Firestone Hot Springs Will never know passion, will never know pain
1,397 Posts
Ooc — Jennifer
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#1
All Welcome 
He'd managed to avoid this place the last few times he wandered through and in all honesty, he wasn't keen on ever coming back.  Dear lord.  His face was pretty well contorted into permanent disgust. It smeeelllled.  And the humidity in the air felt like it was making his fur stick together or something.  Like he felt as if he'd gone swimming even though he'd not gone close to the water.  The few times he got near he could feel it radiating through, his nose and pawpads.  Yeah, never coming back.  Maybe it'd make a good wall to keep people out of his forest.

There was a bit of haze -- steam, really -- coming up off the water.  He didn't see anyone, but they could be lurking just out of sight, or some blurry shadow who wasn't actually a shadow.  Mal had come out here to hunt, but this seemed like it was unending, and with his nose this screwball, he doubted he'd find anything.  It was just very unpleasant, and he certainly looked he thought that.
and i'm wondering who could be writing this song?
209 Posts
Ooc — mercury
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#2
he hadn't had a chance to formally meet this mal yet, but he figured he must be the silvery figure that emerged from the forest whilst cam hunkered near the outskirts, peering like a furtive cat. he slunk away, too, following at a distance—not stalking, necessarily, but too timid to get much closer. only when the young man drew to a halt did cam range up gingerly alongside, forgetting in his nervousness to even make a sound to indicate he was there.

are you mal? he asked, lifting his muzzle to stare unblinkingly at the other wolf. his nose was scrunched, for mal had entered the stinky place and while cam hadn't wanted to come back here very often, his curiosity had outweighed any drawbacks from the smell. he would just make sure not to get in the water, this time.

his eyes darted downward, suddenly scared he teetered too close to a ledge. god, imagine if he fell again!
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Ooc — Jennifer
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#3
And unsurprisingly he also didn't smell the kid coming.  Mal was almost to the point of just turning around and going back.  It sounded like a brilliant idea right at this point.  In fact, that's what he was considering when suddenly a voice piped up -- what the....

It was easy to make the assumption that Mal probably hadn't been informed of their visitor... Especially since Mal wasn't exactly Elysium's biggest fan and would probably say something outrageously insensitive because that's just who he was.  At some point he'd probably torched that brain-mouth filter that most people had, or just never gained one in the first place.  Thus, he blinked and inquired rather bluntly,  Um.  Yes?  Who're you?  And where the hell did you come from?  He sniffed at the kid, thinking maybe he did smell Ibis and Okeanos on him.  But the pair had brought only themselves as far as he knew. So where did he come from?
and i'm wondering who could be writing this song?
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Ooc — mercury
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#4
right, so this was mal, just as he had suspected. cam was unfazed at the brusque tone, though his voice was similarly clipped as he responded, i'm cam. a moment of silence fell between them before he added, cocking his head slightly, our names are both ugly and short. why was that?

he sat down, curling his ever-lengthening tail around his paws. seated, he could at least ensure he remained on solid ground and didn't wander inadvertently into a hot pool again. the day was much too warm for that.

are you from 'leesum too? he asked, wondering. ibis and okeanos had said that olive and seebee were their mummies; maybe this young wolf was their brother or something. cam wasn't altogether sure. maybe this was all random, and he had only stumbled upon ibis by coincidence (which, well, he had).
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Ooc — Jennifer
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#5
He frowned slightly at his name being sort of categorized negatively. Better than being called something that sounds all cutesy and childish.  Honestly the fact that he was actually named Malachi was somewhere waaay in a buried corner of his mind so it didn't even come up 90% of the time -- Mali had been his name, until he very uncreatively decided that it needed some pruning.  But if Cam didn't like his name for the opposite reasons Mal had chosen his... Call yourself whatever you want -- you're the one who has to live with it.  Shrug.   He took another glance around in the brief pause before Cam's next words pulled his attention back.

Wait, did that mean he was from Elysium, or was that just something that Ibis and Okeanos had said about their own histories?  Kind of.  That place was never home.  More like forced to stay until I escaped.  He'd stopped having a home when the pack ceased to be Bracken Sanctuary.  Maybe before, when his mom disappeared and Olive and Seabreeze started the slow destruction of all things familiar to him as a child.  Either way, he certainly did not have a particularly positive experience with the pack.  I'm not making a pack like that one.  Just to be clear, of course.  Just nope, he did not fit in with the weirdo hippy witches at all.  Nah, Mal was a pretty prickly dude, mostly as a defense mechanism, and it was going to take a while for him to break that habit even around those that quite obviously couldn't harm him.
and i'm wondering who could be writing this song?
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Ooc — mercury
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#6
cam didn't get mal's logic at all. cutesy seemed just fine to him. it was the short, lifeless names that disturbed him, like his own. it had no ring to it, no melody. i dunno what to call myself, he replied, rather sullenly.

his eyes widened a little as mal confirmed (sort of) his origins in elysium, though he painted a different picture than what cam was used to. he hadn't said anything overly offensive, though. innocent as ever, cam decided to push it with perhaps the worst possible question in this scenario —

why?
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Ooc — Jennifer
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#7
At least you can think about it.  I'm not good at that stuff either, but picking something you don't hate feels better.  Which was true, but that might be because that was part of Mal's attempt to distance himself from his past.  Part of the clean break and all that.

Yeah.  Mal was kind of a ball of compressed spite and seething when it came to Elysium.  He did his best to keep his tone controlled but there was no hiding the mockery in the middle.  It wound him into a kind of compressed version of his previous rants, pacing slightly as he did so, both him and his words picking up pace as he ranted, We weren't their children.  So everything bad was our fault, the other kids were always just innocent angels, why don't we treat them like the perfect little creatures they were?  Nobody ever looked for my missing sister, the other two of us just got ignored.  They kept us around out of pity.  They acted like everything was perfect, but they were awful to us, and now Brillo's missing too and I bet they don't care, probably didn't even notice when I left -- their little 'sanctuary' was a pathetic joke.  A den of moral filth and hypocrisy, when you got right down to it, just everyone there was far too willing to believe everything was totally fine when it really wasn't.  They were all too enchanted by whatever powers Seabreeze and Olive had.  Hell, Cam probably wouldn't believe him either.
and i'm wondering who could be writing this song?
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Ooc — mercury
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#8
perhaps it would have shaken him completely if he were older, more cognizant of the nature of those around him, but the diatribe only served to further intrigue the boy. he didn't understand most of it, but what he did understand, he identified with. he, too, had felt alone and ignored in elysium by all except his mother. the fact that mal was on the same page. . .it made him feel better, actually. 

they said they couldn't wake mummy up, cam said flatly, scowling. she went to sleep and they put her under the ground. which he thought was quite awful, though they had assured him that was what was best. 

but what if it wasn't? what if mal was right?
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Ooc — Jennifer
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#9
It made him pause a moment.  He didn't know who Cam's parents were, mostly because he didn't ask and didn't think to ask, and probably didn't even know/remember Lily had a mate since she barely crossed his path.  So someone really had keeled over, and what that younger pup he ran into at Elysium had said kinda made sense.  Weird.  Probably due to something dumb and mundane but secretly he hoped it was fate's punishment for their weak behavior.  He couldn't think of what, though.  Just something.

Though the way Cam explained it could also conjure up a whole new sick way they could be evil, but Mal was pretty sure he could find actual reality in it.  It was indirect enough that Mal wasn't quite so ready to shank someone, at least.  But he was also emotionally screwed up enough that he didn't go breaking down in pity or attempting to comfort the kid or whatever.  It was just a kind of understanding of something similar.  Oh, and of course he had no idea about age appropriate answers or anything like that, obviously, Asleep like dead?  My family's just gone.  All of them. -- Except I thought I saw my mom recently... But I'm not sure any more.  Meeting Queenie had still seemed weirder and weirder the farther he got from it in time.  Note he was excluding Delight, who had seemingly decided to stop being his father long ago, given how little attention he gave them when Elysium became Elysium.  As far as Mal knew, Delight was still alive and bowing to the witches' will.  The fact that both his parents were actually dead -- and that he likely wouldn't ever know his mother's actual fate -- didn't enter in to it at this point.  Honestly, the player is not even sure if it'd matter.
and i'm wondering who could be writing this song?
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Ooc — mercury
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#10
asleep like dead? cam had heard that word before. . .'dead.' he didn't like the sound of it. mundane, final. he gave a shrug, shuffling his paws idly as the other wolf continued. he didn't really know what mal was talking about, but he felt bad that he didn't even have a family.

but what was worse. . .a family that ignored you, or no family at all?

oh, cam murmured in absent response, not knowing what else to say. his eyes drifted away from mal, toward the pools he had fallen into before. it was probably unnerving, standing next to a silent little child, his mind a million miles away. then again, perhaps mal relished the quiet.
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Ooc — Jennifer
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#11
Well if Cam wasn't gonna fuss, neither was Mal.  Perhaps it was for the wrong reasons but...  Oh well.  It'd have to be something to go over later if it ever came up.  If he ever had the sense to ask again about it.  He was more than willing to just be ignorant about the whole thing.  Elysium's news was unimportant to him.

Anyway.  If you don't wanna go back there or whatever, I'm not gonna make you. Though he wasn't sure if Ibis and Okeanos would be onboard with that.  Mal was strongly of the opinion that nobody should be forced to go back to that hellhole.  Especially if people were dying and stuff.  If Cam's remaining family couldn't be bothered to find him, then they didn't deserve him anyway.  It wasn't like Delight had ever bothered to go looking for Solomon once the two witches had their claws fully into him...
and i'm wondering who could be writing this song?
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Ooc — mercury
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#12
and that was totally okay with cam. he wasn't ready to go back. . .not yet. sure, he'd wandered away, but he'd not done so completely aimlessly. at the very heart of the matter was his need to escape the daily grief of elysium, the yawning absence of his mama. even if he'd not done so consciously, the weight had become all too much to bear.

why would he willingly take that on again?

okay, cam responded, not quite as absently as before. he gave mal a curt nod, tail swishing a little behind him. talk t'you later, he said, and then he turned to go back to the forest. it wasn't the most eloquent of goodbyes, but hey, he didn't really know how to do those yet. maybe he never would.

at least, though, he'd made somewhat of a friend. three friends, actually. things were already starting to seem a little better than before, even without lily.
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Ooc — Jennifer
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#13
Mal was probably equally awkward for slightly different reasons. As such, it wasn't like he was gonna notice Cam's slightly abnormal behavior.  If it could even be called that.  Anyhoo.  Mall nodded, Yep. Seeya.  And that was pretty much it.  He was gonna go continue to explore this place a little bit more then head back to the Forest not long after.