Ankyra Sound i swapped contact with reality for a country house

hehehehehh lolz

The tussling seaboard was no place for a little inkblot, mistakenly smudged across the page. Her ears fumbled uselessly with the stage-fright that squandered her heart as she stood before the inflowing tide -- the sight of sleek-barreled waves unbounded and greedily gobbling up the light in her eyes, leaving her rooted in place. Lusca was unsure what jokesmith of a god led her here again -- in truth she'd zoned out miles ago -- but she was not entirely enjoying the revisit. Someone was having a laugh, somewhere.

Broad-stanced and glassy-eyed the female stared unflinching, tail slack against her croup as she contemplated tossing back her head and baying haaaaalp at her absent travel companion. Regrettably, her pride was too well-endowed for that to come to pass. So instead, she spat eye-daggers at the sea and began prowling the line where the earth composited soil and sand. 

The further upshore she traveled, the more intense the chill clambering up her spine -- an unsettling scent-salad of unfamiliar wolf and seasalt collided with her senses, tipping her off that she might well be playing into the hands of some cannibalistic neptunian/wolf Frankenstein. With such wild imagination running amok, she considered doing a complete 180 and noping outta dodge, but in typical Lusca fashion, she would soon decide that the currency of her life converted to total of diddly-squat at the current price of impulsive curiosity (and she left a nice rank receipt on their patio, too). 

Steadying her nerves with a sharp intake, the girl proceeded forward with a forced attitude of intrepidness, putting a comfortable buffer between herself and the shoreline as she lingered near the ingress of cheerless-seeming grotto. Peering in, the yearling summoned enough bravery to coo an uncertain "hello? heeellloooooo?" into its passage, stepping partway in as she squinted into the humectant darkness, only to pull back as water dabbled down from the ceiling and onto her head. 

"Are there any cannibals in here?" Wincing, Lu feared a response.

caiaphas irl

within the aphotic ceremonial chamber came a dull echo, wrangling down the mass of flowstone and gneiss until it was but a whisper faintly detected by caiaphas' angular ears. along the hearthstone of damp moss and trickle-streams the wretch froze, her muzzle cast towards the tunnel where the source of sound had rebounded. her hackles lifted slowly and a simmering outrage welled in the lambent yellow of her gaze.

for a moment she was incensed enough to consider barreling up the tavern and out into the surface like some half-lidded and rabid troglodyte. to fly across the basalt to the blinding light and fight tooth and nail for her claim of the cave. but she did no such thing. instead, the slyph owards the breccia stones that marked the tunnel to an adjoining cavern and pulled herself down into the tunnel's mouth, peering out into the chamber. the gentle rise of the tunnel protected her from immediate detection -- she peered from behind the slope with hungry anticipation. 

with her stomach to the shoal and her ears held down at her side, the wretch waited for the intruder. and the manner in which she did so was not unlike a spider's patient wait for fly to erroneously flounder in her direction.

HAHA ohman clooney. this. 

set scene: CAIAPANTS, a rough-around-the-edges suburban mom in a pink gucci track suit with a bad smoker's cough, clutching her cosmo and peeking through the curtains of the estate her sugar daddy bought for them before he mysteriously disappeared one day while out on the yacht for a couples excursion-- 

enter LUSCA, jehovah's witness: idling at her doorstep accoutered in a brown suit with an insoluble thigh stain, clipboard, bible and a slough of despondency.

three rapid raps against her door. three more. ten raps. 

CAIAPANTS, secretly craving social interaction after holing herself up for seven long years, cracks open the front door.

CAIAPANTS (suspiciously):"what? whaddya want? i ain't buying, look at the sign" 

cut to sign, reading: UNLESS YOU ARE SELLING THIN MINTS, PLEASE GO AWAY!

LUSCA, stuttering: "ma'am, do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior jesus christ?"

CAIAPANTS, silent for a moment: "what about 'em?"

LUSCA: "do you own a bible? it's the word of god you know."

CAIAPANTS: "yeah i'd like to have a word with god. keep tryin' to find the guy but he keeps changing numbers! ya know where i can find 'em?"

LUSCA, (nervously): "yes, ma'am, you can find him in your heart!"

CAIAPANTS, squinting thoughtfully: "nope. haven't heard of it. what's the zipcode."

LUSCA: "ma'am you should know that salvation is no joking matter. god will save you by his grace and i feel it is my duty as an envoy of his to–"

CAIAPANTS: "honey, i'd sell your soul to satan for one cornchip."

(DOOR SLAM)

LUSCA, frantically tripping through bushes, pounding on the windows: "you do know the guacamole costs extra!?!"

A few moments passed where she heard nothing apart from the dismal run-down of water from the speleothems as they splattered against the wet limestone in a reverberated rataplan cadence. She cast hearth-gaze about the erosive interior, searching for squatters –– or the reaper, whichever came first.

Sudden shuffling movement from far within the undercroft snatched her ears –– amorphous audio sludge, nothing distinct, nothing that Lusca couldn't talk herself out of hearing. But the cessation of grave-like silence nonetheless garroted the husked remnants of her soul and her ears wilted, a shudder unwinding along the length of her spinal column like a scroll. She shook it off at the tip of her tail, wringing out the anxiety to boldly–and mockingly–exclaim: "YOU SCAAAAARED?!"

OMG LMFAO help i cant even stop laughing long enough to make a post ~__~ u fiend

caiaphas drew herself down into the dredge, her moss-clad body sinking into the rimstone's fluid surface. the titter of the stranger echoed above, followed by footsteps that at length grew in their intensity. caiaphas pulled back as a shade broke across the mouth of the cavern -- like some insidious slug she reined in her ambition and slithered further down the grooved tongue of the tunnel.

then came a call -- the echo behind it resounding and immense -- caiaphas felt the damp air stir as if drawing umbrage from lusca's presence. she continued to back herself down the tunnel, hoping the silence would entice lusca into probing further into the grotto's depths. [b]"you scared?"[b] the siren whispered audibly into the gloom, a calculating smile blooming across her dark countenance as she waited for lusca to fall into her trap.

smirl

The ink-mawed fleur princesse tread a step further into the looming craw of the cavern on uncertain stilts, ears straining to pluck any noise out of the muggy, dead air. Briefly she was consoled that nothing came of her taunting -- her shoulders slackened (she was unaware she had been holding herself so tensely) and a sigh of relief ousted from her lungs. 

Then all at once, the sound of pattering soles, claw ticking against flowstone, a glottal whisper. A resurgence of dread flooded her body -- a body far too slight to contain such a barrage, and she about foundered, reeling backwards with claws slewing against the slippery underfooting. "Fuck a handful of that!" Lusca clamored. Caiaphas' scheme to draw in her sailor didn't exactly go over big -- in fact, it ran aground almost exclusively due to the sinuous coo that ensued from somewhere within the cave system. If the ophidian presumed making freaky-ass noises would successfully entice her victims, she was set to be sorrowfully disappointed. 

The girl made to turn and retreat from the clearly inhospitable abode, but as she pivoted on her heel, an arched shadow was thrown against the barely perceivable walls and disappeared just as quickly. Skidding on her back feet, Lusca blenched -- she so badly wanted to run, to flail across the coastline into the safety of the forest, but she felt locked into her body. 

Unsure where the recluse concealed herself, she desperately hurled her sights hither and thither. "Why do you hide?" suppressing a tremble. "Huh?" she demanded, sneaking her way towards the ingress little by little. "Do you have a deformity, you hideous shit?"

a gleeful snigger threatened to destroy caiaphas' constrained composure as she heard lusca yell sharply into the blackness, her voice thundering down the moss-gilded cavern into interminable dark. as lusca's voice rebounded caiaphas used the noisy succession to move her position once more, drawing further down into the cold reach of the tunnel. it was almost entirely dark now -- not even her keen, cave-worn eyes could pry much from the enveloping darkness.

she was not too concerned about the skitter of her claws, which would quickly betray her location -- for lusca's voice still clamored, alarmist as it ripped down tunnels that were wholly accustomed to silence. lusca would be able to detect her movement, and maybe even follow -- but for now caiaphas waited, calculating her ambush of the overtly curious wolf if she strayed too close.

wtf i wrote an entire extra paragraph and went to preview and it completely disappeared that was 10000% rude

Her aggro bid for some sort of response was met with dank sticky silence rather than feedback -- a frustrated huff barreled from her mouth and Lusca scrooched her brows down over her eyes, shoulders pitching with exasperation. 

"Oh, so we're a beastie of few words." She croaked, hesitating towards the exit but possessed of fresh, deep-mouthed curiosity that could only be slaked by the discovery of whatever oleaginous entity dwelled within, pulsing in harmony with the heart of the cave -- visceral outright.

She could hear It slick across the shadows, and the imagery it invoked within her mind send a shiver from her tail-tip to her frontal lobe. The thestral shot a undecided -- but ultimately parting -- glance toward the passage out, then turned and scoured the darkness, trepidation rimming her eyes. 

"Outtie outtie lets be free," Lusca trilled in a sing-song voice (loaded with misgivings she could not head off; her voice's selvage unraveling -- the leaky faucet that was anxiety), crowding into the awkward fit of the grotto -- a graveyard of innumerable nerves. She was mindful of her footholds, imploring that her trust that earth's correspondence with gravity remain true and that she would not soon plunge through a geographic flaw to her death.

Little did she know just how near to peril she drew: Caiaphas stowed herself away just feet ahead. 

the wraith hung back, little head lowered -- the baleful glare of her eyes set upon the shadowed form of lusca. in great deliberation the wretch scuttled sideways across the path as lusca came down towards her with her voice echoing off the cavern walls in dim repetition, her paws light and flitting across the flowstone. as lusca came close the waif brandished the entire of her unwieldy weight towards lusca's flanks in the hopes of offsetting her balance and sending her tumbling down the slender corridor. in an effort to block lusca's escape she flurried down after her, gums peeled and hackles stirring along her bony spine not unlike a vulture's. if all went accordingly, little timmy would be pushed down the well -- and caiaphas would have a new supplicant to torment.

With a frame so little it could be knocked over with a feather, offset Lusca was as the Saltwinter wolf weaponized her mass -- battery-ramming into her like she was carrying out a one-man ballistic breach. With a grunt hefted from her little body, the girl trundled down the corridor, legs swept out from beneath her as she slammed into the dark floor of a confined passage. 

Pain, like an icepick gored in warm flesh, whisked up her leg, but adrenaline quickly liberated her from its sensation and she strived to her feet. Floewater sluiced through her veins, spine incurved like some catamount beget with the fear of God and hackled as she looked dead into the sulfuric eyes of her undoer.  

A craven whimper pealed through the air as Caiaphas prowled, approaching ominously with the express intent to sow fear and unrest--bringing Lusca to bay as she carefully backed up and felt her hindquarters press against the mucid grotto wall. She slid further back until her rump was beneath her, aligned with her withers, and her back was slithering up the calcite. "Y-you're going to regret killing me," she stammered, clamping her ears. "I'm r-royalty and my-my-my p-pack will come looking." Her eyes widened then squeezed shut, head tucked to protect her throat from imminent assault.

a whoosh expelled from her clasped jaws as the collision smacked her flank - the two of them together were not much meat between them, though caiaphas was delightfully surprised by the force she packed in her blow. lusca was quick to tumble and did not rise. instead she wormed back fearfully until her body shoulders dug into the cave's rim. an onlooker would have found lusca's commentary amusing -- caiaphas did not.

she pulled forward, feral gaze swarming with anger. "shut." she commanded with a snap, the echo of her teeth clacking down the dim corridor in ominous rebounds. "we move - you do not follow, you die -- you hear?" with that the hellish wretch swept forward, snapping at lusca's heels in the hopes to shepherd her to the den's rendezvous. "march!"

Shut! Caiaphas' jaws wrought the interjection like a bear-trap snatching the snout of a coyote, its severity clamoring throughout the grotto. Lusca flinched, shoulderblades digging into the limestone. "I've arrived at the conclusion you d-don't like visitors," she scritched, looking left and right–desperate for a vent or intervening passage to escape through. "We move - you do not follow, you die - you hear?" Umm... "What was that?" She tilted an ear outwards. "Sorry, I'm hard of hearing. You said, 'you're free to go and you're not going to die'? Ifyouinsist..." She lurched forward, anticipating that she had a window of opportunity to shove past Caiaphas, to get away most ricki-tick and with her life.

Alas, there was no time–in an instant the denmother raked her teeth across her victim's gaunt carpals, intercepting an attempted retreat with intractable malice. Luc yipped shrilly, pain smiting her elbows, and with quickly dimming hope for her release she allowed herself to be steered into a downreaching ingress. "I am, I am!" 

gunna wrap up but we need a new thread MISSY

she skulked behind her new captive, her lambent eyes focused on lusca's limping form with the faint expression of disdain. she was not afraid to deliver cruel nips or kicks to 'encourage' her new friend to venture deeper into the chambers -- and any quip or retort uttered by the shadowy hued female was met with a cold and unsympathetic stare -- and sometimes, equally unsympathetic teeth. she hadn't a clue what her plan was, but she knew any lost little ghoul in her caverns was deserving of a lengthy and uninterrupted stay.