and Doe decided that it was not necessarily a bad thing to have callers come to their doorstep - but she still didn't like it. Especially not when her belly was now visibly swollen from the young she carried inside.

Her nose led her to the ghostly figure - Doe saw immediately both the opposite and twin to her alpha, and she wondered for a moment if this was the dreaded Ksenia. But that idea was discounted Doe's yellow eyes landed on her black ones, and when she thought back, she remembered the Cairn girl being described as haughty and regal in appearance; vain.

Though Doe did see something haughty about the other woman, she did not match her mental picture of Ksenia. So instead of sounding an immediate alarm, Doe approached and offered the woman a blank stare, feeling a bit nervous but interested all the same.

"Hail," she said simply, waiting.

Among the onyx outcropping peeked the sleek grey back of an approaching wolf, picking its way lightly towards the scarred banshee in a way that deigned she belonged there, and the ghost at the borders did not. Despite knowing this, her sparse tail rose without preamble, perhaps picking up on the mousey she-wolf's sliver of uncertainty. It was all Furiosa ever needed to take advantage of a situation— and her perceptive black eyes, with the pupils lost deep in ink, hardly ever missed an opportunity to control a situation.

Still, her lifted appendage waved; not only in a holier-than-thou confidence, but also in a soft deference that spoke of a tentative friendliness. Furiosa knew better than to cause trouble at the borders of a pack— though she certainly wasn't beyond it— and she had no intention of stirring the pot today. The she-wolf's scent hadn't reached her across the space between them, and the wind wasn't in her favor, so she had to guess this was a member of the pack ahead. "I wouldn't come across," she assured her of the border-marking stones, though probably unnecessarily. "I was just being nosy."

Though her overlarge ears flickered in apparent acknowledgement, Doe stayed quiet a moment longer, still a bit wary and still studying the rangy ghost across the rocks. After a thick beat of silence, the smaller wolf gave her tail a hesitant wag and moved a bit closer to the stranger. It was a roundabout path she took, moving first to the left, forward and then to the right, forward - moving in a stuttered half-circle until she stood only a few short yards away, ears low but not pinned back.

There, Doe's nostrils flared, and she took in the scents that the woman brought with her. No sickness from what she could tell - able-bodied and in good health.

"Is there something I can do for you?" she asked, and it was clear in her tone that she did not ask as a means of ferreting information, but because it was her wont to bless those that pleased her, and there was something pleasing about the presense of this wolf. Doe wanted to give her something.

In the back of her mind, she still heard Mirage's words, explaining how the gods came down and pretended to be wolves - how they blessed those that blessed them and cursed those that cursed them.

Her tongue swiped over her nose as her pretty prey drew nearer, the inches melting away as Furiosa remained still and vigilantly watched her approach. She couldn't stop her tail from wagging, unable to mask her magnetizing interest in the mousey beachcomber. As she came to stand closer her scent reached the ghost then, and for the three-time mother, the scent of life growing in her was unmistakable. Her expression changed marginally— her nose twitching a little more intently, her eyes a little wider— as a new degree of enthusiasm scuttled around in her own stomach like a crustacean.

"You can always do something for a friend," the ice witch softened into a purr, slithering a step or two closer as she extended her nose with naked interest. "I'm your friend." Not true. "I will be your friend," she amended with the tender care one might use to handle a bomb.

Doe found herself caught in the woman's hypnotizing gaze, her ears flickering as if to ward off flies as the stranger's voice brushed against them. Something about the setting felt strange; almost intimate. It was as though she'd known the bigger shewolf for a very long time. She'd been waiting for her, but after all this time, Doe wondered if she could be the woman she'd known back then.

"Mirage," she murmured under her breath, almost as if she were speaking to herself. Her ears flickered again. "Tell me whether you mean to harm me or my wolves," she said, speaking now with authority, though her voice was not cold or unkind; "and then we shall see if you are my friend."

The words were firm, but she offered a flirting smile, as if to say that she believed or maybe hoped that it would be true.

Even Furiosa, the immortally volcanic and acrid, could be stilled by the presentation of her desires— and it was unpredictable to find what form that would take before she came across it. The phantasm of her wants had come packaged in the form of grey and cream, of mountains and wheatfields, both hard and soft, and Furiosa wanted nothing more than to know such a creature and call it to be a part of herself.

"Mean to? No," she pillowtalked softly, edging closer still. Wanting to touch— wanting to feel. "I wouldn't dare harm you, or anyone you deem fit to save from me." The she-devil said to her angel.

Beguiled, Doe allowed her paws to bring her nearer to the woman as she listened to her response. Sweet words she spoke, and they were near touching, now. Doe closed the space and pressed her nose into the white fur of her chest, breathing in the strength and wilderness, there. Unbidden, her teeth preened at the other, playful and affectionate and something more.

"Then come," she said softly - a secret that only they two would ever know. "Come and follow me, and together, you and I shall make love and war."

Her heart was jumping in her throat - she didn't know what she was doing here, but the woman was intoxicating. "What do I call you?" she asked, tail sweeping an arch in the sand.

Furiosa could feel her pulse where the tender fay threatened to touch. Time slowed palpably, and in anticipation her skin blazed and quivered, shuddering beneath a slovenly coat of a thousand tales; a canvas where blood had been ceaselessly spilled, and where foreign teeth had left their brushstrokes like brands across her flesh. She watched, her lost and engorged pupils missing nothing as the two of them touched. Her neck arched carefully, tongue lashing out to taste the delicate spot behind the large, drooping ear of her mistress, as a hushed sigh steamed from between barred jaws. Greedily, her tongue darted once more, grazing the thin curtain of fur clinging to her lobe before they separated.

Only several seconds had passed.

Fire blossomed against her chest where she had been touched, and her tail was wagging back and forth so heartily it was a wonder the wiry appendage didn't fly off into the atmosphere. The degenerative pale shrew pressed her ears forward in eagerness to receive the seawolf's words— a tremor traveling the length of her spine as she considered her exact desire for what was offered. Love. And war. Though Furiosa was not typically so easily commanded, there seemed to be very little she wouldn't do for the young mother-to-be with the eyes filled of saffon. What do I call you?

"Lover?" she mused, hushed in the dappled sunlight that sought them from the grey clouds. "Sister? Mother? Daughter..." Anything— it hardly mattered! "Yours." The feral woman hissed in naked admiration, meeting her yellow eyes possessively. "Furiosa," she answered finally.

The ear that Doe still had command over fell back against her head as her new friend continued to speak sweetly to her. The intensity in her eyes, her voice was enough to make the young woman feel young and coltish - embarrassed and delighted in equal turns. Furiosa was her lover's name, and Doe repeated it to herself in its entirety, committing it to memory with a reverence rarely afforded to names. Furiosa's, like Szymon's, would be important. Sacred, if the woman proved true. A prayer, a battle cry - if Furiosa allowed it, Doe would teach her children to call her a mother as well.

"Will you stay with me, Furiosa?" Doe wondered aloud, pressed her smaller body against the woman's chest. She tucked herself under Osa's chin with a quiet hum of pleasure, forgetting her own introductions in favor of learning Furiosa more thoroughly and covering her body in the woman's own rangy scent.

Please stay, was Doe's ardent hope, and she peered furtively up at Osa's fierce face. Distantly, she remembered that she had been afraid a moment ago, but the feeling was no longer there. No longer imaginable. It was not that she no longer believed the woman could be dangerous - only that the fury would be directed away from her, and possibly at a target of her choosing. The power behind such a thought was heady, but it skittered away like the rest of them as Doe began to preen and groom Furiosa anew, hoping now to sway the woman toward Blackrock's ranks.

With Szymon and Furiosa to stand with, their family would surely thrive.

With a selfish, craving tongue, Furiosa bathed the crown of the Depth's young queen in caressing licks; her heart beating so frantically against the cage of her breast that she couldn't imagine it was comfortable at all to nestle there. The prayer fell on imploring ears, and the tattered hellion peered down at her enchanting sprite with a broad and sudden sadness. It was a wonder her eyes could ever look that way, though it appeared only for a moment in the sweet lull before she spoke. 

"I belong to Teaghlaigh and Arturo's cause," she said, her forthcoming tone clouded by the quiet, husky way in which she spoke to her paramour. "I gave him my word." It almost hurt to admit, she realized, and it was perhaps the first time in her vicious life that she felt loathe to tell the truth. Her spirit felt torn, jagged and tender. "But I am yours to summon," she added fiercely, casting her body forward so that she might cradle the star-gazed girl again; "at any hour, for any reason. Your song will be my conjure— your voice my beckoning. I will haunt you, my dear. I will haunt you until I am no more."

It was the pregnancy - had to be. She hardly knew this woman, but at her first denial, tears were already jumping into Doe's eyes. Why are you going with him? she wanted to ask, wanting to speak sweet, low words and poison her dark-eyed lover against the man. Her fear of him had diminished, though, since den night and since seeing him less and less around the territory. If he wanted to start another pack, so be it - but not with her. Not with Furiosa.

Still, a weak laugh bubbled up as her new love tried to reassure her, and Doe rubbed her cheek against white fur in thanks. "I'll run you ragged," Doe teased, though she already promised herself that she would use this power sparingly, so that Furiosa had time to care for herself as well. 

For a time, Doe simply listened to the caged bird that fluttered in the other woman's chest, matching her breaths as she did.

Why do you have to leave?

But she was here now. No howl had been necessary, unless it was one made by the gods. Promised to Arturo's pack or not, Doe couldn't help but feel that Furiosa belonged here with her. "Will you stay for a little bit, then?" she asked hopefully, leaving Furiosa's side to dart back across the border and giving her tail an encouraging wag. Her ears flickered attentively, but there didn't seem to be anyone around. "I can show you the den I'm preparing for - for them," she explained, still unwilling to speak of her young directly until they'd made an appearance in the outside world. Old superstitions died hard.

A laugh, deep and genuine, babbled up from the depths of her stomach like a warm spring, and Furiosa was almost taken aback by the sound she made then. Not unused to her own laughter, it was just that hers typically was a harking and acerbic noise— meant to demean and emotionally scar; not to express her true pleasure. She couldn't fathom ever being too engaged otherwise or too tired to spare her pet her time of day or night.

The nymph darted away, leaving Furiosa cold and eager; standing tall with her legs set to quivering by an urge to close the space ordained between them. She nodded, unashamed of the excitement surely reading like the glare of a lighthouse on her face. Without hesitation, she strode across sand and black rock to meet her lover again, taking a tender nose to the slight but telling curve of her belly— pressing her tongue there in sweet adoration. "Show me," the tarnished fiend murmured, stealing to the young woman's side like a fluorescent shadow.

Doe needed no more prompting than that. Confidently, she led her stark companion across the territory, heading for the cliffs upon which Donnelaith sat. Her shoulder bumped against Furiosa's with each step, but Doe made no move to give her space to walk, as though she, too, could not bear to be parted during what little time they had.

The climb grew only more perilous as Doe's belly widened, but she picked her way up the cliffside with the ease of a woman who had grown up on the bluffs and had long scaled them with goat-like efficency. Her mother's birthing den had been nestled in the steep cliffs of their homelands, and Doe's first steps outside the den had been more dangerous than this.

No, she worried more for Furiosa.

"Be careful," Doe warned, anxious as they reached the narrowest part of the climb. Her ears were cupped toward the larger wolf, listening for the telltale plink-plink of cruumbling rocks.

She stuck pinned to the side of her granite-winged dove until the paths leading upward had become too thin to continue doing so; and even after that, she moved so closely behind her, that her muzzle would often graze the top of her companion's traveling, jaunting rump. She often though to tease the fur there— she surely wanted to— but refrained so that neither of them became distracted during their ascent.

Be careful. Though not a wolf unused to such tragic, unsteady ground, the sentiment of the request was not lost on her in the least. She couldn't remember ever receiving such care before. Even as a child she had been particularly unruly, and aside from that, the wolves raised on Orca's Beach weren't exactly inclined to express concern. Furiosa was touched, so deeply that she had to forcefully repress a needy whine by swallowing it back into the hollow of her throat. "I'm fine," she hummed instead, giving her saccharine coastal fairy a prying lick against her thick-furred hip.

From the dizzying narrows to the mouth of the den, it was only a few more paces. The Blackrock beta paused long enough to see that Furiosa made it safely across before swivelling her head back around and ducking through the entrance.

Inside, the cave was cool and dark, smelling strongly of the scented herbs that lined the walls and of Doe herself. The rats had long since been killed and eaten or otherwise dispersed, and the floor was covered in a fine layer of sand, but was otherwise free of debris. Doe had worked very hard to clean and dress the cave for both the birth of her children and housing other members of the pack during the long winter, should the need arise.

Anxiously, Doe gazed at the pale woman, wondering how she would find it.

"They'll be born here," she said softly, speaking more freely in the dark of the den. "Two or three, I think." The little nudges she'd experienced thus far were not much to go by, but Doe hazarded the guess easily enough. "Would you want - Do you think you'll come, when it's time?" she wondered, latching on to the idea as soon as she spoke it.

The whoosh of waves echoed eerily in the cavern, and Doe imagined it felt much like what her unborn cubs must have been experiencing. What will it be like? she wondered as she awaited Furiosa's response. What will it be like to bring new life into the world?

Her mother had warned her of the pain, but the little shewolf was not as worried about this; pain hardly phased her anymore. More than that, she worrried about failing the creatures she would bring forth - it was her mother's greatest shame, to have birthed a stillborn child alongside Doe and Buck.

But Doe was determined not to let that happen, even if she wasn't exactly sure what decided such fates. She laid often in the waters and spoke sweet words to the god of the waves, begging that all the lives within her would come into the world untouched. But what did she know about such things? What did anyone know, except for those who'd gone through it themselves?

Doe didn't know whether or not Furiosa had ever had children, but it seemed better to have her there than no one at all.

Furiosa— a jagged shard clipped from shores forged cold by ice and stone— melted completely within the dark warmth of her lover's whelping den. Her posture, having been decidedly rigid throughout their speedy jaunt across Blackrock's bay, had eased into a soft sort of sag as she ducked inside and began to peer around the space in inspection. Her dark eyes softened on the edges as the petite mother spoke, and she turned her face to watch her, amused and content in their privacy.

"Of course," she vowed, though her mind had begun to recall her own first pregnancy, and how fiercely she had feared for them, keeping absolutely everyone away from them until the brood had been weaned. She hadn't been so cautious with the litters following, but the desire to keep everyone away at first had remained. Only time would tell how she would become when it was finally her time. "You'll need to get rid of all the sand in here," she told her then. "I know it's soft but it's also infuriating to clean off the pups when they're born. We'll get you a few gulls and pluck them. Feathers will do better."

The haunting jaguar prowled forward suddenly, her ears forward with intent as she sought to passionately envelope the girl just then— a curious set of teeth and tongue seeking to know her better. Know her best.

So she was a mother - or she had been. Doe didn't know how it worked, once the babes were grown. A soft oh fell from her lips at Furiosa's explaination. She'd worried the same thing about the sand, but it'd seemed better than nothing. Better than stone. Osa's suggestion, however, seemed much more fitting. Feathers - Doe loved them. Loves to roll in them, chew on them, smell them before rolling in or chewing on them.

The words were on the tip of her tongue when her enthusiastic friend overtook her, all teeth and tongue and dark, glittering eyes. A quiet eep! escaped the scrappy shewolf as Furiosa seemed to surround her, but surprise only lasted a moment before her own desires swept her away. Doe preened whatever rough furs were available to her, whining encouragingly in the back of her throat. In the pale wolf's embrace she wiggled and squirmed, pushing herself against the larger, stronger body of her lover.

Will Szymon love her, too? she thought to herself, feeling a little guilty, now. Doe knew that they would have to meet, even if Furiosa wouldn't be taking up with them in their little sand den - even if she wouldn't sleep here in the cave through the long winter nights. If she took up space in Doe's heart, Szymon must meet her.

"Osa," she sighed, drawing away, "these babes have a father. Could you accept him?"

They writhed and caressed on the hollow's sanded floor, nestling into one another as if they thought their two bodies could become one through sheer thought and persistence. Furiosa could not fathom from where her feelings had come for her, or what it meant for her future; in that moment, she could only be grateful that it was mutual. Her very soulmate manifested into a design that had never been of her dreams. Almost the exact opposite really. For though she found her love to be in the form of a wide-eyed and mousy southerner, she had always seen herself with a northman— broad-shouldered and mountainous. Much like her first husband, from with whom she had violently divorced.

But that was where her sexual preferences lie, rather. She found now that her heart, her soul, lie somewhere else entirely.

She looked into beloved eyes of sharp dawnlight now, seeming to consider carefully the question that had been presented before her. "I won't share you happily..." Furiosa openly admitted. "But if he makes you happy, then it doesn't matter." Besides, the man in her life could give her children— something the villainous wretch couldn't do herself— and if she so happened to feel even a fraction for him what she felt for this one, then all would be well.

The question was, how would the man feel not being enough for his adventurous lover? Whose heart belonged not only to him, but to the wild and savage ice she clung to now.

Doe sorrowed, inwardly, to hear that her lover's heart was not so open as her own. Too, she knew that Szymon had come to love her through trial and error, tooth and nail. It'd not been easy to fall for her, but a long and difficult descent down the face of a mountain. No, her man was too wary to fall in love. It was something he'd had to work for. And Doe doubted he would make the same climb for Furiosa - at least, not easily. But he would endure her for Doe's sake, as he'd endured Qilaq. As he would endure the life that now grew within her.

Perhaps he would never have the depth of feeling that Doe so easily attained, but she knew that if it came down to, Szymon would protect what Doe loved as readily as he protected Doe herself.

"Your restraint is appreciated," murmured Doe, reaching up in an attempt to cleanse the fine, pointed ears of her wicked love. There is something about you, she thought, that is very much like the sea. Wild and roiling, ferocious without effort. Doe's admiration only grew as she found more supporting evidence for this comparison. Perhaps Szymon would resent her at first, but in time, he would have to see what a magnificent creature she was. The desire to tell her so was strong, but the words fell short of what she truly wanted to express, and such compliments seemed fickle in light of Furiosa's own show of devotion.

Instead, she resumed her grooming more vigorously, biting and teasing as Furiosa had done for her.

Furiosa made a low, satisfied noise in her throat, burying her face into the soft, sweet ruff of her pet and inhaling deeply. Another body, another soul sharing the heart of beloved mattered very little in a moment like this— too full of affection to be cowed by avarice. Her wiry tail flipped back and forth contently, serving as a lazy metronome, playing a slow beat for the couple mentally waltzing through a warm, benumbing delirium. "What do I call you?" she murmured sleepily, her voice nearly absorbed completely by the press of her lover's coat; "besides mine."

Everything was strange and hazy - perhaps it had been since Doe first found herself caught in the jaguar's black stare. She heard the question asked, but did not comprehend it, even as it bounced and echoed in her empty little mind. Drunk of the scent of the other woman, Doe could only purr and insist as Furiosa did not continue her wicked enticement, but laid her muzzle against Doe's thickening pelt.

Eventually, though, the woman made herself focus on the words her stark panther had spoken - a question that required an answer.

"Doe Cairn," she said at last, finding herself very relieved to be able to speak the words without hesitation. She'd gone through a whirlwind of changes this past several months, but here and now, she was sure. Doe Cairn.