A Wolf in the Brush[Open]

[Anonymous]

Long, wide plains. Almost as far as the eyes can see, with mountain in the distance. Delmont Crave was returning from Essyrn, but looking at him you would not know him as Delmont Crave. Delmont Crave is a man of about 5'8", he wears a worn weather coat and has blue-gray eyes. Everything he carries with him has a purpose, even the heavy-duty chain he wore around his neck. Those who know him know that he likes a good rum or brandy once in awhile, and is not adverse to a soft bed and a warm bath when one is readily available. But those who know him are few and far between, and most who meet him would say that he is of a good sort, but distanced and soft.

Even the softest cloth can conceal a dagger.

Running across the plains now was a wolf, a huge wolf with a chain around it's neck. It was mostly a light gray, with a white underside and some cinnamon colored fur on his shoulders. It's lope was sure and stead, and it payed little attention to the bushes and grasses it thundered through. The wolf was Delmont Crave's other form, because when Delmont was ten years old he was sitting outside at the wrong time in the wrong place. He was bitten and the next full moon he changed into a wolf.

over time, he was able to break the moon's hold on him, as evidenced but the fact that the sun was just rising to the right of him as he ran. It cast a reddish light, and it was breath taking--but Delmont payed it no mind. He was submersed in the pattern of his lope. He loves running, the air pounding trough his lungs, the ground beneath him, and nothing else. No thoughts of not having a Pack or a Mate. Nothing but him and the wind and the ground

[Anonymous]

It was a .. interesting.

Shant had been led the day prior thanks to his keen weathersense. And it had not disappointed him. Brought together by a rough and gruff witch's was a thunderstorm unlike any he had ever seen before. The clouds were ark, swirling. They hung low to the ground. A long moment had passed when he thought contact would be made. And his hypothesis was correct. Slowly, a long lonely rope of wisp burst forth from the circling wall cloud and touched the earth. It thickened. It raged. It howled - a beast conjured of wind, a beast that should not be. Shant watched from a safe distance as the thing tore grass and trees and shrubs form their resting areas, flinging them carelessly to the side like some used toys. An amazing, terrible phenomenon that lasted only a few moments. He didn't know whether to be happy at its departure, or greatly upset that something that wondrous and powerful would not bless his eyes again for a long time to come.

Needless to say there had been many bolts of lightning that day. Shant left the field with all the bulbs along his tail filled to the brim. They practically glowed, providing a soothing light as he curled up in the bushes and fell to sleep in the darkness.

The night went by quickly. It seemed that only an hour passed. Soon Shant opened his eyes to the waning day. A colorful sun was just peeking over the horizon to the east, shouting a good morrow. The sacs on either cheek breathed deeply, then exhaled in a sigh as Shant stood up, his strange Quetzin body rippling while he tried to wake himself from a sleepy stupor. Those bulbs on his tail still shimmered. Ah wel. First things first - he needed to relieve himself ... much better. And then the stray steps into the fields, oblivious to everything ... but the sudden rushing mass from the south. Shant turned his head, eyes staring down his beak wild and wide.

All in all, it must have been an intimidating thing to see - an eleven foot long, five foot tall beast with a sharpened maw standing in the middle of the wolf's path, suddenly stopped. Would the canine impact, unable to stop?

[Anonymous]

The canine would not; too agile and too quick for that, too aware of his surroundings. Delmont altered his course, and circled around the grandiose creature, keeping a safe distance but pulled like a magnet towards it by curiosity. The lope of his run had been broken, but that was okay; an oddity was just as welcome and Delmont had never seen a Quetzin in person before, only in drawings. Being in wolf form did make him assess the beast for nutritional value, but Delmont was far too civilized a man, regardless of his lupine form, to attack anything that could think and talk for itself.

Still, being a great big wolf did not exactly inspire trust in most people, most things, so before taking a whiff of the air Delmont sat back on his haunches--being mistaken for hostile and then being attack by something that charged up with lightning was not his idea of a good start to the day. Even if he had been running all night.

[Anonymous]

It was odd ... Odd for this beast to come shambling out of the brush, and odder for this wolf to be totaly unphased by a monster that was nearly five times its size. Gruesome-looking and oddle dangerous to the eyes, what should be considered harmless to those who knew more about Quetzins could come off as horribly aggressive beasts to those who had no knowledge whatsoever. And Shant ... Well, Shant was the oddity of his race. He had seen the rought-and-tumble lifestyle of the real world. He had witnessed the slaying of his kind to humans and other species. Hatchlings swept away by hunger birds of prey. Mates snared in bear-traps, their legs broken while they lay bleeding to death. Everything that was not meant to be seen .. witnessed and heard.

Wolves had been, unfortunately, on the list of hunters. On the list of those who killed for food. Some meals consisting of the younger, more vulnerable Quetzins.

So on first site, Shant stared the wolf down. He stopped moving. Neck bent backwards, head lifting up ... an intimidating stance. Had he a mouth, he would be snarling. Or growling. The most he could signal was a low, harsh grating sound that pierced the canine's mental space. It was a threat; warning. The sort you would hear from a rattlesnake who just had its territory trespassed upon.