i n f a m o u s ||CRIMINAL OFFENSE|| ___private

[.Rabid Lycan.]

Zeffen didn’t care anymore. He lunged forward, not with baring fangs and the preparation to dispose of his diseased mate, but to embrace her. The dangers of caressing such a contagious creature were paramount, but he couldn’t bring himself to cease trying to bring her back to sanity, not while she had spoken to him just moments before and confessed her love… He couldn’t give up. Even if she turned and bit him. Infected him, which was the most likely outcome at the moment. He only wanted to make an attempt at bring her away from the flames.
“Don’t die on me,” he whispered.

Not a soul that lives cannot deny the perpetual curiosity that centers around the prospect of the death. It is the final frontier, quite literally, for any creature. One might expect either clouds and light or flames and despair, or maybe an eternal void or blackness. But what would you sense? Could you sense? Would silence greet you, or would a trumpeting ensemble of an angel’s chorus light your ascent into a brighter place.
And if you had enough breath to utter your final words, how would you describe it?
But Sanceul lacked the knowledge to answer these questions, for only a truly deceased wolf could know such things. Hanging on a few last strings for dear life, the expectation of a heavenly chorus was thwarted and replaced with something much more simplistic, but all the same meaningful: “I’m sorry… I failed you.”
And the strength to utter her supposed final words was wasted. Albeit any other wolf or living soul would probably recollect on good times or leave behind a meaningful secret or share deep emotions with their close friends. But, alas, Sanceul was far from ordinary.
“…idiot…” she whispered softly, barely managing her small, signature smirk when the throbbing pain of her shredded neck nearly forced her back into unconsciousness.

((I’m listening to Mad World right now and god… that whole Damien thing you wrote was really touching =’( …so, naturally, I needed Sanceul to… be herself and lighten the mood XD ))

[Sivoncé™]

((awww, thankies ;D I <3 Sanceul. I would fangirl for her right now, but I'm also fangirling for Bain, Raffa, Damien, Adel, Death, and Sumer [we happen to be studying the Sumerian portion of Mesopotamia right now in Cultures LOL] xD So you see my predicament. ))

No no no no no DON'T! "Zef, don't---" but too late, they were locked in a long-awaited and far too long delayed lovers embrace. Forces in her body wrathed and crashed in the tearful rampage that lined her internal being with nothing but carnage. She was writhing in pain, totally, utterly consumed by the envious tongues of hell, flickering with green to prove their satanity. Nothing was as it should be. Inside...
But she was still as a statue. One wrong move could mean the end of her, the end of this moment, a moment that would somehow, in one universe or the next, be suspended in missle-proof memory. The scent of his pelt, wafting around her, the feel of his warm fur, blotting out the iceberg in which she'd resided....the shining in his eyes as they exchanged confessions of love; all of these things she had waited so long for, agonizing over in Hellfire and Tartarus, thirsting more for Zeffen than water for her parched, coarse throat, were here with her now. One break, slip fall and....she shuddered, but her sudden anxiety was not induced by her already frost-gnawed bodice. She leaned close to Zeffen, speaking through gritted teeth. Restraint. The only sign of it he would see, the only outer imprint of a herculean effort.
"Zef.....our daughter....her name is Saskia, she lives with the Yozorans....I did what I had to. I don't know what became of her....I died giving her away to a...a..." she paused, rocking forth as if weighing the possibility of retching, "a pack." A curl of disgust lit her face, but swiftly her jaws clamped together again.

The words were barely caught, but almost as in reaction to the typical mouthings she threw at him, a wide grin spread across Damien's muzzle. "Well at least the world finally knows that being dead doesn't make you wise -- makes you idiotic, as you would say...." The smile began to slide from his face, as murmures of a neighboring conversation carried themselves to him....
He turned, glancing from Zeffen to Sylvana. His lips moved, and more than once he opened his mouth to speak, but always he shut it again. How could he ask Zeffen to leave Sylvana to find herbs? He wouldn't want to do it. He sure as hell didn't trust him with Sanceul....and Sylvana's own relation to him was in question at the moment. Tentatively, he stepped forward, senses on the constant alert for approachers. "...do either of you remember anything that dealt with the cure for the plague? There were nine parts....but otherwise---"
"Shut the fucking hell up, Damien. You're lucky I'm not well. Lucky I'll be dead in the next minute. Lucky," she spat, whipping her feral glare to scorch him for a pawful of seconds before returning her weary eyes once more to Zeffen. "They'll never stop hunting you. You made your choice."
Damien's breath caught at the blast of shock that shot through him. Sure, he'd considered it a possibility, but still...
"It doesn't have to be this way! I saw you in Tartarus, in the Tartarus without darkness. You aren't heartless-"
"Suprise, surpise! Heartless, Damien? Tell me this: do you think Babylonia, Death, Verlust were heartless? You're nothing but ignorance, child!" She hissed impatiently. "Rest here, heal your little friend, whatever. It's not my problem."
"You weren't always like this!" Damien barked sharply, eyes narrowed.
"You knew me in death. This is my life!"

[.Rabid Lycan.]

((You’re right—you have way too many wolves to love, lol XDXD))

Words fell upon Sanceul’s ears like drops of warmth, comforting her although muffled with the blood that dribbled down the curve of her lips. Words that somehow kept her from moving on into an anonymous afterlife, rooting her firmly to the earth and aided her in enduring the pain.
But a fighting spirit is sometimes not enough in these critical moments where a soul finds itself unbalanced over a bridge of life or death. Her wounds would drag her to the depths of a painful demise if she did not receive the necessary care, and soon.
Managing to focus her sight long enough to piece together the fuzzy outline of her savior, she saw that he was moving away, and immediately reacted by relaxing her facial muscles, the smile fading from being. For now, she could only wait in a coma-like state to see what would come of her in the end.
Can’t die… got to take Morgan down with me…

The phrase “hanging on every word” is wasted in countless casual conversations, but not a soul pauses to examine on what it could mean. “To hang” is to be held suspended by, and “every word” should be something that requires no definition. And Zeffen was, indeed, suspended in a sort of trance, ears up and not even daring to steal a breath for fear of missing a sound that escaped Sylvana’s maw. Saskia. Pack. And…?
“Hunt me?” he echoed softly. But there was someone who had interrupted the words, the speech so dear to the tragically distraught male, and Zeffen whirled around in a fury to face the brute had spoken.
“Just leave,” he growled darkly, his voice lowered to a threatening pitch. He wouldn’t allow Damien to interrupt their possibly final moments together, not when he had only just found her again…

[Sivoncé™]

Sylvana sighed, exhausted lungs beginning to give way under the thundercloud noose that pierced pressure points on every inch of her being. She gazed deeply at Zeffen, whirlpools sucking in every moment, absorbing his feel, taste, face, features, scent. The sweetness that still fluttered, like a butterfly with falling wings, in her stomach as she did so. But in a single intake of foul, poisoned air, the vortex shifted its alliance; her limbs were thrashing, contorting and twisting as death possessed her. For a whole minute, she was suspended in incapacitating agony -- her limbs were broken, stomach bleeding, muzzle raged with rouge, eyes rolled back in her sockets, her scram wreaking havoc in the air, seemingly gnashing through the endless cloud cover as a shaft of the moon shone down upon the spiteful scenery below. Arching her back, the fire spread up her spine, hot liquid tongues searing skin, which was now enveloped in red boils. A shower of perspiration coursed across her surface, and in a swift moment, the black hand scythed her breath from her mouth, and it was hers no more. Back and forth the violently raging cyclone whipped her.
And her body expelled any life that dared cling to pump her fisted heart.
From her maw, it ran in thick waterfalls, red like a rising sunset, dripping across and ocean. Fountain-like, it spurted from the pores of her body, overflowing as it swam in ponds behind her lids. And then....and then....
Her spinal cord ruptured with a colossal lurch.

I existed because I dreamed, and well,
...I dream no more.

Damien opened his mouth in the minute preceding Sylvana's second death....and then felt it agape, shaking with the rest of his body, as the she-wolf passed, again, into some other world, some other state of being....a place he knew of well. He felt himself unconsciously slipping backward, turning away before the worst of it started. Turning away and focusing his complete attention on Sanceul...if only to deny the fact that there was a wolf, who hated him with all of the blood that ran from her maw and all of the hate that passed through her veins, who was falling into a curious and torturous world of a simple question: what if?
What was going to happen to Sylvana when she got back to Hellfire, or worse, Tartarus....was there any Hellfire or Tartarus left? After they bled themselves onto the living earth, could they still exist elsewhere? And though he'd looked away from her more private moments with Zeffen....he'd glimpsed. There was something steely about his old friend and fresh-slit nemesis. She wasn't ever a fearful thing in the time he'd known her, but the reaper's carriage hadn't phased her. Maybe Zeffen wouldn't notice, but Damien had. And though he was staring at Sanceul with all of this intensity milling within him, he couldn't shake these restless musings.
They knew something about what happened on the other side. Or at least Sylvana had known....
His eyes slammed themselves shut when he heard the snap -- a reflexive but ultimately useless attempt to blot out the images of scarlet snow and imprinted horrors.
"Sanceul..." he murmured, numb, wondering if it was really his lips moving to make words.... "There's a copse of trees about a half-mile from here...." he didn't dare glance at Zeffen, but swallowing hard, he knew Sanceul would see the panic flooding him. "I can carry you again," he feigned a half-smile, but the faulty attempt was barely tried. Zeffen had meant his words when he told them to leave, he was certain of that.... "There isn't much here I can use to stop the bleeding and wrap your wounds," he added. Sanceul was barely conscious....he couldn't count on the happenings to get her to relent. And he certainly didn't ask her to trust his gut feeling, not after it had led them to this.... Best to bank on sense for this, I suppose.

Now that you've turned the world against me,
I'm only trying to win the battle...

[.Rabid Lycan.]

((aww, Sylvana!!
You just had to make her suffer, didn't you? ))

Although the blood chilling cry that trolled from Zeffen’s open maw proved to be a horrible, heart-wrenching sound within itself, the grief of a mourning lover remained not so much heard as felt. The trembling note that he sustained in his lachrymose wail no doubt verified that even a heart as dark and twisted as a Hellfirian’s could be touched. A Hellfirian could love. Even the most heartless of sinners could not help to wince at the sound they so feared; the mourning ring of loss and heartbreak.
Sliding onto his stomach and dropping his muzzle to his paws, Zeffen clenched his jaws and uttered a soft moan; a moan riddled with a helplessness that rivaled the vulnerability of a pup separated from his mother. Warmth flowed down the sides of his face, but he ignored the comfort of his own tears; it was all ice to him.
“S-Sylvana… no…”

Everything expressed itself in dizzying swirls of color, blotches of smeared figures that Sanceul decided were wolves all that appeared in view. The red tinge of blood had faded and was replaced with a deadening grayscale that gradually began to lull her into a sleep in which she would not return. But a sickening crack and the unwavering cries of the wolf that she had attempted to maul roused her from the brink of death, snatching her from the reaper’s skeletal claws at the last possible moment.
And it all but compelled her to return to that infallible darkness that offered a numbing sense from reality; she did not enjoy what she heard.
But then there was Damien, speaking words that organized themselves into barely-coherent trails of thought, to which Sanceul could only twitch her lower jaw slightly agape in a silent answer. Her opaque eye—the one that was facing the world from her position in the snow—began to slide into a half-open slit, her vision all but useless in any case.
Whatever… you say… Damien… just get me away… from here…

[Sivoncé™]

Her body was cold as ice, with no heart beating and no air trailing up and down her scarlet-wrapped throat. A thin, icy trickle of sleet blustered over the grave land-scape. A pearly light, dampenend and blotted with murk, outstretched trembling, futile tendrils across a dark line horizon. Cautious movements stirred in the mountain foothills -- the baying of a wandering reindeer, the secretive rustle in the evergreens, the shudder of the earth in general and its everlasting gaze absorbed the scenery. Sylvana's body seemed matted indefinitely to the rugged, cut and crossed terra. Rooted to the ground on which she lay, Damien swallowed his deep-rutted sorrow, and wondered bleakly.
What was Hellfire, then, if they, the "dead" were amongst the living beings for another turn to burn the world to ashes? Was there something beyond even Hellfire? Alternate, parallel, intersecting realities? What was life, then, but a pale streak against the massive, tangled web they were swathed with? And what of Sylvana now -- the Hellfirians had different theories. He didn't know of any who had passed over again. Would she come back? But as his copper optics drifted like wood in a dilapidated stream, back to the corpse of the wolf in question, he felt himself tremble in sudden cold. Dead could've been a noun, maybe. An adjective with but one state, one level. But hell, I swear she looks deader than I've ever known her...
Maybe it was just the finality of it -- maybe you just look terrible when you're on the actual deathbed.... but that's not true. No, Redfang still had deep scars from when they had her executed, Assyria had rips in her....
He needs to know. Alarm shot through him as he eyed Zeffen from the corner of his vision. He needs to know she'll still be sick when she comes back. Not nearly as severe -- returned to the beginning stages of the disease -- but she'll need to be cured still....
Slowly, he bent down, nosing his head under Sanceul's back gingerly. He winced and continued with increasing hesitance -- she was too close to death to be risking this. But they had to get away from here....fast. There was no way she was doing that on her own. At last, she was over his shoulders, and he was in a low crouch, the only inhibition to his oncoming flight was the words he still owed the mourner of this graveyard.
Blunt. Just say it. Say it, say it and run.
"Zeffen, I don't know what happens when a Hellfirian dies, but if she comes back, the sickness will only be slightly subdued. You'll still need the cure. Find a healer -- whatever happened to that Diablo of yours? Find someone. Anyone."
With that, he bunched his muscles and dove into a steady lope, going as fast as he dared while carrying Sanceul.
There was no stopping to look over his shoulder, no wondering if Zeffen would throw himself after them, give their general area away to his comrades, or even catch his words. There was no time to spend on ghosts of the past -- Sanceul needed him at the present.
If there is truly a creator, let them have mercy on us and run without trackers for just a while...

[.Rabid Lycan.]

“Only subdued…”
Many words fled from the ears in his despair, but he managed to comprehend that he needed to heal Sylvana when she returned from the tweening realm. But this idea that she would return at all somehow soothed his thoughts, and was the sole factor preventing him from unleashing a scream of indignation to the sky. Bringing his muzzle to graze Sylvana’s inert form, the pink of his tongue brushed the fur of her cheek, shivering slightly from a force other than cold.
“I’ll make you better, I swear… even if I have to ask the pack wolves themselves…”
Swallowing his uncertainties, Zeffen boldly shifted Sylvana’s figure, groping with the corpse until he had successfully lifted her onto his spine. Supporting her weight with the ease of a hardened soldier, the brute trudged off in the opposite direction of Damien and Sanceul, vowing to save Sylvana from reliving this fate a second time around.

An unnatural silence breached the air surrounding Sanceul, her senses no longer perceiving and her eyes no longer open. Her body draped limply over Damien’s shoulders, she surrendered all awareness and, instead, centered all subconscious focus on circulating her ever-dwindling blood supply through her veins.
And yet, a subtle twitching at the corners of her maw indicated signs of life, as did her shallow heartbeat. But haunting images were circling her, and a grotesquely suggestive grin was staring her directly in the eyes…

“I can taste your anger…and it bodes well to the senses, I will assure you that.”
Concentrating on concealing her fear, the she-wolf staggered back a step, her limbs shaking as she struggled to remain standing. A clearly defined hole ached at her side, liquid rubies shining where fur had once been. Her breathing was heavy and laborious, but the wolf opposing her hardly seem concerned at all. In fact, he was entertained—and perhaps aroused—if anything.
“No need to keep snapping at me, my dear… you will only make this harder for yourself—“
“Enough talking, you fucking bastard!” the fae hissed, a ripple of fury arching her spine, her fangs shining in an intimidating display.
“Aww, don’t tell me you’re not happy? I already released that other whore that you demanded I set free… what more could you possibly desire?”
“An apology, for starters!”
The male chuckled at this. “An apology? Dear girl, but why would I owe a wolf such as yourself an apology?”
Narrowing her eyes darkly, the female snarled coldly at the brute. “Not to me—to your mate.”
Shock lighted on his eyes, disbelief dropping his mouth agape. “How… how did—?”
Trepidation and caution cast aside, she charged, a cry of fury surging from her lips. Jaws met flesh, but her speed was hindered by her massive wound, and the instant the male finally reacted to her assault, she found herself unable to maneuver quickly enough to dodge.
A retaliating blow scoring her across the face, the she-wolf fell back onto the ground, a moan of agony escaping her jaws as blood began to flow. Morgan winced as he stumbled forward—she had dug her fangs into the base of his shoulder—and managed to pin her beneath his massive bulk, breathing fog onto her face.
“A little fight in you isn’t there?” he growled. “But you are an ignorant and arrogant bitch as well… and you clearly don’t know when you’ve gotten in over your head?”
Eyes sliding into slits of defiance, the wolf uttered the words that stunned the brute into silence. “I must’ve inherited that from your side of the family.” Twisting her head to glare at him, she bared her fangs in a final act of aggression. “My name is Sanceul. Mark me well, Father.”
Biting his lower lip, it took minutes for Morgan to summon up an appropriate response… and the direction he chose was ultimately far from appropriate. “…you are no daughter of mine… and this will be your last day in the sun.”
A wicked grin was shed, his fangs a scarlet arrangement of blades with scraps of fur hidden between each row. And she couldn’t stop staring, even as he tore at her skull and dragged her to an underground hell… she couldn’t stop remembering that face…

A gurgling noise sounded from Sanceul’s throat, a feverish shiver racing down her spine as she relived what had passed. She slipped into half-consciousness once again, unable to sense, but the muddled thoughts in her mind offering a single conclusion: she feared returning her memories.
…if I die here… and go to Hellfire… Morgan better not be there…

A shadow loomed on the outskirts of the clearing, hidden in the thicket and crouched downwind from the other wolves. Twin steel orbs followed Damien and Sanceul to the edge of the forest, but the silhouette made no indication that he was going to pursue them. He knew all to well that Damien wouldn’t give up Sanceul when she was so close to death, and he had no incentive to return to the flames of Hellfire just yet.
That bastard is going to be a real problem Morgan thought, a scowl tainting his features. I just need him out of the picture, and Sanceul won’t stand a chance… He glanced over at Zeffen as they departed, straining to catch his whispered words, and smirked. Well, at least I’ll have something to say to BloodMist when I get back.
With a final glare in Damien’s direction, the brute swiveled about and loped off into the woods, a goal of vengeance on his mind.

[Sivoncé™]

Pawsteps thudded on in earnest and search of suitable shelter. With every step he took, he nearly cringed, and he would have if it weren't for fear of stirring Sanceul on his back. Cringed because the agonizing scent of death had formed a sort of mask across his face, his being, and it hung thick in an aura all around him. Not just the harsh reckonings of Sylvana's second dying, but the notion that life was slipping more and more from Sanceul with every movement and turn he took. They reached the tall copse of pineland swiftly, the sun peering over the landline at them with curious golden eyes. Damien met them evenly with copper eyes that longed to howl his sorrows to the fading stars. In fact, as he paused, hesitant, the urge to howl nearly overcame him. But he blinked away from the first golden rays that dazzled the ever-kept tundra, and resumed his flight.

Across the back of a lupine figure, the corpse of Sylvana rode on into the living world. But something was stirring in the stardust snow, sprinkled with blood, where Zeffen had retrieved the wolven carcass. As he rode on, the figure of his former love turned cold and black with every bunch of his muscles and tensing of his tendons. Eventually, it, too, turned to dusty ashes and began to wither away into the wind. But this was all unnoticable -- the weight of the body would remain until she was completely vanished from the world of the living....
Because, theoretically, how Sylvana come back to this place of living, with her old bodice intact, if it was out running on her mate's back?

[.Rabid Lycan.]

Sanceul finally began to slowly sag to one side, scarlet staining her ivory pelage and smearing against Damien’s contrasting ebony pelt. Her eyes flickered about beneath her sealed lids, rolling a little as she became aware of her body moving to one side of Damien’s shoulders in the beginnings of a sliding descent to the ground below. She gradually found herself aware of a disconcerting pain that bloomed from her neck and worked its way deep into her chest. The numbing sensation in her legs was hardly noticeable, yet it began to give way into internal panic. The climax of her agony, she felt, was not far away. Amongst her muddled thoughts, she comprised a plea for Damien to halt in his flight. The rough movement among the glacial terrain only served to aggravate her increasingly painful injuries, and she no longer feared the chance that Morgan could be following close behind.
He wants revenge… he won’t… kill me now…not like this…
Unable to center her attention on anything further, she found her eyes drifting to a close, and the anesthetized sensation that had once tickled her toes now spread up to her legs. Blood loss was becoming a very dire issue.

The end of the earth revealed itself in the form of thin ice and rushing water.
Halting at the edge of a riverbed, Zeffen leaned forward in a panting fit, eyeing the waterway up and down with glossy eyes. But his senses delivered a defeated response: there was no way to cross without simply walking across the ice, and he wouldn’t be able to drag Sylvana along without falling through with their combined weight. All at once, the sensation that he could do nothing brought with it the upmost fury, and he quickly rested Sylvana’s corpse on the ground before angrily swiping at a tree.
“DAMN IT!”
After a few instants of heated slurs of curses, Zeffen turned his sight back to Sylvana, and suddenly realized that he had no idea whether she would even return from Hellfire in this body in the first place. For all he knew, she could reappear somewhere else, and he was simply dragging the carcass around for naught.
Narrowing his eyes as if irritated with the predicament, Zeffen looked from Sylvana and back to the river. Then, with only a brief second of hesitation, he stepped over his loved one, whispering “If you can hear me, I will find you again…” before stepping onto the thin membrane that separated him from the freezing torrent below. Inhaling deeply, he managed to swiftly pad his way across with only one crack on the ice to indicate that he had crossed. Glancing once over his shoulder, he disappeared into the woods on the opposite of the river, determined to find a wolf who could heal his deceased lover.

[Sivoncé™]

Damien loped on at a considerably lower pace than the one he had ran at while fleeing in the open. It was more of a steady gait, a light jog, than anything else. Even in the mountains, where the fangs of cold sycthed sharpest, life rushed in with the dull morning. A warren of snoeshoes was stirring not far, the scent of squirrels, nestled deep in their hollows, wafter around Damien. This land was perhaps the one, out of the few territories Damien knew of, that lacked a great or even considerable wolven population. Loners and rouges passed through, but did not settle. In the actual mountains, the tribes were far from any map the pack wolves of this valley had managed to speak of. In place of the lupine masses, prey could grow without fear of wolven fangs. Other predators would control their populations, but they at least gained a little headway. Hunting will be easy here....we could stay at least until Sanceul gets better, I hope. Or I'll rip that whelp....Morgan....I'll rip his organs out and string them from his derailed limbs.
At last, he halted at the sighting of an abandoned burrow-like structure. It wasn't as large as their last settlement, near the Twilight Lake, but there was room enough for he and Sanceul both, and its placement, under and umbrella covering of a gigantic pine, would've made it near impossible to spot if Damien hadn't been looking closely for a place to shelter -- and if his few experiences in life hadn't taught him how to find something of the sort. He crouched as low as his body would allow, frowning at the prospect of shrugging through the hole along with Sanceul. That's not going to work at all...
Lightly, he placed her in the snow next to the hollow. "Sanceul? I've found a place but....I'm not sure how to go about getting you in there. Heck, you're probably not even conscious...." He resisted the urge to pace -- he would have to clean up any blood splatters they left around the outside already, he didn't want to deal with pawprints, too. Luckily, snow was already falling around the outskirts of the pine. I could stick my head under her neck and grab her scruff....her throat looks like the worst wound, so I need to avoid that....it's my best bet.....

Out of sight of any lupine watchings, the corpse of Sylvana gave way to black dust and flying ravens, cawing a loud rucous as they ascended to announce what had befallen them.

[.Rabid Lycan.]

For a moment there, Sanceul almost fooled herself into believing that her throat had a pulse of its own—the throbbing at the base of her throat where blood continued to spill felt like an individual heartbeat. But the slowing pace of Damien gradually coaxed her back into mid-reality, and when her face suddenly met the bitter cold of the snow below, she felt her entire being jerk into semi-consciousness.
Words were being shared. Too weakened and out of it to decipher their meaning, Sanceul simply swirled her pupil in a circle, her eyelids firmly locked in place. He jaw slackened, however, in the most meager indication of acknowledgement. Not that there was many options available for communicating—she most certainly could not speak nor nod, so subtle winces and twitches would have to suffice.
But maybe if I go to Hellfire… I can come back… like the other Hellfirians…
She winced visually, sending a vibration of pain racing through her veins.
Damn, Damien… do what you want… but don’t let it hurt too much…

[Sivoncé™]

The dark brute frowned deeply, but it was clear there was no alternative. He would have to shift her neck slightly, to his displeasure. Grumbling softly -- maybe out of habit in his dealings with Sanceul, he bent his head low and his body into a crouch beneath the fragrant pine. He maneuvered very slowly, carefully, the seconds ticking painfully by. He was reaching his muzzle beneath her head and neck, hoping his own would be some support to her during the move. At long last, his teeth were able to grip her scruff.
And again, his movovements were insane with slowness, progressing sluglike towards the incline to the well-hidden den. But once he did make it to this slope, his treading went at an even slower pace. For all of this slothlike movement, Damien was precise and determined in his resolve. He wasn't running Sanceul into any divets or ridges in the snow, roots, and soil as far as he could tell.
Let's hope that's truly the case....or she'll never forgive me...