i will not bow
i will not break
i will shut the world away
Dark thoughts lace his slumber, fluttering like stricken moths drawn to a all-consuming flame, calling like the soft moans of the damned. Dismembered voices flow down the convoluted routes of the dreary catacombs that were his mind like leaves blown on the stagnant air of a dying man's last breath. They whispered sweet nothings into his ears, just as the ones he had considered to be his friends had during the time they had been with him. During the day, the stag was impervious to these attacks from within, but in his time of dormancy, sleep left him completely vulnerable to the thoughts that his iron-self control had driven away during his waking hours. Faces and scents flashed through his mind, coming in an order that was chronological to each crushing loss. His little sister, Lilja, dead by the teeth of a slavering mad-wolf, his first friend, Maiko, growing mature and leaving without a word, and lastly, and most painfully, the two wolves who he had grown closer to than any others before: Reinn and Cvijet. Reinn's dusk-hued bodice, her wise eyes and sad manner.... Cvijet, always fiery, with her tendency to be utterly scatterbrained, they danced through his mind along with the otherworldly spectres of his thoughts. He tried to join them in the light, but each time he stepped forward, they stepped back. He gazed upon the, longing holding his entire psyche more firmly than chains as they turned, and, with sickening finality, vanished into nothingness. His brother, Sesshomaru, loomed in the background of his sorrowful dream world saying nothing and offering no assistance.
As a product of his troubled puphood, Rijo never slept in the open. The charcoal demon always found a carefully secluded and extremely well-hidden area to rest within. Even now, as he he was taking a quick nap to recover from a rather fierce training exercise, he oriented himself such that, upon waking up, he could escape immediately if it became necessary. He didn't do so to save face because of his nightmares – a wolf who somehow stumbled across his sheltered hiding place would not have known that the sleeping boy was plagued by memories of better times. After all, he lay still, fit, silken bodice in a prone position. No pathetic whines issued forth from his ebon muzzle, his breath evenly passed in and out of his lungs. For all appearances, he was merely another black wolf among hundreds, sleeping in a protected hollow to avoid the cold of the snow. No, the lad hid out of what he thought to be sheer necessity. While he was sleeping, he was completely open to attack, something which caused him to be nervous. Call him paranoid if you will, but these days he only felt safe when he was either awake and alert or completely alone. In this new spot, Rijo felt reasonably protected. It was well into the forest, obscured among tangled rat's nests of brambles and thorny bushes. It would be impossible for anyone to approach him silently and he, being an extremely light sleeper, would hence be fully awake before another creature got within striking distance.
That had its disadvantages, however. When a bird landed noisily in a tree above him, the black boy awoke instantaneously. His opened his eyes, revealing their startling topaz color. The male blinked before raising his head to the heavens. He made out the form of a noir raven and let a feelingness smirk settle over his facial features. The parody of a kind expression passed over his face like a fleeting puff of warmth in the middle of winter, disappearing momentarily to be replaced with his default facade of icy indifference. Rijo had long since forgotten how to smile with true happiness. The black one had deduced that the bird was no threat, but he no longer wanted to sleep, no longer wanted to remember what he had lost. He rose fluidly and stretched luxuriously, arching his spine and throwing his legs out in front of him in an undignified but useful position as he readied his entire body for the rest of the day. He held this ungainly pose for a few moments before shifting into a normal standing position. After ascertaining that no beasties lurked in the vicinity of his makeshift den, he exited the tight-knit underbrush, paws lightly crunching on the thin cover of snow that coated the terra. Without further adieu, he began to move at a swift wolf-lope, his destination undefined in his own brain. The only thing he knew was that he could not stand to linger any longer in a place haunted by his ghosts.
Time passed, and before he knew it, the jet-furred young adult as officially in the middle of nowhere. Rijo could smell a pack's lands not far from his location, and altered his steps to deliberately miss the area. He was interested in joining an establishment and putting himself as a pawn in the hands of some potentially murderous regal. The dark knight had never been in a pack, and so far had failed at every variety of social interaction he had tried, and figured that he had no business sticking his heart into another such dilemma. Loneliness was preferable over the shock of a new pain in his chest and new faces in his dreams.
He wandered aimlessly, muscled frame not tiring even as minutes turned to hours. After a while, the foliage thinned. The stag exited the snow-bound woods and was met with a barrage of sunlight. For someone other than Rijo, the sight before him would have been transfixing, or at least mildly appreciated. Staircase Falls was always pretty, but reached it's full potential now, in the early winter months. The water was flowing, and hence mostly free of ice, but a thin layer of the cyrstalline stuff laced the edges of the bubbling, pool. It was undeniably a glorious sight, but he was not a lover of petty things such as empty beauty. No smile twisted his face as he fully stepped out of the forest, his slim frame moving with an innate grace, and walked to the edge of the icy waters, where he sat. The boy appeared like a splendid statue of coal, expression forever hardened into a frozen mask of utter emptiness. He was a young adult now, and though his bodice still showed some teenlike qualities, such as his long legs and slenderness, he was older than his time mentally. The recent and past traumas he had suffered had only served to harden what was already hard by nature. Before he met Reinn, walls of ice had surrounded his heart to protect him from mental anguish. She had somehow melted his walls, but now that she was gone, the replacement barriers had been constructed out of solid iron. It was going to take more than warmth to melt them.
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