- ƒᴇʟʟ ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʀαᴄᴋs

Celestial optics and snarl-carved dial snapped instantly to the voice as it called to her over the wind, a moment passing before she managed to snatch the words back from the gales. The dark beast's presence seemed to light something briefly on fire within her but it was quickly extinguished by something that had grown rare in Jupiter's conscience as of late--the benefit of the doubt.

Pinned ears twitched against soaked fur. The driving rain had become but a dull, useless drone on her senses to the point where its sting no longer struck her as particularly painful or bothersome; she merely accepted its existence. Scoffing, more at herself than at the dark she-wolf, she turned and padded briskly several feet down the river, away from her, toes clenching into the sand, pads only an inch or so from the racing waters. Not too far ahead, the sand ended and the rapids were edged only by the roots of mangrove struggling for purchase on the shifting earth.

"My taste in cowards is very particular," she snarled over the din, the aggression in her tone focused on the distant point in the trees that celestial daggers bored into rather than the other. Head turned to glance behind her as something in the storm seemed to lessen, the rain becoming softer but nowhere near gentle. The eye of the storm?

"The ones who sit so comfortable on their thrones and preach like saints upon them." The addition was but an afterthought, cast out to the winds once more but to where the other could hear it. Mercury was holed up somewhere around the mangroves, for once not siding with her on her recklessness, but she knew he was near enough to call when she decided to leave or desired him.