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+--- Thread: Sequoia Coast born into cruelty and crooked form (/showthread.php?tid=44299)
born into cruelty and crooked form - Solpallur - October 15, 2020
He backtracked today, reaching the coast under the cover of night.
Solpallur stuck to walking the damp sand where the high tide had once been, his scouting lending to his ranging. The moon was nothing more than a narrow sliver in the sky, obscured more often than not by cloud cover that masked the night sky just as well. Stargazing was out of the question while he roamed, though what he sought exactly was undetermined.
There was nothing much to find out there at such a late hour; the birds had all gone to roost, the seals out doing whatever they desired to do best, and perhaps most important of all he found solitude where recent days had gone without them. @Stjornuati’s company didn’t count, though he seemed to have absconded into the night without him. A dangerous game to play in relatively unknown lands, but one that he delved into once in a great while.
There was much to take in here where the sawgrasses clumped together; this stretch of shore was indeed traveled, though the sea would take away any trace and print. But it was quiet for now in all but the roar of a raging sea. It churned and thrashed, crashing against sea stone and shore no more than a short distance away. As he drew in those scents left behind in the grasses, his gaze was drawn out to the darkness, and his eyes took sight of the seafoam left behind on the gentle sands.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Raleska - October 16, 2020
Solpallur's solitude was shortlived. Out of the cover of night Raleska's form broke, luminant gaze resting on the shadow that seemed transfixed by the shimmering waves as they lapped over an unforgiving and cold shore.
Raleska had better sense than to approach him immediately. For a while she studied him as he studied the seacaps -- but after a while the wind shifted and he was sure to pick up her scent somewhere behind him. She made no move to hail the stranger, for she was well past the days of being warm and kind to strange men at night.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Solpallur - October 17, 2020
The waves changed where the foam rested, sometimes taking it right back out to sea before bringing it back differently. More bulk, thinner; the waves altered everything. They erased. He did not however look upon such an affair for long before the world shifted around him in radical fashion. It was first the feeling of eyes on him, an unsettling thing that predators were often wont to do even if they did not seek to sink teeth into tender flesh for a kill.
And then it was her scent wafting along, going out to sea, that drew his attention fully as he breathed. There were familiar markers about it that he did not immediately place, and perhaps that was for the best. His gaze found her figure and her moonkissed gaze watched him shrewdly. It was a gaze that he met, bristling underneath that scrutiny and wondering what it was that she thought she wanted. He did not appreciate having been found from behind and loitered upon, and rumbled lowly to get this point across.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Raleska - October 21, 2020
It did not take long for Raleska's intrusion to be noted; the swarthy beast pulled away from his rumination of the sea, ravenfeather hackles lifted and an earthy rumble sounding from the cavity within his deep chest. Raleska blinked once, retracting the intensity of her gaze and shifting it upwards -- from his proud ears down to the noble configuration of his muzzle to the perennial semblance of distaste that seemed permanently etched to his figure. He was larger than she -- swarthier too -- but all the same, she did not like his growl any more than he appreciated the prying of her eyes.
Her tail stiffened, but Raleska did not move. Now that she was spotted, she would own her station as peeping-tom -- she was loathe to turn her back upon him, but nothing about her (or him) invited pleasant discourse either.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Solpallur - October 21, 2020
She did not flee nor approach him, and this interested him. There had been many who had done either, though the wolves here seemed almost too curious for their own good. It was one way that they had amassed a follower or two, however temporary, but inevitably in the end that number would always dwindle back down to two—himself, and Stjornuati.
He turned an ear questioning, wondering what it was that held her in place. Was it the curiosity of him? Fear? His head tilted to appraise her then, the silence between them comfortable in his eyes (and perhaps only his eyes). She was not a meek creature by any means, her own face carved out of a deep displeasure that seemed to radiate now from her very being. Solpallur did not discern if it was his presence that caused this and deigned not to care; she could see herself off if she didn’t like him.
The intensity of his gaze held her like a fly trapped in amber.
“Rusalka,” he called to her finally, his voice ever a snagged and snared thing. He recognized her scent now, or rather the essence in the commonality of it. He recalled the wolf on the ridge, though he hadn’t the faintest clue who he was just in the way he did not know her. Was this another psuedo-interrogation about to begin, only in a language he could speak? And then he remembered little Miwa and her words about the coast—was she a lost babe from their home?
He did not know all the words to ask, so he waited.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Raleska - October 22, 2020
Had he just --?
Raleska's ears pulled back. Her shoulders rounded. Her head raised and eyes hardened -- had he mentioned her home?
Oh, she disliked this immensely. For you see, now he had something on her -- he knew more than her -- and if there was one thing Raleska hated with a vehement passion, it was being outdrawn.
She remained stiffened, assessing his figure now as if he were an enemy. And in her eyes, why wasn't he? Only wolves with business knowing of Rusalka were Drageda or worse. Her tryst with Dacio was forgotten immediately in the face of her tenuous survival -- she would do anything, kill anything if it meant staying alive.
"Who is asking?" She replied gruffly, feeling a chill douse her from skull to end of her tail.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Solpallur - October 23, 2020
She seemed not to have liked that mention and Solpallur could not help but wonder why. It would come to him slowly and not long after she had drawn her own question to him; her tone was enough to impart what he needed to come to his conclusions. Perhaps this Rusalka was more secretive than he had previously thought, and their little herald unwise.
“This one,” he answered; it would be insufficient but he lacked the words to elaborate how she wanted him. His voice crackled to say something else and he struggled, trying to find the words in spite of better judgment to leave it plain. “This one… meet Rusalka, þarna uppi, á hálsinum,” he went on, gesturing inland and into the dark. Perhaps she would understand that.
“Do not fear,” he instructed then, watching her.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Raleska - October 28, 2020
Not liking it was an understatement. Raleska was immediately put more on edge.
Two generations back, the tongue this male spoke would have been received with joyous relief -- little did Raleska know her blood ran as north as his. Fast forward a generation, and most of the mothertongue was lost. Add another generation, and the language was just as alien to her as anything else. It was fascinating -- and disappointing -- the way sometimes cultures were not inherited.
He divulged someone from Rusalka had met him - Raleska's eyes cut to him harder than glittering glass; "Who?" And who was the blabbermouth, telling everyone about their business? She did not think Rosalyn or Erzulie would be so loosely trusting, particularly not with a male. And the list of subordinates was slim enough she already was going through the list mentally.
A stream of air hissed between her nose in a scoff as the bear instructed her not to fear. "That is what they all say." Raleska shot back, happy then there was still some distance between them.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Solpallur - October 28, 2020
His head tilted; how to answer this one. Bits and pieces once again reached him, though he understood the first of what she said distinctly. Who? It was, however, not an easy question to answer. Solpallur hadn’t learned the wolf’s name, but he could at least give her a description… or at least he could try.
“Fölur úlfur, brúnt hár hér og þar,” he said without thinking, only to contort his ugly face into something uglier. Disgust, but more at himself than anything. “Ah, no name. Brown?” The words struggled to come off his tongue, and his expression remained unchanged for moments after.
“He brown,” he reiterated, as though that was enough. What else was there about that wolf? Aside from remembering the pack name, there was plenty Solpallur didn’t remember. Plenty had transpired in the time since he had encountered him, and the miles from the ridge were now long and riddled with gaps.
“Scars—” he said then with sudden recollect, almost excitably. “Wolf scars, teeth marks, no, claws.” He tried to show her then, touching his nose towards his shoulder. It was the wrong shoulder, but he didn’t know that nor entirely care.
His eyes were back on her then, watching intently. Unsettling, perhaps, in the way they were drawn to the moonlit ones of her own. Did she know who he meant? He could not immediately tell, but then again she held tightly to her reservations above all else even when she had him with his back to the roaring sea.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Raleska - November 03, 2020
Raleska watched the man's countenance shift. Instinctively she recoiled, expecting the disgust was aimed at her -- instead, the raven-pelted wolf went onto detail who had told him of Rusalka. First with gibberish, and then with the remarkably helpful descriptor of brown.
Raleska's expression was unamused. All of the wolves in Rusalka, barring Regin, Kaertok, herself, and Grimnismal, were brown. That was hardly helpful.
Oh. Wait. He'd said he.
That narrowed it down some. As Solpallur excitedly continued, now detailing the man's scars, Raleska became notably surly (well, surlier than normal). It was just like a man to come into their pack and just flap their lips about everything. What was next, he'd leave?
He was a man, so... yeah.
Raleska didn't feel like talking about Miranda or Rusalka anymore. She looked up, almost abruptly asking: "Who are you?"
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Solpallur - November 05, 2020
If she had known, she did not reveal such to him.
That was a disappointment; his excitement faded fully to transition back to his usual mean mug expression, perhaps even souring when she seemed to move along to another topic altogether. Perhaps this meant that the wolf should not have offered what he had, or perhaps these wolves of Rusalka were none too different than the wolves he had grown up with and dispersed from. Secretive, territorial, worried and harrowed into a node of recluse that swallowed them up greedily like a deep, dark well.
At least that was how he vaguely remembered his natal pack.
Though he understood her question, he could not help but stare at her dumbly for a few seconds. Intentional of course, as it was perpetually easier to pretend he didn’t quite understand while he worked out the pros and cons of being conversational and telling, or less chatty and more unfriendly. But this Rusalka intrigued him, and the desire for information overruled any notion he had about either abruptly ending the charade of parlay or obfuscating stupidity.
“Nafn?” he said, though it came out as a question. “This one the Solpallur af Stormskýli. Solpallur, if frú like.” A bit too much teeth came with speaking his name in full, but he did not expect it to have meaning to her. He had learned that the names of the north did not apply to these climes and their meanings were lost, but perhaps that was as they should be. All things were as they should be, at least in the search for their hringja.
“This one wants to know… nafn? Who you?”
His head bobbled to urge her on; he had shared, so should she.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Raleska - November 13, 2020
The man cloaked in black stared at her blankly. Raleska assumed at first he was simply carefully dissecting what she had said piece by piece, stitching it together into a fabric that was clean and readily understood: yet the longer the silence spanned, the more Raleska was caught by that intelligent glint to his apple-green eyes. Eyes which reminded her so very much of her mother.
Shrewd.
If she was being played a fool, she might have never known.
He divulged his name at last; a name with great gravitas. Toothsome as the rocks in which the sea threw itself against. It was a shame Raleska had never learned from Caiaphas her natal tongue -- for in that moment they were far more alike than she was aware.
She considered lying, but withstood the impulse. There was something about the hunter that suggested he did not suffer fools well or gently. "Raleska Eyjólfur." Once, that name had been something else -- generations ago her great-great-great grand-dam had gone by the name of Eyjólfur Tyge. From her exploits sprouted a long line of hardened men and women -- and Eyjólfur, having taken no man for a husband, had given each of them her own proud name as surname. A name to bear like a shield or tooth. Raleska would have liked Eyjólfur, had she ever met her. "Of Rusalka."
Now, she had nothing of her lineage but the black mask to her face: all others of her blood had withered away like the softening of a drawing tide.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Solpallur - November 14, 2020
Eyjólfur.
It was a name forged out of his own tongue, if not a bit bastardized somewhere if he had to hurl a guess into the sea behind him. He scoffed quietly to himself, the sound nothing more than a clearing of his throat. Ironic, perhaps, to discover her along the coast when he would have shortened her name to something much more similar but just as cumbersome—Øyulfr. The meaning wouldn’t have been lost. Island wolf.
It was sad then, he decided, that she did not have a better grasp of his dialect.
“We are same,” he murmured, the words stunt and stilted. “You of isle, this one of peak. Same…” and the trailing, thoughtful in its essence went to nothing. “Words. Tongue.” But that was where it ended, this he knew, for she was not of the north. No accent, nothing wayward about her than the travels of someone who had somewhere to go rather than be loosened to the wilderness at large.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Raleska - November 15, 2020
Were they truly the same? Raleska turned her head and inspected the raven fully. She tried to take a step back from her own perspective, and think of the dark-cloaked rook as if he were met by her mother, her brother, her grandmothers -- he was cut from similar stock. Even her son, Valravn, boasted the self-same pelt and eye color. Perhaps northblood flowed through them the same.
"My mother would like you." Raleska grunted, feeling alienated from Solpallur, her mother, and her heritage. "I don't know any of those words. I only know the name. "
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Solpallur - November 20, 2020
It took a moment, but his features contorted to something akin to confusion at latter of her statements. He may not have been the most perceptive of individuals in existence, but there was something in her language that opened him up to that alienation. She did not embrace their culture—that much evident and true—but he felt the denial burn at him hotly. Normally such a thing would have invoked a stab of antagonism, but he could not grasp or fathom what gap there was between them.
“Why?” It was a genuine question, earnest at its core. He wondered at this difference now, believing there to be more to it than she revealed. “Mother not teach?” He went with the obvious choice there, though it very likely could have opened Pandora’s box right in front of him. Yet the inclination to probe was unavoidable on his part, as there were so few that he had encountered who even shared a drop of northern blood in them.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Raleska - November 23, 2020
When one spent their entire life fighting simply for the right to live, it left very little time for learning. Raleska could sense she'd somehow speared the man -- she was a sharp and barbed creature, and this kind of response was common among those unfortunate enough to endure her sandpaper personality for too long, but she didn't know just where she'd thorned him.
"Mother is dead." Raleska provided in a tone so serene one would likely sense bitterness lurked like an asp behind it, waiting to be provoked. It was her own fault for bringing up Caiaphas in the first place, but suddenly she loathed this topic and wanted nothing to do with it. "So maybe you can say my heritage died with her."
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Solpallur - November 24, 2020
His head raised, as though to suggest an ah moment. It was unfortunate, but he did not pity her. Death awaited all of them whether they flirted with it or not; it was merely another journey they would all embark on at one point or another. It would come for her as it would come for him.
“Nei,” he said with a shake of his head. “Not died. You live.” Crude, but the heritage, her birthright, it still lived on. His tongue snaked out to lick at his dry lips before it washed over his nose. He knew it wasn’t enough to convey what he intended and the struggle to find the right words left him silent. Stjornuati would have been better suited for this, better able to recall and speak a tongue that Solpallur did not favor.
“This one… he knows…” he trailed, searching. “This one knows the Eyjólfur can learn? Yes. Learn.” His features went stern, continuing. “The Eyjólfur learn only if want. Must want, not force.” Yet given the displeasure she expressed, he could not have ventured a guess as to whether or not she would want to.
Perhaps she made her own heritage, now.
He certainly did.
RE: born into cruelty and crooked form - Raleska - November 30, 2020
Wise and thoughtful as Solpallur's insight was, Raleska resented the idea that she lived to carry on Caiaphas' legacy. It was just like her mother to birth children solely so her soul could follow them throughout their lives -- the idea of the deceased matriarch hounding Raleska until death sent a shiver down her spine.
In truth, did she want to learn? She didn't know anything of her family's history, save bits and pieces snatched here and there from her mother's mouth. Raleska suspected Caiaphas had only shared things she wished to share, and that much of the history of their family was now as buried as the queen that slept below Ankyra's crypt. "What, you would teach me?" Raleska scoffed, followed by a prickle of shame. He was being perfectly nice, and she was being a bitch again. Yup, just Ralesking it up.
"How? Would we meet up or something..? And where would you get the time? Don't you have a pack or something?" With so much of her life and time simply dedicated to surviving, the idea of learning something new sounded exhausting to the Rusalkan.
Raleska did not share company with this man for long. After a time she felt alienated, and so made her exit -- but not before giving him one last glance before she left.