blood magic (p)
Feb 6, 2015 22:34:11 GMT -5
Post by spook on Feb 6, 2015 22:34:11 GMT -5
SEEKING OUT THE ONE WHOSE TIME
HAS COME TO TAKE THE BLADE
HAS COME TO TAKE THE BLADE
Thunder continued to rumble, rippling for a time in the distance before letting loose with a magnificent crack just overhead. Lightning fulgurated through the clouds above them—and as they climbed the familiar path that twisted upward through the mountains, Morrigan felt her fur prickle with electricity from the dying storm. Because it was dying, she heard it in the particular cadence of the thunder, the particular cant of the wind. Each gust blew mightily but mortally—the chill lingering bite told her this was a fading wind. She pushed her slender face into it and forged onward, her paws sliding through the impassible mud the path had become.
She supposed she should have anticipated this, with the enormous volume of rain pouring down upon them in the graveyard. But, as with the majority of things she encountered, the state of the path perturbed her only superficially. She picked her paws out of it almost daintily—in this way Salome faired better than her mother, as the Elkhound in her heritage had granted her a significantly bulkier frame, and larger, thicker paws. So Salome pushed onward ahead of her mother, ears blowing back against her neck, half-blind from the rain. The precipitation itself was slackening as well, just a smattering of stinging droplets every minute or so.
Morrigan remained aware of Celyn’s presence in her periphery, glancing about every once in a while to ascertain his position and continued health. She wasn’t worried, although the mountains in this weather bode ill for any dog unprepared. Mountain lions and wolves abounded, as she’d discovered—but if the latticework of scars over her muscular frame wasn’t enough to convince another dog of her willingness to engage any threat, at any cost, she had no better proof. Morrigan had no claims to altruism, but she also wouldn’t hesitate to distract a mountain lion from Celyn, although he remained a stranger. The white sighthound simply couldn’t relent from a challenge.
Salome reached their habitual resting place first, depositing her mouthful of bones in the shadow of the rock cleft that provided their shelter. Other bones littered the ground—small bones, from birds and mice and squirrels, and larger bones of questionable origin. The younger girl wretched a little—bones buried so long didn’t taste like much besides soil, but they had a musty feel that she wouldn’t savor. Morrigan moved up beside her, placing her own bones far more respectfully on the ground. Immediately she whirled on her hind paws and leapt up atop the small collection of rocks jutting out of the earth just outside the shaded reach of the rock cleft.
Salome glanced toward Celyn with a condescending smirk, a wait till you see this smirk. And then Morrigan tossed her muzzle toward the turbulent skies and loosed a howl, a low ululation that would’ve set the wolves in the valleys to answering had they not all been cowering beneath the storm. She clicked her jaws shut and lowered her snout, flicking her gold-orange eyes toward Celyn and Salome.
“Start digging,” she said, leaping nimbly from the rocks and landing beside the black retriever mix. Again she began ripping up soil, this time with a singular vigor, a real urgency about her now.
Salome immediately obeyed, seeming to have put aside her enmity toward Celyn as she stood close enough to him to brush against him, focused entirely on digging. She’d witnessed many of her mother’s rituals, enough to know how to conduct most of them—but this one she’d not seen. Something had startled Morrigan, she sensed—but she couldn’t determine what. Not yet.
ooc. for Scotia