Sequoia Coast A land of barbarians

@Caiaphas

In the cold, bleak north there had been whispers of monsters beneath the earth that swallowed the souls of all who died in vain. The wolves of The Dread North, those that had banded together, often told of these monsters in frightened and awestruck voices. They all feared death more than anything, because to die was to be consumed by monsters. Only the strongest souls could escape them and ascend to another place; all lives were lived in vain, after all.

The strand that Cthulhu padded along was frigid. A bitter autumn wind had dug its claws into the Wilds and with an unrelenting hold struck terror into the hearts of the creatures who lived there. The coywolf could feel it, too, and despaired to herself in barely audible murmurs about monsters and death. She hunched her shoulders up, creating a visible hump in her back, and moved slowly as if trying to avoid detection, even though she stuck out like a bright sore thumb against the darker sand. Her murmurs intensified when thoughts of monsters returned and she remembered that the bitter winter that would come was produced by those monsters.

She found that thinking about these things upset her, even though they were fitting thoughts for the environment she was in. Cold grey waves slammed the pebbly shore and dark clouds loomed ominously overhead. Everywhere Cthulhu looked, the world was drab and grey. Drab and grey, just like the Dread North. Just like the land of monsters.

^__________________________^

Caiaphas touted her wares along the coastline, beleaguered by the cumbersome weight of the ungainly cache in her mouth. She bore a tilted carapace in her mouth, slung upside down and hollowed out and filled with small artifacts from the mainland. A land nautilus, stuffed with violent red clay from the inland rivers. The fractured skull of some queer rodent with wicked incisors. The narrow, moist head of a fungus she had found glowing maliciously in a cave near Neverwinter. Assorted plants and roots in no order, a calamitous concotion for the Mother.

She was not sure if the Mother Sea would be pleased with her trifle, but Caiaphas had taken great care to select small wonders and artifacts not found in water. She wondered if the Mother ever missed these things, so long diverged from their aquatic counterparts that they must appear gruesome and bizarre to aquatic life.

She was nearing the small clearing on the strand where she had last arranged her offerings when she saw the distant figure of a canine skulking. Caiaphas froze, her muzzle darkening -- and with purposeful strides she strode towards the makeshift shrine. She deposited (quite rudely) her wares and then strung into a headlong gallop, her hackles lifted in rifts and her slender legs outflung with abandon. Her aggressive resolve faltered then, when she saw the wolf was not a wolf at all but a coywolf like her -- and for a moment she stumbled and slowed to a lofty trot, her head held high as she yelled into the bitter wind: "OI!"

Pushing down her usual negativity, Cthulhu turned to follow the boiling surf along its very edge, never allowing the water to wash over her paws. The result was an unusual side-stepping trot that alternated as readily as the waves themselves. No doubt she looked very queer moving down the beachfront in that fashion, but that was fitting for Cthulhu, who rarely did things that made sense.

Presently, a nice example of this presented itself. A dark figure rushed toward her from the deceptive margin of sight, its gait purposeful and its direct approach suggesting violence. A normal wolf might have doubled back when met with this sort of body language, but not Cthulhu. Rather, she began to run toward the approaching Caiaphas, who faltered just in time for the skinny silver hybrid to draw up nearly nose-to-nose with her.

She met the other with a strangely vacant stare upon being greeted. The shout was foreign in her ears and puzzled her, yet she was an unusual and boisterous soul, so the appropriate response, a loudly shouted, “OI!” was given even though she didn't know what it meant.

When the haggard creature mimicked Caiaphas' gesture and articulation, the skeletal female flattened her back and fell to a sliding stop with her back arched like some Halloween cat's, eyes bright and fierce and her topline ridged with sharp jutting hackles.

The sand scattered before her and in the cold her breath flew forward in smoky flares and she stared taken aback, jarring and jilted by the unpredictable maneuver. She eyed the female suspiciously then, a calloused gaze sweeping over her lean and nearly piteous frame. She stole a furtive glance towards the carapace she had rudely deposited and straightened herself haughtily, her gaze cold as she prepared herself to speak.

"You're close to the Sister's wayshrine -- do you wish to anger the Mother with your base and beggarly presence?" She flicked a russet tinted ear backwards and wiggled closer, her eyes wide as a thought struck her. "Or are you here as a supplicant?"

What the coywolf said was indecipherable to Cthulhu, who was simple when it came to words. She sometimes spoke disjointedly, perhaps, but rarely with much eloquence. Words like "wayshrine" and "beggarly" stood out as foreign, though fortunately she knew what a supplicant was. Unfortunately for Caiaphas, Cthulhu's confusion was long in dissipating and the interim was marked by a muddled stare.

"Cthulhu is not here to anger," she said in a high, keening voice that suggested she waa guilty about the accusation. "Cthulhu is just Cthulhu, this one knows no Mother, please let this one be..." The momentary excitement she'd felt upon mimicking Caiaphas' greeting was forgotten, replaced by heavy anxiety. She peered at the other hybrid with a nearly fearful look in her eye and edged one hind foot back.

"Why is that one's head black?" she finally asked, erroneously deciding it was the most appropriate thing to change the subject to.

Caiaphas, unabashed by the interminable lull of conversation, stared equally as blankly back -- though her eyelids seemed tense and her eyes hard with some sort of thinly veiled exasperation. There was something incredibly peculiar about the idiosyncratic creature -- even the manner in which her shrivelled body trembled suggested something faintly bizarre and objectionable.

However, Caiaphas was not offput by the female and her queer manner of chatter. She tilted her angular muzzle and gave her a sidelong glance, the shrewdness in her expression unmistakable as she pieced apart the unknown female's anxiety and wondered, what exactly, had shattered her psyche so profoundly and irrevocably.

When she directed the topic to Caiaphas' markings a faint frown drew across her muzzle. Caiaphas had no true answer to this question -- and while genetically one would call her a chimera, Caiaphas was not privy to this knowledge. So, the natural thing to do here was lie.

"It's a curse." She whispered, her voice hushed and her head ducked as if bobbing from the might of some unseen and wrathful shaman. She could sense that the anxious female was probably too nervous to argue with this ludicrous statement. She dropped her chest and both flat front limbs slid forward, and she peered wildly at Cthulu as she pulled herself forward as if struck then and there by the curse she spoke of. "The carapace I was carrying was an offering to appease the Monsters -- monsters which will eat Caiaphas and Cthulu and blemish our heads black if we do not feed them."

It was a grandiose lie -- but Caiaphas was used to lying.

The answer to her posed question didn't disappoint. Cthulhu had an almost unhealthy obsession with monsters, thanks to her mother and her wild beliefs. Maybe Dygra had been wholly brainwashed by the cultists of the north or maybe Dygra gave rise to them herself. It was a question Cthulhu never asked, much to her disadvantage. She would have turned out less insane herself, perhaps, if she'd known her mother intentionally screwed her children up for the fun of it.

"It can't be," gasped Cthulhu, shrinking as though fearful and yet with a light shining in her eyes that hinted at reverence. "The monsters, they... They touched Cay-fuss?" The name came out terribly butchered on her tongue, but she didn't pause to consider whether she'd said it right or not. "Th-that one must be very special!"

Everyone that had anything to do with monsters was very special, it seemed.

With a near doleful expression the lithe female watched the equally skeletal coywolf -- her narrow muzzle turned to behold the quivering creature as she withdrew as if repelled by Caiaphas' admittance. She nodded austerely at the female's inquiry, uncaring that her name had been grievously mis-uttered.

For a moment Caiaphas studied the animal, wondering what caused the irremediable tremors that wracked her body. She wondered if the coywolf was even cognizant of her body's uncontrollable disquiet. "It seems you are special as well, have monsters touched you to make you shake like that? You are not a wolf at all."

She lifted her muzzle skyward and looked for a moment like some proud and crowing heathen. "The monsters favor us." She lowered her head and a feral glint lit her gaze -- her voice fell into a hushed whisper as she pulled close to Cthulu's ears in what appeared to be secrecy. "They do not care for wolves."

Cthulhu was not, it turned out, cognizant of her body's tremors. They were present from the day she was born and so she lived with them as if they were natural. Others noticed, but Cthulhu was a dense.creature who took no note of others' staring usually. When Caiaphas pointed it out and suggested she wasn't a wolf at all, the coywolf audibly gasped.

"This one isn't?" she repeated in a high, keening whine. If she wasn't a wolf the what was she? Was she a monster like those that haunted her, trapped in the skin of a wolf? Was she something other than wolf or monster, something new and terrible? Caiaphas looked like a wolf to Cthulhu, so was Caiapahas a wolf or a monster?

"What... What is Cthulhu?" she whispered, leaning as close as she dared with eyes bugging out in anticipation.

wow i just realized i have been spelling cthulhu's name wrong... -.-

Almost pitifully Caiaphas reviewed the trembling creature with a dark frown blemishing her ugly muzzle. She had not been aware the true depth of Cthulhu's density and for a moment her brow furrowed in deep perplexity.

She brought a paw towards her chest as she best thought of how to conjure the words -- and eventually she turned to peer at the sharp-faced creature with an exasperated sigh. Cthulhu's high pitched whine racked her ears and she drew back her ears in a sign of squinting affront. She was about to play a terrible and cruel prank and the very idea of it nearly made Caiaphas erupt in a fit of delighted cackles. "Cthulhu is what Cay-fuss is." She leaned closer and sought to place a 'comforting' arm around Cthulhu's trembling and threadbare shoulders. "We are Demons -- but the godly kind -- and all wolves should recognize our superiority. Otherwise the Monsters will consume them and suck the marrow from their bones and banish them to the Underworld."

It was a kind of lame prank, in a way -- but Caiaphas sensed it just might take with the equally small coywolf.

"D-demons?" repeated Cthulhu, with her eyes wide and fearful. Her mother had spoken of all manner of monsters, but demons had never come into the equation. Try as she might, Cthulhu couldn't separate fiends and mutants in her mind, and so the question of whether she was a monster remained an unanswered one. Demons must be some sort of subclass of monster... a godly one, if Caiaphas was to be believed.

"How does this one convince those ones that this one is a godly demon?" she innocently asked, none the wiser to Caiaphas' cruel joke. It seemed a daunting task, asking other wolves to bow down to her and regard her as some sort of deity. Surely for Caiaphas to say it must be true, but Cthulhu couldn't imagine others giving her anything but contemptuous sneers if she spoke of it. It seemed too good to be true.

But then, Dygra had always said there was something greater and more terrible than even the mightiest monster, and that Cthulhu would never want to meet such a thing. Maybe that thing was Caiaphas... and Cthulhu would never want to meet her because it would reveal her own true nature.

Caiaphas nearly crowed with delight as the female took her poorly laid scheme -- there welled in her cutting eyes a semblance of cruelty and torment, and credible Cthulhu was most undeserving of such sadistic attention.

As the trembling and fearful thing asked how they were to convince their brethren of their sovereignty, Caiaphas pulled close once more, obnoxiously close to the shivering creature -- so close the dankness of their breath entwined in tepid fumes. "You do not convince them." She replied succinctly, examining the sinister gleam of her blackened paws. "You kill them." Then the rest will know, she rejoined inwardly.

Caiaphas leaned in close, and like a satellite retracted and yet repulsed by its object of orbit, Cthulhu maintained a close-but-not-intrusive contact. Cthulhu was told to kill them. Kill who, she almost asked like the stupid animal she was, but she managed to save herself the embarrassment by remembering their conversation at the last second.

She licked her lips, shivered, and then said the only thoughtful thing she'd said for the entire course of their conversation: "If... if Cthulhu kills them... how will they worship Cthulhu?" She then appeared to flinch, clearly expecting some sort of punishment or rebuke for her constant questions. Dygra staved off the incessant questions of her offspring with promise of pain. Cthulhu could only hope, and doubt, that Caiaphas was different than her mother had been.

Cthulhu posed a valid question. Caiaphas, for a moment, rose -- a ghastly shadow of displeasure besmirching her sooty complexion. The narrowness of her muzzle contorted in a most displeased expression.

Cthulhu flinched then, as if expecting a blow Caiaphas was powerless to deliver. As wicked as she may be prompted to be she never possessed the proclivity to be violent -- at least not yet -- and the trembling creature remained un-smote.

"They worship us in the underworld, stupit". Caiaphas hissed, her voice devoid of guilt for her prank. She then rose with a preening gesture as if wiping Cthulhu's infectious stupidity off of her silver tarnished coat. Compelled then by a notion even crueller than before, Caiaphas suddenly left -- leaving poor, sniveling Cthulhu to slobberingly pick up the abusive pieces the wretch had left behind.