Lost Creek Hollow my father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die

@Caiaphas

Thunder rolled overhead, graceless and threatening.
 
The ashen brute prowled forward with an air of leonine grace that seemed to wrap against his limbs and encase him in a shroud of predatory nature. The dull gleam in his molten stare sought the hollow ahead, scoping it out with a calculated stare. The trees seemed to shake and quiver against the pull of the wind. Each zephyr was enough to tear against the newly formed leaves, ripping against them with reckless abandon. The breath of it against his frame took the tendrils of his coat and forced them to dance. The siege of the weather was enough to cause him to take shelter in the cleft. He hunkered low, prowling with the very intention of making it to the rut in the wood and to find a moment of peace.
 
It had been some time since he had roamed the earth of the Teekon Wilds. Kavos had returned with no clear path before him; he had adopted the life of a vagabond at a young age. The resemblance to his paternal lineage was haunting. Even in the low light of the dark evening clouds, he cut a fierce figure. Were it that his father’s body had been thrust back several years and many of the hardships had been taken from him, he would have stood as a mirror image to the young boy.
 
Droplets began to fall from the thick plumes. Kavos was not stirred by this, or by the gale winds that buffeted against his powerful figure. The breath of the wild was upon him. It consumed him.

despite the clouds that gathered grim and foreboding overhead, the sylph made no gesture towards seeking shelter. instead she prowled along the split rocks, belly growling as fiercely as the skies overhead. it was desperation that caused her to stay out when all other life had sought safety -- as she pulled a flat-sided rock from the earth and roused worms from their coverage a flash of lightning snarled and clapped overhead.

she paused long enough in her rumination to see a figure sheltered under the eaves of swaying trees; he was far smarter than she for seeking reprieve under the aegis of the copse. at first believing the figure to be kierkegaard she stalked towards him, yet as she drew close enough to behold the fierceness of his gaze and the youthful angulation of his limbs she released his error. hackles rifled and jaw set in an uncompromising stare, caiaphas hissed at the eerily familiar apparition. "who are you?"

It was not long before the presence of another disturbed the peace of the oncoming storm. Kavos had sighted her before she had closed the space between them. His molten stare followed the sharp movements of her body as she cut across the landscape and set her path toward him. There was something about the way she stepped that spoke of recognition, but the savage young ghost had never seen the woman before. Unmoving from his statuesque reprieve of the wild winds and lashing tempests, the boy allowed for her to swing toward him and draw herself near. It was not until she had closed a vast majority of the distance between them that she then spoke, and he saw that she had realized her error.
 
“Who are you?”
 
The brute regarded her with a lifted skull and a clean swipe of his salmon tongue along the pale hairs of his muzzle. The hooded female was shocked at him, but he did not understand why. Nor did he care. The bristling of his coat was natural, constant, but he pulled his molten gaze from her features and turned toward the skies. There was a moment in which he judged just how long it would take for the storm clouds to pass overhead. Too long for him to venture out and risk having to endure them.
 
“Kavos.”

despite the hulking presence, near threatening besides her, caiaphas' gaze swept out into the western brim of the world, where the skies darkened yet the horizon was cast in a strange, glimmering haze. around them the storm shook its great fists, and splattered with heavy ricochets against the stone.

kavos didn't mean anything to caiaphas. and like as not, would continue to mean very little well after their meeting. she turned from her inspection of the darkly shimmering skies, and gave kavos the full benefit of her attention.

"i know you," caiaphas accused, drawing deep from her memories any situation in which she had met him before. none came; there were few faces the witch ever forgot, and it troubled her the familiarity his presence commanded.

The woman with the dark skull seemed as though she struggled with his presence. The brute did not bother to ask her why; it was of little interest to him. It was not until she spoke to him that he found his patience tested.

Kavos had roamed those parts of the wilds many times. He had been born to that world, after all. Still, he did not recall ever having met such a wild and untamed witch of a woman. The sharpness of her gaze was accusatory enough without the jagged edge of her tone. The predator felt his chest swell as he inhaled, fixing her with a glowering stare. Part of him attempted to recall a distant memory of such a creature, but he found that his mind did not contain such secrets. The leonine hound shook his head to her and frowned.

“I think not,” he rumbled in a graveled voice that carried the sound of a voice that should have been familiar to her. It should have sparked some glimmer of knowledge within her mind that suggested who he was – who he belonged to. As though he were willing to humor her, Kavos canted his head just slightly and cast a thoughtful frown toward the wicked woman. “And who are you?”

held in the edge of his tone was a familiarity -- familial, paternal, instinctively recognizable. she cut him a long stare, untimid and not in the least concerned by the exposed edge of his thin patience. 

she found it strange then, the discovery of this wraith-familiar beneath the growling lip of the storm. stranger still, were the stirrings of snakelike jealousy, though the male was conceived well before the time caiaphas had selected her mate.

"caiaphas." a crack of thunder followed, and she waited for its last snarls to fade before continuing. "your father?" she asked, all her energy hung on that breathless, hopeless question.

The stranger spoke with a name that registered nothing within him. There were no fleeting memories that seemed to claw their way back into the forefront of his mind. The ghost scowled at her with a quick exhale through flared nostrils. He grew tired of the games she felt the need to play. Kavos thought it best that he leave her and brave the storm instead of enduring any further questioning, but she managed to hold him in place for a moment longer with one question.

“Your father?”

Kavos turned sharply so that his wildfire gaze settled on her dark-hooded features and he felt the hairs along his neck and shoulders rise instinctively. It would have struck anyone else as a peculiar question, but the ghost lacked all of the social grace to understand what she was eluding to. Instead, it managed to set him on edge. “I never knew him,” the great predator returned in a tone that was forced to be calm. Madness toyed on the edges of his gaze. “And yours?” He could not hold himself for very long.

in some other distant time, caiaphas might have caught the hardened edge in his gaze, and delighted in toying with it. perhaps she would have held her full attention to it, grappling it back and forth the way a daredevil might handle a keen blade in delight. yet this was not that time; survival, and the brutal toll it had exacted upon her, had frayed away that manipulative cunning until at last all that was left was the tattered thread of a tired, dogged wariness.

kavos' answer was not an answer she could glean anything from. disappointment settled in her chest, not so dissimilar from the discouragement that haunted a wolf after a failed hunt. she worried the corner of her lip, studying the immense brute; so familiar, and yet, wholly alien.

"i knew him, but he's dead now."  her voice cracked; not out of affection, mind, but out of the instinctual fear that she too would soon follow in his footsteps, and be lead to her grave. "so he is of little consequence."

So he had been correct in thinking that they did not know each other. She made a comment about her father being deceased, and the ghostly figure's brow creased with thought. The thought stirred something within him that he had not quite embraced before. The idea that death could take anyone at any time had never truly bothered him until he realized that he knew nothing of the man who had created him, and even less of the woman who stood before him. It was likely that his own paternal figure was dead; that time had ticked away one too many notches in his pelt and left him with a frayed body and weary mind. Kavos did not know how he felt about such matters, only that it wasn't a topic that he was fond of.

“Likely mine is too,” he returned to her with a careful stare. There was still the hint of familiarity within the hawkish yellow of her gaze. Kavos wondered where it rooted from; where she felt she had seen him before. The young ghost was not easily forgotten, and he was not quick to allow another's face to leave his memory. So, he wondered if this witch had other familial ties to him, or if she was merely mad.

caiaphas' thoughts were not so separate from kavos': she wondered if she had imagined this familiarity, or if it had been conjured up in a dying feat of desperation - perhaps it was her mind's last feeble attempt to ward off the ever-sinking doom of starvation. perhaps it was some protective measure, some valiant figment derived so that she had some cornerstone of her life to hold onto, to remind her of who she was, before starvation closed around her.

she shifted, uncomfortable visiting such perilous halls of thought. they would lead nowhere good, she knew that well enough.

"well, that's life." she said flippantly, coldly -- deciding then if she was going mad, she should at least do it near her children so they were not left unprotected. she did not hide one last suspicious glance that roved callously and unfumbling over kavos' frame - eyes that seemed to pin him under their hostile will - before she gave him wide birth and made move to leave.