MY LAST BREATH.___death scene.

[Sivoncé™]

^{Hold onto me love
You know I can't stay long
All I wanted to say was
I love you and I'm not afraid.}

Snow devils swirled aimlessly amongst the Mountains of Endless Winter. The world was quiet here, save for the snow song that echoed like a ghost over the spires and quagmires. Summer didn't kiss the stone cold lips of the mountains, but the bloody pawsteps of a wounded femme had left her mark in bloody red lipstick on the snow.

^{Can you hear me?
Can you feel me in your arms?}

Blood plastered the bodice of the goddess who'd once been a canvas of shifting sands. Now, she was a she-devil of purely crimson flame. Her lips agape and quaking, she uttered a single, breathless cry into the stale mountain air. No one heard her. When her legs, like snapping twigs, buckled beneath her and she fell, she was just a tree in a deserted forest, crashing to the earth; there was no sound as she fell from grace, because there was no one there to hear it.

^{Holding my last breath
Safe inside myself
Are all my thoughts of you
Sweet raptured light
It end here tonight}

Pain erupted through her limbs as they crumpled unnaturally beneath her weathered body. She was still beautiful, if death had ever entertained the thought of dancing with beauty. Head down, she retched blood into the snow, draping her maw in strings of crimson.
Sekhmet, what the hell did you do to yourself?

^{I'll miss the winter
A world of fragile things}

It had been a gang of haughty mountain wolves who'd attacked her. Three weakling girls and two brutes who'd sized her up like a lamb before the slaughter -- to breed her, torture her, kill her. They hadn't understood who she was, or what she was capable of.
Killed them, killed them all.

^{Look for me in the white forest
Hiding in a hollow tree (come find me)
I know you hear me
I can taste it in your tears}

But as she dove in for the throat of the last brute -- the one who'd thought she was something to be used, abused, and thrown aside -- the insidious bastard had torn a hole in her throat. Not big enough to leave her dead body beside his. Just enough of a tear to let her slowly bleed to death.

^{Holding my last breath
Safe inside myself
Are all my thoughts of you
Sweet raptured light it ends here tonight}

Sekhmet had led a long, powerful life. She was a fighter. Always was, always would be. She saw an accepted her fate for what it was: a blessing. She wouldn't have to roam through these god-forsaken hills of snow any longer.
She was dead set on going to heaven.

^{Closing your eyes to disappear,
You pray your dreams will leave you here;
But still you wake and know the truth,
No one is there...}

So she'd loved a man who'd killed somebody. She didn't know many wolves who hadn't killed anybody. The packs and Blood Mist could go to hell, but she wouldn't follow. There was only one wolf she would follow, and follow him she would until the end of her days. They'd loved and left each other but no, not really. She'd always carry him in her heart.

^{Say goodnight,
Don't be afraid,
Calling me,
Calling me as you fade to black}

Destroyed, the fallen femme layed her bloodied head on the snow-white down of her deathbed. Her lips stretched, grasping for one last word before death whisked her away into the either.
"Loni."


^{Holding my last breath
Safe inside myself
Are all my thoughts of you
Sweet raptured light
It ends here tonight.}

[Destiny]

No creature that has or ever will live could say that they had not, during some portion of their life, done something terrible, or perhaps, on a lesser scale, simply 'bad'. Not so much something to regret - regrets are for fools and romancers - but a time or a deed to be remembered with mild disdain. To be, one day, plead guilty to and forgiveness begged for. That, that is something no one knows until the millisecond when they must bow down and pray. Pray to their Gods, pray to their friends, their lovers, their blood. Anyone, and everyone, who they have ever done wrong, or ever known. These wolves are redeemed.

But not without succumbing to the leaden weight that is realizing their folly. Never without this moment of truth.

Loni walked through the shadow of the valley of ice and snow, falling in paw-steps he had made only a day before. There had been no freshly falling snow that night, and thus they remained, though obscured, on the boundaries of his vast domain. It was not large for need, nor for want, nay - it was simply that few dared cross the bastard that was he. The devil that loners warned their children of at night, the bastard son of a fool and a vagabond. Not even a brave or particularly intelligent vagabond at that. Loni did not relish in this.

Once, when he had been much younger, the thrill of the hunt, the boiling heat he felt in his gut as the life drained from his kill - whether pup or wolf or prey, it did not matter - had given him a rush. Feeling their existence cease, and knowing it had been he who mastered their fate. Not a God, not anyone or anything else. Mephisto had trained him well, from the time of puphood, molding his young mind like putty. Some wolves say you are born the way you are, but this is only half true. You may be born with the desire, but such a simple thing can be controlled, over-ruled, or even extinguished with the proper care. All it takes is someone to raise you right.

But Loni had not been raised right. Nor had his sister. And therefore, they had both been damned from the start.

It occurred to him that, sometime back, his feet had drifted from the well-worn path, meandering off the lands beyond the boundaries of his rule. This did not worry him - few would dare come near. Even if they were not familiar with the scent, one look would keep them at a fair distance. After all, he was a fairly large beast. Broader, more muscular, and more imposing than most. Generally something to be frightened, even if he was your friend. Like a sleeping grizzly. And even if they dared to come close, the lighter portions of his otherwise black coat had been permanently bloodstained many moons before, which was an unvoiced promise that he was not a wolf you wanted to mess with.

Loni let the path take him. It was not one he was familiar with. These were foreign trees, untouched hills, and the scent of wolf, of blood, hung faintly in the air. As he marched on, it drew richer. Fresher.

His blood began to boil. But there was something wrong. A feeling in the air. An atmosphere that he did not like. It made him wary. Loni did not get wary. This concerned him.

Much of the day had passed by the time his paws had brought him near the heap of fur. Many paces ago the cobwebs in that portion of his brain had begun to blow away, and after awhile he had come to recognize the scent, remember its taste,and, more slowly, what it looked like. The name was caught in his mind, hiding, like something that did not want to be found. A painful memory that had scabbed over for fear of endangering his reputation.

But there was some unnatural force tugging at his body. Forcing those steps, until he was near enough to make-out the figure, close enough to see a few sandy patches hiding beneath the blood. It covered his paws. Seeped into his fur. The name buzzed in his throat, wanting air, wanting to exist once again.

"Sekhmet."

Loni stared. For a very, very long time. In fact, the sun had washed the Mountains with its tongue of flame before he rose his head once more, turned it to the heavens, and then back down to her once again. With the sudden rage that is so pure, so fueled by a feeling he had never known for any other being, he howled. It was the haunting song that is known only to the man who has seen all that has ever mattered disappear from beneath his very nose. Lost, perhaps days ago, perhaps hours, perhaps years, to everything but remorse. He howled for minutes, for hours, and when he stopped the silence was heavy, and then he howled again.

It was not the call of one who has nothing left to live for. It was the war cry of one who has seen the light.

"I will do right by you some day, my lady. I will do you right."

And with that, he turned, and he was gone.

But not as far as you might think. Loni doesn't do just one encore.