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Post by Eve Vardell on Jun 13, 2009 14:39:04 GMT -5
Eve was exhausted. It had been three nights, now, that the full moon had loomed above her. If this were a half-decent horror movie, that would have been enough. According to most myths, werewolves only changed either on the one night of the full moon, or the three surrounding it. Unfortunately, in real life the monster within her was a little less discriminating.
She was out in the stables, brushing the horses. Molly had just finished her last lessons for the day, and was inside showering, leaving Eve to tend to her weary, beloved beasts. A smile quirked Eve's lips as she patted a black stallion's neck - it seemed like a small thing, but the fact that Molly would trust Eve to take care of the horses told a lot about the level of trust that had been gained between the pair in the few weeks they had been together.
So, tired or not, she wouldn't allow herself to sneak a nap until the job was done. She still had almost four hours until sunset, and she'd slept for an hour already at dawn. She was on the fourth day of the cycle, and it wouldn't be long before she could sleep full nights again. She could handle this. She could.
She finished grooming the stallion, checking its shoes for pebbles the way Molly had taught her, and making sure they each had enough water. Then she sank down against the barn wall, blearily checked to make sure that her wrist-watch's alarm was set for 7:30, and allowed her eyes to drift shut...
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Post by Molly Rourke on Jun 24, 2009 13:07:20 GMT -5
The kid hadn't come in after feeding the horses. She'd long missed dinner by now, and if Molly had been any true motherly figure she might have been worried. As it was, though, the woman just decided to set a cold plate aside and leave it be.
There was something going on with Eve - had been for the last couple days. She was distracted, lost track of conversations and had to be reminded of chores several times before they sunk in. Rings under bloodshot eyes told clearly that she hadn't been sleeping much, if at all. Considering all that, it was likely that the girl had wandered off for a bit to think about whatever was eating at her, or possibly (hopefully?) had managed to doze off in one of the fields for a bit.
The thought crossed Molly's mind that this could be the anniversary of her werewolf encounter - or near enough it, anyway, to lead her worrying. Or could even be just the full moon getting to her. Might be seeing it in the sky and not being out chasing wolf leads had her feeling guilty. Whatever it was, it was likely best not to talk about it unless it became a real detriment to the girl's health. Sometimes the only way to get a problem right in your head was to work it out alone.
Still, when the sun started dipping too far behind the trees, Molly decided to find the girl and bring her back inside to sulk in the relative safety of the ranch house.
Full moons were no time to wander alone in the dark.
Instinctually shouldering her shotgun, Molly stepped out into the dusk.
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Post by Eve Vardell on Jun 30, 2009 12:52:37 GMT -5
Hungry...
The beast awoke in the shadows, surrounded by the scents of old wood, hay, and horse. It was only an instant after dusk, and she could still taste the last rays of the sun dispersing from the air around her, making her want to shrink back under the hay and sleep. But the bright moon called to her, from beyond the dead and hewn trees shielding her sight from the sky. She couldn't see the light, but she felt it. It was enough to make her want to throw her head back and howl.
Her body was weary, but she shook sleep from her mind with a violent toss of her head, and rolled forward into a crouch. Sleep could come later. It had been too long since she had roamed, truly free. She used the back of one hand to push her long hair behind one ear, as she took in her wooden cage with gleaming eyes.
Barn. This was the Woman's barn. These were the Woman's horses.
Angry...
The Woman who hated her and her kind. Who hunted them for sport. The Woman made the girl worry and hide, ashamed of who she was, what she was.
And now... now she was Hungry.
Eve had opened herself to the moon on this evening - she had let down her guard, knowing well that wolf-blood would take her. She had wanted this chance at vengeance.
And the wolf was all too happy to oblige.
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Post by Molly Rourke on Jul 4, 2009 23:34:20 GMT -5
Night was approaching fast - too fast for Molly's liking. She circled the house, calling out the kid's name as she peered into the fields and back toward the edge of the distant woods. She couldn't make out any human figures moving along the border of the the trees, and over their weeks together Molly was pretty sure she had drilled it into Eve's head not to go wandering under them alone. Too many dark things were known to dwell in those shadows. Too many good people had walked in there and not come out again.
But if the kid wasn't in the house or practicing in the field... was it possible that she could still be with the horses? The thought brought a small smile to Molly's face. By her own admission, Eve had been a stranger to horses when she'd first come to the farm, but she'd grown attached to them well enough: always offering to groom them, feed them, and help lead them in and out of the barn when the kids from town showed up for their afternoon lessons. She had a gentle touch - maybe too gentle for her chosen line of work - but it left Molly more inclined to trust her, all the same. Maybe it was old-fashioned, but she felt there was a good sign of a person's character in the way she treated her horses.
Molly was still standing at the back of the house, gazing out into the field and lost in idle thought, when she heard the first screams from the barn.
The horses were dying.
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Post by Eve Vardell on Jul 22, 2009 22:15:17 GMT -5
Her heart sang as it screamed, and tossed, and kicked. One hoof managed to nick her arm, sending her stumbling, but with a roll of her shoulder and a soft growl, she was back upon it before it could roll away. The others were already gone, and their heart-blood still felt sweet on her tongue... but it wasn't enough. Her physical hunger might have been sated, but the blood lust would continue to course through her until she finished the Woman's favorite. The black mare.
High and frantic, it screamed again, tossing its head and kicking wildly as the wolf descended upon its chest, blood-soaked fingers tearing past layers of flesh and bone like wrapping paper covering up a the most beautiful gift. All thoughts of the Woman, and the joys of vengeance, faded from her mind as her fingers locked around the throbbing heart and pulled it free. The horse gasped and stilled, and the wolf bent to lick her prize.
She was full, her eternal hunger quelled by the size of the girl in which she dwelt, and so after only a cursory taste she dropped the heart to the ground and darted toward the barn's back exit.
Her hunger had been sated, her vengeance fulfilled. It was time to run under the moon and howl.
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Post by Molly Rourke on Aug 22, 2009 22:31:55 GMT -5
She ran fast and hard, shotgun clutched tight in both hands barely slowing her down by a heartbeat. Despite this, the barn was a long way off from the back fields, and by the time she reached it the inside had gone eerily quiet.
Drawing in a slow breath through her teeth, Molly raised the shotgun and set her finger on the trigger before nudging open the door. It swung open quietly enough, but only a cursory glance revealed that there was little need for silence.
Nothing was left in the barn. Nothing living, anyway.
She took a few steps forward, taking in the carnage with hardened eyes. No matter how painfully the sickness twisted in her gut, no matter how much she felt the burn of tears build up in the back of her eyes, she kept her breathing steady with an effort of will as she pulled her gaze from bloody corpses of her beloved beasts and peered into the shadows around the corners of the barn. She knew what had done this - what else on a full moon night? What else would tear into her horses chests and tear out their hearts the way this creature had done? - and she doubted that it would still be present after the kills were completed. Still, taking an enemy's actions for granted rather than making sure was the best way to get oneself killed.
She moved slowly through the darkened barn, forcibly keeping her gaze away from the black mare bleeding out, its heart discarded beside it like a bitter fruit. Bessie... she'd had the mare for years, since before her father had been killed, since before she'd known that demons were anything more than fantasies to frighten children. Her father had gotten her for Molly back when she was a teenager, when she was just a filly. He'd laughed at the name she chose for it - saying it was meant for a cow, not a mare. But she hadn't cared; she'd heard the name once when she was younger and had known, just known, that Bessie was the name of the horse that would ride with her for the rest of her life.
She pumped the shotgun once, angrily, and quickened her pace past the remains of her longest companion. It was obvious to her, now, that the wolf had gone out the back. As she made her way toward the door, as though to confirm her suspicion, she heard a distant, wild howl from the fields. Her finger tensed on the trigger, and she broke into a run in pursuit of the sound.
The horses were gone, but the kid might still be out there, in danger. Molly would do everything she could to protect her.
And she was going to make the wolf pay.
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Post by Eve Vardell on Aug 26, 2009 19:54:01 GMT -5
[OOC: You know what I just realized? Back when you joined the site we figured this scene completely differently - you have a different version of it in your sample post! lol, that's kind of strange, but I like the way we're doing it now so let's just keep going with it. ] The moon sang to her in a thousand different tones of white and gold. It seemed brighter than it had ever been, not cold and distant but warm and welcoming, throbbing with millennia of power and memory, from the days when it had been worshiped rightly as a god, from the time when it empowered woodland tribes that had to it with offerings. And she, the wolf, could feel that power working within her now. Her awkward, gangly limbs were stronger than they could ever hope to be in the draining daylight, and she pounded through the fields on all four of them, heedless of the rocks pressing into her palms, the tall wheat whipping her face. This was freedom. Blooded teeth baring, she raised her head in a victorious howl. The moon beamed down on her, and she knew it approved of the horses' slaughter. Her offering. The woods were closing in ahead of her. How she loathed to leave the open fields and the warm light of her mother moon, but her instinct for safety led her forward. The Woman would not be happy when she discovered the offerings, and in the wide fields the wolf was an easy target to a practiced eye. Another howl - to prove that this was a tactical retreat, and not a cowardly one - and then she broke the threshold of the trees.
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Post by Molly Rourke on Nov 27, 2009 18:59:41 GMT -5
[OOC: Oh wow! Yeah, I'd completely forgotten that we'd worked out this scene already. But I agree - I like the way this one's going so let's go with that instead.]
She heard the howl echo across the field and against the walls of the building that had become Bessie's tomb. It rattled up amongst the rafters like a bird frantically searching for a way back to the open sky - a cry more wild, more feral, than any human scream. It may have drawn breath from human lungs, have traveled up a human throat, but there was nothing in that voice that sounded like anything other than an animal. No human emotion could be linked to that tone - nothing deserving of hope or of pity. It was a wild beast, and it had killed some of Molly's own.
Whatever face it wore, it deserved nothing more than a swift and brutal end.
As though in answer to her enemy's wildness, Molly felt her heart begin to thrum in a new rhythm - fast, violent, and full of oh-so human fury. Her feet picked up pace until they struck the old wood of the floor in time with each beat.
She burst through the broad doors, into the balmy air and the glow of the cursed moonlight, her eyes immediately scanning the pale fields for a flash of movement, a sign of her target.
There.
Against the trees to the west, a flicker of motion. A blur of brown and blue, as though some animal - faster and more agile than any human could hope to be - had been dressed in faded jeans before being sent back into the wild. It was too far off for Molly to make out much of it,and she wasn't about to waste a shell aiming at it from that distance, but it was enough for her to follow.
Her heart raced, her feet pounded, and she followed the monster toward the trees.
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Post by Eve Vardell on Feb 16, 2010 13:58:25 GMT -5
The wolf had not expected to feel anything but trapped beneath the shadow of the trees, for the encroaching barrier of leaves between herself and the shining moonlight to feel as stifling as the wooden cage of the barn.
She had not considered that this was no ordinary ceiling. Flickers of skylights, breaks in the foliage, captured the wolf's fascination, and she darted delightedly from one patch of light to the next, marveling in the pale patterns her Mother painted across the rich, dark earth. For a moment she forgot the barn, the dead horses, and the vengeful Woman trailing her, too caught up in the fervor that wild forest and the taste of freedom sent raging through her. She prowled through the shadows, eyeing the patches of moonlight like a hungry hunter stalking her prey, before pouncing forward and releasing a snarl that rang like a peal of laughter to her sensitive ears.
The game continued for some time, the wolf chasing flickers of moonlight further and deeper into the forest. Tomorrow she would sleep again, and the frightened girl would reclaim their body and shake at the blood on her hands, the depth of the forest, but tonight there was no reason to be afraid. Tonight the wolf was free, and she wanted to play.
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Post by Molly Rourke on Feb 25, 2010 14:20:48 GMT -5
She hadn't expected to close in on the beast quite so quickly, but she could hear the movement not far ahead of her through the trees. It couldn't have been running from her, then. Had it been foolish enough to think she wouldn't be following... or was it just not concerned enough by her chase to follow?
Molly had never found it easy to live inside the minds of the beasts she hunted. She tried, because she knew it was easier to track them, to anticipate their movements and react accordingly, if she understood how they thought, how they felt. Their motivation.
A hint of a smile tugged the corner of her mouth at that - "motivation." As if these monsters needed any motive to destroy a life.
But this one was acting curiously, even for a wild beast. And that put Molly on edge. If it had wanted to escape, it probably could have. It'd had a good enough lead to disappear... or at least to get much further away than this. It was moving, yes, but at nowhere near its potential speed. So what was it doing? Waiting for her? Trying to lure her in to a trap?
Molly let out a quiet breath and continued to track the creature, gun steadied against her shoulder.
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Post by Eve Vardell on Mar 19, 2010 15:58:36 GMT -5
There was something, a scent in the air which didn't belong there. The scent of blood, of dead horses. And of human.
The wolf had eaten her fill with the horses; she had not planned on taking the Woman's life as well. But if the Woman insisted on tracking her, on invading her territory, then the wolf would have no problem with making her prey.
Regretfully, she gave up her game with the moonlight and ducked into a low bush, waiting for her prey to close in .
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