minotaur.

-carnivore-

Independence Day was spent up at White Ranch. Avery was invited, and Avery's family and all their serving-staff; Eva was invited, and Eva's kids, and Calden's cousins and Calden's friends and Calden's neighbors and their neighbors' neighbors and their friends' friends and --

the whole lot of them, everyone, everyone who wanted to come. The Whites have their own stash of fireworks, to which the more enterprising guests add their own. Those who don't bring explosives bring food, drinks, baseball bats and catchers' gloves and pigskins and frisbees, or maybe just themselves and a guitar to liven things up.

In the end the house, large as it is, feels packed with people; half a hundred guests or more all talking and laughing and grilling and making music and tossing footballs around. Kids scamper underfoot. Kids splash in the pool. Kids play with the puppies, their parents hovering nearby to remind them gently, gently. Big gruff Ian is down by the stables, lifting shrieking kids onto the backs of the more docile ranch horses, leading them around the paddock.

As night falls, the grilling finally stops. There's still food aplenty heaped all over the tables and libations besides, but the focus of the party changes. Someone stretches strings of white icicle lights over the deck, the sort of thing you'd use for Christmas. The people with the guitars get serious about their playing, and someone pulls out a fiddle, and then of course someone pulls out a bodhran. Someone sings. People dance, skirts and heels flying. The young'uns in the crowd go down to the big empty patch of dirt all cleared out special for the fireworks, and there's a lot of whooping and hollering and at least one close call as rocket after rocket soars up to burst brilliant in the air.

Long after midnight, there's still a touch of smoke in the sky; music in the air. It's close to two in the morning when the last of the departing guests make their way out, and the last of the stayover guests bed down in sleeping bags, on air beds, in the guest suite. Wherever there's room.

There's always room for Avery in Calden's bed. So that's where they go, leading each other up the stairs as the house is falling quiet. Still a few errant pops from outside as some teenagers from the farm down the way set off a few last fireworks. Colors dash across Calden's face as he shuts the door to the bedroom; closes the curtains.

It is dark, then, and intimate and warm. He is a little tipsy. He still has half a bottle of beer. He sets it on the nightstand and sits on the bed and pulls Avery close to him, close to stand between his knees, her stomach pressed to his chest as he pulls her closer still. He laughs softly, half-drunkenly. They kiss. He lazily fumbles his way through the fastenings on her clothes and his own, and they argue playfully about who gets to give whom oral first, and in the end no one gives anyone oral because they end up just

tumbling into bed together, a languid tangle of limbs and lust, her legs wrapping around him, his back flexing under her hands.

--

550am the next morning Calden's cellphone rings. It's barely even dawn and he's slept three hours and it is way too early but he reaches out and bats around the nightstand and finds the devilish little device and looks at it. It's Paul. Calden answers with a grunt. He listens for a while. He sits up.

"I'll come have a look," he says, and he hangs up.

He kisses Avery as he slips out of bed. Leans over her, his chest warm against her back, kissing her high on her cheekbone. "Keep dreaming," he says. "I'll be back in an hour, max."

--

Half an hour later, Avery's cell phone rings. It's Calden on the other end, sounding apologetic; sounding worried.

"Something killed a few of the cows last night," he says, "and something about it feels off to me. Could you come take a look?"

Radiant Honor

Avery's staff is well-paid and well-appointed. They are invited by Calden but then, because they are the sort who need it, they are encouraged by Avery to please come, but not to feel pressured to do so. They are more than welcome, they will not be insulting anyone if they choose not to come. In the end, most of them do, and she is delighted. Her steward spends at least part of the evening getting blatantly flirted with by Jimmy White, and maybe he knows as well as she does that he's not going to get anywhere but they flirt anyway, playfully, keeping themselves sharp.

Her father comes, and it turns out he was once an avid horseman and spends quite a bit of time with Ian and the kids, riding a lovely gelding. Her brother ends up in more than a few contests of sport and swim and danger-seeking with Calden's younger cousins. They show off for some of the young women at the shindig, getting progressively stupider until someone nearly loses a finger.

And Jill is there. Avery calls her Tenderfoot, like Calden does, only not like Calden does: she calls her Tenderfoot like it's a title, like an honorific. Because in a way, it is. It's an acknowledgement that Jill is like her. She says that if Jill ever wants to spend some time in the city she would be more than happy to set her up in a guest room at the house, make sure she has a driver to get her around if she likes. Offers, not knowing if Jill would enjoy this at all, to take her shopping, or to go to brunch. Maybe a Rockies game or the Clyfford Still museum. Denver's a lovely city, she says.

And Avery is having a lovely time. Avery absolutely vanishes a couple of hours into the evening. Her phone is left with her steward, whose only explanation is that Avery went for some air, which is a bit strange since they are out in the open air, but a few people know. A few people, Calden and Avery's father among them, that she left. She is one of the only -- though of course not only -- wolves there. A few of them feel her, sense her, when she comes loping back across the plains in the darkness. The dancing hasn't quite started yet and people are still setting off fireworks. Someone, a neighbor, thinks she sees 'something' out there, she has a fearful look in her wide eyes.

Calden is sitting somewhere, watching the dancing as it starts up, when Avery appears at his side, coming back onto the deck and sitting beside him, tucking herself beneath his arm and against his side. She smells like wild air and wind, solitude in summer night. The scents in her loose hair, which was previously up in a pretty bun with a flower pinned in, are reminiscent of fireflies and thunderstorms. She went for a run. She went for a run that took close to three hours, which means she went to hide, she went to be alone, to get away, to escape the chaos and the crowd,

but she came back, and here she is, smiling as he draws her up to dance with him.

--

Her staff and her father head back to Denver, very late at night, her brother ending up at an impromptu sleepover with several other boys at some neighbor's house. Avery herself goes upstairs with Calden, starting to kiss him even before the door is closed, pressing against him, into him, down over him as they fall to the bed. She is telling him, rough with lust, that she wants his cock. She's touching him, kissing her way down his body and opening up his clothes and he's telling her to get up here, fighting with her clothes, licking her hip. They are drunk and pulling their clothes off and falling into bed together, first with Avery riding him and then, soon enough, with his body flexing over hers, her arms and legs around him, her head back, her teeth in her lip to keep from crying out too loudly.

Not nearly enough hours later, she stirs as his phone rings. She yawns and keeps her eyes closed and is trying to bat it out of his hand while he's trying to listen to the voice on the other end and then she is making a whining noise of protest when he says he'll go for a look. She finally opens her eyes, a disgruntled pout on her face, her hair tousled as hell. He leans over her, kissing her, murmuring to her. She answers, as he answered Paul, with a little grunt. But to be honest, it's been three hours of sleep for her. She yawns and happily accepts the permission to just go back to sleep.

--

Half an hour later is not enough either. She opens her eyes blearily, exhausted, wanting to ignore it, but she drags it close to her and sees that it's Calden. Right now when he calls a picture pops up of him with his shirt hanging open while he smirks wryly at the camera, his hands busy making eggs, and it makes her think of how much she loves him and how much he turns her on and it's a good picture, because of that smile and how messy his hair is. She closes her eyes again, putting the phone to her ear, yawning instead of saying hello.

Something killed a few cows.

Her eyes open. She goes still. Her heart hardens in her chest, tightening. It takes her a moment, still, to say: "Yes," and it's a bit raspy. "Yes, darling, of course."

--

Not very long later, she is there. She comes loping across the plains, slowing down from a brisk but not exhaustive run, wearing her pristine white fur, her crystalline blue eyes. She gives a low howl-hurroo before she is in sight though, alerting them to her nearness.

-carnivore-

She smells the blood long before she sees the slain cattle or the men who watch over them. It is thick in the air, tangy, coppery. Only cows' blood -- if ever a wanton slaughter is 'only' anything -- but so much of it.

She smells men, too, and their horses. She smells a whisper of Stag -- all of the White boys bear some faint tracery of their people. She smells anger and confusion and fear. She smells guns, that cold mechanical scent of steel and oil.

She smells,

beneath it all,

something foul.

--

Reverence of Dawn, Radiant Honor crests that low hill separating her from the kinsmen. By then Paul's led the horses off; stands a good hundred yard away, three bridles in hand, rubbing the flat of his palm soothingly along the neck of the most skittish gelding. Jimmy, Ian and Calden are still standing over the carcasses, tall rawboned men in denim and flannel.

And the carcasses.

Not one, not two, not three or five but nine, ten, perhaps a dozen. Smears of blood-churned mud are evidence that they've been dragged from where they fell -- but not very far. All the cattle were killed within a stone's throw of each other. Most of them in a dry gully, out of easy sight. All of them viciously, brutally butchered, and none of them quite the same way. One, the throat torn open. Two, the underbelly eviscerated. Three, the vertebrae severed by a crushingly powerful bite. Four, mauled so terribly that two limbs and a head hang by strips of flesh ... it goes on.

The bodies are perhaps a few hours dead. Rich stink of offal on the air. Flies just starting to gather. Jimmy has tied his bandanna over his face, like some silver-screen Wild West bandit. He looks green around the gills, though. Keeps putting a gloved hand over his nose to try and ward off the stench.

"Ian found the first one on his way home last night," Calden tells her as she approaches. Doesn't matter which form she's in. He speaks to her like she's Avery Chase, his lover and his beloved, because she is.

"Thought some stray mountain lion came through and managed to pick off a weak one," the kinsman puts in. Shrugs. "Didn't much see the point in alarming all the guests. Figured Paul and me'd come out in the morning and clean up the mess."

"When they rode out, though," Calden adds, "they found the rest down in that ravine. Like they'd been driven there and killed, or maybe killed and then stashed there. Eleven in all. No mountain lion could, or would, take down eleven full-grown head of cattle in a night. No mountain lion does this." He points at one of the cattle; the grotesque wounds. "Or this. Or this. Or leaves all the bodies untouched, not a bite eaten."

Radiant Honor

They know her. They do not raise rifles in her direction. When she nears she slows, she lopes and then stops, and in a blur of motion she is standing among them, dressed in those yoga clothes Calden knows so well, her hair tied back and straight. Her eyes are clear despite the lack of sleep; one cannot face this sort of thing and not find themselves growing alert. It is the glory of the part of her that is human. It is about survival.

As she comes close she turns on her gift, perhaps to help sooth the animals that are still alive. She looks at the gore in front of her, the paths where the bodies were dragged, the untouched meat, the gathering flies. Everything in her is opposed to such rot, such waste, such decay. She touches the back of her hand to her nose, to smell her own skin and her own hand lotion rather than this. She surveys, her eyes moving slowly, noticing the novelty of each wound, the excitement that accompanied the slaughter.

This happened last night. While they were sleeping. While they were partying. Dancing. Setting off fireworks.

"No," she murmurs, in agreement, then looks up, at all four of them. "I don't have the gift of sensing the Wyrm's presence, but I would like to take all of you back to the house and Cleanse you, just to be safe. If all goes well I will hunt and then cleanse this area as well so you can safely clean it up. But for now, I want to make sure that the four of you are safe. I have willow switches in my car." Of course she does.

-carnivore-

Some other day,

someday when they are not harrowed and sleep-deprived and somber with the knowledge of this, this happening while a mile away they were happy and partying and thinking themselves safe,

Calden is going to smirk and crack some faintly inappropriate joke about willow switches in her car. Not today. Not now.

He watches her examine the bodies. He offers her a handkerchief -- or perhaps it's a bandanna of his own -- to hold over her nose. He doesn't think her weak for minding the smell. It's impossible not to mind the smell. Slaughterhouses smell like blood and offal, too, but not like... waste. Rot. Decay. Not the one he employs, anyway.

"We could back you up," he says quietly. Doesn't push; but offers. "I'd like to. We're good shots, and those rifles pack a punch. Besides; these are our cows. Seems like maybe we shouldn't pile the whole mess on you."

Radiant Honor

Oh, she takes the handkerchief. Ladylike, that. She covers her mouth and nose, even if none of them do, and does not doubt for a second that their respect for her might lessen. In fact, she does this in part because it gives them permission to do so as well, if they need to. She does not think like a girlfriend. She thinks like a queen and commander.

Avery just shakes her head. "Not when I don't know what I'm up against, or how many," she says, and firmly. If they were Garou, they could come. But she is alone out here. Javed is hundreds of miles away, and so is Ruby. She exhales. "I'm going to find it -- or them -- first. And then go from there."

She nods back in the direction of the house. "Let's go. First thing's first."

-carnivore-

She doesn't think like a girlfriend. She thinks like a queen, like a commander.

Calden doesn't think like a boyfriend, tender-ego'd, impatient to prove his worth and strength and manliness. He thinks -- well. Perhaps a little like a soldier, a subject, a citizen. He doesn't question her decision, once it is made. He doesn't question her logic, because it is sound. He doesn't question, either, that her first impulse is, always is, to protect the innocent. To keep them safe.

"All right," he says. "We'll meet you there."

--

They part ways. Perhaps it's unchivalrous, but the cowboys ride and the fancy lady runs. They take different paths -- the men keeping to the dirt trails the best they can to spare their mounts the danger of a stumble or a fall or a broken leg; the wolf finding her own path through the harsh, open country. Morning is reaching its glory when she finds herself back at the house. She's beat the Whites here, but she can see their dust-trail a little ways away.

Isn't long before they arrive, all four of them, tack jingling, hooves clattering. They're efficient about putting their horses up, pragmatic: none of the leisurely pace of pleasure riders. In a matter of minutes they're coming back out of the barn, slapping dust off their thighs with their hats, knocking mud off their boots. A small cloud of cattledogs mill about them, sniffing sniffing sniffing, smelling decay and death and somethingbad, worrying, distressed.

"Shoo," Calden mutters at them, affectionate and distracted. "Shoo, go away, get on."

They're cleansed out in the paddock. Calden has a memory of blasting icy water at each other to get mud off. This isn't nearly so playful, and the water isn't nearly so plentiful. Jimmy looks awed and Paul looks like he's done this before and Ian looks just a bit skeptical at all the widdershins-ing and the willow branch-ing. He doesn't say anything, though. Respects the woman, even if the 21st century part of him wonders what the fuck.

A little past ten in the morning when they're done. Calden sends the hands out to feed the horses and see to the dogs, do what work there is to be done around the homestead. He himself follows Avery as she heads back out. Still has his rifle in hand.

"You're still going out alone?" he asks; it's more confirmation than question. "Don't take chances, all right? You see something too big, come back. Half the Sept would rally if you called them."

Radiant Honor

[charisma (charming) + rituals]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 4, 5, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1

-carnivore-

[ahem. EIGHT. eight in morning. i can't do maf.]

Radiant Honor

The horses, too. Avery doesn't want them to be put away yet. They'll be scared -- oh, they'll be frightened by the howling and the smoke -- but they, too, have been near the catastrophe. Their spirits are as much a part of Gaia as the spirits of the dead cattle, the spirits of the kin. She gathers them with their riders for the cleansing, which is the first time than these cousins see Avery in her warform. She towers over the tallest of them, hulking and white. Muscles ripple in her arms and hind legs with every step. There is such intelligence in her eyes when she rises to stand that it is hard not to see her as some sort of alien creature, vastly superior of mind and strength. There is such savagery when she howls that the horses dance but do not whinny;

through their terror, their spirits feel the release of what they were near not so long ago.

Perhaps even the rational human-molded minds of Calden and his cousins can sense it, too. Some of the horror being released, some of the anxiety, some of the feeling of something so wrong falling off of them like scales. It is a holy rite, and it is performed with love flowing up from the earth and water and smoke and through her voice on the air, surrounding them.

When it is finished, she takes her human form again. She puts away willow switch, smudge stick, while they put the horses away and feed the dogs and get back to work. She closes the trunk of her little Juke, turning to him. Her brow stitches gently, but she nods. "I won't," she tells him, and leans over, his rifle between them, taking his face in her hands to kiss his mouth. "I believe we owe each other some special attention that we didn't get to last night," she teases softly, pressing another, smaller kiss to his mouth. "So of course I'll make sure we get back to that later."'

She rests her brow to his for a moment, kisses him one more time, then she's off, falling to all fours and running away from the homestead, back towards the ravine, and the carnage it holds. Maybe by now the other sleep-over guests have woken. Maybe Jill is rubbing her eyes and thinking about breakfast, having dreamt of howls under the sunlight.

No matter. When Avery gets to the ravine, alone this time, she begins trying to pick up a scent.

Radiant Honor

[perception (insightful) + primal urge]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1

-carnivore-

Last night, there was a moment.

For a few hours, Avery was nowhere to be seen. The party roared on, of course, as Fianna parties are wont to do. But in the midst of that controlled chaos, a moment: a little bubble of quiet around the corner of that broad deck where it was quieter and darker and not so crowded. There, Calden found a few moments to himself, sipping a bottle of brew. There, Avery's father found him -- or perhaps sought solace himself, and happened upon his daughter's gentleman caller instead.

They stood quietly for a while, side by side in unspoken solidarity. They drank their drinks and thought their thoughts. Looked at the stars. Eventually Philip Chase spoke:

Avery go for a run?

and Calden nodded, lip of the bottle resting against his own lip. Once, then again. Taciturn, though not withdrawn. Not unfriendly.

Good night for a run.

Yep.

--

A conversation, after that. Brief and sparse; the exchange between one man too old-world, too polite to overshare and another too old-fashioned, too damn cowboy to want it. They talked about Avery. Talked sparingly of those times in both their lives when she's not there. Talked about thinking of her when she wasn't with them. Talked, without ever saying it, about loving a woman like her. A daughter like her, a lover like her; a wolf like her.

Philip Chase would know something about that. He was married to a Galliard. Died when she was thirty-five. Never remarried.

--

Calden thinks of this moment, their brows resting together. Thinks of it, the gun cool in one hand; the other resting on Avery's hip. "I'll hold you to that, Miss Chase," he murmurs,

and then they kiss again, firm but not lingering. He steps back. She hits the ground on all fours, glorious, white as fresh-fallen snow.

--

Calden goes back inside. Jill is coming downstairs and telling him how Avery wants to take her for a girls' day out, can she, can she, would that be okay? And Calden is smiling in spite of himself, pulling down a heavy frying pan to cook up some eggs, telling Jill she can go if she keeps up with her homework.

Because cubs have homework too. Algebra to do and books to read, because just because you can turn into a wolf doesn't mean you get to be an ignoramus.

-carnivore-

Meanwhile, the earth itself seems to rise to meet Avery's paws. The sun loves her, and the moon adores her, and the earth is her mother. She is so strong, so swift: she courses over the land, retracing her steps, faster this time because she knows the way, faster this time because she is unburdened and alone.

Soon enough she is back at the site of the slaughter. The cracked and rugged land carved by alternating drought and flood. That gully with the cramped brambles and dry brush, which in the next storm would turn into a rushing river. The blood down there, so much of it that the dry riverbed is muddy with it. The bodies hauled back up to higher, drier ground, heaped awkwardly together.

The smell of death. The smell of blood. The smell of decay setting in, and

beneath it, that smell of something wrong. Reverence of Dawn catches it, recognizes it. Teases it out in her mind. Follows it: east, east, down the direction water would flow if only there was water. But there isn't water. There's only blood.

Radiant Honor

Here, back again, she stays in lupus. She does not comfort; she does not command. She holds no handkerchief. She does not know that back at the homestead, Jill is excitedly asking her quasi-guardian if she can go for a day out with Avery, and it's as though they both know that Fostern or not, Jill's mentor at Forgotten Questions will not likely turn Avery down. They can trust her, you see. People trust her. Calden trusts her, and Jill trusts her, and sometime later this summer they'll have a sleepover, and brunch, and shopping, and a movie, and the museum, and such a full day that they will have to nap in the middle of it just to take a break. Avery will paint Jill's nails and talk to her about how important it is to take care of yourself, to do things that make you feel good in your own skin, because Gaia knows the world does a lot to try and make you feel awful in that skin. She will blow, gently, on Jill's fingertips and Jill will feel cared for, delicately, when very little in her life is delicate.

Avery will do this, knowing the importance of such things, of such delicacies, because of what she faces this morning:

horrors.

--

She first checks to see if anything has moved since they left. Any bodies. Even a foreleg out of place would make her wary. She is on high alert, sniffing, circling, looking for something familiar. She feels recognition but can't quite place it. Her fur stands on end, and she begins heading east. Carefully. She keeps her body low.

Radiant Honor

[perception + alertness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

Radiant Honor

[again!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

-carnivore-

Nothing has moved.

But things are missing. Didn't notice this earlier: too many people about. Too many animals. Too much pure blood that needed to be protected.

She notices it now. Now that she's alone, and focused, and hunting:

every single carcass is missing something. An ear from this one. An eye from that. A heart. A tongue. A hoof torn bloodily away; white bone drying in the sun.

--

She moves on. She moves east. Careful, body low. Ears back. Tail out. And presently, she hears --

screaming. Distant. Faint enough that at first she might think it human. But it's not human. It doesn't sound like an animal, either. It sounds like nothing a creature of this earth should be able to emit.

Closer then. The noise is louder. Very near now. When the wind blows right she smells it. Dead ahead. Not in sight. Those damn gullies. East still, and down, in the crack of that ravine running into that small river demarcating the eastern border of Calden's land.

Fresh blood. Old death. And corruption, corruption to the bone.

[avery can: stay up on high ground! jump down into ravine! sneak up! or rush in! or... anything else you can think of!]

Radiant Honor

In some ways she is glad that it's still daylight. Coloring like hers, it's easier to be seen at night if there's any moonlight or starlight at all. In daylight she isn't much better off, but at least she's not like the north star, glowing in the darkness. She stays low. She stays alert. She tries not to contemplate what might be happening with the missing pieces of her lover's livestock.

She stops, stock still, when she hears the scream. She freezes, and lowers her belly to the ground. She listens, and when the wind shifts she inhales, her tongue lolling for a moment to taste the air. She begins to creep forward, belly low, as slow as she needs to go in order to stay as quiet as she must, must be. She will look. Peer in, try to remain unseen.

Radiant Honor

[dexterity (athletic) + stealth]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

-carnivore-

[DOES THE BADTING NOTESS?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

-carnivore-

She's perhaps ten, fifteen feet above the bottom of the ravine. The sides are steep but not insurmountable. She could, if she slipped, climb back up. But by that same logic: anything down at the bottom could climb up.

She's aware of that. She's careful. Never careless. Never reckless. Radiant Honor creeps forward, her underbelly low to the hard-packed earth, step by silent step. There's the edge of the ravine. Right there. Three feet away. One.

She looks over.

--

Avery finds out what happened to those missing bits of cow. They're arranged around the creature, radially, ritualistically. A tongue opposes a tail. An eye opposes an ear. Genitals oppose a hoof. There is a meaning there, blasphemous and filthy, carved in those ragged and jagged lines surrounding the talismans, connecting them.

And there in the epicenter, there where all the lines meet:

a creature.

Maybe that used to be human. That thing down in the pit. It has the basic form of a human. Two legs, two arms, a head. Bipedal maybe. But it is nothing close to a human now. Not anymore. Now, it's a fucking monster, muscles bulging, head misshapen. It is howling. It is screaming. It is screaming because it is tearing at itself, digging the nails in, scoring, scouring, goring the flesh. Pulling skin away in strips, splitting it open over the backs of the arms, between the shoulderblades, scratching, scraping,

ripping,

tearing,

until flesh falls away in chunks. Until Avery realizes she can see something underneath. The oily shine of chitin. The dull gleam of horn. The creature seizes what is left of its face and flings it off, quite literally crawls out of its own skin, rises from the scraps of its former body.

Towering. Horned and hooved. Armored like a scorpion, shaped like some nightmare of man-and-bull. Blasting a bloody mist from its nostrils and tossing up its head: lightless eyes fixing on Avery.

Radiant Honor

Avery has never had a cat.

Up until recently, she could not have any pets at all. She couldn't go near Calden's horses, Calden's cattle, even Calden's cattle-dog who now adores her like the stars. When she was young she might have tried but even then something was burgeoning in her, waking, snarling in the direction of these small creatures who could not hope to survive her if she frenzied. When she changed, she was terribly careful with everyone around her; everyone and everything was vulnerable. So she has never had a cat.

And there's no cat-owners nearby, either, to tell her that right now she is acting exactly like one. For when the thing looks up at her, sees her despite how quiet she was, sees a shadow of her muzzle perhaps, and she is discovered, Avery instantly decides to behave as though she meant to do that.

She rises on all fours, rippling in size into hispo, playing her hand that she is no ordinary wolf, she never was. Massive now, heavily shouldered and thickly furred, she opens her maw and roars at the thing, her voice becoming an undulating howl, a shriek of judgement, a lecture in a single blast of noise.

Then she dives in.

Radiant Honor

[That was Eagle's Beak! -1 R!]

-carnivore-

[LET US ROLL INITS +7]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Radiant Honor

[init! +9]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )

Radiant Honor

[Reflexive stuff!

-1 WP Fangs of Judgement. +2 damage vs. beings who have fallen from their original purpose.

-1 WP Resist Pain

-1 WP Lambent Flame. +1 diff to hit Avery in close combat til gift is turned off.

Already activated: Eagle's Beak, +2 damage to all bite attacks.

NO TIME FOR YOU, LUNA'S ARMOR, SORRY.]

Radiant Honor

[1a. Bite its head off!

1b. She is probably on the ground now and will bite its leg off!

R1. NOM

R2. NOM]

-carnivore-

[1. HORNS. THEY ARE USEFUL WHEN SOMETHING COMES FROM ABOVE. Gore!

R1. HOOVES. THEY ARE USEFUL WHEN SOMETHING IS BELOW. Stomp!

R2. Speshul attack: CHARGING BULL!]

-carnivore-

Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

-carnivore-

[base dam +1 (succ) +2 (horns) - agg!]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

Radiant Honor

[soak!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Radiant Honor

[1a. dex + hispo + brawl -2]

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )

Radiant Honor

[damage! str + gifts + hispo bite + suxx -1]

Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

-carnivore-

[soak!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Radiant Honor

[1b. same! -3]

Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 4, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 3

Radiant Honor

[base 11 + 4]

Dice: 15 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 7 )

-carnivore-

[OW]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

-carnivore-

[R1 I AM BLINDED (BY SCIENCE!) BUT I STOMP]

Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4) ( fail )

Radiant Honor

[R1!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Radiant Honor

[11 + 4!]

Dice: 15 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 6 )

-carnivore-

[OWIE]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

-carnivore-

[R2: CHAAAARGE. mechanics: rolled as a normal attack + bashing damage for THUD. then, any and all 10s on attack are rolled a second time as agg damage from horns.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

-carnivore-

[FFFFFF. base + 5(succ) + 1(bash!)]

Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 6 )

Radiant Honor

[soak!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

-carnivore-

[agg!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Radiant Honor

soak!

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Radiant Honor

[R2]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Radiant Honor

[11 + 3!]

Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 8 )

-carnivore-

[OW]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Radiant Honor

[init +9!]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )

Radiant Honor

[minotaur awfulness +7]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )

-carnivore-

Radiant Honor, like her sky-born totem, is death from above. Leaps like she doesn't know the meaning of fear. Falls like a strike of lightning.

The thing plants its hooves. Squares its shoulders. Catches her, viciously, on the points of its horns -- a savage twist of the neck throwing her aside, but not before she sinks her teeth into the side of its head. Twice. It's like biting sheet metal. A few scales pop loose, ping against her teeth. Then her paws hit the ground.

The beast turns to face her. She can feel its weight, the thudding concussions against the earth. It rears back, cloven hoof coming down -- but she's so brilliant, she's so bright, it can't see. The ground shudders when it hits. She's long gone, slicing in from another angle, a deeper bite this time,

she punches through. Foul blood in her mouth. Foul, but it still tastes like victory, doesn't it? A massive fist catches her in the side, knocks her back, and then --

WHAM

-- the entirety of the brute coming down on her. A rib snaps. She doesn't have time to feel pain. The horns flash; she twists back, feels the rush of air riffling her fur. She twists to her feet and her teeth find purchase again, eliciting a howl of pain this time as armor plates buckle, as flesh and bone pulverize.

They face each other. Both injured. The monster worse off. Wary now, low cunning in its eyes.

[1. CHARGE AGAIN

R1. GORE AGAIN

R2. KICK!]

Radiant Honor

There is no time to armor herself with her goddess's protection; this thing would likely kill her in the time it would take to turn herself to silver and moonlight. There is no time to summon the kinsmen who said that this thing slaughtered their cattle, that they had rifles, they'd back her up. Right now she thinks their bullets would bounce off this ting, ricochet, do more harm than good. And it would go after them, and they

would feel pain. They would feel their bones breaking, their skin tearing, and her heart shattering, and she doesn't have time for any of that, either.

This time she goes after it with fury, with vengeance, which she feels burning low. Her throat is raw and her body vibrating with spent rage. Her sides heave; she skids against the mud, mucking up the thing's circle of animal bits, then bolts toward him again.

[1a. tactics schmactics let's just bite it to death

1b.

1c. -- BITE IT TO DEATH. wp on this one.]

Radiant Honor

[1a. -3]

Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 2

Radiant Honor

[+5!]

Dice: 16 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )

Radiant Honor

[bounce off this THING.]

-carnivore-

[OWWW]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Radiant Honor

[1b. -4!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Radiant Honor

[+3]

Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )

-carnivore-

[NOOOO]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Radiant Honor

[1c. -5]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1 [WP]

Radiant Honor

[+3!]

Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

-carnivore-

[AGH!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 5 )

-carnivore-

[LAST STAND D:]

Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

-carnivore-

[dam+3+1 for THUD]

Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )

-carnivore-

[1 for horns]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )

Radiant Honor

[soak 1!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Radiant Honor

[soak 2!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

-carnivore-

[R1!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 3, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

-carnivore-

[dam+3+2]

Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )

Radiant Honor

[SOAK! HAIL!!!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

-carnivore-

[R2 :[[[[[ stomp]

Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

-carnivore-

[dam +1 bashing]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Radiant Honor

[soak!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

-carnivore-

Avery BAAAA AAMonstar OAA AAAAA AAAAA AAAAA

No one can say Avery doesn't fight with heart.

No one can say Avery doesn't give everything,

every time.

She rushes in. She is glory itself, fanged and clawed. She snaps at the thing, that foul afterbirth of man and beast. She crushes armor, breaks bone, tears flesh, rends tendon. She brings the monster low, crumpling to one knee, bloody hands slamming to the dirt.

She doesn't. quite. kill it.

And it retaliates. It's got a temper too, you see. It's got a twisted sense of vengeance, of brutality, of viciousness. It pulls strength from some deep dark store, and it unleashes

devastation.

Two tons of armor and meat and bone smash Avery to the wall of the ravine. Dirt rains from above. It knocks the breath from her but little else; it's nothing. It's nothing, except it crowds her, it corners her, it keeps her from sidestepping the blow.

The blow comes: the curving horns, the brutal one-two snap. Sinews standing out in the beast's neck, like steel cables bulging through concrete. The tips of those horns bloody, dripping gore.

Avery doesn't feel pain. Not like this. But there's a limit, there's only so much she can take. Curtains fall. Lights out.

--

She hits the ground, an enormous wolf, white stained with crimson. It's almost petty -- the beast rears back. Stamps its hoof down, hard as it can. Cracks another rib maybe; something popped. The beast hopes it's her heart. Doesn't matter if it wasn't. Look at all the blood. No way anyone can survive that.

It turns away. Slouching, dragging a leg. It drops to all fours because it can't walk on two legs anymore. It's too damaged, too injured, but none of that matters either.

It won. The bitch of gaia is dead.

Right?

Right.

Radiant Honor

It was once something else.

She thinks it was a man, once. A human born under Luna's moonlight, on Gaia's earth. Sister of all mothers, mother of all children, and he belonged to her, once. Somewhere in the past he was something small and vulnerable and delicate. He was innocent. She can imagine a hundred things that may have happened to lead to this: completing a ritual with Calden's cattle, standing in a ravine and giving up the very last traces of humanity

just in time to be judged for it.

People misunderstand judgement. They feel so helpless before it that they seem to think that the judges enjoy it. Like children, thinking that their parents get a kick out of punishing them. Avery could not judge him, not nearly as harshly as she does, if she did not know that once, he was not an 'it'. He was one of Gaia's, and she would have protected him. That she, and her kind, did protect him. Died to protect him. She could not judge him as vengefully as she does if she were not keenly aware that, once again,

it was not enough.

It's not rage that drives her. It's not fury that fuels her this time. It's something like mercy, and it's everything like judgement. He crossed that line. He crossed it because everything they do is not enough, because the Wyrm is so overpowering, because he had no guardian angels among her kind and even though she knows -- she knows -- it would be impossible for them to give every mortal a guardian, she knows that if he'd had one, neither of them would be here.

She attacks him. She has to. Because he crossed that line of his own free will, in the end. It doesn't matter anymore who did help him, or who didn't, or what the Wyrm insinuated into him. He made the choice. He crossed the line. He must be judged. He must be punished. The others -- the ones who have not given up their loyalty to their mother -- must be protected.

Except:

it's bigger than she is. Much larger, even when she wears her hispo form. It is crushingly, viciously strong, driving itself against her, driving her into clay and stone. She knockes her head back and starts to twist away but

doesn't.

She can't feel pain but she is cognizant of what is happening to her body. Where she has been opened by that massive horn ripping through her torso. She is aware of a fuzzy darkness around everything, a crystalline brightness to what she can still see. She is aware that her limbs are not responding, that her mind is fuzzy, that she is sinking to the ground and not able to react. She is aware of one last blow coming at her, before it goes dark. She does not feel pain when it stomps on her again.

She does feel jarred awake by the rumble of impact. She snaps her eyes open, aware that she is hanging together by threads right now, aware that she is a crumpled, somewhat pulpy mess right now. She flicks her eyes: sees it hulking away, shuffling through the mud made of dirt and blood. It is dragging itself away, back turned to her. She bares her teeth, to fight off a snarl. She rolls to her feet, even though her body should be telling her NO NO NO NO NO STOP DON'T STOP NO NO NO for doing it. She begins to walk after him, blood -- her own, his -- mingled with her saliva, dripping from her jaws.

Avery leaps.

-carnivore-

[1. !?! HORNS!

R1. STOMP!

R2. STOMP!!!]

Radiant Honor

[1. NOM

R1. TEAR, REND, DESTROY just in case]

Radiant Honor

[RAR]

Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )

Radiant Honor

[+2!]

Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 8 )

-carnivore-

[I NEED ALL EIGHT SUCC TO SURVIVE D:]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

-carnivore-

[x_x]

-carnivore-

Any number of wolves -- good wolves, heroic wolves, wolves who do right by their blood and their blessings -- would have fought out of rage and vengeance and hatred. They would have a right to. A right to outrage, a right to disgust, a right to want to end such a horrible creature.

Not Avery.

And any number of wolves -- good wolves, heroic wolves, wolves who do right by their blood and their blessings -- would have let the creature go at the end. They would have a right to. A right to survive, a right to withdraw, a right to look upon the odds and say: enough. Enough for today; I will come back tomorrow.

Not Avery.

Not Avery, because having a right to do something does not make it right. It is not right to be angry. Judgment for the guilty does not come from anger, no more than punishment for a child comes from hate. Judgment comes from responsibility; from the terrible weight of necessity. And it is not right to withdraw, to back down, to run away,

just because you think you might die, just because you've fought so hard, just because you're clinging to life by your fingernails. It makes it easy to lie still, to pretend death, to wait until the beast departs. It gives you a right to do that.

It doesn't make it right.

Time and again, Avery proves this much: she doesn't do something because it is easy. She doesn't do something because she can.

Avery Chase,

Reverence of Dawn, Radiant Honor,

does what is right. No matter the cost.

--

She leaps.

The beast twists -- gives a single bellow of surprise. She cants her head just so and she bites, she bites so fucking hard, she brings her teeth down and she doesn't think of killing, doesn't think of dying, doesn't think of vengeance.

She thinks of mercy. She thinks of justice.

She feels bones separate; nerves shear. The monster stiffens, jerks once. Then, with an odd grace, the monster falls. The ground shakes when it hits.

Radiant Honor

Well.

It's over, now.

--

Avery falls on top of the beast as it hits the ground. She stays on top of it, teeth bared, dripping, for several heartbeats. As many as the beast waited over her limp body, and then some. She is tired. She is not exhausted. She also is not dead, has not raged back, does not have a new scar she will have to explain to her lover, who sees her body naked with more frequency than anyone. She tries to focus on the creature, waiting for it to jerk alive again, move, try to hurt her again. It doesn't. She finally slumps off of it, swaying to the side, but she clings to her gift, to the inability to feel pain.

No howls of triumph. No effort to cleanse -- she is missing the basic things she needs for that -- and no effort to bury. She sniffs around, looking for traces of another, of friends, of family, of anything connected to this creature that might come after her. She smells nothing. She closes her eyes for a moment, just a moment, and then she begins to climb out of the ravine. Her paws scrabble a bit, her claws sink in and pull. She slinks down to lupus, rolls her shoulders, and then begins to make her way --

she almost thought home.

She heads towards Calden, to the west.

Avery Chase

There will be a trail of blood over the windswept, sunbleached grasses between the eastern ravine and the land that smells so completely of Stag, of Fianna. There will be a trail of blood that smells of Falcon and Fang. Perhaps she should be too proud to go to the commoners for succor. Perhaps she would need to have a different kind of pride.

Avery moves slowly, not from pain because she is still staving that off, but because she does not want to think of how she could further injure herself. She goes slowly because she wants her head to clear, her wits to return, her mind to remember humanity. She moves slowly, in essence, to meditate while moving. To absorb the judgement, to dwell in it, and to let it go.

And when she reaches the homestead, which is grand, she does not go to her lover, does not go to have her wounds washed and bandaged. She does not go to be fed soup. She goes to her car and she gets a willow switch, a smudging stick, a lighter. She gets a canteen of water and packs them all in a bag and then she heads back out again. The ravine has to be cleansed so that the monster's body can be disposed of safely. The cattle that were slaughtered must be cleansed so that their taint does not spread to the carrion and then over the entire land. These are things she can do, pain or no pain, blood loss or no blood loss.

That is how he sees her, eventually. The blood is matted to her fur, sticking it in locks and clumps along her belly and her legs, all over her maw and her face. She is filthy and there are open wounds, gored holes in her soft spots, the glistening of internals where the skin should not be split, but is. Her eyes are blue and glassy and she carries a bag in her teeth, walking eastward.

Calden White

If Avery ran in her wolf form, she'd easily outstrip any vehicle navigating this rugged terrain. She's not running, though. She's too injured to run. She's so injured she should be somewhere resting, for god's sake, but instead she is walking.

Which is why she can hear an engine behind her. Which is why the engine grows closer and closer, laboring over ruts and ditches, catching up, until Calden's truck -- it is the same one that she first met him by -- pulls to a dusty stop next to her. The handbrake cranks into place. Leaving the engine running, Calden throws his door open and jumps out.

"Jesus Christ," he mutters, coming to her in four long strides. There's not a hint of hesitation. Perhaps he's beginning to recognize her wolf form. Perhaps he's just smart enough to know there's likely only one badly injured white wolf in the area. "Avery, where the hell are you going?"

Avery Chase

He sees her after she's already left his house, the area right around it. Saw her from a window, perhaps, in the distance, heading back out. She's loping, neither running nor trudging, so in the end he doesn't jog after her. He drives.

Of course she stops to look back. She tenses, and turns, lowering her body, preparing to drop her bag if need be, but she recognizes the truck when it gets closer. She darts a bit out of the way, faster than she would if she weren't injured, but there you go. She's doing this out of sheer control, sheer understanding. Yes, she could push herself, ignore pain, go wild. She doesn't. No twinge of agony stops her; she just has to remember. Perhaps that says something about her clarity of mind.

Calden gets out and her bloody tail wags a bit. She is glassy-eyed but still happy to see him, dropping her bag of ritual components and lolling her tongue at him. She knows she is thirsty. She wags as he strides over, Jesus-Christ-ing and where-the-hell-ing. In answer, she barks at him, leans over, and nudges the bag toward him. Maybe he can carry it for her, cool? You're such a good boyfriend.

Calden White

Calden saw her, it turns out, as he was leaving the barn. He was in there trying to settle a pack of cattledogs discombobulated by the smell of death and slaughter. He was coming out to get some treats from the house, maybe. He saw her, a white-and-bloody-and-muddy wolf walking in the distance,

eastward,

and he about had a heart attack. Went after her in a truck because it was faster than feet -- and because he could carry her if he needed to, but only so far.

It breaks his heart a little when she darts out of the way. They both know he would never, ever run her over. He'd flip the truck into a ditch first. Still: there you go. She darts. He parks. He strides over and she wags her tail and he lets out this short disbelieving sort of laugh. Swoops down and picks the bag up -- tosses it in the bed of the truck.

"Avery," he says, "darling, get in the truck, please."

Avery Chase

She whines. It's not a protest against the truck, per say. It's spreading the filth around. Already bad enough she tracked it back to his house. She has to start carrying ritual components with her, like a Theurge. She wavers, and it may look like she's about to topple, but she's not. She's just wavering, hesitating, because he's being all worried but she's worried for him.

And she does not want to shapeshift into her human form right now.

Avery draws C L E A N S E in the dust with her paw, leaving black and red streaks. She looks up at him, dolefully, whining a little in her throat.

Calden White

Calden doesn't waver. He goes over to the truck and pulls the door open: just like a gentleman.

"Please," he repeats. It's a gentle word.

Calden White

"I'll drive you where you need to go. And then if you have to cleanse the truck after, I'll help you."

Avery Chase

He opens the door for her, after he has picked up her bag. What a gentleman. What a good boyfriend. She is tucked together, trying not to let him see her ...well. Guts. Avery whines again as he opens the door, then circles the truck, hopping into the back. She leaps with surprising grace, considering she looks like she was gored open by a rhino. She stands there in the bed of the truck, peering over the side at him. Of course she'd want to ride in the back. This is the woman who nearly had an anxiety attack because he put wet towels on his bedroom couch once, isn't she?

Calden White

On level ground, even in the smaller of her wolf forms, she is hip-high to him. In the bed of the truck, her head stands higher than his. He has to reach up a little to thread his fingers into her fur.

Calden kisses her between the eyes. It is not at all the way one might kiss a dog -- not at all the way Calden might, and does, kiss poor silly Patches. There is recognition there, and concern, and love.

"I would've laid my shirt down for you to sit on if you'd just asked," he says, wry. "We're heading east? One bark for turn left, two barks for turn right, and three for stop. All right?"

Avery Chase

Avery flinches slightly. SHE DOES NOT WANT HIM TO BE MESSY. And not just with the blood, though it horrifies her to see her blood on his hand, even dried flecks of it. She doesn't want him tainted. She doesn't want him messy. She flinches a little, and whines, but permits him to touch her if she insists. If he leans up to kiss her, making her blue eyes cross slightly. She looks at him, silghtly watery in the eyes from exertion and exhaustion and wariness and tension, and she does not lick his face. He says he would have laid down his shirt but he doesn't understand, that wouldn't be enough.

She whines a little, but even she couldn't quite explain why she does just then. She wants to lay her head over his shoulder and go to sleep. He is temptation itself to her right now. This is why she didn't disturb him when she came back; all she wants to do is curl up against him and fall asleep, let him hold her, let his nearness heal her. And truthfully: she can't just do that. She has honor. She has pride. She has duty. And all of those things call her back to the ravine, to cleanse and to burn and to bury. To make the earth better than she left it.

Avery can't give so much credence to her own desire, when faced with that duty. And nothing tempts her desire for comfort and peace like Calden does.

She does not lay her head over him. She nods her head, and then settles down in the truck bed.

--

Several barks later, they pull to a stop at the ravine. There is blood at the rim. There is far, far more down the walls.

Calden White

The scent of blood and corruption here is so strong that even Calden's weak human senses pick it up. He grimaces as he parks, once again leaving the engine running. This time, stepping out of the cab, he pulls the rifle off its roof-rack. Holds it with its muzzle pointed downward, safety off, as he lowers the tailgate and lets Avery out.

A moment later he gets her bag of goodies out of the truck. Truth is he's not sure he wants to look into the gully. Truth is he feels like maybe he has to. Has to know, if only circumferentially, what happened here. Calden takes a deep breath. Then he walks to the ravine's edge, looking down.

--

The beast is still there. It has not, like some creature from a horror movie, slithered away while Avery's back was turned. It is still there and it is still dead. Flies have begun to gather. Blood has cooled and congealed.

"Mother of god," Calden mutters.

Avery Chase

[charisma + rituals]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 2

Avery Chase

Avery is not going to stop him. She gets down and he grabs her bag, shouldering it so his hands are free on his rifle. She walks toward the edge and looks down with him. He says what he says, and she keen-growls a little warning: the mother has no place here.

She nips at her bag til he puts it down, and when he does, she shifts into her warform. Somehow she is even more horrifying like this, her wounds more obvious. She does not look like an injured wolf; she looks like a monster who just fought off another monster.

Guess which one is true.

--

The smudging stick is lit, and the water poured, and howls unleased into the midday sky. She chases away the darkness that lingers on the edges of daylight, and down below if Calden looks he can almost see squirming tendrils of black and green shuddering from body parts and blood, dissipating. It may be a trick of shadows and light. Nothing will undo what this creature did to itself, though. It cast off its old body for this new one,

only to lose that, too.

When it is over, the smudging stick still smoking, Avery crouches near Calden so that she does not tower over him. She looks down slightly, keeping their eyes in line with each other. She holds up both hand-paws, each one massive enough to palm his head and crush it, but she holds them like scales.

"Burn," she asks, manipulating her throat as best she can when she cannot -- never learned how to -- shift only one part of her body. "Bury."

Calden White

When you see Avery the way she was last night, young and wealthy and beautiful and charming, you can almost forget what she is. You almost believe she's nothing more than what she appears to be, the heiress of an old and venerable fortune, the scion of an old and venerable name. You start to imagine that she's cut out for a life in politics or business; that she'll make a living of making money from money. You almost forget

that she is all those things, but she is more. She is a daughter of Falcon. She is born to rule. She is born to fight. She is born to greatness, and to sacrifice.

Calden watches from the ravine's lip, gun in hand. A chill runs up his back when she howls. A twinge spears through his heart when he sees the wounds, the damage, the fresh blood when she moves wrong and breaks scabs open. When she's finished, she comes back to him. He looks up at her -- and then right at her -- with furrowed brow, aching eyes.

"The boys and I will take care of it," he promises. "Let me drive you back to rest. We have to get gasoline anyway, and a water pump to run a line from the river just in case the fire gets out of hand."

Avery Chase

"Cows."

That's her answer. And:

"Cleanse."

Insistently. She doesn't mean to snarl at him but there is no way for her to inject emphasis without a bit of snarl, a growl, and in this form there is no way it doesn't sound like a threat. Everything about her right now is a threat. The very image of her ripping a body limb from limb is right there, hidden in every twitch of muscle, hidden in the very scent of her blood.

Avery chuffs air from her nostrils. "Cows." She repeats this. She drops to all fours, prepared to walk back to the site of the slaughter if need be.

Avery Chase

onoz

Calden White

Something in Calden's stance is a little tauter, a little warier. He can't help that, either. A beat; then he grimaces.

"Okay," he relents, "all right. I'll take you to cleanse the carcasses. But then you're going back to the house, and we'll handle the rest. Fair?"

Avery Chase

She's stubborn. And frankly, it's hard to argue with her in any form, but... nearly impossible, in this one. Avery looks doleful again, somewhere behind all the rage in those crystalline eyes that are almost white in the sunshine. She pulls back from him a bit, puts a few inches of air between their bodies.

Her nostrils flare. She chuffs agreement, giving a nod, and then drops into lupus. She is brownish now, rust-colored, from all the dried blood. She smells like burnt herbs and death. She gets back into the bed of his truck.

They do it all over again.

Calden White

They do it all over again.

The driving, the bumping around, the knot in Calden's heart because that is his lady-love riding in the bed of the truck, what sort of gentleman is he. The arriving, the stopping, the hopping out, the willow stick, the water, the smoke, the howling. As before, Calden stands a little ways away from the rite, his gun in hand. He stands watch, sun-squinted eyes keen on the horizon.

Then, she's finished.

Then, she cleanses herself -- and him -- and his truck.

Then, finally: she lets him take her back home. That's how he thinks of it, every time: taking her home.

--

Perhaps she agrees to ride in the truck's cab this time. Perhaps not. He doesn't insist -- though he does offer.

When they're back at his place he parks as close to the door as he can. It's not that he thinks she'll truly collapse. He just doesn't want her to strain herself more than she already has. He doesn't want her to hurt, to struggle, to fight; any of that. None of it is possible, but it doesn't change how he feels.

He helps her inside, if she lets him. He gets her situated: a warm shower, a soft bed. Lots and lots of towels and bandages if she's concerned about bleeding onto his thick mattress.

"I'm going to go burn the bodies," he says, meaning the minotaur; meaning the cattle. What a waste, he thinks: but then, he's not going to chance eating that meat now. "You rest. I'll be back soon as I can."

--

Soon as he can turns out to be two and a half hours. Two and a half hours before she distantly hears his truck pulling up. Two and a half hours before Calden comes up the stairs, smelling of smoke, smelling of burning fur, smelling -- incongruously -- of the same mouthwatering scents that rose from his grill last night.

The handle on the bedroom door turns quietly. He isn't sure if she's asleep.

Avery Chase

Avery is

so tired.

--

She has worn herself down by the time that Calden's lands and Calden's possessions and Calden himself are cleansed to her satisfaction. If he were not rather fairly pressing her to rest, rest, she might insist on going with him and the boys, burn and bury what must be burnt and buried, cleanse all of them all over again. It itches at her skin from the inside to think of him standing anywhere near that place, that smoke, that scent. She whines when he urges her back into the truck to go back, she's shaking, her fur is black in places where the blood has dried and hardened. She goes, and for the first time, one of her paws slips as she gets up.

Into the cab, on top of his outer shirt.

--

Back at Calden's house, Calden's home, one of her most favorite places in the state, they go inside. Perhaps no guests who are not of their blood stayed last night. Perhaps they've made their way home already, with someone passing along their gracious host's apologies for not seeing them off. One way or another though, they go upstairs. Avery will not leave her small four-legged form, will not be carried, but she goes slowly, and her glassy eyes only seem clouded by the landing. She hangs on to her gift and walks with her head high, but the truth is, she is gravely injured. However close that fight was, it was too close.

Avery does not want him to see her in her human form. That, too, crawls up her skin and tears at her mind, unthinkably uncomfortable. And she doesn't need help washing, does not want help washing, but she washes thoroughly. Coagulated blood nearly chokes the drain of his tub. She stays there until it runs clear. She trembles, wanting to bleach it, wanting to clean it, because it's such a mess, what if it stains, but her hand rubs over her face, both enlarged and covered with a thin coat of golden-pale fur at the moment.

Does he have bandages large enough to cover the holes in her torso? Avery makes do. She wraps herself; she is in glabro still, locked in his bathroom, white bandages or towels turning red as blood seeps from freshly cleaned wounds. Better than before, though. Already slowing. Already regenerating.

She is wrapped in a robe, lying atop towels, her torso bandaged thickly. And when he helps her onto his bed, she closes her eyes,

and does not hear a word he says.

--

Two and a half hours later, Avery is awake again, but not in much better shape. She renewed her gift as soon as her eyes opened, undulled pain shooting through her. Her will is low. She is exhausted.

And she is downstairs in his kitchen, sitting on the floor by the open refrigerator in glabro and a bathrobe, hunched over what is left of a prime rib roast from last night. She tears it off in pieces, eating it cold, and there is juice on her chin. She is not as glassy-eyed, but there's a fierceness to her hunger. She also has a gallon of his milk out, the cap off, half drunk. And the cupcakes, what's left of them. The chocolate ones with the white frosting, the blue and red sugar dusted over them. But mostly she focuses on the prime rib.

She looks up when he comes in, nostrils flaring at the smell. Avery is quite still for a moment, then continues chewing the -- very large -- bite of meat in her mouth.

Calden White

A moment,

a flicker of pause when he sees her like that. Wild, half-dressed at best, inhuman, wolfing down the most energy-dense foods she could find. Heavy proteins, simple sugars, lipids, oils. A flicker is all it is, though. Blink and you'd miss it.

Then Calden comes around the horseshoe-shaped island. He peers into the fridge; pulls out a tray of steaks they didn't get around to grilling last night. Grabs a bar of butter. Takes down a heavy pan from the hanging hooks and turns up the gas burner.

"Do you need healing?" he asks, low. "I can call around, see if anyone knows anyone nearby."

Avery Chase

You would think she traded hearts with Patches. The way she looks at him when he pulls those steaks out of the fridge, raw and red: her eyes are shining, blue, as prismatic as crystals. She looks so happy. She looks so loved, and she also

is completely unapologetic about sitting on his floor in an inhuman form, the fridge open, certainly making a bit of a mess, gulping his milk and scarfing food into her mouth. Avery doesn't even think about what she eats; she pulls what looks good, what makes her salivate, what comforts something in her. She is close to being able to think about what makes sense to eat, what will burn more slowly over time. It isn't about making sure she stays satiated; it's about giving herself enough to burn so that she can sleep again, rest again, which is what she truly needs most of all.

Calden turns on the stove and asks her if she needs healing. Avery licks juices, thin and trickling and red, from her fingers. She thinks, and exhales heavily, and that would hurt but she would rather sap her will dry than feel the sort of pain she knows her body is in.

"You know what's stupid?" she asks him instead of answering, picking up the half-full jug of milk and lifting it to her mouth one-handed. She gulps a few mouthfuls, managing not to let it spill all down her mouth and throat. "I know how to make healing talens. I learned, months and months ago," she truly does not remember when, as she wipes the sleeve of the bathrobe across her mouth. She looks around; picks up a cupcake. "And I have never, not once, taken the time to sit down and make some, just like I wasn't carrying a bag of ritual devices to cleanse with, because I so rarely fight alone, and because I so rarely --"

Avery stops there, more abrupt than she would be if she were not drunk on her own exhaustion. She closes her eyes, leans her head back against the door of the fridge, looking up at him for a few seconds, her eyes limpid.

"Please don't call anyone," she says quietly. "I don't -- I know it doesn't make sense, I don't think it does, but I sorely do not want you to. I just want to stay here and be still and rest. And when I'm well enough, I'll make talens to heal the rest of the way. I'll even make extra and leave them here." Her eyes drift closed. She sighs, and seems as though she is about to open her mouth to say more, but she is opening her mouth

to shove a cupcake in it.

Calden White

Calden is on the verge of smiling when she says --

or rather, when she doesn't say something. They both know what it is. What is unspoken hangs between them, dreadful, heartbreaking. She never makes healing talens because

she usually doesn't need them. she rarely comes this close to death.

Calden's face falls. He pauses where he is, pan heating on the fire, steaks waiting to sizzle. He turns to her. He crouches, he wraps a hand behind her head, and before she can eat another cupcake he kisses her -- firm and long and aching.

"I love you," he murmurs. "Please be careful, Avery."

Avery Chase

Let's be fair: Avery has already eaten that first cupcake in the time that Calden spends looking at her. It's just a second or two, really. But she opens her mouth and in it goes and let's be thankful she remembers to not eat the paper liner this time. She has licked her lips, not unconcerned, not insensate, but just hungry. Hungry, exhausted, trying to keep up with her own body's vociferous metabolism. Any other day and she would notice that Calden smells like fire and smoke and blood and horror, but right now all she can grasp is that one: he is making her more food and two: he is very sad now, coming down to her, while she is holding a second (or sixth) cupcake in her hand.

He touches her, and he wants to kiss her, and he can sense her flinching, she doesn't want him to kiss her in this form, she thinks it's very ugly and rather useless only tolerable for its necessity at the moment: the ability to speak, the opposable thumbs, the regenerative capacity. Her brow furrows and she recoils a little, instead of kissing him back, but leans into him all the same, resting her brow against his shoulder.

"I'm quite careful," she says, words which would have a tone of affront on a better day but now are just murmured, almost whispered. "I snuck up on it, but it noticed me. And I certainly couldn't just run."

She inhales, and sighs, and mentions: "You smell terrible, you have to wash." But she doesn't push him away, even for the cupcake she's still holding. She just sighs. "I love you, Calden. I promise I'll make healing talens. Don't fret."

Calden White

It's okay. He understands: she doesn't want to kiss him like this. She doesn't feel sexual like this; doesn't feel attractive. It has nothing to do with whether or not he still finds her attractive,

because he does, because he always will;

but then: she is not defined by the regard of a man. Not even this man.

So it's all right. She leans into him, and he embraces her. He nuzzles her, kisses her cheek instead. He is very tender with her. He aches; he thinks of her fighting alone in that ravine against that thing; he thinks of how terribly wounded she was. He is very gentle, very adoring.

She tells him he stinks.

That draws a laugh out of Calden, sudden and surprised. He squeezes her -- and meanwhile the butter has started to smoke in the pan; he needs to tend to that. "I'm going to hold you to that promise," he says,

and on that note, presses his lips to her temple. Starts to get up.

Avery Chase

Precisely.

He thinks she is pretty, always pretty, always desirable, even if he doesn't particularly want to fuck her in every form her body can take. But that has no bearing on how she feels. Right now she feels ugly in this form. Right now she feels horrified by the vast opening in her belly, carved by the horns of an inhuman something.

But: she does want to be touched. As awful as he smells -- and he does smell terrible right now -- she wants to lean against him like that. She wants him to touch her hair and kiss her face and nuzzle her and be gentle with her, even though her breath smells like a mingling of rib roast and buttercream. She makes a small noise, a whine that means comfort, and then sighs.

"Okay," is all she says, easily, as he rises to tend to the food he's going to make her. She picks up the jug of milk and begins drinking, holding it with both hands, til it is all gone. She looks up at him as he begins searing the steaks, and knows she doesn't need to tell him: it's okay if they're nearly cold in the middle, if they are bloody and wet. Oh, that's quite all right. But then she thinks of something, and her brow furrows:

"My god," she murmurs, though yes: her voice is rough now, a bit more of a growl with every word. "Have you even eaten?"

Calden White

Calden quirks a small smile down at her."No," he says, "but that's why I'm cooking up a steak for myself too. We'll eat together. On the floor, if that's what you prefer."

Avery Chase

The wrinkle in her brow deepens. She aches to hear that, it's been hours since they woke up this morning. Though it occurs to her to call her steward, a maid, the cook, someone to run in and finish the steaks while Calden washes or rests, it occurs a second later that she's not in her own house right now. And that Calden, more than likely, would want to finish searing the steaks himself regardless.

She leans her head against his leg. Normally it would hit his thigh, but in this form, she's essentially leaning against his hip. It's a small difference that feels enormous; right now she is roughly his height, has similar breadth to her shoulders. And there's the thick eyebrows drawing so close together above her eyes that they may as well meet. And the sharpened nails, thick as chips of wood. And the soft covering of pale gold fur covering her body. And the angle of her ears, pointing back and enlarged, cupping slightly like any canine's. And how her nose turns up just a tad more than normal and darkens a little at the tip, coming quite close to resembling a... well. A snout.

Still Avery, though. She leans against him, and if he is so inclined to stroke her hair or even scritch her, she certainly isn't going to stop him.

"I love you," she says quietly, even though at some dim corner of her memory she thinks she's said this very recently. No matter. She closes her eyes. "I love you, I love you."

Calden White

Searing steaks, Calden smiles to himself.

"I love you," he repeats, and mirrors, and answers; drops a hand briefly to cup her head against his side.

--

The steaks don't take much longer to finish. And they take no time at all to plate: a big one for Calden, several big ones for Avery. True to his word, Calden slides down to sit on the ground beside Avery, their shoulders touching as they eat. In solidarity, he's forsaken knife and fork as well: eats with his teeth and his fingers, blowing on the latter when the steaks prove too hot.

When they're done, he stays there a little longer, stinking, full, companionable in his silence. After a while he turns to her and kisses her atop her shoulder, through her robe.

"I'm going to shower," he says, and pushes himself up with a palm on the floor.

Avery Chase

By the second steak, Avery is starting to feel less ravenous. She is feeling less like her insides are trying to collapse in on her, burn her up from the inside, self-devouring. By the third, she begins to eat more slowly, actually pausing to chew a bit. When she eats the fourth, she gets to the last three or four bites and just looks very, very sleepy. It takes her longer to eat all this than it takes Calden to eat one steak, but given how rapidly she was shoveling food in her mouth to start with, it isn't much longer.

He sits with her. It's hard to see, but her belly isn't even swollen from eating. She is sated enough to rest again, she thinks, and looks content to just lie down on the floor a la Patches and sleep in front of the fridge, but Calden moves. Calden's shoulder shifts and she blinks, looking alertly at him as he begins to rise.

Avery just smiles. She gets up as well, but a moment later she shifts, dropping to all fours. The bandages around her midsection are moved askew, but her glorious body has scabbed over the wounds, is trying to pull her skin back together, rebuild it anew. Avery licks her jowls and walks alongside him as he goes upstairs. Even in lupus she moves a little more slowly, a little more carefully, minding her tears and gashes. But she does not limp. She does not whine. She does not beg to be carried.

She does hesitate at the edge of his large, warm bed, still rumpled from her earlier sleeping, still with towels laid down where she had been sleeping while Calden and his cousins took care of the mess that the monster -- and she -- left in his fields. Leaping up would mean re-opening something, she thinks. She thinks she should have waited to shift, but the plain truth is: she just likes this form better. She circles a bit, then there is a fluid motion of white and silver and gold, a bursting of fur and snapping of bone as she shifts up, leans forward, flops on her side in lupus again.

By the time Calden turns on the water in his bathroom, Avery is asleep again, curled up, her nose tucked and her tail tucked and her soft, injured underbelly protected. She sleeps more deeply this time, and for longer: she is fed, and her beloved is fed, and her beloved is near, and the land is clear of monstrosities and their offal, and the sound of water rushes in her ears, and in due time, a body comes close to hers again. Avery does not wake, or even stir, even if she is cradled. She has permitted herself that much: her guard is down. The closeness of another while she sleeps does not make her jolt awake in case of threat.

She just sleeps.

--

...and sleeps.

And sleeps.

And sleeps.

At one point she does roll over, legs sticking straight out, body on its side.

A while later she stirs briefly, sliding off the bed into glabro, walking naked into the bathroom. She comes back some time later, unconcerned with the fact that her body is sweating profusely and she does not smell very good at all herself now and her breath is horrendous, because her torso aches so piercingly that she can do nothing but lie down again, sleep again. This time she does not even waste the energy to shift back; the bed sags slightly on her side with her weight, with the sheer density of all that strength.

In fact, Avery sleeps most of the remainder of the day. She rises from the bed a second time only to eat again, whatever she can find or whatever is put in front of her. When she does, she makes some calls, sends some texts. She lets her father and steward know that she'll be staying with Calden 'for a few days', which is no strange occurrence. She reaches out to others at Cold Crescent and lets them know about what she fought, and what she remembers of it, and how it was handled. She tells Javed, too. She tells them the honest truth: yes, she's fine. No, she does not want them to send or summon healers. She'll make some talens in a day or two but she's going to be resting. Save the healers for the chance of a vicious battle coming out of nowhere, et cetera.

And she goes back to sleep. Most of all, she sleeps. She rests. She wants to talk to Calden and be near him and love him and stroke his hair and laugh with him and make love to him but the very thought of doing any of those things is exhausting, is too much, even hurts to think about. So she sleeps. When he is near she tries to touch him, a hand or paw on his arm, her face or muzzle near his shoulder or his side or... wherever, really. She makes contact. And when he is not near, when he gets up to work or to walk or to do anything, mostly she doesn't notice. The room stays dark and cool. The wounds she took from the minotaur-thing stitch themselves back together. And Avery dreams of Canon in D and flowers and long, long runs to nowhere by herself, all by herself forever and at least one dream of Calden sitting behind her in a hot bath, stroking her to orgasm under the water. And plenty of dreams that make no sense at all, jumbled messes as dreams often are.

The sun sets, and Avery wakes in the middle of the night to feed herself again, to sleep again. The sun rises, and arcs over the sky, and Avery gets up to -- well. To eat, first of all. But then to carefully, gingerly bathe. To brush her teeth and gargle and rinse with mouthwash and comb her hair. She takes her birth form for a while. After a solid twenty-four hours she's already significantly more well. She finds bandages and wraps them around herself anew, gets into a clean bathrobe. And since she woke this time in an empty bed, she walks to the bedroom door, opens it, and peeks out into the hallway, her hair wet and straight, her eyes alert, her cheeks more colored than yesterday.

Calden White

Calden's house has always carried the promise of being a safe haven, a retreat, a place where Avery could go and hide. Where she would be safe and cared for; where she could find untainted food and clean water and soft beds and hot showers.

In a sense, that was exactly what he offered her the night they met. But it's never been quite like this. It's never been so -- entire, so unashamed, so complete.

She sleeps. She rises only to eat, and when she rises there is always food set out for her. Heavy meals, energy-dense, nutrient-packed; things her body can burn through and metabolize into the basic building-blocks she needs to rebuild herself. She runs so warm when she sleeps, her skin drenched in sweat, her hairline wet with it. At night Calden sleeps near her, but the truth is she is too warm to embrace for long. He keeps close, though. And he makes contact, or she does. They maintain contact.

--

The sun sets. The sun rises. The sun arcs high.

Calden is not in the bedroom. The bedroom is full of light -- the drapes pulled back, the sun streaming in. Patches is not in the bedroom either, but almost as soon as Avery opens the door she hears the soft thump-thump-thump of the cowdog's tail. Patches still lives in that closet Calden ceded to her, surrounded by her rapidly growing pups -- including the two that, perhaps after this weekend, Avery will be bringing home to her family.

A few paces past the closet and through an open door comes the sound of a keyboard clacking away. Calden in his office, at his computer, brow furrowed: hard at work. The less glamourous half of being a stockman -- the accounts, the ledgers, the balance, the bottom line.

He looks up. Sees Avery. Almost at once he pushes the keyboard back into its drawer, standing to come around the desk.

"You're still hurt," he says; stating the obvious, there. "Tell me what you need and I'll get it."

Avery Chase

He offered her more. First it was a hot shower, a safe place to relax after an exuberant, gluttonous hunt. Then it was hot food and well-aged scotch. And the wine he kept trying to press on her. Entertainment, amusement -- the billiards, of course. He kept offering her more, and more, and his only price seemed to be that she would accept. And perhaps: that she would stay a bit longer, share her company a little more with him. Even after the couch, the bed, the shower, the wall, that was all he seemed to ask in return. Stay a little longer.

Avery restrains herself. She is well-comforted, after all. She is not in desperate need. She has a small but loving family. She has a posse of staff who are as loyal to her family as if they were relatives themselves. She has a small but effective pack. She has friends at both septs: the Guardian, Bright Spear, the other leaders at Cold Crescent. Avery has a mansion, a penthouse, and a cabin to call home. Wherever she goes, she can find someone willing to give her a place to rest her head, a hearty meal, a friendly word. She does not lack. She does not want to take advantage of all the good will that is offered to her, either. She does not want to lean on her family or upset her staff or rule her pack with an iron fist. She does not want to dominate the allies who respect and rely on her. She does not want to take her luxury for granted. So she holds back. She did not stay with Calden that first night, even though she very nearly could not tear herself away, could not get enough of him.

No: it's never been this entire, this unashamed, this complete. She has never taken such advantage of what is offered. She has never let herself eat and rest and do nothing but what her body urged her to do as wholly as she does it now. When she wakes and there is food nearby she eats it without looking for or calling out to Calden so she can thank him properly, share with him, comb her hair and put on lip gloss and make herself presentable to share a meal with her gentleman caller. She just eats. She does not worry about her breath. She does not care if it is too hot or too cold. She just eats, and then she falls back asleep.

--

The next afternoon, the towels she has slept on are spotted with blood that seeped through. They are drenched in sweat, as is the pillow under her head and the sheets beneath her. She is covered only with a sheet, also sweat-soaked, also blood-spotted. But the injuries are starting to close. She can feel that, and she is grateful for it. She can clean her own wounds; she can walk without engaging her gift, though it hurts. She just wants to recover her strength, so she suffers the pain a bit. She'll make do.

Down the hall she can hear clacking. She can hear and smell Patches and the puppies. She walks slowly down the hall to the office, looking inside. She remembers the last time she was in his study with some fondness, smiling to herself. He hears her, or smells her, or feels a change in the air, and sees her standing in the doorway, leaning against it, smiling sleepily but tenderly.

He tells her that she's still hurt, and Avery wants to laugh but she knows that would hurt. She just rests her head on the doorjamb. "And I will be hurt for another day or two," she tells him, as though this dismisses it. Or maybe: just accepts it. She decides against unwrapping her midsection to show him just how much improvement twenty-four hours has wrought, see? It would still be grisly, and upsetting to him.

Her instinct, her kneejerk, is to tell him she doesn't need anything, she just wanted to see him, she wanted to get up and move around a bit, she's fine, it's okay, she's fine. And looking at him, and thinking of waking up to meals laid out for her, thinking of the fact that he might be reminding her that she's still hurt because she's wearing her human skin right now, and does he even know that she can't regenerate like that, she's not sure --

Avery sighs softly, a quiet exhale that is more tired than anything else, despite all her sleeping. "I'm afraid that the linens are quite soiled with sweat, and that they have a bit of blood on them as well." Which, translated into anyone-but-Avery speech, means that it would be nice, very nice, if he could change the bedding. He asked what she needed. And she is not ready to eat a whole herd of elk right now, and she has washed her body and brushed her teeth and slept for a day and a half and... right now, all she can think of is how nice it would be to crawl back in bed. With clean sheets.

She lifts her arm toward him, brushing the backs of her fingers against his side, catching the fabric of his shirt. She's still so hot that he can feel it radiating even from her hand as she tugs him toward her by his clothes. "You are a good man, and I would like you to hold me."

Calden White

"I'll change them," Calden murmurs, a promise. "Come here,"

though really, he's the one going to her. Coming around his desk, he wraps her in his arms; embraces her even though she is hot almost beyond withstanding, even though she is wounded and bloody and some part of him twists at the thought of inadvertently causing her pain.

She calls him a good man. He holds her a little tighter. "You're a good woman," he says, muffled, lips to her hair. "You're a good wolf. You're a good Garou, and a good Philodox, and a good Silver Fang.

"You're good, Avery Chase." Suddenly it comes spilling out of him, as though the words had been dammed up somewhere until now. "In a way that few people are. And I love you. And it terrifies me when you're injured. And I can't imagine losing you. But I'd never ask you to stop, or to do less, or ... anything like that. I can't. Not without changing who you are."

Avery Chase

For a brief while, the shower that Avery took cooled her off. Even wrapped in a robe she felt some relief, felt herself soothed by the evaporation. She is sweating again, slightly, when Calden steps over to her and wraps her in his arms. She notices the way he holds himself back just a bit, trying not to press against her when she's hurt. Avery smiles to herself.

And passion bursts from him, pours from him a cage of birds opened into the sunlight. Good, good, good, he says over and over and over. Everything she is, she is a good one of those. And Avery laughs tenderly, softly, because to laugh any harder would be painful.

The laughter does not last, because he is pained. He says terrified. He says losing you. Avery lifts her arms, though her ribs flinch at the motion, and wraps them around him, touching his back. She closes her eyes.

"Oh, darling," she murmurs. "Darling," again, whispered. "Don't be frightened. I won't let you lose me." But she sounds sad, at the last words. She can't promise him that. So she lifts, looking up at him, her hand still resting on his body, just as all night she tried to maintain some kind of contact with him. Her brow is furrowed. "At least: I'll do my very best."

Calden White

Her arms lift. His hands cover her ribs, very carefully, very gently, barely hovering over the surface of robe and bandage. He dips his nose to her shoulder; embraces her with his eyes closed, chest expanding as he inhales. She smells like herself, which comforts him. She smells like bandages, like sweat, like hurt -- but she still smells like herself.

"Promise me you'll do your best," he says, muffled. "Promise me you'll be careful."

Avery Chase

Avery closes her eyes, letting her brow smooth as Calden bows slightly against her, lowering his head to touch his nose to her throat, gentling his hands around her. She smooths her hand softly over his back, as though to soothe him. Comfort him, the way her scent comforts him right now, the way her living and breathing and walking and talking and being the same woman she was yesterday comforts him.

She thinks this is fair: he has given her his bed to recuperate in, his home to shelter in. Every time she wakes, he's brought her more food. He has given her so much comfort in the past twenty-four hours; he has worked so hard, done so much. He woke so early yesterday, he trudged through the fields, he followed her when she was bloodied so he could help her. He spent most of yesterday burning corpses and burying them with his cousins. He did all those things so that the burden would be a little less on her. And really, all she did was fight a bit.

So Avery pats his bath, trying to soothe him.

"I would not say it if it were not an oath," she whispers to him. There's almost, almost a hint of affront on that: he should never have to ask her to promise something she has said she will do. She says it now, tells him it already is a promise, because -- well. He seems so very worried.

Avery turns her head, kissing his jawline, which just happens to be where her mouth falls. "Calden, I'm afraid I have to lie down again," she sighs, bordering on apologetic in tone. Or maybe just weary: tired of being tired, tired of being weakened, which she is. "I'll be much better tomorrow. I'll make talens then."

Calden White

Really, she's right to be a little affronted. He knows her. He knows her better than that: knows her well enough to know that Avery doesn't need to say I promise or I swear or I vow. She would not speak if it were not the truth. She would not speak if it were not a vow.

His back is patted. He is embraced and comforted as though he were the one in need of such things -- he, when she was the one who fought, who bled, who nearly died

in defense of him, his family, his land, his cattle. The thought twists in his heart. She thinks of it differently: he did so much, he burned things and cleaned things and cooked things and all she did was fight a bit. The way she thinks of it would surprise him, make him ache.

He hugs her as tightly as he dares. They hold each other for a while. He kisses her and she kisses him and their kisses fall in strange and tender places; and then she is tired, because of course she is tired, because she was nearly dead, and --

and he lets her go, gently, sighing an exhale.

"Come on," he says. His arm is around her waist still; he supports her against his side. "Lie down on the couch." He means the one in the bedroom. "I'll change the sheets, and then I'll come nap with you a while."

Avery Chase

[argh I forgot to correct it. she pats his BACK. not his bath!!]

Avery Chase

Time is valuable to Avery. More valuable than anything. It isn't foreknowledge of her own short, brutal lifespan that makes her so aware, though: it's her mind. She's been feeling things, flickers, since she was perhaps nine or ten -- these were, for the most part, chalked up to the surprising addition of a baby brother to their family. Stronger things, steadier lights, when she was cusping on adolescence. Puberty made her want to claw her skin off, made her anxious all the time, made her prone to running away -- in ways that weren't obvious, ways no one in her family or friend groups would note. She would go out with her friends. She would excuse herself from her friends after a while, under the pretense of being summoned home, but she would not go directly there. She craved these times alone; she asked her father if she could have tutors at home instead of going to school eventually,

which was his first sign that it was starting for her, something was off, something was wrong. Avery, so bright and gleaming and sociable even then, surrounded by friends, was clinging to calmness as she floated the idea, but there was a tightness at the corners of her eyes, a panic in the undercurrent of her voice. It passed. These things pass. They wax and wane like the moon. She stayed in school.

Then her mother died. The feeling of wanting to pull her skin apart and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream was so strong she thought she was breaking in half inside, which in fact her body was trying to do. She was trying so hard to change, and even now Avery doesn't know what stopped her. She thinks back and thinks that to rage and frenzy would have been such a relief then, would have hurt less than being forced to contain all that anger, all that sadness. It was so much bigger than she was.

Calden, knowing Avery, might inherently understand what her father thought back to and understood, many years later: there was something in Avery stronger than her rage, and stronger than her grief. He doesn't think it idealism to attribute this to her, when she was only a teenager and had no conscious understanding of what was really happening to her, but he thinks that deep down, Avery couldn't let herself change then, because she might have hurt her little brother. She might have hurt her father. They needed her. She couldn't let go.

By then she knew what was going to happen to her mind. She was old enough that her father had begun talking to her about the Silver Fangs and their curse, their burden, their punishment. It was so unfair; she cried. She cried then, and she cried much more later, but secretly, in the piece of her heart she is most ashamed of and cannot speak of, Avery became almost grateful for her mother's death.

No: not her death. What her death afforded to Avery: no one questioned it, no one halted her, when she stayed in bed for weeks, her door shut to the world. She did not go to school, she did not speak to anyone, she went on very long walks alone and sat in secret corners where not even the sun could look at her, because right then she had it in her head that it was all the sun's fault that the Silver Fangs were mad and that her mother had died. She thought a lot during those times, writing nothing down, saying nothing. She thought about time. She started thinking of her mother's age as her own lifespan, obliquely, not quite naming it but basing her math on it. She was halfway done, then, give or take. She thought of how much time you waste as a child, flitting about, not knowing. She took it back from herself: it isn't time wasted. All that not-knowing is a blessing, isn't it? All that freedom, all that blissful ignorance. She recalculated.

She started thinking about how many years she had left, if not Before She Died then at least: Before She Went Entirely Mad. Her father was older than her mother but he had some control over it, or at least showed that. She thought about how much time Oakley would have and devoted herself, at least a little, to making sure his innocent, sane childhood was a pleasant one, uninterrupted by fear of his own psyche. She started planning out her years from then: how she would use them. What she would prioritize.

Avery knew, better than any high schooler should know, that it doesn't do to wait for things. She knew what you could lose while you were waiting.

Time is valuable to Avery. Time spent fighting is an eyeblink, a breath, it is worth so little on its own. It is only worth the time it buys you, and your people, and your goddess. You must work quickly to eliminate the threats so that you can get back to the business of living, and loving, and worshipping, and enjoying. She fought a little. Calden spent so much more time, and his cousins -- how many hours has he worked to clean up after her little scuffle? How much time is he spending caring for her while she rests? What time does this take from her pack, her sept, her people? These are days she spends with him and they are days she cannot spend with her family; Avery does the math. Avery calculates and recalculates and she thinks deeply about what is worth it to her and how much and sometimes she has to flip a coin inside and follow her heart's impulse because the math fails her in the end.

Of course, by her math, Calden has given much more to her and to his people and to Gaia in the last 48 hours. Seventy-two, if you count the Independence Day party. Oh, that joy she had. She remembers that joy, she can carry that with her. Timeless hours, like those, make her feel like she's been given a stay of execution, a longer-than-expected stretch of health after a diagnosis. She can get so much out of hours like that, and the life of her body may not be extended, but the life of her heart and mind certainly is. Give her enough joy and she feels immortal. A little fighting cannot dim that; she did her best to make it quick, and not waste too much time.

The greatest loss here is not organ damage or blood, to her, or the closeness of violent death. Think of all the hours she's losing by sleeping.

--

Avery smiles a little as she leans against him. She walks with him, slowly, out of the study, past the little room where the puppies live with Patches, back to his bedroom. "All right," she concedes, even though the heat from his body is mingling with the heat from her own and she thinks if she doesn't cool off she's going to faint, though she really isn't.

When they get there, she quite happily lets him help her to the couch, laying down with the robe wrapped around her. She gives in to herself and shifts to glabro again, sighing as the healing process speeds up again, as her body strengthens in answer to her pain.

Avery ends up falling asleep while Calden is stripping the bed of its linens; a good thing, because listening to him clean up after her would make her feel bad when it really doesn't need to. She dozes on the couch, sweating again, her breath panting slightly like an animal's past faintly sharpened teeth. She doesn't sleep deeply, though; when his shadow covers her she stirs, looking up at him with those fierce, bright eyes.

The bed is made anew. The sheets feel cool and soft and clean against her skin when she sinks into bed again, helped along by her lover, covered only lightly with a sheet because anything more would make her 'burn to a crisp', in her words. She sleeps, and regrets the time,

but it is okay, for now, if he comes to bed with her for a while, and holds her hand.