Firefly Glen [PHE] the type that makes me feel old

I’m so sorry. Some PP to set stage but please lmk if you’d like edits <3

ajei’s poor treatment never strayed far from sobeille’s mind. in the many days that followed she seamlessly integrated herself into the busywork of the hunt. she was helpful to the healers, she pitched in during the many hunts and subsequent dispatches of meat. by all accounts she was perfectly behaved and earned the trust of most in camp — and it was that trust, in this dark hour, that sobeille came to violate.

it was a late moon that spread its canting light through the canopy that sobeille descended. the air was chilly, and the camp still as its workers rested from the ardors of their day. sobeille tiptoed until @Mae’s scent was strong — she would be the first, and easier target.

ajei’s tearful face swam in sobeille’s vision as she threw the peltskin over what she assumed was mae’s sleeping body, teeth reaching to throttle life from her throat.

In the moment after lightning strikes, the world around is lit to silver brilliance — just for a heartbeat, just the barest blink of trembling eyelashes before it all turns to flame and ash.

That moment is for thought.

Thoughts like: would it hurt for more than a second? Would they miss me? Was it always going to be this?

The next moment is for answers.

Like, it definitely hurts for more than a fucking second. Smothered by the hide, pierced by teeth puncturing through it with serpentine precision, Mae slackened and shot out from beneath it with a push of her back legs, lunging for the sea wolf in a snarling fit of snapping teeth aimed at her legs. Her throat and chest stung, ominously sodden and flinging dark red droplets.

Cygnet slept like the dead.

The little kicks and whimpers she’d huffed in the early stages of sleep had finished perhaps half an hour ago- and she succumbed to the state of paralysis while she settled into a deep and restful slumber. There she lay, flattened on her side and relaxed- putting all her faith in the goodwill of others.

She did not hear Mae approach or even the sound of the skin as it was draped over Mae. The first scuffle elicited nothing more than a twitch from her whiskers.

But when Mae snarled she lurched to her feet, one ear inside out and one lip curled, blinking the fog and stupor of sleep away. Her limbs- still recovering from paralysis- wobbled beneath her but in the dark she spotted the fray- two bodies that wrestled on the ground.

She sent up a shrill bark of alarm and dazedly lunged forward, grabbing onto the first piece of skin she could grab and began shaking the absolute bajeezus out of it. 

The pelt Sobeille had brought with her would never recover.

sobeille had done simulations.

in her mind she rehearsed this, from the moment she first saw mae and cygnet and knew the course of her actions. she'd seen the red doom writ upon the wall in chaotic scribble: this is what her life amounts to. a simulation with a clear goal, and a finite end.

ajei.

the simulation does not take into account how little experience sobeille has. she is far from the ultimate perfection of her craft: this is a novice's work. her hands tremble and her body shakes. adrenaline is juddering through her, making her a nervous drunk -- and mae, mae is a whole entire living body that does not want to make sobeille's second murder easy.

who can blame her? nobody wants to go.

sobeille's teeth pierce flesh with satisfying ease. the taste of salt and the bitter tonic of adrenaline flood her senses. she rips back and forth as savagely as she can, and suddenly her victim is rising among her.

bloodied. furious.

mae's teeth score across her cheek and take what feels like a pound of flesh with them. sobeille might have screamed in pain if it weren't for how intent she was on her task. she knows only the thundering urge to strangle; to eek out every last breath -- and it is mae's face she reaches for to see that vision fulfilled and that stupid, blind girl silenced for good.

suddenly, there is the peppering battery of teeth everywhere as mae returns fire.

a packmate was thrashing somewhere nearby. it was sobeille's mistake to rush to see this done, and now her skin pays the price. pain as she has never known it; it's keener than any fang, and slices her murderous concentration in half.

suddenly, she was aware how painfully unprepared she was for this. she has made mistakes. she has not planned this through. she shoved a hard shoulder to mae attempting to dislodge her, and then whirled upon the assailant behind her.

but two against one -- even sobeille knew that her chances of success was now eclipsed by failure. the potent chemical of fear began to seep into the maddening cocktail of adrenaline that pounded within her.

she must escape. now.

so far sobeille has been eerily silent; her jaws part to deliver what must be a thousand vicious snaps in cygnet's face. more to throw her off balance than to actually connect -- but it is then she aimed a second sharp shove towards the one that could see, and if that unbalanced her enough, take advantage of the opening and bolt out into the star-studded meadow.

the plan had been poorly designed. her undoing. blood -- as much her own as mae's -- splattered down with every step she took.

There was discourse. The night was silent--Akavir missed the sound of the rushing waters of their creek. 

An eye opened to the night, uncertain what woke him. Groggy--the darkness yawns before him, the promise of daylight to come in only a spare few hours. There's a brush of the ground... soft.

It does not draw his suspicion, but it stills him, nonetheless.

Salt in the air--so faint, and yet the teasing lilt of the autumn night breeze--

Suddenly, there is shuffling. The sweeping sound of a thud--and he's up, ignoring the complaint of his muscles.

The shrill bark of Cygnet is what draws him to run, and his gaze is suddenly focused with the adrenaline that propels him now.

Snarls--the scent of salt turns to iron.

A form tries to dart away--away from his girls--and it's with punishing teeth and a sturdy form that makes to halt the intruder, his own snarl gutteral and terrible.

The rage of a father.

He's a shadow as he moved to block her--to snap his jaws to pin--to push down to the ground with halting clarity the wolf who dared trespass on them in violence.

Last for me, Mae can be powerplayed <3

Later she would say it was all a blur. Here and now she felt a crystalline clarity: her heartbeat, paws flying across the ground, the shattering moment of collision and blood and snapping teeth and

the world went black.

Whatever retribution Mae might have enacted upon Sobeille's pinned figure was cut short. The Frostfur-Mayfair fell slack beside the sea wolf and did not rise again. Still now, her blood pooled steadily around her, and her frantic heartbeat began to slow.

Sobeille left her signature on each side of Cygnet’s face. 

A fluke, more than anything, for warning snaps to cause such devastation- but where Cygnet had rolled a critical fail and had grabbed the sealskin rather than the trespasser, Sobeille’s luck-kissed dice had granted her an exceptional win. 

Cygnet squealed as she reeled backwards. The first blow tore a river of blood from her forehead to her cheekbone where Sobeille’s lone upper canine hooked and pierced her eye as easily as a hook spearing a worm. Cygnet pulled her face away, to catch another snap to the left side of her face, one that spilled blood into her eye.

Akavir was upon Sobeille at once, as Cygnet’s world went dark. She howled and screamed in pain, pawing at the side of her face where the fluid from her eyeball ran down her cheek. 

Her left eye, labradorite, became filled with blood; garnet now, she could see nothing from it. 

Blood ran down her throat. Murderer! She spluttered. MURDERER!

any taste of victory sobeille held between her fangs -- of blood, of skin, of fur -- was thieved by the chilling sound of more feet behind her.

and before she knew it, she was overwhelmed.

strength she had never known before seized the back of her neck and in that second sobeille knew her life was forfeit.

matted in blood, choking, snarling, fueled with hatred -- it all died in her mouth to feel alien teeth close on her spine.

this is what it amounts to, she thinks in that split second of fight or flight; knowing to run would be to unzip her spine from flesh -- knowing to give in would be to turn her life over.

all of everything roars to life in her mind: the spray of the sea, the salt, the wind. her maman. her legacy. ajei. the poisons. the bitterness. her sisters. tousaint. the red pearl. tante. the witch. cayetano. the legacy she envisioned for her children. her grave. chani -- it all moved and slid and oscillated together like stormwater in a shaken vessel.

sobeille took one last look of the life she'd lead until that moment; she saw the blood, and the discord, the violence. the scream of unhappiness. the satisfying slump of mae as she -- sobeille assumed -- died; sobeille closed her eyes. if i am to die, at least i took one with me when i go.

while cygnet reeled and screamed murder, sobeille relented under akavir's savage press of fangs -- waiting for that moment that she joined mae in the bloodied world of her own undoing.