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[SON OF A PREACHER MAN | PRIVATE FOR NOW] - LAZARUS - 07-19-2018
[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: helvetica; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 1.4;"]/ will be open eventually
Everyone here thinks they make so much sense. With the schedule they keep, the borders they're so strict about, maybe they'd just never seen anything to make them think something else. But here he is, a living, breathing reminder that their system's not always so damn perfect, and life goes on as it always does. Life goes on. And on, and on. Social niceties have already taken a toll on the Cane Corso, daily kindnesses grating at the exposed nerves. Life on street corners and gravel roads had already torn away any excessive softness, and then any softness that wasn't obsessive. He'd been honed, but not with someone else's careful hand. Life had pinned him to the ground and dragged him, leaving ragged edges. It's only now that he realizes that not everyone else has experienced the same. The people here are kind. He kinda fucking hates it.
The dog has kept himself isolated so far. A few interactions, just once or twice, and most of his time then had been spent making fun of them in some way. Even that became tiring quickly, and where Gabriel adjusted enough to at least figure people out, the mutated creature had decided to stay out of everyone's way. The grasslands are too open to feel comfortable, and with time, Lazarus slowly wanders towards the southern border, eyes flicking to every shuffle of the grass as if he's expecting some other creature there, some other dog with a scarred muzzle and torn ears. There's nothing. Consistently nothing. He's imagining things, and they're not here to cause him any trouble. Staring wasn't a challenge, they didn't need anything from him.
Lost in his thoughts, the day ends with the canine laying underneath the trees' canopy, his mouth stained red. He's not entirely sure what he's eating — bleeds red, has hooves, tripped when he bowled into it — but it's as decent as anything else he's ever put in his mouth. Like he's already said, people can be picky haven't fucking been raised the same. They don't mind sharing, they don't go to bed hungry, they don't mind when people creep up a little too close when they've got a mouthful of food. That, or they don't notice.
Laz notices, and he minds. He'd tried to be tolerant at the first signs of someone creeping near him. It was a border and all that, it could've easily just been a patrol, or someone looking to join. Though he doesn't move to greet them, and offers a low warning growl with coppery teeth, he does nothing more. But he can hear them moving. Not the familiar, subtle shifting of wings above his head, or leaves. Slow, heavy steps at his back, body low to the ground. The growl from Lazarus's mouth now is far more aggressive, his back tense and spine straightening. Another step, and his hackles raise, short fur along his spine bristling. The canine stands slowly and they both circle, the half-eaten prey between them. Even with the sun setting and the shadows of the tree, the other form looks pitiful. A leopard of some sort, thin but not starved, with wild eyes. Lazarus knows that sort of desperation, but he has no sympathy for it.
When they reach for the remnants of his meal, his jaws snap into the air, a harsh bark breaking the fragile silence of the forest. They withdraw, and the cycle repeats with slow steps inwards, neither fully backing down. Then claws slice into his cheek and it's fair game, the battle over in a few short seconds. The leopard is pinned in a heartbeat, the weight of his body more than enough to hold them in place even when they trash underneath him, even when their claws dig in, even as they cry — there's a sick sort of sound and then red, and it's over. He withdraws with harsh pants, tongue lolling out of his mouth and short ears pinned back. Everything settles slowly at first, then all at once.
Lazarus's mouth closes. Fuck.
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Re: [SON OF A PREACHER MAN | PRIVATE FOR NOW] - GABRIEL - 07-19-2018
[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-size: 9.4pt; line-height: 1.4;"]Lazarus hadn't had as much time as Gabe did to grow accustomed to people who hadn't fought for their food the same way, who hadn't defended what they caught tooth and nail because if they didn't, someone else would surely steal it. Once his sisters were old enough, when they started taking care of each other better than Gabriel ever had, he left. Wound up with a small band of folks with big ideas, and he realized many of their perspectives were based from the outside-in, not the inside-out like Gabe's had been. They saw suffering, saw starvation, but hadn't felt it the way the people they pitied did. Gabriel had. It was why he understood Laz so well, how he kept from tripping over the barbwire the kid wrapped around his perimeter; the few times he did catch at the fence he didn't panic or lash out, reacting calmly so as to keep from pushing Lazarus one way or another the way others inadvertently did when growing angry or fearful. They didn't know better, most of them. It wasn't as though Gabriel could hang a sign around Laz's neck that read, "beware: raised to viciously fight for food and shelter because of a shitty world."
Or maybe he could.
At the moment, though, he was asleep, not scheming of ways to acclimate his mutated Cane Corso child. His sleeping schedule was a mess of feline and avian habits, sometimes overlapping and sometimes switching; there were days when he could barely rest at all, and days where he couldn't seem to stop sleeping. Today was a happy medium, the hybrid bedding down in one of the trees, draped across a sturdy branch with his head on his toes, blissfully free of strangers and making certain his son didn't skewer anyone. Of course, nothing good could last, as so many people knew, and so he was roused from slumber by growling nearby. Familiar growling. The "don't come near or so help me" growling. Gabe's onyx gaze took a moment to adjust, and then he was peering down, where a jaguar -lean from not enough hearty meals- approached Lazarus, a deceased antelope the focus.
He didn't intervene, not yet. The jaguar wasn't from here, and if they attacked, Gabriel wasn't going to separate the pair. Which was, naturally, exactly what happened, and he observed with dark eyes as Lazarus pinned the smaller creature, death inevitable, and when the canine seemed to snap out of his mineprotectmine haze, the hybrid leaped out of the tree, gliding down to land with a thump a short distance away. "Bien hecho. ¿Acabaste?" His tone was a bit dry, and he cocked his head, then sighed, slowly approaching to nudge the jaguar's corpse. "Ganaste, mijo. Es hora de limpiar." They could dig a hole, he supposed. Or ditch the body somewhere for the buzzards. Gabriel didn't want this to be twisted on his son in any fashion; the jaguar was a stranger, from over the border, but he wouldn't risk it.
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