How do you love? Like a knife.

The wolf had taken off in one direction and hadn't looked back, fleeing into the night with nothing but his thoughts to accompany him. Dark thoughts which plagued him, ones that haunted him like specters in the corners of his mind, weaving webs of sorrow and rage. 

In the loneliness of his solitude, they found it most easy to attack. They drained him, feeding upon him until he was nothing but a carcass, a skeleton reduced to dry marrow and ash. 

But it was better than death.

Better.

Death. 

His trot slowed into a hazy walk, emerald green eyes glazing over with a harsh detachment. He faded into nothingness, a shadow upon trees, a ghost licking at the flesh of the world. Begging for peace. He didn't think it'd ever end -- the torment, the anger. The rage that built up inside him, awaiting eruption was a ticking time bomb, one he felt every agonizing moment of. And he didn't think he'd ever be free of it, not until he slaughtered every last one of its sources.  

Clay found himself in the opening clearing of the vale, the cool water of the lake licking at his paws where he'd stopped at the shore. He decided then he'd kill them. All of them. 

They'd pay and he'd finally have his retribution. 

@Misericordia

---

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Eyes like glass stare through him – the jagged, broken pieces chewing through his soul in one glance. The fur color changes every time, as he stares, studying every new feature. A bird clips over his back, a sharp talon catching a strand and cutting it loose. The ground shook, a crevasse opening beneath him, and a yawning void within swallowing his falling—

An inhale crackled through him as he jolted awake, his head narrowly avoiding a heavy smack into bark and wood. His eyes roll in his head a moment as his tongue smacks against the roof of his mouth with an annoying texture. He flexed his shoulders, reveling in the cracks down his spine and into his hips. He felt... better than before.

He studied the low hollow he rests in, it's almost perfectly formed to his body, which is no easy feat given his size. Were he not a wiser wolf, he would say it was like it had grown around him while he slept, drawing him into its protective embrace like a shield against the greater world. He wondered how long it would have taken for it to eat him alive. He dragged himself from the hollow, stretching long and low on his haunches as he went, fur and muscle shifting along his bones with the flex of good health. He wasn't sure where he was as the foliage parted to reveal a gorgeous lake, backdropped by a brilliant sunrise.

"One of the better places I've woken up," Misericordia's voice roiled in amusement as he murmured low. His eyes drew toward the bank to his right, catching on a silhouette staring out on the lake; back toward him. His attention firmly held, he began to walk at a slow, comfortable pace toward the shape, eyes narrowed in scrutiny of every detail as they grew steadily clearer. He would not announce his presence. Should the wolf he approached not notice him until he was in a dangerous distance... they clearly weren't of any use to him.

So, just who did he have the pleasure of meeting?

---

@Clay

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He was darkness in the light, though what little light that still flickered within the chest of the man had began to dwindle. It diminished with each setting of the sun, but now, as the sun rose, it sparked once more. Dim, faint, flickering. In the rippling surface of the blue waters, turned golden by the rising of the dawn into the sky, he saw his reflection. Down, his gaze peeled into it, something of scrutiny painting itself against his face. 

He used to be handsome. Pretty. Now, he felt as if he'd been turned ugly by the rot that consumed him from the inside out. Would it eat him entirely? Maybe if he let it. 

He almost missed the fall of foot—he might have if he hadn't tuned back into the reality that unfurled around him. There was no hiding the autonomous response of bristling hair, strands of silver and gray standing up on end, his emerald eyes full of animosity burning holes into the figure that approached soon as his head turned. He didn't know who dared bother him, but they were in for— 

He hesitated when his eyes focused. A man of a titan's physique, fur of crimson and gray. Handsome, stalwart -- though there was something unsettling about the way he watched Clay. He looked through him, like he'd laid him out open and bare, reading him from the inside out, learning all that there was to know of the fallen angel. When Clay realized he'd begun to stare, he ripped his molten eyes from the wolf and pinned them elsewhere, anywhere but him, growling out his speech.

“I do not know where you're from,” He hissed something cruel, before inhaling something deep, careful to annunciate his words, “but some people don't take being snuck up on lightly.” His head tilted upwards, green eyes burning into the wolf as if he were the one looking down on him -- bitterly, Clay wouldn't acknowledge that it was clearly the other way around. 

warden

---

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Beauty was in the eye of its beholder, and truthfully, did Misericordia behold. A scent tickled across his nose, warmed across his senses like the smoke of a fire, drifting effervescence and sparks across his tongue. A coat, well-worn in the way it fit to form and wound around an ever-alluring form; Miseri almost had the shame to chide himself – he should be focusing on more practical things, like where he was and not purely on matters of who he was speaking to. There was something so tantalizingly.. harsh about the creature before him, and it made him seek answers in the air around them.

He couldn't be certain yet, what gave that certain quality of broken fragility; Miseri, of course, hemmed in on this thought with mere guesswork. He could be altogether wrong, diving so deeply into speculation, but it was more fun to take a chance at being proven right than to constrain himself to shallow thinking.

A low huff left him, eking from that stony front he presented now, head high and paws steady beneath him as he stopped a comfortable distance away. He didn't feel like mending a new scar on his face for growing too near. He wouldn't press forward before he was sure it would be tolerated.

Misericordia spoke, his voice a quiet one, edged with not-quite amusement, but some kind of lightness, "I cannot imagine a world in which it is."

His eye glittered with a quicksilver shine, before it was gone beneath the fake luster. Still, his next comment came out without even a sheen of mockery, though no small sliver of him besmirched big, noble types. It did however come with the slightest degree of taunting. "I offer my most humble apologies."

He even bowed his head a slightest degree, though his eyes hardly closed or left the object of his study. His question came out with genuine curiosity but also too marred with something testing, "I am afraid I am well... cómo se dice...?" — how do you say...

He tilted his head aside, staring off along the bank a moment, as if gathering a stray thought. Misericordia didn't turn his head to face the wolf, instead gazing at him from his periphery with one golden eye, nearly hidden beneath a lid drawn low. "Lost, I believe."

---

@Clay

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Clay was unable to shake the feeling of looming doom, a fog that lurked around the corners of where Clay couldn't see—or maybe, didn't want to see. 

He appreciated it; the way the wolf didn't come any closer. Clay knew it had nothing to do with his measly attempt at intimidation--there were worse beasts in the thickets than the gray, muddied pelt of he. Then again, part of him liked to think it was. That there was some part of him that was fearsome, that he'd grown into something to be feared, an opponent to be revered. 

Liked to think he'd never be a victim again. That he'd never have to lay down and take whatever sorry hell the world tossed at him. He remembered the bullshit he'd hear spewed during his adolescence, that trials life threw your way only made you stronger. His teeth gritted together at the mere thought of it. No, no. It was an excuse. An excuse to tolerate injustice. 

His head tilted away, peering at the red titan through one visible eye, the other half of his face hidden, and turned towards the lake. The sun that bounced off the surface of the water captured him in its fragmenting golds, a bronze hue that magnified the impersonal beauty Clay possessed. “Good.” A single word, though it was caked in something bitter, something cold. 

As the brute admitted he was lost, Clay only stifled a laugh, one that reflected the hollow cavern of his chest. For some odd, peculiar reason, Clay laughed—and it was not a sarcastic one, though there was the usual twinge of it. It was genuine, pure, unfiltered in its clarity as it bounced from his teeth. Then, he stopped, turning his cold eyes onto the rogue. “W-we all are.” He wanted to bite into his own tongue, to draw blood when he stumbled over his words, ears immediately flattening against his skull. One could hardly be of the intimidating caliber when he spoke as if he were some scared youngling, tail tucked between his legs. “Wherever you came from...” There was emptiness upon his tongue where the wolf's name would have been, but he continued after a lingering pause, just enough time for the wolf to chime in with his name if he chose to, “You w...won't be going back.” 

A scoff, and the lean wolf was turning, moving to walk along the edge of the lake. 

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Misericordia, for all his time spent watching, waiting, and predicting, never could quite expect the responses he would get at first. However, he could be certain, never had one startled him as much as the one he received now. The dichotomy of the airy portrait before him, with the heft of unspoken tremulous was enough to catch Miseri on the wrong foot, if only for a moment.

The acceptance into a low noise of what he had believed was amusement — but it was all too sudden. There was a grain and grit to it that made it feel wrong as much as it sounded and seemed right. When the stranger’s eyes turned to him again, they glowed with the fractures of sunlight, and yet bit like frost; when his voice came, it stammered and slipped. Another wolf’s heart might have crooned in pity, oh, poor thing. But Miseri was not that dull. Instead, he fixated on this cracked thing before him, and marveled at the small slips of very real, very sharp persona that revealed themselves with every biting word and exhale.

”Misericordia,” The red-furred wolf filled in. He didn’t sound eager, but neutral, waiting and patient. He stood still on his paws without fidget, letting his body fall idle as he let the stranger say all he wished, uninterrupted. When his final words were uttered, Miseri couldn’t help the way one brow rose, and his lips pulled in a low frown. Was this some weak joke?

Only truth dripped from those words, but it didn’t make any sense. Had this wolf been part of the reason he was here now? Wherever here was. Misericordia did not give the stranger a chance to make anymore distance, trailing behind at an equal pace, step for step, as well as his strides would allow. He remained only so far as the stranger’s peripheral, but if one step moved him closer within view, then Miseri was willfully ignorant to his own motions.

”You seem certain,” Misericordia said, his chin tilting down toward his shoulder as he walked, tension spreading down his neck and into his spine. His gaze anchored to the wolf before him, rather than their surroundings. Oh.. hmm. ”So, you’re lost too.”

If the stranger turned to look at him, he would catch Miseri’s facetious and knowing expression, matched with an almost-smile. There was no pity to be found in his eyes. It was clear he didn’t think this was so surface level, and chose to joke about their actual awareness, than to press for any real answers. Misericordia didn’t have much to return to, and if his new path was to walk forward and harass this stranger with his presence, then that was that. He continued, batting his eyes and letting a real smirk pull his lips with a flash of teeth, ”Its nothing to be ashamed of…”

Now, it was Misericordia’s turn to ask for a name, an air of confidence about him, even if he wasn’t assured that he would receive a genuine answer.

---

@Clay

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A pretty stone, one set apart from the others. It caught Clay's attention and instinctively the gray wolf was leaning downwards, his movements soft and languid as his jaws parted. Into his mouth he snatched it up, pushing it into his lower cheek to rest until he found somewhere else to put it, to stash it away with the other various things that'd caught his eye. 

It was then he noticed the continued sound of pawsteps. They fell behind him, and grew closer, but never too close. Good. This wolf had a head upon his shoulders, something Clay was thankful for; he'd just begun to feel back to normal after his scuffle with the Bogeyman of Blackwood Reach, and he was not keen on earning anymore battle scars. At least, not for the immediate future. 

So you're lost too. Clay's head snapped backwards, his glare raking viciously over the redhead.  

“I am not-” His breathy hiss was cut off. 

It's nothing to be ashamed of. 

Clay suddenly turned, his movements so quick they might have blurred. His teeth snapped, pushing air into the face of the wolf, his nose coming to rest only inches away from his. “I am not l-lost.” A growl. 

He swallowed, emerald eyes snapping up from his nose and to the burning eyes of the other. His heart skipped a beat. “My name is Clay.”

hoarder

---

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The glare thrown at him ignited a certain amusement and inky interest, even as the stranger stooped to collect something from the river; it almost made him drag a tongue over tooth, appraising and reappraising the sight before him. Misericordia never found honest interest in the meek and sniveling — maybe entertained it out of boredom, but never had he truly been captured by those all-together bashful or cowardly. Misericordia was pleased to know the wolf before him, for all his sharp and quiet edges, wasn’t constrained to a similar, meager attitude.

When teeth snapped just before his nose, so swiftly and viciously that it was almost like a breeze had brushed him, Misericordia applauded himself at his lack of flinch. He schooled his face from his poking into a cool, lidded stare; a certain amusement and intrigue no doubt swimming in the depths of his golden yellow eyes. The quality unhidden as he watched steadily back, into the lovely green of those opposite. Misericordia was both pleased and disappointed at the sudden snap — enjoying the still living spirit of the wolf before him, but disdaining what seemed to be quite the temperament. However, that wasn’t to say it wasn’t a quality Misericordia couldn’t completely hate, only filing it away in the back of his mind as a cautious note.

This entire situation was precarious; as daunting as treading the edge of a cliff, awaiting a single rock to slip and drop him to his demise. But Miseri was always one for a challenge. He let the charged moment hang still in the air, not commenting further just yet — bowing his head in acquiescence instead. He chose to preoccupy himself with the name given, studying it like it were material before him, branded into gray fur.

”Clay,” Misericordia tested, rolling the name on his tongue like it were something to be savored. A simple name; but not one without a range of associations that came to mind. Ultimately, he focused on one in particular, something to be molded, something that could never truly be broken. He decided to veer a little onto daring. His face fell neutral again, though when he spoke, it was with a pleasant twill and tilt to his lip as he complimented, ”It suits you.”

---

@Clay

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The way his own name fell off the tongue of the red devil before him, Clay swore he felt his heart stop. It clenched within the restraints of his rib cage, seizing up and shriveling until it was nothing but a dehydrated ball of muscle. Clay's breathing hitched for several long pauses, his green eyes — full of a heated irritation — flickered like a dying light as they searched across his face. He looked into the other's eyes, ones full of hardened mischief, and clenched his teeth. 

Clay went to make a witty retort, but it was cut off. 

It suits you. The mere sentence haunted him. A bitter arrival upon Clay's conscious that drove him mad with anger, and he was bunching up with annoyance once more, the strength in his body pulling up into his shoulders as they squared. His whole stance ready for the attack, though Clay wasn't going to. He knew he wasn't going to. It was merely meant to threaten, but it didn't work. The man didn't even flinch, just kept leering at Clay with those daunting, wicked, handsome eyes...— stop it. 

“F-fuck off.” He spat in his face, and then once more he was turning on his heel, knocking his shoulder into the other as he moved. He was determined now to put as much distance between himself and this man as quickly as possible. But that meant returning to Ullarcraig, where he'd be met with questions from Vulture, no doubt. And he'd created an annoying habit of bumping into Ilya on more than one occasion, something else that Clay found troubled him. The man was so nice, so doting and caring; it made Clay sick, but not sick at him. At himself. Sick he needed the help, that for some reason, he made others feel as if they needed to offer him sympathy. He didn't fucking need sympathy. 

Clay, for some reason, cast a glance back and internally cursed himself for it. Just what he needed; to give him a reason to follow. 

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Misericordia’s talents were in recognizing the smallest of hesitations, the flickers and glimpses of something meant to be hidden, things meant to be buried the instant they are born. Sometimes, they gave him an advantage, assuming he leveraged it right, and didn’t fuck it all up. Which, wasn’t something Miseri could say he’s never done. The business of meddling is one that means rolling with the punches, and if he needed to roll.. then so be it.

Misericordia half-stumbled to the side as Clay shoved past him, a slight tick of reproach licking down up his bones like a dying flame before it extinguished. Any tension that had entered his own frame, if only because of the abrupt movement making him expect teeth, bled away into his fakely serene manner. A satisfaction rankled through him; that almost… enticing scent of a burning storm wrapping around him like a second coat, before disappearing like a whisper between his teeth. Miseri turned just as quickly, movements all liquid and flowing as he easily kept pace with Clay, traveling just a bite closer than he had before.

That dark, slinking and bitter part of him assured that if Clay were to break into a sprint, Misericordia would be close enough to catch him; assuming he was fast enough, and Clay were slow enough. However, like a passing breeze, the thought was gone. There was no enjoyment to such foul and disturbing feats; the game Miseri enjoyed was far more strategic. Besides, he would never stoop so pitifully low to writhe in the mud with the worms.

What could top the ultimate victory of being able to be the one to turn your nose and listen to a heart shatter anew at a simple rejection. Where was the fun without the groveling? The wretched tears and unending, desperate devotion?

Misericordia considered his next move carefully, head dipping lower; making himself look ever so slightly smaller, if one ignored the crest of his neck and its dark fur rippling behind his ears. When Clay turned and glanced back, it only assured him a little more, his face drawing back into something more neutral, and then into reticence.

”I can tell when I’m not wanted, hermoso — beautiful,” Misericordia sighed, voice tinted with his theatrics, projecting the image of dramatic sorrow as his brows furrowed together and tilted upward — his ears pulling back, and his lips curling in a tiny, pathetic frown. His eyes flickered away for the first time in what felt like hours, dancing over the lake a moment. ”If you wish me to leave, then I will go...”

The slinking part of him was back and alive, urging for Clay to tumble into his trap. His eyes narrowed minutely, sliding back to Clay’s silhouette, by all means… dismiss me.

---

@Clay

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