Bearclaw Valley Whiskey will solve all problems but one

@Caiaphas 

Sarah had not been oblivious to the earthquakes and rumbles of the earth that were sometimes accompanied by loud crashes, where rock walls disintegrated, landslides happened and forests fell. Lost Creek Hollow had been spared from any major losses, yet every evening the weathered warrior went to sleep with a hope that she will see another day. 

The thing was that all her instincts screamed at her not to trust the false calmness of the residence, but her sense of loyalty to her brother and his mate did not let her leave the place behind. Were it any other pack, she would have done so without a word, without a second glance back. Now all she could do was go out in the wilds and see, where the worst damage had happened. Then decide, whether this should be brought up to her brother as an argument for leaving or not. 

Bearclaw valley was her first destination, because few days ago this had been the source of the most ominous noise. She had hunted here few times before, but having never been her favourite plot, she had difficult time drawing up the exact extent of the damage on the first take. Only after she had wandered the place for a while and paid attention to certain tell-tale details did she began to realize the force that had made these solid rock walls crumble. 

Sarah made a stop next to a place, where a huge boulder had crushed a couple of trees and bushes in it's way, until making a full stop at an old maple tree. It - though shaken and crooked - was still standing strong, it's red and yellow leaves gleaming in the bright autumn sunlight. Looked almost like a throne - the she-wolf thought, admiring the force of the nature that had caused this.

revisiting bearclaw had not been in caiaphas' favor.. but fortune rarely favored her these days. she was close -- far too close to easthollow for comfort.. but the way to the coast had been shut by the tumble of mountain rocks and trees, and caiaphas would be foolish to attempt the normal road home.

she found herself within bearclaw's collapsed perimeters, where one boulder in particular had managed to strike down adjacent trees like a wrecking ball. here she saw a wolf -- a familiar wolf -- that caused her hackles to immediately raft upwards. standing where she was, caiaphas cut the roan female a deep scowl and spoke. "back for more?"

Sarah turned around to face the person, who had spoken to her. She did not recognize the scrawny hag-like wolfess, who looked as if it owed to Death himself. Then her eyes narrowed and there was a faint memory of an episode in the summer. Severe injury, smell of pestering wounds and rottnig flesh and her sense of duty to help a weakling cross the rainbow bridge. 

"How curious," Sarah replied and smiled coldly at Caiaphas, amused by the run-in. "Are you offering?" she tilted her head to the side and eyed the other one curiously.

a threadbare smile, cold as the winter sun, came in reply to caiaphas' scowl. she studied the grizzled face of the woman that had nearly ended her -- and somewhere, was pleased at least it had not been a male.

sarah's curious head-tilt was met with a subtle arc of the siren's tail. no, she was not offering -- sarah could try, but caiaphas was in far better condition than last they had met. she was not hale -- no, not yet -- but getting there.

"no." her lips pursed in a pleased expression that dared sarah to strike her if she dared.

Peculiar creature this she-wolf was. Nothing more than scrawny hag, beaten and battered, but unbroken and with so much will to survive. Admirable really. Sarah smiled humourlessly, as she paid respects to the other woman's ability to cling on life, but did not say anything aloud. 

"Then, why are you here?" she asked, more to play with Caiaphas, now that she had pressed her company on her, not that she had any interest in her doings. "The forest is full of shadows and dark creatures lurking. Ain't you afraid?" Or are you one of them?

sarah smiled -- caiaphas derived little joy from it.

she responded with a half-smile of her own, and like sarah's, it seemed far from genuine. caiaphas had her own preferences on how this reunion would go - sarah would see she was not easy game, and would kindly take a long walk through a dark forest.. already, the siren was readying herself, should sarah try to finish the job..

standing there among the rubble, caiaphas found amusement in the face of irony that seemed to mock her. if she was to die here, so close to easthollow... well.. she couldn't say the gods didn't have their own brand of humor, could she?

"hunting, probably the same as you." caiaphas answered, surprisingly truthfully -- there was little point lying at this point, wasn't there?

The old hag was the last person, who should be reminded about the dark and shady characters that prowled the woods. On the second thought - and this was an amusing one - Sarah would give a lot to see, how would Warlock react to meeting this rusty battle-ax during the night-time wee break.

"Good," Sarah nodded and had nothing to add to the subject they had just been discussing. She looked over her shoulder at the rocks, then let her gaze travel over, where the trees had been taken down, then back at the gorgon. "So, the last time I saw you, you were about to give up the ghost. What exactly had happened to you?" she asked.

I am playing around with all of the synonyms to "hag" that the dictionary has to offer. If any of those happen to be very rude and demeaning by chance, please, poke me. :)

you are good! battle-axe is a very good one - usually, in reference to an old lady that is as tough as dirt.  

the siren queen expected some sort of rebuke, and her one ear lifted as sarah simply accepted her words with a benign glint of humor. it had been too long since caiaphas had met good company on the road -- these days, it seemed all company was invested in killing her.

upon examining sarah's question, caiaphas called to mind that sarah had considered killing her too -- for that reason, a prickle of something akin to uncharitable emotion surpassed her. it was gone in a moment, but it was there long enough sarah might see it. they may be well-met now, but they were no old friends' reunion at the jolly tavern: once crossed, caiaphas never forgot a face.

"someone had the same idea as you. try to kill me. they almost succeeded too." she rubbed her throat absently with the front of her wrist, recalling her spat in easthollow with a pained smirk. "it was not their skill or even the deepness of the wounds that got me. it was the infection thereafter, and the flystrike. word of the wise -- if you are going to sport wounds on your body don't do it in the height of summer." or at all, really.

"Oooh... I wouldn't put my intentions under the label "killing for fun"," Sarah corrected the old lady. "There is a certain stage of decay in a living thing that you begin to consider them as a food source," she explained with an unpleasant smile and you could not tell, whether she was meaning every word or was just messing around. "There was nothing personal against you, but I see, where you take offence," she added, quickly examined Caiaphas from head to toes, and decided that it was not worth it. It would be more fun to wager, how long was she going to survive.

"If our roles had been reversed, I would have felt offended myself," she chuckled humourlessly. "So, I understand that your would-be-killers did not try to end you, because they were hungry?" she asked, because in her experience no sentient being wanted to get injured in the wilds. Even a small cut in the right place could end you over period of time. Therefore often conflicts had to be resolved by peaceful means. "It must have been a very grave insult," she guessed.

her entire life, caiaphas had often viewed others as pawns or pieces to push around for her agenda. sometimes, it faired well for whoever she moved -- and other times, not so well.

yet to be viewed by another as meat was most unsavory. caiaphas could not help the prickle of her hackles as she recalled how very close she had gotten that day to joining the dead -- all because fate had ordained sarah come across her.

caiaphas could not fault the woman, however, for her view -- and in abstract, it was almost amusing -- except it was her, and caiaphas had never had a good sense of humor about her own misfortune or potential demise. "they nearly killed my children. so i returned the favor." she offered a shrug in rejoinder. tit for tat had always been her motto, although in some ways her revenge was often a long-time coming and too slow for her taste. "so, who are you?"

"So, you nearly killed theirs? That's very interesting. Please, do elaborate, how "almost killing" works... did you scare them to nearly-death? Did you take an ear or a limb?" Sarah chuckled at the choice of words and still felt that this one-sentence summary did not tell the whole story. But, who was she to press the old she-wolf for details, which she did not wish to share. Neither of them were here to entertain the other at will. 

"Who am I... hmmm..." Sarah was not prone to existential questions or philosophy, strongly preferring the straight-forward and blunt approach, but, when she was in a particularly good mood (like now, for example), she tended to play the "I am annoying and smart" card. "Well, I am on your naughty list already, I guess. And my name does not matter so much as my face does. You won't forget me, because I had intent to kill you. And I won't forget you for the same reason. The names seem quite pointless to me in this situation."

caiaphas afforded a smile that was only semi-genuine. "no," she corrected, a shake of her head given -- "killed. they tried, i succeeded." for that was what she had heard and seen with her own two eyes. the crack of spinal column, the lifeless slump of the puppy.

according to caiaphas, leta was very dead indeed.

no surprise given her company, that sarah refrained from doling out her name. "names hold power." caiaphas replied, not entirely disagreeing with sarah's point. it had merit, in a way. "holding a name is dangerous. perhaps moreso than knowing their face. anyone could say 'have you seen a while wolf, with freckles' for instance --" here caiaphas thought of charon, 'peanut' -- "but the name makes them distinct. maybe i wish to know your name, should i need it in the future. after all, if i was on my deathbed searching for someone to be kind enough to end it all, asking for the scary grey lady in the woods, would get me very different results."

So, the old hag had killed a child in another pack. That made Sarah alert and like the black-headed woman even less than before, but she was wise enough not to burst out in a justified anger. She knew she was no better than this woman - they both were killers with a past record and it made no difference, whether it was a cub with a broken spine, suffering from crimes of his or hers parents, or it was a loner that had been perceived as danger and finished off few miles off the pack's territory.

"I don't think you will need my services," Sarah shook her head, smiling cynically. "I risk of being very much doomed, should you change your mind in the process," she added a brief explanation, which she believed to be very true in regards of the stranger. That wolf had an aura of a person, who has an iron-grasp on their life-thread. They would outlive everyone out of spite and need for a revenge. "Someone else might take the job though, I don't imagine they will feel very sorry for you," she observed and smiled at the end of this morbid joke.

"Now that you are still alive - and I believe you will be for a while - what are your next plans? Another revenge?" she asked curiously.

a cynical smile doused the grizzled lips of caiaphas' would-be killer. she observed it with a flick of her yellow gaze, amused yet not so amused to smile back. it was disappointing the woman refused to provide her name. she was smart -- caiaphas had no good use for it outside of malevolence.

rounding her shoulders in a shrug, the siren exhaled a loose sigh. "very well then, if that is your choice. i will come up with my own name for you - perhaps, 'the granny killer', or 'old lady strangler'." now came the cynical smile in return, and the dancing of her gaze as sarah asked for her next plans..

she would not get them. caiaphas had her own designs, and they remained locked in that labyrinth of terror she called her head. it was nothing personal -- besides the whole attempted murder bit -- but if caiaphas was to be successful in her endeavors, it was best to not blather. "ah. afraid i cannot tell you. but you will hear of it, i'm sure. maybe some day, through the grapevine, you will hear of strange tellings and know it was me." the smile faded now, replaced by a steely glint as the siren rose. she had enjoyed their brief talk, for it was exhilarating to exchange banter with someone with more than half an ounce of wit -- but caiaphas felt her time with sarah was drawing to a gloomy close.

"If you say so," Sarah accepted the proposed nicknames with a slight nod of her head. She had not expected Caiaphas to be honest about her plans - the iron lady was here for easy amusement and truth did not interest her. As far as she was concerned now, after fishing out some of the details, that battle axe owed to death. If it was not her, who ended her, someone would. And should. Not unlikely that she would take someone with her as well. That would make a proper burial gift and the road over death's desert less lonely. 

"Just don't die in the meanwhile," Sarah told the lady and felt too that their meeting had come to an end. She had some hunting to do before returning to the hollow and the old lady had to get as far as possible, before the would-be-killer changed her mind and threw that "would" part of uncertainty away. "After all, you just offered me your soul to take. Whenever that time comes," she finished, gave a farewell smile to the black-headed she-wolf and then padded away. 

Sarah did not think that she was going to meet this gal again, but she knew that the fate had ways of surprising people. She will live and see.

Thank you for the thread!

thank you for the thread <3

while death itself seemed a gruesome concept, caiaphas supposed in the end, if it was any to send her to death's gates, sarah was better than most. she had long since accepted she might not die of normal causes -- unless a fang to the throat constituted as normal.

a roll of her shoulders was given in response as she turned away. she would try her best not to die, but death had that way of overcoming even the best attempts -- it would be fate to decide when, and where, caiaphas happened to shuffle off their mortal realm. "aeternum vale," she found herself saying in the old tongue, surprised it slipped here -- but sarah, and caiaphas, were perhaps part of an order older than themselves and it seemed oddly fitting.

farewell forever, it meant -- but caiaphas suspected, it was not the last she would see of the silver-clad fighter.