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 Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 6:16 pm
Kondo was sick of importunate demands for answers from his snake. That no-good b*****d had torn her from his shoulder and tossed her to the ground! He snarled. She bit him. He nearly stomped on her in a fit of rage.
This chaos became more rote with every passing day. That morning did not break the mold, but it put a dent in it. They had a new subject of great interest to bicker about.
"You smell like a whore," Fira hissed. To be the devil in his ear was her job. Why else would she prefer to perch on his shoulder?
That's when he'd thrown his fit and her.
Alive, but furious, Fira retreated back to their home in the rocks to restore her spent patience.
What awaited her there was not calming. Not at all.
Fira would have made a good bird as well as a snake.
"Oh, no!" she screeched and squawked from the entry point. "This will not do! Out! OUT!"
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 6:27 pm
It was a shame that snakes could not die in child birth.
The lioness flicked her eyes over at the entering creature. Her stomach churned and rumbled delicately underneath her rib cage. Freyja closed her lids as she let her eyes roll over and opened them once again to wince. Her tongue had scraped over a sore spot along her side.
The blood had stopped flowing, and she would be able to go out in public in short order once she'd cleaned up the mess. It had barely hurt at the time, and now feeling was coming back slowly. She preferred it when the pain had been blunted by intoxication.
"You are closer to the outside," she mused towards the intruder. It almost sounded like a purr, but it was still tipped with her bitter tongue.
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 6:37 pm
As she was not a bird, Fira had no feathers to be ruffled; yet her scales seemed to bristle, somehow. She rose up taller in preparation to lunge. The length of her hovering off the ground swayed from side to side.
Freyja did not have to say it for Fira to know she was being looked at as an intruder. That was outrageous. She lived here. No lioness did! Not since--
"Freyja, you uncouth whore!" She had not blustered her way through a crowd of incautious paws to come home to this nonsense! "Thisss --" Fira stopped, composed herself at least in voice. "This is not where you belong! He is not yours, you thief! You thieving whore!"
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 6:46 pm
The back of Freyja's throat was vibrating, and she did not realize herself that a warning growl had been issued.
"Thief? Stolen?" The lioness passed the snake a very pointed look. Still, the raised body and the energy with which the snake acted made her shift uncomfortably.
"I hardly think you have any desire to take part in what I offer Kondo." Though she would not put it past a non-lion, and a non-Stormborn, to have uncouth and impure thoughts.
"Mind your tongue."
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 6:59 pm
Fira flicked her tongue out in defiance and ssss'd at the lioness. To be more specific, the thieving whore lioness occupying space that was not hers, had never been hers, and would never be hers. Fira would poison this harlot if she had to and get one of those big constrictors to eat her whole!
"Mine is right where it should be," she spat, "but yoursss is not!"
The snake looked at her then. Really looked.
"Oh, Freyja, you are ssso ssstupid it would astound the Gods themselves." Some of Fira's long body fell on the ground and her temper seemed to fall with it. Demoralizing pity was not any better than deadly anger to a true Stormborn. "Are you satisfied with yourself now? Have you gotten what you wanted?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 7:05 pm
In a blasphemous display of words that would be repeated to no one else save for the snake her sister had given a mentally-dying lion, Freyja made one point very clear. "The gods, if there are any, are dead to us."
The lioness rose, shaking herself down and fluffing out her wetted fur. Her brows furrowed together and she stared at a patch on her rump which was not covering a gouge well enough.
"Tell me one good thing they have done for this family."
They had taken her father, they had taken her sister and with it her husband's good nature, and now she was letting them have her.
"No," she answered, honestly, firmly. "There is one other thing." If she could do one thing right, it would be to raise sons that would make the Stormborn themselves quake. She was not done with the world yet, though it may have been done with her.
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 7:29 pm
Fira would have stood on the very tip of her tail had she been a mind reader. The world was not done with Freyja, but chances were Kondo was. He was cruel even in kindness; by doing her this favor he had left her with scratches and bruises everyone could gawk at if they were insightful enough to know they should. Worse still, those wounds they could not see would never seal now. They would bleed forever.
Stupid, stupid lioness.
What would her sister say?
Fira would never have an answer for that as long as she lived. Death itself kept her from one.
Freyja's questions, however, only needed a moment of thought and then Fira spoke tenaciously: "The Gods made you a lion. That is enough to be grateful for. But they did not stop there. You are alssso a Viking. At your birth, you were born lucky. That is what the Gods have given you. You think for this they will give you his cubs? Pleassse. If they feel a good laugh is in order you might get daughtersss."
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 7:44 pm
"You will keep that quiet." Freyja's growl was intense now, and her eyes did not look at the snake as she spoke. As her sister had been gifted, so to might it be assumed that Freyja was also of the sight.
She did not wish to think of it, and she had no desire to become a priestess. It was another kind of slavery. So many of them were so walled up in their own prayer that they forgot they were born of the storm.
No woman should dare to out-rank a man, no matter how well she sang the gods from their perches. But, perhaps that was just bitterness talking. Her sister had always had a pleasant relationship with her talent.
"There will be no daughters." Freyja's voice had gone cold, down to the ice that caked the seas to the forevernorth in legend.
"I have seen it."
What she had seen, however, was not being disclosed.
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 7:59 pm
Fira swayed, unable to stop if she tried. Every scale was being pricked by arrogance and stupidity. Her tongue flickered out, went in, and repeated this several times. She was so livid that she'd have more luck growing her own paws than speaking quietly. She'd put them to good use and smash Freyja's head into the wall until all the ridiculous thoughts bled out her pretty little nose.
"You've ssseen it, have you? I've seen some things myself! Awful, terrible things that your ssssister weeps over, wherever the Gods sssaw fit to leave her after that night!"
To call what she and Kondo had a partnership was too noble. They had an understanding. Fira did not like him and no one should. He was a murderer and the only thing they could agree on other than Aja was that he had no place being a father. His one good quality was he had kept away from the females so as not to repeat what he saw as a mistake and she saw as a tragedy.
"What if there are, hm? What if there are girls? Look at what he did when thingsss were better for you females! What do you sssuspect he'll do now? Take them outside, in the open, and drown them? Smash their little headsss with a stone?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 8:07 pm
There must have been something lion left in Freyja, for she winced as Fira spoke. A crack in the earthy cavern held her intense gaze. The freeborn's body had gone still.
"Maybe," she said after a time. The thick, mucousy saliva in her throat was swallowed. The wounds on her body could not heal fast enough.
"But I have nothing but pity for the girls raised by his hand. They will be better for it."
No, she and Kondo would not make the happy parents which the Warlord and his wife appeared to be. At one time, maybe he had that chance with Aja. All those things had died with her.
"Perhaps. . . " As her words trailed off, there was a small choke in the back of her throat. "Perhaps Aja will keep them company there."
Then, she swallowed down that, too. "He will raise good sons, or I will do it for him." And she would. Only now could she shift her eyes towards the snake.
"You have seen awful, terrible things, and you have not thought to stop those, either." In her mind, they were no better. In fact, the snake was far worse the evil. She saw what was wrong, actually believed it was wrong, and had still created no change.
Freyja, well, she knew she was right.
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 8:17 pm
Fira lunged and snapped at the air. She did not get close enough to strike the lioness. It wouldn't be the first time she'd bitten the self-righteous b***h, but in her anger, she couldn't trust her fangs to keep the poison from injecting itself into her blood. That would send all the cubs to Aja, if there were cubs to speak of. She dreaded to think there must be, and that there would be many. That would be Freyja's punishment, daughters and lots of them.
"I do not carry the brute's daughters!" Asserting there were girls would sting enough. No name-calling or paws could slap her across the face harder than that.
Fira slithered out of the den after that final outburst.
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