Gal...lope free?

[RandomWiktor]

AishTamid played by RandomWiktor:
((Let's get these red wolves off the ground, man!))

___He was standing on a grassy coastline, listening to the roar of the waves crashing on the feral shore. Behind him, a sprawling epanse of woodland swayed gently in the ocean breeze. As he faced the open sea, eyes half closed and a strong wind ruffling the thick russet fur of his nape, he inhaled deeply, taking in the saline odor of the open ocean. His ears flicked to the sound of a lone seagull shrieking high above. It brought a smile to his face, but as the bird's calls continued, they started to intensify, soon an unearthy metallic scream. His eyes shot open at the sound, and sparks were falling from the sky. He let out a loud yelp...
___And then his eyes opened for real, just in time to see the pavement grinding past inches from his nose as his overturned cage slid across the dark street at a massive velocity. Aish-Tamid turned his head sharply in an attempt to see out the ventillation holes in the side of his holding cage, and a wave of nausea and sharp headache coursing through his body with the motion from the sedatives he'd been injected with before the transfer to the next zoo. Through the hole, he could see the truck tumbling on its side down a steep embankment, throwing up sparks as it scraped the pavement on its way. Tiny squares of shattered safety glass littered the road.
___But where was the other cage? Aish-Tamid felt a sharp stab of fear lance through his heart. He attempted to turn around in the cage, but the jarring of the metal over the pavement as it continued to skid down the road caused him to lose his footing, slamming his chin down painfully on the cage bottom. Letting out a low whine, he attempted to struggle to his feet again, clumsy and groggy from being drugged but posessing the single-minded determination to find Khellya. His mate had been in the cart next to him, and if the open door of the destroyed truck was any indication, she was somewhere out on the road like himself. Perhaps she'd been thrown further, perhaps her cage had landed face down and SHE was being ground across the pavement -!
___He wouldn't have much time to reflect on this, of course, because there just so happened to be a steep embankment on both sides of the road, and he had just gone over the shoulder. Though the velocity of his cage had slowed significantly by then, there was enough to carry it over the steep edge on the other side. Suddenly, Aish-Tamid was airborne, weightless and hurtling through the air. An instant later, he smashed into the dried up creekbed below, he cage door bursting open and propelling him out onto the earth. He attempted in vain to get his paws beneath him, but wound up colliding forehead-first into the rocks and earth ascending towards the road.
___Suddenly, he found himself back at the ocean, but this time, as the gull soared over his head, it screamed but one word: Khellya!

[RandomWiktor]

Khellya played by Redpyre:
The female, lost in her own slumber, witnessed no dreams as she travelled. It was blindingly empty and black in her drugged world, remaining maddeningly the same for hours, until the earth shattered apart beneath her.

An explosion of movement and sound broke violently into her unconsciousness, and blearily pulled her into storm of chaos. At first, she figured distantly that this must finally be her dream, because for all the terrifying things that were happening, she felt very little pain or fear. Her smaller body was still in the tight thrall of the tranquilizers, and she watched dumbfounded as the world spun around on its head at sickening angles, and open air yawned beneath her cage.

She would have broken her neck had her muscles been functioning, but instead she carreened like a soft pinball around the inside of her cage as it crashed into the corner of a moving car. The sound of screaming brakes howled in pain, so familiar that it sounded like her own voice. This had to be the strangest nightmare she could remember ever experiencing. Blood clouded one eye then, as the dented door of her cage popped open from the force of the crash, and she was spat onto the gravel at the side of the road.

The people in the cars nearby, the ones who weren't so busy with being involved in a multi-car accident to notice, thought the reddish canine lying on the side of the road must have been dead. They'd seen her crate--one of several--come tumbling off the dying truck, crush and bounce off the hood of another car, finally crashing into the shoulder railing and burst open.

It would be a few minutes before her eyes opened again, and she found with mounting fear that her nightmare was still there, waiting for her. A thousand terrifying smells hit her brain at once...fire and fuel and hot rubber. And her own blood. Shock and drugs allowed her to stand before she could think, wobbling on stunned legs. Nothing that she looked at made any sense. There were people running around, waving their arms. Some of them were looking at her.

At first she wondered why she was wandering forward, toward them, heading back toward the direction of where the truck should have been. There was something there that she needed to find! Her ears were ringing painfully, and there was a human waving at her. A few more steps forward, and suddenly there was a monster charging at her from the corner of her vision. Instinct kicked her around and chased her back off the road, moments away from being tackled by the speeding ambulance. Willowy legs unwillingly ran her all the way off the road and down the incline toward trees and a dry creekbed.

Khellya almost ran right into the trees and beyond, but a sharp scent caught her nose as she limped down the creek bed. Her...mate? Staggering around a mangled crate, she found a familiar crumpled body. Letting out a broken whine, still mostly lost in her dream-like state, she padded over. Finding him motionless, all she could do was wash his face with gentle laps of her numbed tongue.

Later, the news would read about the fatalities and loss...several human lives and a few precious members of some of the most endangered species in the world.

- Meet Khellya -

[RandomWiktor]

AishTamid Played by RandomWiktor:
___The white stars had long past faded behind his eyelids, as had the tangled red swarm of blood vessels visible when the sun struck his face. All that remained was a deep and all-encompassing darkness, omnipotent and absolute. His awareness was limited only to vague and dream-like impressions of the outside world. Long ago, the ghostly howls of the ambulances had come and gone, faint relics of the conscious world. The scent of his mate nearby, the feel of her touch, was only a distant dream. Nothing could rouse him from the blackness, the profound depth of his unconsciousness. Even the wicked cadence of the throbbing ache in his wounded head was numb so long as he remained in slumber.
___ In the end, it took only the gentlest of sensations to finally bring Aish-Tamid back to the world of the living and awoken. Twirling in the night sky, a beacon of light against a canvas of black, a single snowflake glimmered in the moonlight. Its tiny, intricate, icy form drifted slowly down, evading the grasping branches of the trees, windswept by chance down the narrow gully to where the two red wolves rested. Here it settled gently and in contrast, cold against warmth, white against black, on Aish-Tamid's wet nose. Then and only then did his amber eyes finally flutter open, and with a low groan he slowly lifted his head and said, "Khellya?" in a hoarse and pain-struck voice. His breath was visible, a gray and twirling mist in the cold night air.
___Scenting the air and therefore waiting for a reply, he knew she was alongside him, even though he couldn't turn his head fast enough to see her instantly. He wanted to leap to his feet and smother her in licking, but knew better given the horrible pain in his temples. Thus, tail thumping the ground at a frantic pace, he turned and shifted a bit on his elbows and hocks, leaning fowards to lick her face. He whined low and urgently, overwhelmed with joy knowing she survived. For the time being, the fact that they were miles from their natural habitat, in the middle of a harsh and foreign land, meant nothing; the oly thing that mattered was that they were together.

[Khellya]

As she slept, pulled into unconsciousness by exhaustion and lingering sedatives, there still were no dreams waiting for her on the other side. Just featureless, apathetic black. The emotions and nightmares would return once the trauma set in...and that moment was a long way off. For now, she would rest easily in her ignorant blackness and enjoy it. Some part of her knew that it would be the last painless thing she would endure for some time. Her life and body had been uprooted and knocked around; the fate of her beloved AishTamid remained uncertain.

Her face was buried in the fur of his side, hiding her nose away from the encroaching cold. It wasn't until her resting place stirred, and the pleading touches of her mate covered her face, that she grudgingly began to wake.

She whined, though it was really more of a moan than much else. The ache of her body, the cold earth pressing on every aching limb, drove pulsating spikes of pain into her skull before she was even fully awake. She didn't want to open her eyes, didn't want to face this new world. Finally she relented however, at the sounds of AishTamid's voice, and peeked open her eyes long enough to meet those of her mate, confirming that he was alive. A moment later, she was shuffling her body closer and eagerly nuzzling and licking the entirety of his face and neck.

Everything hurt, the air was unfamiliar, nothing surrounding them but foreign dark and cold, but her tail matched her mates, beating a thankful rhythm against the ground.