[Flashback] The White Beast

Even the village of the moon slept when the night's heavenly sphere was nothing but a circle of darkness that gave no light to work by. Plants were covered with heavy, rough tarp to defend it from the night's frost. Animals were led into the barn to rest in quiet safety. Children were given cups of milk and bits of cheese before they were herded off to bed. One by one, the small flames of the primitive candles all around the village went out and the hardworking people began to rest in preparation for the next day.

But there was one creature up and about at this time of slumber, as her eyes afforded her perfect vision in this darkness. Her name was Iskra, a word that meant "shining" in the half-developed demonic tongue her former clan had spoke in, so named for the iridescence of her blue eyes and her maladaptive white coat that was only useful for hiding when the winter's wrath rolled in. She was large, but nowhere near her final size, and her white coat was spotted, sleek, and healthy-looking. Clearly the animal had been eating good fare since leaving her home, but eating good fare meant the hard and difficult hunt... meant run-ins with other demons who invariably ganged up on her and stole her meals if she did not make haste to hide them.

During the day, she'd sat curiously and watched the villagers, who were similar to gods in her mind for their ability to wield tools. She watched them milk the cattle and herd the sheep. She watched the chickens pecking about the yard from the invisibility of the tall grass on the outskirts of the village. She watched the children play with the fuzzy, puppy-like dogs of theirs. From the scene of tranquility and hard work she derived one verdict. Their livestock was weak: a trait she'd been taught to despise. They had to be destroyed and used to further her own strength. It would be a simple ritual. The creatures would be torn to pieces and go, screaming, down her throat.

To avoid the wrath of the gods, she took advantage of the cover of darkness. For all the gods could do, they couldn't see in the darkness without their little suns on sticks, and they always approached things with much noise and shouting. These handicaps would give her plenty of time to escape their wrath. The ground was cold as she stepped gingerly towards the village, all the while smiling her pride in her own cunning.

The hens of the village, fat, feathered things, nestled over their future brood in fullness of tranquility, heard not the cat-like approach of the ravenous hyena. Indeed, she managed to clasp her jaws around the pitiful contraption defending the birds and tug backwards, snapping the wood in her vice-like jaws. A slight crackling betrayed her, but the hens were in a deep sleep and long accustomed to the sound of creaking wood from the huts and trees. Iskra smiled and licked her chops, gingerly stepping over the ruined threshold towards her meal.

[EXP: 615 || TEXP: +1]

Iskra paused, her progress arrested by the sudden presence of a torchless god. What an unusual turn of events. Her mind worked swiftly. She could attempt to bite the god, for despite their designation in her head they were only mortal, or she could attempt to flee. It wasn't a war of attrition, after all. These chickens would likely be here the next night and the night after, and she could instead strike at the fat cows or the lazy sheep. No reason to make this her last stand, after all. It was a matter of conserving energy since now she lived alone.

So she snapped and snarled once, making a wide circle around the young man wherein she kept her teeth bared as she turned to him. It was a young god... very big and strong. The beast could respect that. He was not to be destroyed as the chickens were or even any dogs that may have come to repel her presence. He could live. When her semicircle was complete, she lowered herself to the ground and took off in a hasty sprint, seeking the refuge of the black night forests.

[ EXP: 230 ]

Iskra stopped. Ostensibly her progress had been halted by the well-timed application of ice patches to her feet from seemingly nowhere. She did not mind ice much. The matriarch hypothesized that her white coloring had something to do with either death or the snow or possibly both, but what did bother her was the fact that this god had done something she simply failed to understand. It bothered her pride a bit, as he'd done two things so far that she'd assumed he couldn't. Firstly, he had found her in the dark without the aid of the little suns on a stick. Second of all, he'd managed to stick her feet to the ground from a distance. It was surely a thoroughly alien power, but she didn't understand its source and that made it a strange thing of fear and she did not like it. She snarled and snarled at the young man's approach, only quieting when she heard him begin to talk in the human's odd manner of speech. She understood a little bit. Someone who remembered the old way of speaking, that is, someone who was created from the soul of a dead human, though neither of them had any way of knowing that, had taken the time to give her a primer in this manner of speaking, and her preternatural intelligence gave her ideas of what he meant by context.

She did not know what a "guards" was or a "pack" or some of the more complicated words like "thrill", but she did understand "meal every night" and comprehended the gesture of the chicken toss. He meant for her to eat it.

The hyena picked it up gently and tilted her head to the side. He expressed his strength by binding her in place, but not killing her, and he expressed an ability to feed her by tossing the chicken. Through the lens of her past, she mistook his actions for wanting to be her leader.

This designation she did not mentally resist as she didn't mentally resist the matriarch's dominance when she was much younger. She only left that clan because she saw no profit in taking it over, only responsibilities with very limited power. Taking over this young human's clan, however, would profit her greatly. She might even learn the source of his odd powers and, through emulation, improve on it.

But for now, she simply took the chicken, giggling briefly in her species' call before making for the brush again.

It wasn't until she took a few steps in the direction of the woods that she noticed the male human smelled familiar.

Yes, there were only a few humans that the matriarch with her clan had ever attacked.

This was one of them.

The spotted animal stopped cold and took an incredulous look backwards, not believing her thought for the moment.

That little weak thing? That little weak thing that they'd almost eaten had bound her in place like that and was now this big?

It was somewhat a confusing thing for her little hyena mind, and she stood there and stared for quite a few moments.

[ EXP: 612 ]

Over time, the hyena settled into a routine of showing up every night for the gift of a chicken every night. She didn't actually need the offering most days. She was a wild animal, after all, not a pet reliant on anything from mankind's table.

But to this table she arrived nightly, sitting gently on the ground next to the chicken coop. It bothered her in a small way to see the white-haired boy as a grown man, and she didn't know if he recognized her from that night or not. This uncertainty gave her a deep-rooted mistrust of him, even as they grew closer.

All of the humans in this area were generally the enemies of her kind, so she only revealed herself to him. The remainder of her spare time she remained hidden, watching the humans from the brush. In time she came to admire her habits. There were some things about them that she preferred to her own upbringing, and the idea of leading one of these villages appealed to her so strongly it was all she could do to not find the leader of the village and challenge him to a contest of strength.

But that was for a later time. For now, she simply lay on her belly, looking over the moonlight frosted village waiting for her new matriarch to appear as he did every such night.

[ EXP: 274 ]

The creature stood to her four feet, a certain dignity in the way she stood that told of the shifted relationship between the two. She understood full well that he wanted her to visit his home instead of waiting out near the chicken coop that rested relatively close to the outskirts of town. She simply did not wish to trot through the town or find a route that afforded her a safe passage to and safe escape from his home. Such an endeavor would require her to walk around the town and approach the dwelling from behind.

Now she thought of him less of a creature "in charge" of her, though he still maintained a designation close to her old clan leader in her mind because she doubted she could best him in physical combat, which was the litmus test that she measured authority by. There was the decidedly subservient behavior he showed by bringing her the fresh meat every night.

The fare he had fetched her was nice, however, and she gracefully dipped her head into the pouch, pulling out the delicious flesh and snacking quietly, though messily, on the various kinds. Indeed, she made the several pounds of food disappear in what would have been record time for a human.

Afterwards, however, she did something unusual. For a very long time she had watched the man and the other humans, but her knowledge was still lacking in an area.

She had no idea how to do that thing he had done with the ice, manipulating the elements themselves.

But she also had no way of communicating to him that it was what she wanted to know. It was a perplexing issue. She tilted her head to the side and sat at his feet, looking up into the man's amber eyes and opening her mouth. A harsh laugh occurred, almost a sigh, as though she were trying to imitate his manner of speaking despite being a dumb beast. She flexed her jaws up and down and continued to blow, nothing but growls and giggles issuing forth. It was a difficult situation.

[ EXP: 417 || 1 TEXP ]

Forget. It was one of those words that the others of her kind simply couldn't understand, like truth or love, an abstract concept that had no place among the brutes.

Yet, she was somewhat happy that this concept existed and worked so well with the boy-come-man. She enjoyed the feeling of his hand along her spotted back and even went so far as to encourage the gesture with a certain arching of her back and a more delighted incarnation of her species' chuckle. Originally she'd been quite afraid of that hand, but now she enjoyed the fingers through her coat. It was the sort of contact that she hadn't been getting since striking out on her own. Perhaps she was getting to be emotionally dependent on the human, though she wouldn't admit such a thing to herself. Dependency was a weakness, and weakness led to death.

She looked up into his yellow eyes with her blue ones, her mouth still flexing, though she made no more attempts to breathe words into the motions.

After a time, she simply quit. Perhaps she didn't trust the human completely, as it seemed likely he'd remember at any moment the role she played in the untimely demise of his murderous parents, but she still felt it was right for her to rub her smooth form up against the seated man, an affectionate growl not unlike a purr rising from her chest. Surely her continued kindness would cause him to forget these thoughts of doubt, right?

[ EXP: 314 ]

Now that word she understood... "Name". Though her kind generally didn't relate to such things, she knew her own instinctively. Indeed, when she came into the world it was the only thing she was aware of. It was the last gasp of her mother as she lay bleeding in the dirt.

Her mouth began contorting with more focus and her toothed jowls shoved out a few raspy noises until it formed a few stretched out syllables.

"Iiii--huheeeeh..."

She almost had it out, but her name was designed for ease of speech by demons. Indeed, it had a meaning in the common tongue of the animal spirits.

"Iiiisssk..." She paused to cackle out a breath, standing up on her back legs as she figured out how to say it like a normal human word.

"Iskruh. Iiiskrah. Isk'ra."

Satisfied with her skill in speaking the word, she rested and took a few breaths. So this human language wasn't so hard. It meant "shining," if she knew the word in the common human tongue.

[ EXP: 234 || +1 TEXP ]

The creature rested for a moment, enjoying the hand behind her ears despite everything. It was a nice moment. She'd managed to convey a word to this person, despite the difficulties of her anatomy working against her.

And yet, she felt a little displeased at the entire situation. How was she ever going to have a productive relationship with him if she couldn't even talk to him with words he could understand? She could understand her clan leader in her past life, but she seldom spoke back. That was because talking was a right of those in the authority. She'd never be able to get authority over him if he was always the one using words and she just had to lay there below him, mute, and listen.

It was frustrating, assuredly, but she didn't believe there was anything she could do about it. Perhaps later she could find the ability to speak. Indeed, among the animal spirits there were those who could talk...

...but she wasn't the same class as they. For now, she decided that words were not important. She could convey her dominance some other way.

Deftly moving from beneath his hand, though she was loathe to stop the pleasurable sensation, she moved up behind the human and placed her forepaws over his shoulders, thrusting her hips forward repeatedly in a manner that would make most men extremely uncomfortable, but among her own kind sent a powerful message concerning the ranks of the two creatures involved.

[ EXP: 321 || +1 TEXP (2nd thread, 5/21/11) ]

Truthfully, the young hyena hadn't expected her motions to result in her almost sticking her 6-inch member, for only those with extensive knowledge of wildlife could tell a male hyena from a female, into the mouth of the one that fed her. It wouldn't have been a strange gesture for Iskra. Among the hyenas, subordinates often placed their genitalia near the mouths of the more dominant pack members. Fortunately, however, Lethe managed to roll away.

Her path took her forward, somewhat confused. Generally, other hyenas didn't move out of the way of such an expression so dramatically. They either resisted the attempts with bites and ominous snarls, or they submitted. To see the man rolling and flipping about so insistently confused her a bit.

But his next words angered her a bit in the sort of way that would have been sadness were it not for the copious androgens running through her bloodstream. To the human, no doubt, it was just a joke, but to her it was illustrative of a more serious problem. She didn't want to be in charge of a hyena clan. She wanted to be in charge of these more powerful humans, and she wasn't satisfied with the prospect of being forced to return to her species because she couldn't draw respect from the gods.

A bit moodily, she grumbled a low chuckle and began to slink back off into the bush.

[ EXP: 294 ]