Micranthemum Monte Carlo

The chalky scent of blood remained. The iron smell sticking to her nostrils like honey, the odor invading the deepest crevices of Lana’s mind. A flicker of a tail was all the movement that followed out in the real world, one where her body was not confined to the hollowness of her own thoughts. Lana could remember nothing, and yet, the images flashed before her mind as though she could recite each and every little one. The words did not come, her voice did not come, and the tiny narration that lived inside her own mind could neither retell the events that led her to…wherever she was. The pictures that flashed across her mind were like figments of a dream—blurry and hazy—but if she reached out just far enough, she may just be able to touch one. To grasp it. To really see it.

Were they memories? Or were they dreams? Her eyes followed the cascading images before her, watching as they tipped and slipped against a waterfall of recollections. Her imagination transformed this dark space into an area where the echos of her past flashed like lightning bugs around her. Her eyes glanced against a specific shard of memory, its surface muddy against plumes of smoke that filtered across her vision. She could see herself, lying against the cold winter ground. Blood seeped out from beneath her body, it’s long, red hands painting the earth beneath her. Beside her, she could see Oskar and his familiar tones of autumn. Though, they too were stained red and the boy’s body was limp and cold. Their silhouettes were softened against a waning daylight, the image slowly starting to dull as Lana attempted to look in closer…

A sound had pierced the empty recess of Lana’s mind, drawing her head to the side and forcing her eyes to narrow against its shrill shriek. Was that…her? The sound had been disgruntled, seemingly squeezed against an impending doom that was not tangible nor present, and yet filled with the metallic taste of fear. She attempted to follow it, pushing her legs further against the darkness of her mind until she could barely catch a glimmer of an image.

Another cry.

This time a roar that brought Lana’s head swiveling to the other side. An animal, no doubt. One that was deep, throaty, and angry. Curiosity had easily gotten the better of the young Crane as her paws were seemingly moving on their own, towards the sound and away from her distinct cry.

Her paws, however, had not made it very far. As the darkened walls around her began to crumble and fade, the earth—if one could call it that—cracked and split until she was no longer standing, but instead falling.  

A yelp echoed from her lungs as the world and her mind went black.

Lana woke to the sound of whistling wind. Traces of exhaustion and pain echoed along the muscles of her body as she shifted. Her paws grappled at the earth beneath her, lifting her body up, as her head danced with a dizzy tune. A green gaze fastened itself around its surroundings, observing, as the world before her sharpened. Where was she?

Without the safety of the walls that she had built around her mind, Lana could recall little of what had just occurred. The memories, the images, they faded into a dream she could faintly remember. The cries, their sound, stayed with her longer—but what had happened between point A and B were ultimately lost on the young Crane.

Structures that she had never seen before stood out to her, their jarring walls of stone unfamiliar as her eyes focused along their jagged edges. The air tasted like moss against her tongue, and the scents that flooded her nose were nothing she could recognize. Large roots tangled themselves against their structures, twisting atop themselves and rising higher into the sky. She traced them with her eyes, watching as the tree limbs soared into spaces and crevices that she could not imagine them fitting into, and yet they had.

She shifted once more, her body jerking against the sound of something cawing and clucking above her. Lana could not make out where the sound was coming from, but its haunting notes caused a shiver to run easily down her spine.

Her mind did its best to justify her existence, to fill in the holes where her memory ran blank. Oskar and her had traveled, they had left in search for something more. Had they found it? Was this it? She could not remember, and yet, the importance for said details began to fade as easily as they had come.

She was slow to fully rise to her feet. The weight of her body feeling unnatural, as though she had been bogged down by water, to the point where weariness creaked along her bones. But Lana did not falter in her step as she turned to peek around her. She had woken up in the middle of this structure, between two roots that cupped her body in a warm embrace. But where was Oskar? The realization had hit her like a ton of bricks. The stark awareness of his absence causing her breath to hitch in her throat as she swiveled around, her paws tapping against the soft dirt as she whipped her gaze back and forth.

“Oskar?” She called out, a sense of urgency coating her tone like honey, despite the rasp of fatigue that glazed over her voice. She searched for him against the flickering daylight and through the coins of light that glittered between the stalks of roots and swaying leaves.

“Oskar!” This time her urgency grew, her tone faltering to a place of desperation as her eyes swept over the decaying structure. Her paws cautiously stepped over roots, pieces of stone and moss that littered the ground as her nose twitched against a flurry of scents around her.

There! A waning scent trail tickled her senses and before she knew it, her body was turning. A full one eighty as her paws leapt over the larger roots of the tree beside her. Her legs pushed her towards the fragmented steps of the structure, where a flash of a brown silhouette lied against a backsplash of grey. With the frantic beating of her heart, Lana pursued it with caution. 

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The royal elken wolf felt her days were filled with a cautious walk. She would survey the roots in a wonder, a glazing of a fiery look for if he would return, an inflicting upon her own fangs would ensue. Though the traces that once were, at the time being were of a vague absence — but she couldn't let that fool herself, knowing full well, heretics were the most trickery of fellows, and knew when to take her for a surprise. She would not let him pass again, nor' would she for her own demise — enemies to the land, despite a sacred bond holding the two..

The sought the heathen deer, but he was not here.

Her claws gliding upon the dusty stones, occasionally pushing through the overgrown routes while wandering through the halls. There was scents not familiar, and a calling — ! a voice she did not know of. It brought a faint chuckle to these hallways, for though abandoned as they appear to be, there was far too many visitors to the realm. 

An ease of glide as she walked through, a stride to the worrisome calling of the other, who hunted for a companion. Instead, she caught the attention of Celnes.

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Green eyes fixated against the backsplash of grey, her attention righteously focused on where she had momentarily spotted the familiar color. Though, as she ambled forward cautiously, the familiar hues of autumn had faded and shifted—their colors morphing into the shadows of the unfamiliar structure before her. She tracked the splotches of color, eyes sharp against the waning daylight as her steps brought her closer and closer to the decaying steps of stone.

“Oskar?” She uttered in a hushed tone as her ears pulled back against her skull. The sound of her heartbeat thundered against her chest. “I swear…If you’re trying to scare me….” She started up once more, eyes narrowing against the shifting shadows of the structure.

She was nearly there.

An abrupt cluck from the sky startled the Crane, the sound seizing her shoulders into an arch and forcing her paws to come to a halt. Her head instinctively swung to the side as her lips pulled back into a silent snarl. Yet when her eyes landed on nothing but the empty roots and moss that littered the ground, her facade quickly fell. She snorted against the air, easily ignoring the thumping of her heart within her ears, as she tried to rein in the terror and fear that crawled up her spine. “Oskar, knock it off and come out here,” she growled.

This wasn’t a time for games—

Though as her attention shifted back towards the archway made of stone, Lana was not met with the familiar silhouette of her friend, but instead one of a stranger. Green eyes clashed against a world of amber and she paused. “You’re not Oskar...” The words fell from her lips like acid as she hid her panic and shock through a hushed tone.

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graphic imagery death

Pain. Searing, white-hot pain. It coursed through him like a hoard of locusts, eating away at every fiber, every molecule, every little detail that made him who and what he was. Torn apart from the inside, bleeding, reduced to a pile of mangled flesh and opportunity. But he'd saved her, he thought. At least he could die knowing that — that in the end, he wasn't as much of a coward as he'd painted himself to be. He'd made his own retribution, dealt his own justice, and would soon meet his mother whom would welcome him with a smile and open arms and an I'm so proud of you.

Dazedly he took in his last sights of the valley he'd been born and raised in, the majority of his vision blocked by the hulking mass that now wore his blood. The last bits of auditory information were of the beast as it lumbered away, chortling and grunting as though Oskar had been nothing but a nuisance. A trespasser; a child who'd decided to play stupid games and now regretted winning the ultimate stupid prize.

Then, a scream; far away, feminine. Lana.

He panicked, but couldn't do anything about it. Everything drowned in the sound of his own blood rushing through his ears, spilling onto the nettles and leaf litter beneath him. He choked, sputtering, fighting to do something, anything except lie there and die. But he couldn't. The air wouldn't come — he couldn't force it down his shredded windpipe any better than he could draw a sound from it.

His eyes rolled into the back of his head, the world falling into darkness and he falling with it.

-

The smooth stone beneath him felt like a bed of ice; a frigid coffin for which he could lay, undisturbed, trapped in his own hellish version of purgatory. But he'd at least managed to sit up after a few failures, to brace his forelimbs against the foreign surface and stare, absent-mindedly, at the flooring between his paws. His head hung heavily between his shoulders, swaying ever so gently, massive with the weight of agony and defeat that truthfully, he'd never asked for.

"Oskar?"

It sounded so far away, weak with distance and exhaustion. It was so easy to assume hallucination that he didn't even care to respond. Didn't move, didn't do anything besides stare and wonder what he'd ever done to deserve this. Then it came again, that voice, urgent as though she were still there, still calling to him and hoping that he'd come to comfort her while she fell.

Part of him wanted to give in again. Wanted to slump, to let his wobbling legs buckle and send him crashing back to earth. But truth is, he didn't even have the energy for that.

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"I'm afraid not deer." A lost soul into the temple of the damned ; the Queen started to count this place as a guiding toward the heretics, ever since that damnable stag had touched here. Those who entered were not the pinnacles of the High Elk blessing, she so thought while looking at the raveness before her so. Though touched with brown, finding one within this place was.. Suspicious, at most, especially when it seemed they were lost and wandering, calling out to a stranger in which.. She flickered her ear, hearing the quiet steps of another emerging from somewhere else.

All was to be destined, and she was curious within her devil smile on what purpose that they were brought to these lands? A feiry gaze, dashing overhead of the others shoulders in a knowledgement ; she sees him. Before turning her gaze back to the woman.

"You seem lost."

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Lana was quick to push back her surprise, easily masking it behind a countenance of indifference. Be it her pride or her own need for self-preservation, the young Crane would’ve rather been caught dead than to face a stranger with a look of shock or distress written across her features. And so that was what led to an impassive stare to swirl haphazardly against her green gaze.

Unsure of whether or not the woman was friend or foe, Lana chose to tread lightly but cautiously. With enough control, she was able to keep her hackles from raising, her tail from lifting and a growl from surfacing. Though, what she could not restrain was the subtle shifts in her fur that tickled her spine, hitching up at the sweet sound of the woman’s voice in her ear.  

Lost? No.

Merely…Misplaced.

“Who are you?” Lana cared little to give the woman what she wanted. With Oskar still missing and Lana having not a clue of what part of the world she had just involuntarily stepped into, the less information she gave out, the better. At least until she was certain of the intentions of the natives…or whomever roamed this land and the whereabouts of Oskar. 

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He'd felt this kind of an ache before; this weight that settled atop his ribcage, pressing, threatening to snap something and end it all in a great whoosh of bone turned to dust. It was an emptiness that screamed, broke right through his eardrums and imbedded itself in his skull. A pain that he'd spent his entire life trying to run from, heal from, forget about so that he might open his eyes one day and see something else besides the ghost that haunted him.

Now, well. Now there'd be two.

Both taken from him in much the same way; violent, identical. Except this time, he'd tried. He'd defied fate and he'd stepped up instead of leaving, running, hiding until the damage had been done. But it hadn't helped, had it? The outcome had still been the same, and here he was again, alone, snapped in half and fraying at the seams.

The slight muddling of nearby voices had made an ear twitch every now and then. Stuck in the same hallucination, he thought, and how cruel was it that one of them sounded exactly like—

You seem lost.

He risked looking up, pulled in a deep, shaky breath while he struggled to focus on his surroundings. It was dark, though rays of sunlight managed to bounce here and there, refract off a glittering bed of moss or against the jagged edge of broken stone. Around the girth of a distant pillar he could make out two forms, both dark, both so blurry that he wondered if maybe he was just seeing double. So for a while he merely watched, but he could at least tell where the voices were coming from. Maybe not a hallucination after all?

Or maybe just a very good one.

Who are you?

Lana.

Suddenly he was on his feet, the weight of the world rocking beneath him. Because he knew that voice, and he knew that coat and that scent and that attitude anywhere. But when he tried to make his way to her, to sever that distance and chase that mirage, that's when his body gave out. He tumbled, having not taken more than a few steps, and shut his eyes against the thump that his chin made when it collided with the floor.

"Lana," he groaned, though he felt so weak, he was unsure if she'd hear him.

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She was quick to adjust herself, not letting the elk Queen catch her act of discomfort, surprise, or even fear. She experienced many who held a fear to where they were — the unknown how they landed here, for who else by a God could cast them away, so far from their land? Yet, these mortals knew not of the god she prays to, the High Elk ; and does not know the others that may plague to this land. A patron, to herself and many others, but alas even He did not give answers, when she too was summoned to this land.

It was wise not to show any, a neutrality and yet a wariness as they raised their hackles to herself, but she did not return the gesture and continued on with a crescent smile. Even if she wasn't a fighter — the Déorwine has gotten in a bit too few of them, and gained in her experience. There was no worry within her expression, or posture — she held herself high by the status she reigns in a pleasant atmosphere, even if her heart was poisoned.

"I am Celnes Deorwine, of Elkshire," she announced, "though it seems.." and she did not continue that sentence, lifting her paw and pointing it towards the groggy figure behind her.

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Wide eyes were reduced to slits as she stared at the woman before her. She introduced herself, just as Lana had asked. And though the introduction should’ve calmed the young Crane, it had instead done the exact opposite. She could feel her heart hammer within her chest, hear the blood rush through her ears—and gods, what the fuck was an Elkshire?

Confusion on top of more confusion all but clouded her mind. She had been thrusted into this uncertain world, pushed into a place of chaos against her will, and without the chance to get her bearings—Lana was at a loss of what to do next.

Trust had never come easy to her. Not since a child and especially not as she aged.

The woman’s enigmatic smile, hidden by a curtain of pleasantries was unsettling to say the least. This Celnes was confident, she was self-assured, and what Lana despised the most was that she was in a position to be all of that. She knew where she was, she knew she had the control, and she knew how to use it. So, where did that leave Lana?

At the bottom.

Confused, lost and helpless.

Reduced to nothing more than a defenseless pup in need of someone older, bigger, and more capable to help her survive.

Lana nearly conceded, nearly gave into the defeat she was feeling, and nearly uttered the weak words asking for the woman’s help.

Though at the brief lifting of the woman’s paw, casting it to a place somewhere behind Lana, the young Crane had paused. Her eyes picked up, turning and peaking over her shoulder as a crumpled figure of darkness lied within the shadows.

Ears twitched atop her head as an emerald gaze subtly brightened. Oskar? Her breathing hitched in her throat as she forced her paws to turn. It hadn’t taken more than a few moments, a few strides no less, before Lana was at the stone structure, staring at the familiar silhouette of her friend.

Her body sunk then, her nose coming to gently prod at the boy’s cheek as she sniffed.“Oskar...?” She whispered against his fur, “I’m here—I’m right here—you’re—we're alright.”

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Everything that had once made him exhausted now seemed to scream at him in pain. Warnings went off in every which direction, blaring, their lights blinding against the darkness of whatever building they'd manifested in. And Oskar lay amidst the chaos, trapped in the fog of his own mind, choking on the thickness of it.

And then came her voice, her touch, her nose cold against his cheek but still warmer than the stonework beneath him. He breathed, his breath ragged from being torn apart and put back together so many times that he'd lost count. But slowly an eye opened, bright green to match that of his friend's, and he tried to force a small smile.

"Lana," he whispered back, as though saying her name might help keep her there, might stop whatever forces that worked against him from taking her away again. "I thought—" a shaky breath, "I thought I'd lost you."

But she was there, he was there, and they were both alright. The smile he'd tried to force earlier came to fruition, because he knew Lana was the type to lie to someone to ease their suffering, but part of him knew that her words were only the truth. At least, as far as she knew.

His other eye opened as he fought to break his gaze from hers — to focus on the distant figure, almost as if in question. Accusation. Had she been the one to bring them here?

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Two wolves who recognized each other, family, friend, lover — not everyone had the fate to be reunited with someone they once knew. A mourning within her heart, remembering how she lost a love and a brother. Though cousins found safe and sound, it could not fill the void of those she cherished dear, and felt a hatred, burning within seeing this lovely union.. Alas she would never let such scorn appear on her face, a silence coming from the Deorwine as she smiled gently upon the two and within their reunion. What a bliss, they must be ; to be in this unknown world and yet found each other in a strange realm.

"Isn't this lovely," she commented, a cold chuckle, "perhaps you may do well with recuperating in my land, for this area is not.. Safe." As the other gazed with accusations, a glimpse of what thought to be herself only brought amusement. To claim such powers, she'd be struck down by the High Elk himself, perhaps, just as she was cursed on the day her litter was born. Forlorn and scorn, yet relish, and pray to Him as there was nothing else she could do ; as the Queen rebuilt her Kingdom steadily, and slowly.. Betrayals come and go, and she, was never one to let an opportunity to fly.

A lull' though it wasn't far from the truth — Nightwalkers claimed near, and so was that deer that imitated a wolf. The land, mysterious as it was.. Wasn't refined for their situation. Wouldn't be nice if she acted like a savior, and granted a sanctuary for these lowly souls?

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