Bearclaw Valley [m] go back to sleep

Mature Content Warning

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: gore, animal death, body horror, general fuckedupness and delulu

wake up, athalia.
the girl's eyes snap open to see burning amber, whisked up in a chain of smoke tendrils. it was so late. what did mother want now?
she pads outside to feel the coolness of the air, the grass crunching beneath her feet. it feels as though there are twice as many stars as there normally are. mother is gentle, kind; she kisses the top of athalia's head and leads her out into the shade of the mountaintops.
i have brought you here because you have a job to do, mother says. you do not want to disappoint me again, do you?
athalia's lip trembles. no.
good.
there is a rabbit emerging from a nest a few yards ahead, and the beargirl's blurry gaze focuses hard on the lumpy shadow as it hops further from safety and closer to her. a smile is etched onto the face of mother with long, spiny teeth poking from betwixt her jaws. don't you want to know what a beating heart looks like?
the pupils dilate. yes.
though unsteady, athalia lumbers in a mad dash just quick enough to seize it by the foot; its loud howl of panic fills the crooning silence. athalia's jaws crush down on bone, and it breaks with a loud, satisfying sound. but the rabbit is still alive, very much so.
slowly, athalia begins to slice down the middle of the now immobilized creature. a visceral scene of scarlet now coats the ground. she laps at the fat and muscle and bone, but not to eat — to learn, to taste. everything remains intact beyond the unnaturally clean slice. she can see the large, pulsating muscle, she watches as the lungs fill and deflate; and she especially notices when it slogs from an erratic, deranged high-pulse to a devastating slowness.
by the time the rabbit is dead, mother is gone, and now she is left alone with what she has done.

after they left the rise, sobeille headed south. there was so much of the world to see, and she a thirsty adventurer that drank the sights and the smells with naive fascination.

she told chani she would not stray far, but that was a lie. a path brought her down through the valley, into a rolling meadow that ended abruptly with a fortress of stone. it reminded her of ankyra sound; of the teeth-stone that hung down from the cavern in an eternal grimace.

the entry to bearclaw may have been the extent of sobeille's journey, if she did not recognize a scent within it. intrigued, the girl set up a small howl and then invited herself in -- a risky endeavor, but one a girl without boundaries was confident would not be received poorly.

she walked down the redpath, a small furskin with the bones she'd discovered along the way held in her jaws. nearby, something screamed -- and when its voice faded, sobeille sensed an echo that would not go away.

sobeille was drawn to it.

she came upon a dark girl with a rousing blaze of sienna on her back. before her was the clinically sliced body of a hare. its fur was wet with matted blood, the viscera within exposed. sobeille could sense the thudding heartbeat as it faded, reverberating in consecutively longer pulses until it stilled forever.

she looked upon the small organ and marveled its intricacies. for something so vital, it was hideous -- rubber-grey and mauve red, with veins and arteries wrapped around it like choking vines.

you ever wonder what your own heartbeat looks like? sobeille asks of the feral child -- unafraid, and sensing a kinship that went deeper than simply blood.

OMG

when one leaves, another arrives.
flesh is stuck between athalia's teeth, the broad, feverish features painted in a rainbow of visceral reds and blacks. she does not look up, not at first. yes.
she has never seen this girl before. when she finally meets the dandelion eyes, she thinks she sees the dark apparition of her mother — but it is not her, not her at all. the voice, the body, even the face is different.
this was certainly new.
she sits silently, corpse drawn up between her willowy forelimbs, awaiting guidance that will not come from an apparition that is not an apparition at all, but a girl intruding upon her territory.

sobeille should be afraid. she'd done something terrible; she'd violated one of the most sacred tenets in wolfdom.

but she does not fear tradition, nor respect it.

the feral girl does not look up -- at least not right away. sobeille had time to place down her furskin, the sundry bones rattling onto their heavy-sided faces as she gently laid the ensemble down.

she looked to the rabbit with his chest exposed to the world.

and then she looked at the girl with the disunited aura and cast her bones.

me too.

me too
it was such a simple expression of camaraderie. athalia blinks, shunting the carcass with a small but mighty kick. she lowers herself to the ground as if in slow motion, a quivering sigh given as her elbows hit the earth, then her belly. all the while, she is unmoving; unblinking.
who was this girl?
the bruingirl flips through her mental files, searching for a place she could have seen her before. a sibling? no, that could not be. ancelin nor ameline hadn't introduced her either. maybe she is like mother, ignored by everyone else, coming and going as she pleases.
her tongue flicks out to pass over her lips and her teeth, tasting the now cooled blood. another sigh is shuddered out as she moves to protect her rabbit again, resting her head upon the open chest; the muscles are still warm.
she says nothing else, only silently communicates something: mine.

sobeille was met with silence, but the stranger’s body language communicated more than words ever could. she was watched — warily — the ghoul’s feral eyes tracking every moment as she slouched possessively over the ruined breast of the rabbit.

sobeille wordlessly moved back, a gesture of eased tension. she glanced to the bones and their formation, brow furrowing. de bones say — she leaned close, concentrating on the orientation of each arched spine. she closed her eyes and a single, visceral image hit her. spirit. opening them, sobeille slowly collected her wares. i’m sobeille. who you be?

the bones can speak?
suddenly, athalia is intrigued. her wariness is pulled away and replaced with the eager leer of a cat watching a mouse, pupils large and dilated as she emits a chuff and scrambles back up onto her elbows. a-tha-li-a.
now, she begins to approach the stranger, leaving the mangled rabbit behind her as she whisks her way up to meet the girl head on. a cursory sniff is given before she brings her tapered muzzle up to nearly press into her cheek, ears falling flush against her skull before springing back up again.
mother whispers to her. how bone speak? she asks it urgently, desperately. want to hear.

*laughs in instant reply* i'm so sorry twin

sobeille stood still as athalia's interest grew. she could tell by the way the girl looked at her - how she prowled close in the languid manner of a jungle cat. it enlivened the fur along sobeille's back -- it exhilarated her blood.

for the briefest moment they are nearly touching -- two bodies connected by an electrical exchange of information. sobeille drank in the girl's scent of red pine and forest -- of the meat on her breath, of the wilderness -- and in turn, athalia likely sensed the salt still under sobeille's skin, and the sour smell of near starvation.

she was almost sad when athalia pulled away.

yes, de bones speak. she recalled how the moonwomen were free and generous with their knowledge. how her entire world had been built on the backs of strong women, who openly shared their hearts and homes. she would do the same for athalia.

it takes practice. see - she spilled the contents of the sack, pushing the bones towards the girl. they must be bones of power. you know dis by listening -- close your mind to all thoughts, just breathe --

the girl continued prattling on the thousand little lessons she had learned; from sialuk, from kukutux, and from her own trial and error -- how she had captured and killed things purely for their bones -- eager to finally expose a part of her that she knew better than to share in sapphique.

she hadn't even needed to ask before sobeille went into a full tangent, and while athalia was typically the type to zone out on lectures, she hung on the edge of the girl's words as if she was hearing god herself speak. her jaw hung open in a soft shape, and now she began to mirror what was directed of her. she tears away a femur from flesh and hide, dropping it in front of her so that she may place her ear close to it and listen.
and it spoke;
spirit.
you right, she whispers, a little excited gasp touching her lips. her tail twitches and thumps in the grass. spirit.
an idea, no, a memory, wrapped in the static of passing moons; the headless skeleton that sat somewhere in the thick brush of the valley. the bruingirl gathers herself to her feet, scurrying to nudge sobeille into a stand. she presses her nose to her shoulder and vibrates with an excited, high-pitched whine. come. i show you.

as sobeille grew, she would learn nature’s highest coven was comprised of women. athalia drank her words as if it were a nectarine fount — she imagined this was how she appeared to the mooncoven. it was strange being the teacher — but sobeille stepped into this role readily while the air around them crackled in electricity.

athalia stripped flesh from bone and sobeille watched with approval darkening her eyes. suddenly, the bruingirl stood — sobeille hastily gathered their spread wares, including the freshly gristles bone. excitement thrummed in her blood as athalia briefly touched her shoulder, but she kept silent. she followed in anticipatory silence as the girl lead her deeper into the black pine.

the winding tendrils of bearclaw's hidden pathways led the two girls to a secluded area which looked a bit like mother nature vomited a selection of haphazard plants onto the forest floor. look, athalia whispers, turning toward her new friend with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it hint of a smile.
she begins to rummage through prickly thorn bushes and overgrown ferns, pawing at the earth until, somewhere beneath spring's bloom, lies the pillaged, headless skeleton that athalia had unearthed some several moons prior.
the bruingirl reaches now for sobeille's paw, guiding it toward the ribcage worn with fungus and flowerbuds. her tail thuds excitedly against the ground. what it say?

there was a possibility that sobeille was being lead to her death. this prospect sent a titillating shudder down her spine.

she trusted athalia, though. she was woman, but she was ‘other’ the way sobeille was ‘other’. two outliers in a world that could not understand them.

she was lead through convoluted territory. eventually athalia stopped, digging with rough heaves at the earth until a gristly skeleton was unearthed. sobeille noted the head missing, and blades of fungus cut through each rib.

her heart fluttered as her hand was guided to the ribs. for a moment the vivid image of a heart pulsed profoundly within her; followed by two spectral eyes, a hunter hulking in the bush — the shape of a black doe walking past.

what did it mean? the image pulled away, leaving sobeille back in the presence. she thought she heard the heart thudding in the distance, but that too faded away.

sobeille drew to her full height, eyes conveying a quiet sense of shock. perhaps unsatisfyingly, athalia’s question went unanswered. who dis be to you? she asked of the sleek spiderling, gaze turning back to the ruined skeleton cradled by dark earth.

i don't know.
a simple answer to a not so simple question. there was no way for the girl to have known her connection to these remains was bone-deep; no way for her to know that this nameless woman had a brother and father who looked just like her.
the bear looms over her in a silken shadow.
found here, athalia moves her shoulders in a loose shrug. don't know who. but they follow me. watching.
me have many watchers, she quietly admits, something she had never before spoken aloud — but some primordial instinct told her that this knowledge was safe with sobeille. mother. birds. spirits.

housed under that black earth, the skeleton shared no secrets. sobeille mused to herself, studying the lines of moss and rot that darkened the stranger’s bones.

a feral burst of power rippled down her skin. while she was a collector of bones, there was something forbidden here — cursed, maybe — and she felt a thousand eyes now seemed to bore into her spine.

dat be like a loa. sobeille decided, unsure if this thing was bad or good. perhaps like her loa, this spirit watched over athalia, guiding her where they were compelled. mebbe dis loa be guardin’ you.

had she known from the priestess the word taotaomona, she’d have spoken it.

she watches intently every move that sobeille makes, every minute change in her expression. she says a word that athalia does not understand — loa? she mimics, the crimson brush of her nape flaring in interest. loa...
was that what mother was? the birds? were they loa?
i... see things, the words fall from her mouth slowly, eyes dropping to the soured, minuscule bones which once made up the inner workings of a forepaw. they leave. then come back. and i hear, she mimes something unintelligibly with a flick of her arm as if she were gesturing to something invisible. no one else does. only me. did sobeille have this too? were they both gifted in some way that the beargirl had not understood until now?
was that why she had the unshakeable temptation to touch her?
almost jarringly, athalia reaches out for her, slowly inching closer until she can touch her muzzle to the space behind the other girl's dark-printed ear. it was innocent, really, at least — at first.
pretty, she murmurs absentmindedly.

sobeille was just superstitious enough to think if a loa guarded athalia, she was born in the wrong place. her attention fell to the brittle bones athalia studied; sobeille knew the anatomy that once wrapped around those bones intimately, and flexed her own paw as if she could see every tendon and ligament’s shifting relation within.

athalia revealed something so intriguing. now sobeille truly wished for the power to close her eyes and see within — not just gristle and viscera — but feelings and thoughts too. what did athalia see? what did she feel?

her fur stood on end as suddenly the bruingirl moved, her muzzle tracing the blackened end of sobeille’s ear. it defied every instinct sobeille had to allow a predator’s mouth so close to her face. she stiffened, and turned her head towards the bruingirl’s jaw.

another sensation rippled through her, equally surprising. equally nameless. sobeille introspectively examined it for a moment before she recognized the blood pounding her temple. don’t touch me, she instructed, settling a foot away where she would not feel compelled to stroke the raven-black of athalia’s fur. where she would not be compelled to wonder of the redness beneath, or how beautiful the garland of red would be speckled across a canvas of black —

she straightened. dis loa be protectin’ you — or dis place mebbe. mebbe dat is why you be seein’ t’ings. she lowered her head, her voice hushed. one time, i saw a ghost in de sound below. no one believed me, but i saw ‘er — and worse — an’ she saw me. an’ she showed me t’ings too. what your loa be showin’ you?

given the fact that personal space did not come naturally to athalia, she did not necessarily think that her touch would be disliked — and so when it was, she was stricken with shock for a good moment, very visibly a bit confused as if she had been given the wrong signals entirely. perhaps she had been. and normally she would have scoffed or even growled over the command, but despite herself, she listens.
oh, she says, flatness overtaking her tone as she yanks herself away. sorry.
it felt like being a child and suddenly hearing an adult get very, very serious.
she goes eerily quiet for a long while and almost ponders getting up to leave as the vulnerability of this interaction truly begins to gnaw at her. why was she entertaining this? why had she even let this girl into her sacred home? ancelin and ameline would kill her for this. she wants to throw up and yet she cannot stop herself.
not show, she whispers, shaking her head. tell.
she flicks her muzzle back in the direction that they had come from. can't dis-a-ppoint mother. she tell me, get rabbit, and i listen. i kill. i-- feel heart. but, her breath shudders, eyes panning down to her grizzle-coated paws. she never like. always leave. she leave big time when i small, yeah? little. and then she send birds, and the birds give sunlight. but have big problem, big fear, be-cause-- 'cause me not know if mother mother, or if mother--
did any of this make sense? her frustration is visible, evident in the way her nose wrinkles and her gaze hardens. only seconds after she speaks, she asks herself if any jumbled, maddening drivel composed coherent sentences at all — all she can do is hope sobeille understands the gist.
methinks mother fake. methinks she fake, 'cause-- it make no sense, right? mother have-- weird faces, never same face. never same voice. never-- stays. not like an-cel-in.
she shivers, visibly recoiling, body curved into a semicircle of discontent. mother tell me to hurt.

sobeille was quick to move past that briefly uncomfortable moment — which for her was more tense than painful. she had never had someone touch her like that before — the ripple effect it caused under her skin would be ruthlessly dissected at a later time.

she did not mind the long silence. during these spanning seconds sobeille studied the gristly bones. what had their bearer looked like? how many lives had she killed?

when athalia spoke once more sobeille dragged her gaze from the moss-studded bones to her face; measuring the rhythm and the hesitance as it outpoured from athalia’s speech. sobeille did fully understand — but she worked to try to piece together the snippets she comprehended.

it was not empathy that guided her, but a shared sense of kinship. so hurt. sobeille urged, a budding excitement setting flame to her heart. what would athalia do - and moreover, who would be caught in her destructive path? it excited sobeille to think about the thousand outcomes — the little webs that grew bigger with each move. jus’ don’t do it in your own backyard, ya?

eventually it came time for sobeille to leave — but the bruingirl stayed in her thoughts for a long time after the sun set on her path home.