"When they said I must leave hell
and I put on flesh again, it felt like a soiled dress."
Leo falls asleep dead and wakes up on fire, as she has every day in recent memory. For the split second after her eyes open, there is a rush of remembrance—who she is, what she did—and with it a phantom blue flame, creeping silently across her skin like oil on water, the warmth of it as faint as someone’s exhale. There is a brief, beautiful stillness. A breath held to bursting. Then something shifts, a window closing, or a curtain moved by the wind, and these tiny noises are enough to snap the thread that sends her plummeting to wakefulness.

Today she rises unusually early, startled alive by a bad dream; it had a very loose plot but sharp, sharp edges. It’s still nearly black outside. She stumbles to her feet and through the soundless dark, tripping through a long hallway, until bracingly cold wind splashes over her face. On the first inhale, her lungs prickle. On the second she forces her eyes open, blinking into the bitter cold. And though the earth under her hooves feels like it always has, solid as anything can be, the scene that plays out in front of her is entirely different.

No forest. No trees at all, except ragged splotches far on the horizon. Leocadia’s blood cools suddenly; the wind presses in, raking her close-cropped hair, and her body tenses against the knowledge that she has been suddenly and entirely exposed. There’s a herd of strange beasts moving in one colossal clump over the plains, and a wide, slow river, tracking a glittery path to the base of a bright blue sky.

Don’t panic. Easier said than done. Leo wrinkles her nose against the breeze, against the thousand new smells it carries over. Her heart has picked up an odd staccato murmur; it thrashes against her chest, too close to bursting out for comfort. Don’t. Do not. Her overlarge ears shift nervously, the senses of this new place—whatever it is—beating against her like wings.

There are a million thoughts in her head, and all of them pin her to the ground.

@ Anandi <3

On the plains, a hunt is underway. It’s unusual for the time of day, the sun hanging high and fat overhead, the sky cold and cloudless, but the pack moves to a tempo all their own. A crisp but lazy breeze sways the tall grass, disguising the diverging path of the wolves as they split into three groups: One to startle the herd, one to flank and confuse them, and the last to pick off whatever poor beast gets separated from the pack and left behind... A calf, most likely. The sick and elderly bulls had already separated themselves from the pack.

Anandi is watching idly from the river, only her eyes (rimmed by long, dark lashes) above the water’s surface. She does this often, marveling over the technique and unity of the wolf pack. The physicality of the chase is sometimes thrilling to her, but usually it’s just… somewhat interesting. Like watching babies playing. (But for fuck’s sake, there’s not much else going on in Mythos, especially when you’re not interested in “cleansing the land” of a magical continent you have no interest in.)

It gets really interesting when she notices the swaying grass changes direction. The wolves have picked up a new scent. Her eyes narrow when she sees they’ve pivoted toward an equine– they were rarely, in all the days she had watched them, so bold. Either they were desperate or something about the chocolate-brown mare smelled of weakness. Or both.

Anandi did not particularly care about the loss of a fellow equine’s life. She did not have the sort of principles that most land dwellers (and even some of her sisters) upheld. But she did feel a certain possession over the people she walked among. She had friends and… other interests… that called this place home, and as what she considered a higher tier of predator, she deemed it her responsibility to put the pups in line.

She slips from the water and jogs after the wolves, head low and nostrils flared. “Head’s up!” she calls to the long-eared woman, sparing the stranger a long glance. She’s the rich brown color of the forest floor, eyes the amber of tree sap; all alien territory to the kelpie. All lovely but unfamiliar.

Anandi turns her attention to the closest group of wolves and charges, ears pinned back and teeth bared. The second group scatters with a chorus of yips, but the third– the third circles round the side of the stranger, four brown wolves emerging from the tall grass, crouched low and ready to pounce.

"When they said I must leave hell
and I put on flesh again, it felt like a soiled dress."

The moment that Leo stands fixed in place must be brief, for she is conscious of only blinking once; but it stretches out in front of her like a cliff over the ocean, vast as the horizon with a long, steep drop. Her heartbeat is sticky in her chest. The rustling of the grass by thin, sharp gusts of wind echoes in her ears, the resonance strangely high-pitched. Then the stress kicks in, floods of cortisol, a chilling twist of adrenaline in the pit of her stomach, and the ex-nun realizes: her body knew before she did that they are not alone.

She twists one ear to the outside nervously. There is, underneath the low shrill of the wind, the sound of dirt being moved; paws pressed to the ground. Leocadia raises her chin, flushed-amber eyes scanning the deep grass. A lupine shadow darkens a nearby patch of earth. A little further north, gray fur prickles just above the sea of grain. Wolves. They’re much more intimidating like this, half-hidden and boiling with predatory heat, than their 2D painted counterparts.

A muted fear washes over her, like baptism. Leo’s body runs cold with foreboding. Through the terrible bubbling noise in her ears, like hearing a breath let out underwater, someone says: heads up! For a moment, the girl is relieved; she quickly remembers, though, that it might be just as dangerous as the pack surrounding. Even if it does have the voice of a pretty girl.

Loathe as she is to take her eyes off the wolves, Leocadia can’t help sparing a glance to the source of the noise. Ah. It is a (pretty) girl, about her own height but with much more graceful in movement, something about her almost—fluid. Pearl-grey and coral-orange, her eyes an uncannily vivid green, she’s close enough to touch in one second and striking out out at a clique of canines the next, jaw closing so suddenly Leo can nearly hear her teeth snap together.

Oh, right, she remembers suddenly: task at hand. An uncanny crescent circle has formed around her. Four wolves in various shades of brown and gray, pointed ears pinned back, their maws all warped into ugly snarls that show off the unpleasant dullness of their teeth. (To imagine getting rent apart by them is highly unpleasant.) There’s not enough time to properly think through her next move, so—nervously—Leo follows some long-buried instinct to spin, then kick, so fiercely that she hears the whistle of it through the air a millisecond before the dull thump of impact.

@ Anandi <3

girls like us betray translation
There is something to be said for wolves and those who run with them. There is also something to be said for those who run against them.

And it all means nothing to Anandi. The poetry, the prose, the sagacity; to her it’s all just the drivel of bards and philosophers, who by no coincidence were so often destitute. She had always believed, even before she laid eyes and hands and tooth on the evidence, that metaphor was a weak substitute for reality. And she was right all along–

but of course Anandi Minn was right.

What matters is the moment. The spark. The fire in the kelpie’s veins as she launches forward and snaps her teeth clack-clack without restraint. The scent of fear (canine, pitiful, delightful) that follows. What matters is the satisfaction; if not in the kill then at least the victory of the scattering of wolves. Pups. Babies. What lights up her veins, heady as the finest wine, is the affirmation that she, Anandi, is the one who should be run from.

To hell with how the poets would paint it. She’s addicted to the feeling, not the story. (Though it should go without saying that if she were to be immortalized in myth, she would not complain.) A shared look with a pretty girl doesn’t hurt either. The stranger’s not the kind to stand out in a crowded room, but those unusual eyes... they hook. Anandi grins, all sharp teeth, before turning back to her quarry.

Anandi’s wolves scamper like the good boys and girls they are, with little yelps that bring a semi-drunk smile to her face. In all truth she is not terribly concerned with her charge, whom she had so heroically dashed in to save. This is all ultimately of passing interest, a game which she had no chance of losing– Her favorite sort. But the kelpie turns and lopes back to the girl diligently, whistling low in approval as she kicks out. She misses, the wolves are fast, but the kick lands close enough to send the rest of the dogs scrambling back into the tall grass. Off to lick their wounds and set their focus on weaker prey.

She watches them go with a small frown. "It’s not like them to attack horses, not in broad daylight." Idiots. She shrugs and her snakelike attention turns to the amber-eyed girl. "You’re not hurt?" Her sharp voice lacks concern, but not interest. Most idiots would try to run when faced down by wolves. It said something- Anandi does not know what, not yet– that the girl had stood her ground.

A  N  A  N  D  I

art
@ Leocadia