Wolf RPG

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I have other threads to reply to but I wanted to throw Akh in here. :D Going to do a bit of time warping here to make this prior to Pied joining HR.

Akhlut had waited too long to seek out Jinx, the pale female he'd seen only from a distance and whose voice he'd heard only in howls. Now, he made finding her a priority, for curiosity had gotten the better of him: why had Pied, the female Delta of Blacktail Deer Plateau, asked him about her? Was she causing problems so soon after finding a place for herself in Horizon Ridge? Akhlut would harbor no idle troublemakers. Yet something in the Kesuk-Nereides made him give pause to accuse her immediately. Fundamentally he felt that Jinx was not out to harm his pack's reputation. She seemed quite at home, from what he coul ascertain, in their seaside home, and she had come to him with no complaints and no petitions, so he supposed she was all right.

As fortune would have it, Akhlut's search for Jinx on one late afternoon was a short one indeed. Her pale form stood out against the dark rock of Horizon Ridge's namesake landmark, where the trees fell away and only the large jagged scar of earth remained. Akhlut himself remained hidden amongst a cluster of ferns, damped down though they were with a light cover of snow, and watched her for a moment. Something in her appearance seemed maddeningly familiar and yet he could not pinpoint it. She looked, too, to be in something of a foul mood, if he was reading her stiff posture and grim facial expression correctly. Though the Alpha's Light leanings told him he should just approach the woman frankly and ask what Pied had been on about, then get on with their lives, Akhlut hesitated. He wasn't sure that the more-reclusive wolf would take kindly to that sort of treatment. They were, after all, near strangers, and some wolves were quiet and reclusive without being secretive or plotting mayhem.

In the end, Akhlut settled for a midway approach. His poise when he ventured out onto the bald rock was that of confident Alpha, casual enough on his own lands, but with an air of light dominance. His tail arched halfway over his back, and his head was held high. His body, though not tense with the potential for conflict, moved easily and gracefully, and his ice-blue eyes stared straight at Jinx. Akhlut would test her mettle, but he suspected that this female would bend easily beneath his calm assertiveness, and then they might progress to a real encounter that was not abetted by each of them being uncertain of the role and trustworthiness of the other.

OOC: Works fine for me!

IC: She had thought spotting the herd would be made easier by the height, but Jinx hadn't accounted for the rainforest. It spilled out from the ridge's southern and western sides, thick and overgrown and remarkably humid. It reminded her of Shearwater Bay so greatly that her eyes closed of their own accord and she drew in a deep breath, forgetting her desire for a hunt to calm her nerves and take the edge of hunger off. Besides, she decided it would be too difficult to find the prey if they were hiding in the shadows of the trees, where even a wolf's keen eyes could not find them.

She rose and turned about as if to head elsewhere, and came face to face with a wolf coloured in the same hue and pattern of the porpoise totem she had once been acquainted with. The fur in her ruff and withers rose uncertainly as shock at his abrupt appearance, and his almost ghost-like silence in approaching. She had no idea who he was: he was no Kisu, and the howls aside from his and hers had been minimal. It could only mean...

She need not think more on it, for Akhlut instantly claimed right of rank with his posture, to which Jinx conceded after only half a heartbeat of tense uncertainty. The pack had an Alpha, and if she was not mistaken, this wolf was he, and he seemed more than able to maintain that rank if necessary. For that reason, Jinx ducked her head and laid flat her lifted fur, and her ears tilted down and to the sides of her head in a comfortable position of respect and ease. Her posture said, you must be Alpha.

But their first meeting required verbal verification, of course. "Akhlut," she identified, summoning the name from memory of when Kisu had said it. "I am Jinx Kesuk." If she was aware that he might already have a bone to pick with her of any kind, then she certainly didn't give it away.

Akhlut's ebony fur puffed up, not stiffened with aggression but lifted with the intention of emphasizing his size and therefore rank. It gave him an unusual air of true regality, instead of simply the gritty authority he usually aimed for, and in a moment it seemed that his display did the trick, coaxing both easy submission and a few sparse words from the ivory woman. Although her words were scant, they were well chosen for effect, though perhaps the female hadn't intended it. The brief stirrings of admiring a female's body that had barely begun in the back of his mind were vanquished suddenly and thoroughly.

"Kesuk, is it?" A slow smile spread across the Alpha's lips as he peered at his recruit with eyes opened anew. "Blood calls to blood then, and perhaps the closer the blood ties, the stronger the call. I know of only one Jinx Kesuk, and her mother is my own." His half-sister, one of two girl queens of Shearwater Bay, daughter to Nanuq by Koios. Never had he laid eyes on her before coming to Horizon Ridge, but her name was known to him even if his was never known to her. "I believe you know both of my mothers--the other is Aktaie Nereides." Let his newfound sibling chew that over, then, for he knew that the partnership between Nanuq, Aktaie, and Oak Heart was hardly a conventional one. For a moment, Akhlut spared a thought for the original purpose of his confrontation with Jinx, but he set that intention aside for the moment.

<style type="text/css">q {font:13px Georgia; color:#BA6D00;}</style>She watched with some suspicion the way his lips curled into a smile, but his thoughts were revealed without further delay, and she found herself face-to-face with what was easily her worst nightmare. Though her body remained neutral, her ears nevertheless cropped closer to her neck as emotion washed through her: Nanuq had left her children for Shearwater Bay, children that would have died without their grandmother's nourishment. She had dared claim another family without sparing any thought for the former.

Jinx had, for an instant, forgiven her mother her departure... But coming face-to-face with a child that had undoubtedly been favoured over her and hers, who were stronger wolves than these Kesuk-Nereides (in her haughty opinion), ripped that forgiveness into shreds. For once the Kesuk was wise in that she did not direct her sudden anger at Akhlut; for all intents and purposes, the only change that was visible was the downward pull of ears, and perhaps, if one looked closely, a stormy expression in her eyes.

Akhlut went further, to mention something even more horrific: Nanuq's mate was a woman and, worse even than that, the true Siren Queen of the Nereides, Aktaie. Disgust rolled through Jinx's belly like bile, and it was all she could do to not recoil from him and the vileness of his parentage. A quiet voice in her head reminded her that his parents did not dictate his actions, but... Well, there would always be disgust for him, that was certain. He was the child of an unholy union, the child Nanuq had forgotten her firstborn children for, and the child of the Nereides.

Lecter had had it right when he said that Shearwater Bay and the sirens in the north had had no business joining in sisterhood as they had, and that it was the source of conflict, for even now Kaskae might have been breeding with one of their consorts to produce children who were taught two opposing faiths, as if two opposing faiths could possibly exist. They would bastardize Shearwater Bay's religion... As would Shearwater's bastardize the Nereides, and it would become a vicious cycle, until wolf slaughtered wolf in strife and argument about who was right.

These thoughts were very well-concealed—Jinx had become rather good at keeping things to herself—as she mustered a smile that was false, but convincing. It is good to know there are others in the world who speak those names with reverence, she offered, knowing that while Nanuq's did not deserve it (she was a deserter and now, coupled with a woman), Aktaie certainly had, at one point or another. My mother abandoned me and my siblings, she quietly revealed, and then, I hope you will take no offence to me considering her no more family than any stranger. You, however... You share my blood, and are not my mother, and so we are true family. I will do my best to honour that bond, and the bond of wolf.

Even if it meant serving a wolf whose very origins disgusted her, though to be sure, it was no fault of Akhlut's own, and Jinx was well aware of that.

Jinx's words were not the warm welcome of a sister for her brother that Akhlut had expected, and his show of youthful confidence and genial authority faltered as his ears flattened and he could not, for a moment, meet her eyes that smoldered with indeterminate emotions behind their sunset irises. It had not occurred to him that Nanuq's presence in Echo Cove had meant her absence from Shearwater Bay and therefore an utter lack of contact with Jinx and her other children. He hadn't supposed that his pale sibling's memories of their mother would bear few similarities to his own, or that she might not be so pleased that they were kin.

"I apologize," he said frankly, his tone betraying some of his thoughts; it was always a disturbing thing to discover one's parents are neither immortal nor incapable of wrongdoing. "It didn't occur to me that the history between yourself and our moth--well, Nanuq, would be... a sensitive subject." His tail swayed as he said, with a hint of his former enthusiasm, "I'm pleased that you won't extend your aversion to me as well. As you say, I'm not my mother, and I am pleased to have another of my sisters at Horizon Ridge. Naga is my full-blooded sister. She'll be a year old soon. It pleases me to see the Kesuk name thriving at another seaside." Pride suffused his features once again as he spoke of Lysianassa and referred to Echo Cove, Shearwater Bay, and now Horizon Ridge. Perhaps the Nereides women were known for revering the sea, but the Kesuks were certainly tied to its crashing waves equally strongly.

"Tell me, sister, do you follow the old faith of Atka and Sos?" Curiosity tilted the male's dark head and he felt certain of her answer; Shearwater had arguably been stronger in its devotion to the bear gods than the Echo Cove than Akhlut grew up in, for Aktaie and some of her Nereides followers had brought the confluence of the ocean and the moon into the mix, and some of the younger Cove wolves had little use for religious faith at all and clung to stoicism, atheism, and pragmatism.

It hadn't been her intent to make Akhlut uncomfortable, yet no remorse seeped up through her stomach like it normally would have when she realized she had. It was simply a fact of their bloodline—abandonment ran thick in it, whether he wanted to believe it or not. Siku had abandoned family, Sitka had abandoned family, Nanuq had abandoned family... Countless other Kesuks in other generations no doubt had abandoned family.

Vex and Jinx, too. Both cubs had been named by Koios, owing to their less-than-traditional Kesuk names, and both had subsequently abandoned their families... Jinx, at least, thought her reasons were justified, but Vex had wandered away without a word, never to be seen or heard from again.

Arktos perhaps could be considered to have abandoned his family, but... Arktos had been special. Something had changed in him, snapped, and replaced his soul with something more tortured and pained. Jinx had not understood it, and even if she had attempted some kind of exorcism, she was certain the effort could have killed him. He had been taken, by god or loa nobody knew, but taken, assuredly.

Her thoughts strayed back to the present company, who was speaking of himself. She twitched her ears forward and then back in thoughtful consideration of this: Akhlut was not his mother. What, then, was Akhlut? Was he his other mother, the Siren Queen, who had allowed a child to run wild with the title in the true Nereides homeland and destroy everything they had ever stood for by elevating the lesser sex? But perhaps the tradition Jinx had been told of in story did not exist at Echo Cove, either, and Akhlut had not been subjected to a life of inferiority... Surely not, she thought, for here he stood an Alpha.

Naga, he said, piquing the quiet Jinx's attention suddenly. Naga is my full-blooded sister, she revealed, somewhat vaguely referring to a different Naga altogether, which she promptly clarified with, though only family call her that. Kaskae is her name. She rules Shearwater Bay now. Jinx had ruled with her, once, but... It was in the past. Shearwater Bay, Bon Dye, all in the past, washed away with the tide of time, at least in her own belief. Some wolves clung to their disgruntled disagreement with her, but that was their own fault.

Ah, yesss. I was Mambo, and led their rituals. She said this with some pride, but not too much. The Oracle elected me, mmn, chosen me for the role. Thinking back on it, it could have been favouritism on Nutaaq's part, or a desperate attempt to keep his granddaughters from killing one another over the title of Warchief, but then... It would have made sense for Nutaaq to favour an older wolf, perhaps Jello or the Sylvia he had come to covet. Jinx was too illogical and admittedly too stupid to think that a god hand-picking a wolf for leadership was about as strange and out-of-place as an anvil floating on the wind.