Here We Go A G A I N

The last thing that Harper could remember before the ground shook was the lights. Streaks in the sky that gathered her attention that had never been there before. Streaks in the sky and what looked like lightning shooting up, from the ground. Everything in her body told her to abandon home; to flee, to move out of the way, and naturally, Harper would have. Other animals were already fleeing; there had been howls in the sky from various other wolves, of other packs. Her own howls likely never made it to their destination. And then there was nothing. She could recall the sound of the growling from Mother Earth as she came to life and then nothing. Darkness took her and many others, and when Harper awoke, the first thing that she noted was the pressure. Something quite heavy and dirty covered her entire coat, as if holding her there, in place. When her senses came, Harper realized that the earthquake had caused a landslide and now Harper was stuck in the ground, only her face and right foreleg had not been covered. 

She was dirty, her face covered in little cuts and bruises and not to mention the debris of the aftermath. The rest of her body was covered beneath her, unable to move. She grumbled, twisting and turning in place, though nothing happened. She was stuck. The earth had tried (and failed) to swallow her. Harper was a prideful canine, though, refusing to call for help as she was determined to do this on her own. Though she pondered if it would be best to wait for rainfall to loosen the ground around her. 

Until then, she would wait.



@Amaranth
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The wraith had wandered, wandered, wandered around the plains. It was an endless expanse of waving grass, rolling plains, bright sunlight. The normalcy of it all had become so mundane that it began to drive her insane (more insane?). It was the same sunrise every morning - a peculiar and bright kiss of fire. It was the same sunset every evening - a dim and inviting mist of azure and navy. Days of endless wandering became nights of endless insomnia; she was searching for everything and nothing and hoping that somehow, someway, her amethyst eyes would find the prize she sought. Or was it really ... the prize she sought to bring back to Valeska?

Either way, the endless days turned into endless nights and Amaranth easily lost track of the time. Lost track of her location. Lost track of her goddamn mind. She slowed as her body reached the top of a rolling hill, gaze scanning the mindlessly mundane surroundings that lingered at the foot of the small mound of grassy dirt. A harsh sigh escaped her dark lips that were now pursed in clear animation of her boredom.

But something told her to travel onward. Perhaps it was the wind. Perhaps it was intuition ... but she moved again, her limber body weaving through the tendrils of slithering grass, paws lagging and dragging through the dust as a plume of mist expanded behind her carelessly laid treads. The breeze touched her coat with cool fingers, the warmth of the sun kissing her atop the back of her neck and her dorsum. She reveled in the contrast for a brief moment before she noticed a new scent on the wind - something familiar but concealed with the harsh scent of wet earth. Her movements slowed as she reached the bottom of the slope, nostrils flaring greedily as her storming purple eyes scoured the ground until they finally found the source.

A disconnected limb. A decapitated head.
Seemed her day would no longer be classified as boring.

"...Harper?" The word touched the silence of the air, escaping her in a wisp that was as alluring and gentle as the breeze. Amaranth would recognize those eyes (those lips, really) anywhere. A flicker of her fangs sparked in the light as she grinned, prancing now as she approached the disembodied limbs and head. Was she buried? Or did she somehow get spliced when the earth swallowed her? There was certainly only one way to find out. "The earth clearly does not find you as delicious as I do," she hummed, a sultry lilt persisting beneath the jest that lightened her dark features. Golden paws went to work, instinctually beginning to shovel away the heavy mud that had encased her.

Oh, how pleased Valeska would be; but only if she could return Harper to her in one piece.

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The arborist sinner drifted through consciousness like a lost ship in a storm. There was little else to do while she waited for the clouds to darken, to bring her the fall of rain which didn’t look like it would be happening for quite some time. This would come as to no surprise at all, of course, as Harper went through attempting to bust out of the ground in sessions, and sleeping in between to gather her energy. It was a vicious cycle of no improvement as she could not feel any of the soil around her loosening, though she knew better than to continue her efforts.

Prideful still, though, the devil wolf would not call upon strangers for help. Who knew what sort of canine her cries of help would attract, and Harper would hate to lure in the wrong sort of canine that would see her as a free meal versus someone to help and assist. Or perhaps Harper was just pridefully paranoid, if there ever was such a thing. She was in between consciousness when the queen of gold happened upon her, and though the scent of something familiar stirred her enough to allow the devil to briefly open her eyes, Harper didn’t exactly believe what she was seeing.

A familiar face? Here, of all places? Granted, the earthen woman’s complete attention had been on attempting to escape the earth’s grasp, she hadn’t even noticed that they weren’t quite in kansas anymore. Nor did she have the energy or the strength to keep her eyes open for very long. It felt more so like she was half asleep and struggling to stay awake, like being woken in the middle of the night and only desiring to return to sleep, but also being too intrigued to actually do so. Was this a delicious dream or an alluring hallucination? Was it both?

For a time, Harper would watch over this angel as those golden paws dug into the soil that held her in place, large ears flickering with the words as Harper could suddenly recall the feeling of her tongue colliding with something smooth and delicious. Something in which that Harper now longed for. It was this feeling of desire that grounded Harper, clearing the fogginess of her dream-like state, though the sinner would merely smile as she glanced admiringly and silently up at her golden savior.

@Amaranth
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The disembodied head did not speak, but those dark eyes told a voluminous tale ... there were whispers there, hidden beneath stoic veils. Desperation, determination, hunger. Amaranth's smile widened as those eyes touched her, that hunger threatening to devour her. But the large lady did not move; there was no attempt at escape. And perhaps it was because all of her energy had been sapped in her transportation to this bland purgatory ... or perhaps it was because she hungered to be saved. Perhaps she'd been waiting for Amaranth this whole time, just as Amaranth had been searching (albeit lazily) for her.

Destiny. Fate. Or perhaps the hand of the gods that Valeska often sang praise to. The smaller, devout lady often touted on about how Amaranth had an unseen and unspoken connection to these elements; and perhaps she was right. For it was often the most ignorant that became the most enlightened. Consecrated. Exalted. Amaranth.

Golden paws continued to dig, uncovering Harper piece by piece, part by part. It would seem that the earth had not spliced her, no, for she was certainly connected together beneath this blanket of stone and grit. The stench of wet dirt invaded her senses as she continued to turn over the mud until she'd silently and sufficiently revealed Harper's body to the sunlight. Scratched, war-torn, chewed up, and stinking of earthworms ... but she certainly was the same Harper that Amaranth remembered.

Her paws quieted, but her eyes were alive with a swirling sea of purple mist. She wanted to know how Harper ended up here. She wanted to know how they all had ended up here. "Welcome to purgatory," she began finally, pursing her lips as she mused toward the other. A delicate, golden paw reached forward to softly stroke the top of Harper's dusty head, brushing away some of the crusted debris that settled there. It was distorting her figure, and Amaranth, too, hungered. For beauty, for knowledge, for information. Electricity sparked at their gentle touch, her hazy eyes mirroring the sly smile that pulled her lips into a soft coil.

"Do you know how we got here?" This time, her eyes glinted with a curiosity that burned hotter than fire, the alluring intonation of her voice swirling like a gentle mist. It was almost like she was begging Harper to remember ... remember the details where her mind was fuzzy.

But perhaps the details of death were not to be remembered.

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While Harper was not attached to her emotions and feelings as strongly as others, it would bring an odd tidal wave of emotions upon the realization that she was, in fact, being saved - literally - by her sister’s friend and perhaps her own favorite (as if there were others?) acquaintance: Amaranth. The bad influence of their only (though mutual) connection, the small, silver dove. Had it not been for that, or her arborist nature, Harper and Amaranth would never have met. It was their only connection and Harper pondered if the two of them would truly ever share anything more.

Yet still, Harper was glad that it was Amaranth that saved her versus their little silver dove. Oh, Harper could only imagine the earful she would have gotten if the devout dove had uncovered her, but even as she was uncovered, Harper didn’t yet move; allowing herself to take a deep inhale, despite that she now smelled like the earth, which was not a very attractive smell. She was in rough shape, with small cuts and bruises that her dark coat concealed nicely, it was a wonder - though not a true miracle, as that implied that she was a devout, too, which she certainly was not - that she held no broken bones or any fatal damages.

The very first thing she would do once uncovered, was to stretch with a heavy moan, though stopping to grin up at her dear savior, almost as if she hadn’t heard the words with another, equally deep inhale and… she paused, only briefly. Purgatory? Oh, so they were dead. Which, she supposed, would explain the entire thing, wouldn’t it? The lack of a memory, the crawling out of the earth - yet, what it wouldn’t explain was the familiar scent of pine on the angel’s coat, or why they were both in the same place until she recalled the roots. Ah! Yes. Gods were cruel things, after all, weren't they? So anally judgmental. Hmm. Now that sounded familiar, didn't it? Standing, though slowly, to shake out her coat, though gently; the sinner was still quite sore from all that pressure of the ground and wet mud. “Chamomile.” In fact, she still had the taste of herb in her mouth. “Nothing else.”

@Amaranth

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The dark-pelted woman rose like a corpse lifting from a grave. The large, muscular body roared back to life in a creaking stretch, awakening each and every muscle that had slumbered for the duration of her transport to this new world. The golden woman was patient as Harper re-awakened, deeply breathing life into a previously entrapped, motionless frame. Dirt and grime cascaded from her skin as she lifted and moved, grit tumbling from her pelt as if a grave (pun intended) reminder that she was nothing but a toy for the earth to consume at any moment; they all were.

"Chamomile. Nothing else," the woman announced with a grave, stoic sense of stony ambivalence. A soft exhale passed from dark lips, purple gaze as indifferent as the tone of Harper's voice. Head lilted from side to side, a soft and metronomic sway as she watched the woman erupt from the ground and regain her sense of stability ... her sense of self. "It would seem all of us have forgotten our death," she crooned in deep, melodic harmony; golden brows rose upward as her slender ears pushed forward in contemplation.

It was all so bizarre that ... that perhaps it was all within her imagination.

A smile was all that she could muster to replace the confusion and heat that was brewing within her chest. A smile that became wryly twisted with the irony of this cruel world that she had created and trapped herself within. As trapped as Harper buried beneath the tendrils of an angry earth. "Valeska is here, too," she offered lightly, pushing the words through smiling teeth. "She's been looking for you. She thought you were lost ... swallowed whole, and digested by the earth. And yet ..." she trailed off a moment, head dipping low as she took a couple of fluid steps toward the other. Her muzzle lifted into Harper's chin, nose touching her cheek gently. "... and yet, here you are."

A deep inhale brought the scent of winter, masqued by the hearty scent of earth, into her nostrils. Into her core. Igniting something within for a very brief moment before she pulled herself back a few inches, nose hovering close to the other. Purple eyes locked with visages of equal caliber, that smile never leaving the traces of her delicate, feminine features. "We should get you back to her." The words were but a whisper, but as she said them, her body turned and moved a few paces away. The plumage of her golden tail flicked, inviting Harper forward before her head looked backward over her shoulder, purple gaze glinting as she urged the other to follow her.

She could not lead her home, but she could certainly lead her to her family.

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The earthen colored canine who had, ironically, just crawled out of the earth itself, was silent for a time. She had, of course, known that Valeska had been here; the scent of that familiar pine was unmistakable. She could very vividly recall that the chamomile had been for Valeska, though the details were hazy and she could not recall why her sister would need it. Perhaps, this too, was part of their mystery of death. How interesting it was, though, that all of them were here, together. Had Harper and Amaranth corrupted the pure, religious saint of Valeska so much so that she was in Hell, or had Valeska worked her magic and was somehow able to cleanse a non believing sinner to the point of redemption? Or would Anubis show up at any moment to weigh their hearts?

Valeska was looking for her, though? Why did Valeska concern herself with finding Harper? Did she not realize that Harper could take care of herself?! Or could it be… no. No, that was silly, stupid. And...yet, that was the only plausible explanation: the others were here too, and Harper had been the last to resurface. “... the others?” Harper whispered softly, tilting her head as she often did, with narrowed eyes. Their entire family? Dead, together, and all in the same place? Something about that didn’t sit right with her.

Let’s get you back to her. Harper’s ears flattened almost at once as her hackles rose, though she did not growl. Amaranth was the friend of her sister and the delicious woman who saved her, when she could have turned the other cheek and pretended not to notice her. Normally, going to see her sister was not such a big deal, but Harper did not know how long she had been searching, and well, Harper smelled terrible and looked even worse! It was an odd sensation for Harper, who didn’t (openly) care about her appearance, but she wanted to look good. “No.” Harper said firmly, very nearly growling out the word as she gave Amaranth a very stern and dominant glare, which was followed by a flash of teeth. Not a warning, not a threat, but rather, a very awkward smile. “First, a bath. Then we see Valeska.”

And off she went, in search of a source of water with or without Amaranth.

{Harper exit.}
@Amaranth
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Amaranth could see the cogs slowly turning behind those deep purple eyes. The realization of their shared predicament was quickly setting in, a tear in the normalcy that they had finally achieved in Hiraeth's Temple. In Elysium. Everything had been as quickly wiped away as it had been built - all in a flash. All in a cloud of smoke and fumes as the earth swallowed their world into darkness. "... the others?" Harper's head tilted, and Amaranth's eyes darkened slightly. "We have not found them," she offered, strangely apathetic despite the fire that burned within her throat. The delicate voice remained even, unbending.

Upon mention of finding her sister, the she-devil bristled indignantly ... Amaranth's head tilted softly as she peered back at her over the golden plume of her shoulder. Body redirected, facing her once more, a silent inquiry as to where the sudden flux of energy had surged from. 'You don't want to see her?' those eyes wondered eerily, the wind tracing along her skin and once again delivering the stale scent of dirt into her nostrils. And then Harper mentioned her need to bathe ... which caused Amaranth to glance at her own sodden paws. Entrails of the earth caked to her previously pristine, golden slippers and tainted her otherwise otherworldly beauty. But so often was the wraith fixated on the beauty and appearance of others, she hardly remembered to clean up after herself sometimes.

"Very well," the woman crooned just as Harper marched off, brushing past her golden savior to search for a watering hole to cleanse herself in. Amaranth followed, quickly catching up to walk at the larger woman's side and nodding her head toward the north, where she'd seen a suitable pool. And together, the two disappeared from the plains, eventually planning to bathe and then converge with their silver-coated leader.

---

Amaranth exits

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