a better day (not really)

TABLE & CODE © SKELLE 2021
"Speech!"

ooc// takes place around the time of the pack meeting, not long after the challenge

You could say, looking upon the tangled heap of spotted fur, ”He really had it coming to him.” And to be fair, you wouldn’t be wrong in the least. Macabre’s predicament at his mother’s own pack challenge was his burden to bear - he committed his sins, he paid the price. Quite heavily, depending on who you talked to - perhaps getting one’s eye near-gouged out, a broken femur, and the nastiest of infections setting deep into his bloodstream and his lungs was maybe a tad too steep.

But again, perspectives.

The events of the challenge were a blur; Macabre barely remembered what happened after he’d lunged at the shortshit who’d been scarred by his brother. The little fiend sliced his eye like a hit knife through butter, and the adrenaline, the sheer euphoria of his reckless actions fueled such a manic spurt that he’d barely recalled the white-hot snapping of his leg by the moldy wolf of the Armada. He’d crawled back to his siblings in a haze, and soon after everything faded to black. It was dark for a long time - so long he wondered if maybe he had bled out and died on the battlefield. Maybe his family, maybe even his own brother had abandoned him, Ghoul, his other half - one of the most important blood-related wolves in his life. No, he wouldn’t. They were brothers forever, no matter what he did, he could always count on the rosy-pelted boy to help him out. And he’d return the favor, every time. But it was so painful. Every fiber of his being, ripping itself to cellular shreds, every tissue, every splinter of bone. He felt it all even in the darkness of his blood-loss induced coma.

Finally, though, some semblance of life returned to his being. His crumpled body twitched in the shoulders. His once steady, deep, raspy breaths inhaled sharply. His eyelids fluttered - the right eye slowly opening as the left one, encrusted in swollen, inflamed flesh, painfully tore itself open through the yellowish discharge and dried blood that clogged his ocular membrane. When he awoke, his right eye saw bright light, squinting and blinking rapidly. Normal. The left one, clouded over and the cornea itself clawed through, saw nothing but a smoky haze. And it hurt. Everywhere. The boy could scarcely move a muscle, for if he did, it would feel as if white-hot needles were piercing into each individual strand of flesh in his body. Inhaling was an excruciating task, the pneumonia that settled into his lungs producing a raspy, guttural rattle with every heave of his chest. His left hind leg was bearing the insufferable, stabbing aches of each shift of his form he attempted, until he finally gave up and lay where he was, a thick, phlegmy cough rising into his maw. He wheezed, his form shifting rapidly between searing heat and shivering cold. Fever. No doubt the result of infections settling into the fracture on his leg and the scar on his face. A marred, destroyed soul. But he felt nothing. He was incapable of it. Pain, yes. But anger, bitterness, hatred? Not really.

Apathy, more like.

He groaned instinctively, a deathly rumble, mired with fluid that collected in his chest. He felt the thickness of bandages wrapped securely around his hind limb, though, and around his scars as well. Someone had clearly taken care of him. And..taken him somewhere, apparently. He had no idea of Insomnia. He had no recollection of his mother’s loss. He had no clue that Medusa was his pack leader.

Confusion caused a soft wrinkle in his brow as the cow-spotted boy weakly scanned the blurry surroundings. He was in a cave on a plain of some kind - unfamiliar. Rolling fields of flat earth, covered in tall grasses. A sunny sky high above his head, the light unwelcoming as he squinted.

Just what the hell had happened?