Firefly Ravine someone was changing, someone was changing from the inside out

she lingers by the cliffs a long while, waiting for the bodies of her kru to drop away, back to their duties and desires. but no matter how deep she tries to probe, she cannot find within herself the urge to cry. it is the exact lack of any strong reaction that scares her. a wild, irrational part of her feels a resurgence of anger at wildfire instead -- has she used up all her mourning on her capricious blood-mother, leaving nothing for nomi, the one who actually deserves her sorrow?

nomi would probably tell her -- she had to go, it was her time, she shouldn't be sad anyway. (or maybe she's just making herself feel better).

when the fading sunlight is finally ruptured by a thin line of grey cloud, sinking the cliffs into premature night, blix rises and turns and begins to walk. she passes hougeda, unable to bear the thought of looking at anyone else right now. she passes the borders, hesitating only a second on the threshold--any venture outside runs the risk of encountering a not-so-friendly neighbor, and she isn't in a place to handle that--before crossing, her aimless path arcing away from the sound.

blix isn't leaving leaving, but she can't be in drageda right now, near those cliffs, near the ocean where no doubt nomi's bloated corpse has already sunk and begun to dissolve back into the water. she needs to send helix to trigeda -- ajatar is heda now. blixen always knew the score. drageda is heda, but heda is not synonymous with nomi. antumbra's death is not the death of drageda. and that means she's got to keep it going.

fireflies, blinking in and out of her vision, pull her back to the present. abruptly she looks down, focused on the blue-shadowed grass her paws have sunk into. her own fur looks shockingly bright to her, a slash of deep red against the earth. unsettled, the girl stops her march. a wave runs through her -- her stomach convulses suddenly. 

she retches until her stomach is empty, pulled into a cramped ball, and coughs once. the fireflies drift by, unconcerned, and dimly she wishes she was with mallaidh instead of out here alone. 

but she doesn't move. not yet.

I really don't know how this got so long and I super apologize for the novel

Ever since her encounter with the soft-pelted Dragedan, Raleska was on the warpath. She was outright furious Rosalyn had denied her a chance to enact vengeance. She did not think of anything but hurting those that had hurt her, as deeply and irrevocably as they had hurt her mom, her family, her pack. Somehow, Raleska measured that barbaric code "do unto others what has been done to you", and somehow, she drew from that code a sense of firebrand justice, a sense of violently confident purpose.

And so she marched south of Rusalka's claim, at first being drawn to the Tangle and then following the river that coursed through it south. She was not expecting to find what she was looking for, and much the way an old hound might habitually circle around its owners' property and offer a stiff-lipped growl here and there to suggest to any peeping intruders he was still walking and ready to put up a fight, only to find his bluff for show contested by the might of an intruder forcing him long at last to move towards his true purpose, so Raleska found that by hunting for Drageda curs, she found them.

She was a little shadow that flitted through the dense underbrush as she went, using the loud trinkle-gurgle of the river to conceal her steps, and lingering where the shadows pooled under heavily leaning pine trees, rather than crossing broad blades of sunlight. The scent of acrid vomit hit her nose as she lurked in the bushes, her eyes fastening with a slavering dog's fury on none other than the woman that had dragged her like chattel through Drageda.

She could kill her right now, Raleska was sure of it - the wolf was clearly sickened or compromised, and Raleska had the advantage of thus far being undetected.. Just one more step and she could show Blixen how Eurycrates felt - her blood simmered and pounded, and a sudden lightheaded yet intense purpose overcame the girl.

And yet, like a black-cowled assassin, leaning over the crib of a babe in which he had been ordered to execute, in finding his body's contact with the crib had gently rocked it and thus fluttered open the impossibly blue and placid eyes of a child that had never once felt malevolence pressed upon her, in which she might have looked up at the soul hastening her demise and smiled blissfully as he found himself startled to be witnessed by her, so Raleska found her motivation crudely rocked, and the resolve to kill suddenly sucked out from under her by the pitiful cough of her prey.

Raleska faltered then, an inexpert fool suddenly caught in the whims of a gale -- and with a shaky breath, discovered the malevolent will that had carried her thus far to be delivered into reckoning, had abruptly abandoned her, leaving her nothing but confused and wildly out of her element.

i love it thank u for joining ehehe

the ache in her stomach does not subside despite its emptying. there is nothing for her here; there is nothing for her outside of drageda, she knows that. lifting her head, blix moves to begin the slow creep home, and abruptly realizes that she is not alone. near-simultaneously: the scent of the rusalkan girl she'd nearly killed mingled with her acidic sick and then the sight of her, out of place amongst the calm, blinking field.

she does not know the girl intended to kill her, but her proximity is enough to raise blixen's hackles, her lips drawing back in an ugly frown. the child is not a threat as far as she's concerned, but she is a reminder of what is at stake in heda's death, the pressing threat of their hostile neighbors. exhaustion keeps her from moving toward aggression yet. instead, she gives her an unimpressed once over and huffs, "what do you think you're doing."

Just as quickly as her resolution fled her, a new emotion settled in the pit of Raleska's stomach upon behind beheld in the flame-licked sights of Blixen's darkened amber gaze. She stiffened, her tail out behind her in a prickly wave, her lower lip pulled back menacingly.

What was she doing? Her ears cupped back briefly, but the girl took great care to hide any further doubt that might have shown across her features. She was a Rusalkan, and this was the enemy -- she wondered what her mother would do, if she were here too. Surely, she would dole out the same treatment that Eurycrates had received.

"Following you." The girl answered baldly, not caring if it stirred the woman to anger -- Blixen was sick, compromised or something, and foolhardy Raleska believed in her own skills far too much, in that youthfully arrogant way a child was often convinced of their own godsent immortality. "You're sick." She remarked, letting her gaze rake across Blixen with little of the pity she had felt before -- this is an enemy, she reminded herself, feeling a wave of hatred begin to boil her blood the more she thought of Eurycrates' throat being dismantled roughly from his pale hide. "And you're alone."

you're sick. blix snorts, an involuntary draw of breath, almost forgetting she had, in fact, been sick a moment earlier. not a bad guess, but if the girl thinks she's weak right now she has another thing coming. as calm as she feels, she's still blixen, hot-headed, impulsive, eager to draw blood, eager for a chance to relinquish some of the pain currently held tight in her belly. drawing her lips back to expose her yellow-licked teeth, she advances, and brings herself to her full height, fur puffing. 

"i let you live before," she says, adrenaline from the prospect of a good brawl beginning to overcome her emotional exhaustion, "don't count on me being so gracious every time." blix stops where she is, holding her position defensively -- she wants this impertinent child to make the first move -- to really give her an excuse to not hold back.

Blixen straightened out under Raleska's stare, unfurling in the way a spider might unfurl from its web - slim and lethal. Raleska was undaunted, but she did acknowledge the woman with a cautious coldness. Blixen's words stung, but Raleska was not stupid - she knew these words to be barbed and meant to draw her ire.

Her brow furrowed at the memory of being hauled off, but she stood her ground. "I was outnumbered. Not much sport in that." She pointed out, her tone matter-of-fact, betraying she was perhaps still confident in her ability to defend herself if Blixen proved aggressive. She thought of Aure, and how badly she had wanted to kill her too - anything at all so the Drageda curs could feel the loss she had felt.

Little did she know that Drageda felt all too keenly grief's cruel blade - done at the selfish hands of their commander, no less.

Full grown and no longer willing to be under her mother's shadow, Drageda's shadow, or anyone else's, Raleska found herself looking Blixen in the eyes, unafraid and unmoved by the woman's display of teeth. "I let you live just now, too." It was partially true - she had every intention of ambushing Blixen up until that pathetic cough, and now, with the malevolence bereft of her save for that bitter memory of Eurycrates bleeding out on the cliffs, the girl was untethered from her ambitions to play Rusalka's assassin.

It did not mean, in any way, that she no longer held a vendetta against these wolves. She did -- but for all of her talk of wanting to kill, Raleska found it hard to deliver - perhaps because she was simply inexperienced, and perhaps also because a bit of her was still so taken aback by looking another living thing in their eyes and knowing she was responsible for closing them forever.

the girl doesn't raise to her jabs, which is annoying, because blixen really wants to have a go. just a little go, even -- just a little bit of snap and bark. her rebuttal is annoying, too, because it's not technically wrong. still. "it was my decision," she says, drawing herself up a little taller. mallaidh and the others held back because blix had them, as far as she's concerned. she's their wormana. "and being a good sport has very little to do with it, kid."

the girl meets her eyes and blixen holds it, until her words make her laugh, at first mocking and quickly delving into something closer to hysteria. bobby's words are still fresh, the cliffs, the faces of her kru as she told them the news, artaax's abrupt departure, all of it -- and now this little kid telling blix she let her live, it's just -- it's just so absurd! it's too absurd for her right now, because she can't stop laughing, and the laughs, at some point, break into sobs and then she's crying, but it's not sad, it's funny, everything is just fucking hilarious right now, like she's just gonna come out here and be killed by this snot nosed little kid and rusalka'll move into the cliffs and everyone'll be like, well, shoulda seen this coming, as if blix is ready to take over drageda, jesus, nomi, what were you thinking, did you even think about me at all? no of course not -- and maybe it isn't so funny -- and blixen isn't here anymore in front of the girl from rusalka ready to throw down, she's just in her head, at the cliffs, crying because her mother is dead.

Raleska lifted her head, her proud features unflinching as Blixen held her gaze - Blixen, the wolf who by all rights may have been her superior - certainly when it came to experience and fighting.. but none of that mattered to Raleska, who instead simply saw an enemy, a grub, a worm, a thing worthy of being stepped on and squashed out of existence..

Except then, Blixen wasn't laughing anymore. Her peals took on a hardened edge and then a cutting one and then she was sobbing, and Raleska was left unsure of what to do, because who goes from laughing to hysteria, and then starts violently sobbing in front of a wolf that wants to cut them down?

Her gaze narrowed, and she wondered if she should just put Blixen out of her choo-choo-train misery right then and there, because obviously she had jumped the tracks from Crazy Town to full on Neuroti-City -- and what was going on, in that cracked skull of hers, was she having a stroke or dying or was she sick with some disease that would get Raleska too?

She didn't want to say "are you okay" but it was the first thing that popped into her head. No! This was the enemy - they

KILLED

EURYCRATES.

"You're not right in the head." Raleska stated, her assessment firm with superiority. No wonder they were enemies - these wolves were fucking crazy, absolutely, spin-top, drunken-dreidel crazy.

my apologies for the delay in replying to this!! things have been wild at school -- wrap soon?

raleska's voice washes over her at a distance, barely penetrating the sounds of her own crying and the rushing of wind in her ears. a jagged laugh breaks her sob. "no," she rasps in agreement, though speech takes great effort for her right now, "i'm - hic -- i'm prob-probably not."

a wild thought strikes her that it'd be so, so easy to just leave right now and not look back, but as quickly as it comes it's dashed away. her eyes refocus on the girl, breathing raw and heavy. "you're not worth any of this," she decides, eyes red, still sniffling. it'd be easier if any of them had injured nomi in battle -- or been the ones to kill her -- but that isn't the case. starting a war right now would... not help any of them. with a deep and rough sigh, blixen slowly moves to go, clearly reluctant to turn her back on the girl but not intending to linger any longer.

Maybe Raleska wasn't worth any of this, but she knew as she watched the wolf fumble away, that Blixen had been shred of her previous status as an untouchable, powerful wolf. She had seen Blixen at her most vulnerable - coughing, vomiting, laughing, crying -- and what?

It just meant that Blixen was just another bag of flesh and meat; same as her.

She didn't chase, as much as she wanted to. Seeing Blixen reduced to something so small and fragile made Raleska feel wretched inside, as if Blixen had transferred her own anguish onto the girl -- Raleska didn't like it.

Seething, the girl stalked in a different direction, eager to walk this off and lock this memory in some unreachable vault forever, never to be remembered.