When Life Gives You Lemons.

[hybrid]

Time: Early morning.
Weather: Rather warm and nearing a dry and uncomfortable heat.
Location: In the middle of the thickets, far from any shade.

There were light sounds on the air as Mongri moved through the dried out grasslands, if you could even call them that. Already she had wedged a larger amount of thorns and brambles in her paws, yet she continued to move, he tall lean physique moving in slow, long steps towards nowhere. She was keeping her head at the same level as her spine, he long wiry tail resting unmoving between her flanks. A light breeze shook her coarse hair, she felt it on her scars. Her winter coat was already clumping and falling out in great heaps like wool. She occasionally dragged the length of her body against the large bristly bushes, allowing the thorns and dried twigs to grab and pull out her old coat.

She stopped and looked out over the valley, she was nestled in what felt like a hole in the world between the three packs, and yet as she looked to them she shrugged her shoulders, Forget it, she thought. The dried earth felt like sand to her as she moved on, and then, there nestled in a layer of thorny brush was a brown hare, grooming itself. at once Mongri dropped her head low and sprang, chasing the starving hare out of the thickest parts of the thickets, her jaws catching it as it leaped.

With the hare in her jaws she plopped down and began to feed, her stomach growling.

[Lanie]

Spir had been wandering across the desert that was this pathetic rock of a wasteland, her sense of Death twinging constantly. It was getting to be annoying. Surrounded by the constant sense of death was like being cold, a cold that made her shiver indefinitely. She was surprised she hadn't given into death herself. She'd gone days without anything more then rabbits and field mice, and water was almost impossible to find. The thirsty ground seemed to suck up rainwater, but when rain did chance upon these clearly unclaimed lands, she would lap up what she could before the ground snatched it away from her. It was freezingly cold and made her head hurt, but it felt good.

She'd made her way onto slightly different ground. Instead of simply harsh rocks, there were spots of scruffy grasses and clumps of vegetation that might be described as bushes. As she moved farther and farther into them, the grass got thicker until there were patches of yellow grass every few feet. Her paws were soothed by the relatively cooler vegetation, and the cold diminished. More things lived in these grasslands. Less death surrounded her.
Of course, that might just be because less life surrounded her, too. She could sense dead beings in a way no one else could, but she couldn't sense the live any better then another wolf. Blocking out her death sense, she focused more on her natural senses. Smell, let the wind waft the blessed scent of prey to her. Listen for their scrabbling footsteps, so desperate to gain succulent bits of grasses that they were willing to step out of their burrows in the midst of a wolf. Look for a twitching grass that was moved by something other then the wind.

All senses watching the grasses in silence, she finally found what she was looking for. She noticed it with the grass twitching in a smooth pattern unlike that of normal prey, more like the wind but in a different direction. It wasn't a rabbit, but a snake. Her mind registered it as a kingsnake or a coral snake, and if it was the latter she normally wouldn't be willing to even try for it. But this was, in fact, a small kingsnake. She'd caught it moments after it exited a rabbit's scratch, and caught it easily. A clump of dust was displaces as she disturbed the still scene, and ate semi-contentedly. She wasn't worried; After all, what wolf would willingly be out here?
But when she felt another creature's sudden death, her head shot up above the grasses. A scent came to her, of a female wolf. "Who goes there?" she called, fake bravado sounding surprisingly real in her throat. She was used to acting tougher then she was, having formerly been necessary to stay alive in her old pack.

[hybrid]

Mongri stood, her long frame of hard muscles frozen as she heard the voice, someone trying to intimidate her? She felt the ease of a chuckle scrape her throat. Her belly was barely full from the half starved hare, but it would do. She streteched her flanks out from behind her and turned toward the voice, her long wired tail still hung loosely between her flanks. She cocked an eyebrow at the voice, her head tilted to the side, and she zeroed in on the wolf from where she stood. Her keen eyes scanning the female with hawk-like intensity.

"I should be asking you the same." Mongri shot out, her voice more amused than anything. She stepped forward a bit her eyes never leaving the wolf.

[Lanie]

She didn't scoff like she might've, in her old pack. That was when she was fighting wolves she knew and had no choice. Her voice followed a careful, almost monotone. "And since neither of us has any reason to answer the other, I suppose I'll begin. My name is Spir, and now you have a reason to tell me yours."
She smiled and almost laughed, knowing that her telling her name didn't provide a reason, but curious as to see just how many buttons she could push.

She couldn't see the hare that she was now sure the opposing wolf had killed, but now so close, she could feel its spirit lurking in the very outskirts of death. Her eyes looked a bit distant as she prodded it slightly, trying to uncover its last scenes before it had died. She knew it was a long shot, and wasn't surprised when its mind had no information to give her. She released it quickly, not wishing to relish in it any more then she had to.
Only one dead had comforted her, and now in a time of need had forsaken her. Ilila. Her sister was dead or alive, wolf or spirit, she didn't know. But time seemed to stop when her sister came to her, speaking words she had never spoken before in ways different then Spir had ever heard or seen her.
She shook away thoughts mentally, standing strong in front of Mongri like a leaf. Wavering in the silent wind, yet naturally shock-still.

[hybrid]

Mongri eyed the wolf carefully her striking blue eyes hard in the sun, the warmth of the day burning onto her back. Her decorated face of scars seemed to glimmer in the light with the crisscross of its pink and gray road map blazing through the thin fur of her feminine face. She head the name, Spir, she said the name in her mind a few times, rolling it, and remembering it. She stepped to the side and raised her head a bit higher, her body's muscles prepared for action but her stature giving her a relaxed appearance. Mongri could feel the seasons weighing on her, she was still young but this wolf was younger than she. Mongri wondered if this wolf really understood her own actions, to play games with a wolf who was not inclined to play fair. In fact she was very inclined to cheat, yet she saw no point in this for now.

Mongri gave a twist of her lips, whether it was a smile or a hint at a snarl, one could not be sure. "My name is Mongri." She said with an almost kind voice. She gave another strange twinge of a smile. "Now why don't you run along and find yourself a pack to join." Mongri turned a bit and ran her body along the thorns removing more clumps from her winter coat. "You look half starved and exhausted." She said bluntly. She looked around but saw no food but at the same time, she too felt the burning in her stomach, but she had felt this feeling a lot during her life. In a strange way this young female reminded Mongri of herself in a way, but from the way Mongri spoke and acted, she did not show a single shred of this. Mongri stepped from the thorn bush and stared her over once more, "You seem fit for a pack, why are you wasting you time out here?"

[Lanie]

Spir watched Mongri carefully, the obviously self-intentional smile still on her face. Mongri was a dark gray, with flecks of blue, and matching eyes. Spir herself had orange-ish fur with smeared gray and lighter colors toning her front and sides. Her eyes were also a similar color. It almost reminded her of light and dark, but if she was the 'lightest' that this land had to offer, then that was saying something.

"Ah, but you look half-starved and worse, like you don't want to be here." She watched her reactions with an almost sly grin. "I'm here because I want to be. A pack life is obviously not the life for me, can't you tell?"
She shook her head comically, licking her lips. "You look more fit then I am, and I know. On top of that, you seem to know of a few packs around. I've only just arrived, and no nothing of the people of the lands. So why are you here? An exile, perhaps?"
She wasn't one to talk; she'd ran away from her own pack like a coward. And still she couldn't get away from what she was running from. Oh, well. Irony would be a cruel thing.

She breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of death. Death didn't have a single scent, for many dead things smelled different. But to her, she could label it with a single scent. It wasn't blood or guts or rotting flesh, it was just...death.
She simplified life. Death was death, no matter the dead. Water was water, running or not. A wolf was a wolf, whether it was male or female, young or old. It confused her how people could really care the differences between things. It was the broad scale that mattered, everything else was meaningless.
Unless it was actually your life.
In which case, it was only usually meaningless.

[hybrid]

"Ah, but you look half-starved and worse, like you don't want to be here.... So why are you here? An exile, perhaps?"

If her words bothered Mongri, the she-wolf did not show it. Yet somewhere a low and ominous snarl was playing in her mind, one of evaporating patience was nearing the point of overflowing, yet through her lips, and into the valley, she did not make a sound. She stepped forward, the warm sun on her back, her scarred framework glimmering in it, the blue tint of her fur shinning in the light. "No, nothing of the sort as of late. At one point in my life exile would have been a great word to describe what I was, but now, no." She raised her head a bit and took a longr breath, "There is no appropriate title for what I am."

She sighed, she really was not bothered by this female, and although Mongri always ran low on patience, she was far from being annoyed. She sat down on the hard sandy earth. "There are three packs here, the Aquene of the plains who stand for peace, The Ileai of the forests, and the Imperium of the Mountains." She gave a chuckle, "And the glorious, radiant lands before you are the badlands, the outskirts, the leftovers." She smiled a bit, "Our very own piece of paradise filled with sand, thickets, a muddy river, and all the starving rabbits you can get your teeth on." She rolled her eyes and with a voice of genuine meaning, "I cant imagine living anywhere else, maybe one day a pack will seem fit for my life, but I cannot see when or why that day would come."

She gave another soft smile, "You sense death, do you not?"

[Eastern]

He could hear the pads of their feet behind them, see their dark shadows, thrown out by the sun, he could smell their fear, their curiosity.
The small group of critters behind Harijan had followed him since he had entered the thickets. They crawled from their holes, and flew down from above to watch his emaciated from pick it's way through the thorns.
Harijan stopped and turned, facing the group.
The assembly stopped, their bright blacks eyes fixed on him.
"Okay, guy's this has got to stop. What if another wolf is around here? Hmm? What then? They will eat you, and I will not stop them, sorry to say. You guys are lucky that I'm not hungry right now." That was a lie, and his stomach grumbled as if to exclaim that to those gathered.
The critters chattered to themselves. One stepped forward, offering himself to Harijan, as food.
Harijan sighed, amazed that another animal would do that. He had seen it done before, form a wide variety of creatures: crows, snakes, lizards, squirrels, and even a fox at one point.
The one that stepped forward today was a mangy hare. It's long brown ears were tattered, and it's face white with age. Harijan, turned away from the hare, as he had always done, and kept moving, trying to ignore the critters that followed eagerly behind. They usually disappeared once another soul was around. It was a good alarm system, Harijan thought.
And soon enough the chattering behind him stopped, and the world became painfully quite. Harijan smiled an looked behind him, and sure enough all the critters were gone. Except for the old hare, who stood on his hind legs, his floppy ears hanging down his back.
"Go!! Before they catch and eat you!"
The hare stared at him, it's pink nose twitching. Then it turned and left.
Harijan breathed a sigh of relief and turned his attention to two females. He could hear their conversation.
'Hmmm. Three packs? That's strange I didn't ran into any wolves on my way here...Or sense them for that matter.' He thought. Then he caught the last part of the female's sentence. His eyes widened and he looked toward the other one. 'Sense the dead?'

[Lanie]

Spir lisitened carefully. Eventually, somewhere in her explanations, she set down on her haunches. she glanced around as she listened to the other female, listening to the descriptions of the lands. She couldn't be too far away from the lands, she knew, because she could see - actually see, not some precognitive sense - the territories that Mongri was describing. The mountains were most obvious, peaking over the horizon with a shadow that presumably encircled the entire land. She could spy the trees, a vast wall of towering pines that possibly contained a variety of smaller trees. The plains were harder to spy, but she could assume that the blank, tree-less spaces could be considered plains. Her voice softened to a tone intended to inquire, not annoy.
"In a way," she said, looking a ad surprised. "You sense other's powers?" she guessed.
She cocked her head, as if she had heard something, but it fell silent after a moment. Probably just one of he fleeing prey animals upon coming out of its burrow a bit late. A darkness clouded her mind, the unsettling feeling when death approached. She could feel several passed beings, wolves in particular, and it broke her concentration.
"So, ah, you seem...unsatisfied with being...on your own," she struggled. "Why not join one of those packs?"
She struggled with her words as she tried to sense the dead more clearly. It was a gathering of them, almost. It was strange, because she couldn't feel any spirit in particular - other then the variety of dead rates and rabbits and snakes amongst the brush.. It was like the heavy feeling she'd always felt around her den site as a pup. The feeling she got when she was around a place upon which many had died - or someone who had killed many.
She shivered, hesitating for a moment before turning her head towards the source. It was hard to pinpoint, but when she turned and saw a male wolf standing there, watching, she reacted instantly.

She whipped completely around, as in one hundred eighty degrees, so fast that her tail whiplashed almost next to Mongri. She realized this would mean turning her back on the mostly unknown female, but her mind transitioned him as a greater threat to her current position. Her paws were slightly spread apart and her tail was raised in warning, her teeth bared cautiously. "Who are you?" she asked, her accent slipping through for a moment as she dropped the 'H' in 'who' and the 'R' and 'are.'

[hybrid]

Mongri did not move, a small grin on her lips, "Something like that," She said in response to Spir's question about her power, if you could call it that. "And no," She chuckled, "I am far from being unsatisfied with this place. In fact it is quite the opposite." She tipped her head away when Spir's tail went by her face. She smiled at Spir's spunk and at the quirky accent that flew from her lips. Furthermore so she looked over the male. Mongri stood up her long lean legs stretching in front of her as she walked.

She stepped slowly near to Spirs side, her body not even nearing to touch her. She stepped a few steps in front of her and looked at the male. Her sharp eyes picking over his figure. "Hello."

[Eastern]

Harijan cocked his head to the side at the female's hostile attitude toward him. But he moved his eyes to the other female, the one who had said hello to him.
"Good day to you." He said, his airy voice giving nothing away. "I did not mean to disturb the two of you. I was a bit...peroccupied and had no time to realize that their were others near by. Please pardon my intrusion." He said, dipping his head.
His eyes strayed back to the hostile female. "Have I done something to earn your hate?" He asked, his tone was more concerned, then unkind and confrontational.
He did not go into a submissive posture, nor did he bare his fangs. He remind relaxed, and calm, He had had enough violence in his life, he was trying to get away from that by coming here to this barren place.

[Lanie]

Spir cursed herself silently in a flash and her tail fell limply. Not submissive, but almost...disappointed. She blinked slowly, watching him with dull eyes that, just moments before, had sparked with an automatic hostility. "Apologies," she said as easily as she could manage. She was more angry then embarassed at her outburst, but not exactly at herself. Partially at herself, partially at Harijan for, as she saw it, sneaking up on them, and partially at Mongri for distracting her so as not to be prepared for another's arrival.
She couldn't chase the looming, chilling presence of death away, and examining him carefully with eyes that could've been stone, she came to the conclusion that it was this strange male who was emitting the aura of death.

Back to the matter at hand. He was still looking at her, looking a tad confused, if not aloof, waiting for an answer. She had little prepared. She'd been raised to expect an attack from anyone and everyone.
'He's done nothing wrong," came a voice, heard only by the most exquisitely gifted ears. Spir swallowed, her eyes darting to something unseen behind Harijan for but a moment. That was enough of a glance to understand what she saw.

She was almost positive that neither Harijan or Mongri had seen it - after all, she'd never seen anyone with powers like her own. But what she saw was in the vague shape of a wolf, without color. She could see through it, literally, as it was a haunting color of misty white shapes. They seemed almost detached, as if the body was not touching the legs, and the proportions weren't quite correct. But even as fuzzy and unclear the image was, even as short of a glance she saw of it, what she had seen was the flickering image of her sister, head cocked inquisitively.
She hated the constant reminder of her powers, but enjoyed the company of her deepest friend that she could no longer have in life. And she was considering actually listening to said wolf...who was, by the way, dead.

Then again, she had always been better at talking to people.

"You've done nothing wrong," she quoted her guiding, unseen sibling cautiously, hiding the frown that wanted to appear on her face. "I was just startled, as it was."
"My sincerest apologies, again," she continued, nodding sideways a bit. "I am Spir." Her voice wasn't completely apologetic, still containing some form of caution - which she was pretty sure was about as warm as she would get with strangers.

[Eastern]

He thought of a million things to say. Somethings nice, and maybe some not so nice, but his mouth stayed shut. He had learned to chose his words, and not randomly spew out whatever comes to mind. He was lost in his musings, and he stayed silent a second to late. An awkward pause had settled over them.
'I look like an idiot, or a creep' He thought, 'She just apologized!'
"No harm done!" He said, to his relief. He wasn't quite used to his new speaking habits. "One can never be to careful. I am Harijan. I over heard you two speaking, this is no mans land?"
He left out the part about overhearing that Spir can sense death. It wasn't his place to ask. He found it quite ironic that he met someone who could sense the dead, because he could sense life.
He heard a rustling behind him, and he shifted one ear back to listen. He briefly closed his eyes, scanning the area for life. Among the purple stalks that was the grass, and shinning red spot in the shape of a hare stood out, like a little sun. Harijan inwardly sighed, worried that the others would kill the hare. He doesn't mind killing for food, but he didn't like to do it to a the animals who followed him. It made him seem...ungreatful. It felt like he was taking advantage of their trust...He really was sick of causing others distress.

[Lanie]

Spir nodded slightly. "Apparently," she responded. "I've only just arrived, however. A pleasure to meet you, Harijan."
Her mind was working on her own now, as the forever-invisible image of her sister faded with the gentle winds. She didn't realize, but she was thinking on a thought train very similar to this new male's.
She could sense several dead around - rabbits, dead in their burrows merely a foot underground. Not much nutrition, but to dig a foot in weak, dry soil wasn't too much of a burden. She wouldn't, though; she never had.
She almost chuckled. She was drawn to death, but never to dishonor those who had passed. So, it was only natural she would wander onto this land - a land filled with dead or dying prey, the dead being pretty much the only source of food.
She realized that the remains of the snake she'd caught earlier still lay at her feet, unmoving. Obviously. She could still hear it; she could see what it had seen in the last moments of its life, its simple thoughts. Four things attached her to the dead; how far away she was from the time it had died, how far away she was from the body, how long ago it had died, and her attachment with the dead. Since the snake had died only minutes ago directly below her, and the body was still there, its soul would linger for a while longer.

She shivered subconsciously, covering it by shifted between paws. She hadn't forgotten the chilling presence of death that Harijan seemed to have carried. Her eyes flew past him at the rabbit, and her stomach lurched, but she dismissed it with a scowl directed at the obviously stupid creature. It was like it had never seen a wolf before.
Or, she said to herself, like it wasn't afraid of them. She watched Harijan carefully, as his ears turned in an evaluating manner and his eyes flickered shut. She frowned, replacing her scowl with a look that consisted of narrowed eyes and suspicion in her working jaw. She returned the neutral gaze on her face after a moment, watching both of them carefully.

[Eastern]

Harijan cringed when he saw he eyes lock on the hare that was behind him. He had know way of knowing, nut he was certain that it was the old hare from before, he didn't want to see it get brutally ripped apart. But to his amazement Spir did nothing to attack it. Instead she acted suspicious. Harijan sighed, he might as well let the cat out of the bag. "I could help but over hear that you can sense death, well I can sense life. And life, well at least small life, is attracted to me." He said. He couldn't believe that he actually told her that, but maybe she really wouldn't attack the hare now, knowing that it was following him. Harijan turned half ways around, and confirmed his suspicions. It was the old hare. He shook his head, as the scrawny creature hopped alittle closer to him. Harijan went over to the hair, and nudged it gently with his nose.
"I told you to stay away!" He mumbled. His stomach growled loudly, but the hare only hopped closer to him. He looked over at Spir. "They really are hopeless." He said sadly, with a small smile on his face.