Wolf RPG

Time was what she had needed, and time was what she had taken. Elphaba wound slowly through the mountains before redirecting her course back to the valley. She spent a lot of time thinking about @Equinox; about what it meant to be married to him.

At the time it had just seemed like the next step, and looking back she felt a little stupid. There was no trace of regret in her — but she couldn't help thinking of what she'd said to Equinox about having children. That she knew nothing.

She tracked a rabbit through a meadow and tore into it without waiting for it to draw a final breath. She thought about the first rabbit she'd ever killed, the way her heart had been in her throat and she hadn't even tasted the blood at first. The thing Elphaba hadn't expected about young adulthood was how often she found herself reaching for memories of a past she'd been desperate to leave behind. Life had just felt different then. She thought sometimes that it was the constant novelty of inexperience, and other times that it must have been the freedom, the complete lack of responsibility for her own immediate future.

Most of the time, she didn't know. She just knew that she missed the way the world looked when she was young, and she wished that she didn't.

It was late when she finally slipped into the grove, picking out Equinox's scent at once. For a time she followed. Then she realized all at once that she couldn't go back to him like this, and broke away from his trail. The night was clear and alive with the small sounds of the forest, but it went silent as she called to him through the trees. She turned away with her nose low, pushing through the ferns in search of a scent to follow. Nox would have to find her. She needed to track something, something she could kill. Not him.

Equinox had returned to the rendezvous site long before he had intended to. He traveled south, but did not make it far before the smell of blood — not an insignificant amount, threaded with the known scents of Kvarsheim and the unknown scent of the surrounding packs — forced him to return.

He could not forge south if violence was on the table, but he felt stripped of his manhood, in this and more. He was only now realizing that even the tenuous respect he had been given in his father's pack was because he was his father's son. It had been ignorant to believe it was hard-won or even earned, no matter how he had molded himself to the diplomat's role.

Status mattered less to Elphaba than it did to Equinox, but he struggled to believe that he could provide for her if they had to start over. He had seen the way some places treated their new recruits, and although it was necessary he did not want them to have to establish themselves somewhere new. The hardest part of it all was that nobody understood where they came from, or that they had proven themselves there.

He thought about the point Elphie had made when they left Kvarsheim — feeding kids is work. For once in his life he was too caught up with the immediate future to worry about what that meant for their own children. Instead, he spent his time devising plans on low-effort ways to make themselves useful.

Her voice broke through his ruminations and he descended upon her swiftly, perhaps faster than she would have liked. She was trailing something when he found her and he knew better than to disturb her when she was working, so he fell in step a good distance behind her instead.

But the mere presence of him was a disturbance; only the sweetest, a shimmering in the air that sparked against the silvered twist of her agitation, and as it burst to flame all thoughts of hunting turned to ash. And then there was only that fervent racing feeling, hot shades of passion she'd only ever known as a lust for blood, and then the fear.

Fear because love was not so different from the hunt; fear because desire felt so much like hunger robed in silk.

She couldn't run from this.

In silence she broke from the trail, and he was there, his eyes catching the light of the stars and glimmering through the harsh shadows. Nox, Her voice was soft. Her heart thrummed in her ears. She reached for him, his steadiness, his careful control. She wanted to see it crumble under her touch.