Learning to Walk Again (openish thread)

[brother_alone]

Winter held Joshua's hands while he recovered. It drove away every distraction that would stop him from doing what it took to survive. It saved his life. When he was strong enough to climb out of the ravine he'd been thrown into it lead him to his first tracks in the snow. It gave him the cover he needed to secure his first kill.

Winter could not stay forever.

With it gone and Joshua once more in control of himself, things aren't as easy as they were. He often waits until the hunger gets to be maddening before he lets himself hunt. It's easier that way, keeps him from thinking about what he's doing. About clawed hands rending hide and sinew apart as sure as his fangs drew blood. If he thinks he hesitates. Ends up getting hurt and losing his meal. He's still getting used to all of this. He doesn't like it, but he's surviving.

It's the time spent in between hunts that's the worst. Time when his mind is brutally clear. He scrubs himself as clean as he can get in those moments. Laments over everything that's brought him here. The tiny shack in the woods he once used to call home has become so again. Still nothing more than four walls and a dirt floor but it's his. A place where he can retreat to when stronger hunters are nearby. A tiny territory all his own for him to claim.

It's lonely. It's hard. But it's home.

((Open to Josh's friends if they'd like to catch up with him.))

Comments

[brother_alone]

This is his territory. Pathetically small, and with almost no hunting opportunities to speak of but the shack and immediate wooded area around it is the only thing he's tried to claim as his own. The smell of Other Power here trespassing is almost more than he can stand. The shrieking in his head is growing louder. Louder still.

Until Joshua opens his mouth and Screeches in reply toward the direction of the voice. Shoulders up and posture wide. Making himself as threatening as possible.

Words will have meaning again later right now instinct says to protect what's his.

[nomoreroom]

The screech was only answered with cackling, the source of the noise consolidating, congealing, into a singular point. Forming and fully manifesting, the grinning, scarlet demon couldn't have been less intimidated by this.

This scruffy, starving, miserable insect of a creature, so insignificant that even it's disrespect was laughable, rather than offensive.

All seven foot plus of him was here now, teeth bared in a mocking grin, blood and hellfire eyes alight with sadistic amusement.

"Got a lot of damn gall, don't you? A lot of bravado, for a mangy, half living mutt."

[brother_alone]

Joshua knows that voice. He knows that face, that stance. He's trying to calm down but instinct is too strong right now because the wendigo knows one of its own. They aren't pack hunters and this trespass is something he shouldn't, cannot, allow. Common sense and Joshua's will so small in comparison to what every fiber of his being says he should be doing right now.

He's crouched, slightly elongated limbs jutting out at odd angles while he's ready to pounce. That milky left eye watching with fervor every tic of movement Alastor gives.

There's fear there. The wendigo knows it's the smaller of the two. No matter how old the spirit that merged with Joshua was he's not either of them anymore. Something else. Something new and young and still finding its feet. But he still lunges for Alastor because this tiny territory is his.

[nomoreroom]

A backseat driver indeed, if Alastor could only hear that internal turmoil right now, he'd be very proud of himself for using such an apt descriptor. But my, what a warped thing he'd become, hadn't he? All twisted and pulled out, like fresh taffy, the demon idly wondering just how much that seemingly cauled over eye could see. It was definitely not behaving like it was useless.

What he could sense, very easily, was that fear. After all, were they not both beasts? An animal could easily smell it in the air.

The Thing That Was Once Josh would find the head of that microphone bedecked cane swung sharply and carelessly at his face, like Babe Ruth at the ninth inning to a baseball.

"Faster, kiddo, gotta be faster than that!"

[brother_alone]

Bones would crack--should shatter even. Were Joshua still fully human. There's a reverberating Crack! that the forest swallows up as Joshua is thrown back into the trunk of a tree. The soft sound of his body hitting the ground after is nothing by comparison.

He's shaking his head, a low growl reverberating through his chest while he picks himself back up. The shriek he gives is clipped short. This time Joshua's leaping upward, grabbing onto tree branches and vaulting up ten, twenty feet before he jumps to a nearby tree.

Running away, possibly. Or lining up an attack from above.