I can't help trying. Before Carnifex I had been confident in my ability to seduce. Never had I had a want for suitors or those who would willingly take whatever I offered in exchange for protection and warmth. I couldn't go a winter without another, I think. The cold pierced me like nails and sometimes the spring nights dropped low. I would shiver around Myrria, determined to keep her warm even if I wasn't. How strange things were and how cruel the fates were. To have given me something I didn't want and taken away everything I had wanted so that the world was reversed and changed. I stare into the eyes of Exodus as he jerks his head up because they are an orange look in color and it reminds me, faintly, of the red sheen on Carnifex's black eyes. I feel a cruelness creeping up in me, a need to lash out at the world as if Exodus spoke for it. How could there be others who did not feel the pain I felt? I shouldn't have loved my beast. I hated him now because I loved him so fiercely that when he was gone I was nothing.

Is that concern in his face? For a moment I think maybe he will help me but then I shake it off. I must be cautious even if I am trying to seduce him. I must be wary lest he be one of those infernal wolf-eating creatures. May the mange ever gnaw at their skin the way they gnaw at their victims. Was I even fooling him? Was I trying hard enough? I try to focus on adopting a sultry expression because I knew I was beautiful. It was the only thing that had kept me alive for so long, as sad as that is.

For a few moments I wonder if he is dumb. Maybe he doesn't understand what I'm saying or maybe he doesn't care. Except I think maybe he is lost too and it makes my step falter, my gaze shuttering as he gazes upon me with intense curiosity now. I needed him to desire me, not be curious, and I feel panic in me because I know it is too soon. I think I will turn around and leave him, go back to my hungry child and feed her what is left in my body, but then he says something that stops me in my tracks. My gaze turns hard now as I glare at him, as if he was saying it deliberately, as if he knew my secret. Except that as I glare I begin to loose sight of him and he becomes wavy. I realize my eyes are sheened in tears and try to blink them away, abruptly looking away from him to hide the gaze.

Exodus, he offers, and is it weird that I find my defenses crumbling beneath the simplicity of a name? "Malleah," I rasp, my voice no longer deep and sultry, but bitter and tired. "Being alone is the hardest thing of all." And my voice breaks as I sit down, slowly, almost painfully and stare at the ground. It was a bad move because he could be lulling me and I would never have given in so easy before. That was before when I was whole and not cracked and confused. "Do you.. uh.. have a pack?" My voice is awkward as I try to quell my queasy stomach and eager emotions. Grief would consume if one let it so I tried to stifle it as much as I could.