Impact

[Pyre]

The black sky that night was streaked with a stream of bright red fire--it looked like a meteorite or something was falling down towards the dunes. Only meteorites don't generally scream, do they?

"AaaAaAaaAaaaaaaaaaAAAAAA--oof!"

In the sudden impact, plumes of sand shot up, the wind picking it up and temporarily everything went dark except for the fire still blazing where the thing had fallen.

The fall hadn't actually been terribly far. It just seemed like it had been because the thing was on fire and thereby one would think it had already fallen through the atmosphere or something. Also, you couldn't see whatever it had fallen from--either because it was dark or for some other reason.

Whatever the case, the thing was swearing.

"Aaaaahahaaaahaaaa! D*MNIT! D*MN them all!" The hound's white fur was turned gray in the moonlight, clutching a bloody leg and several other injuries. Around him, the flames cloaking his feet, tail, and hands had turned the sand to glass.

"Bloody wolf, bloody fellhounds. All I asked for is five seconds of quiet. Is that really so much to ask?!"

As though the stars could answer him. Bane swore again.

[€l SonikkÜ]

Perhaps not stars, but Bane wasn't as alone as he thought.

A tiny sound, soft and ethereal, came from somewhere nearby. It was hardly audible, but things like that were rarely all that hard to hear when the only step from silence was your own voice.

Nearby in the desert's NOW cold sand, was a girl laying limp in the mesmerizing light. She had three hedgehog-like quills, though somehow softer, the longest one streching just about to her shoulderblade. Her fur and quills were one dark color, appearingly black in this star-lit night. She was laying on her side with eyes closed and soft lips parted in unconciousness.

Covered with blood.

But no sign of an aggresser.

[Pyre]

Bane continued swearing for a good four minutes before he finally shut up. He had to do something, go somewhere, help someone. Something.

He stumbled upright onto one paw--the other still bloodied from...oh gosh, how long ago had all of that been? His leg would probably heal this way, bent and slightly broken. He'd blown his own freaking leg off! How could there still be a foot attached to his ankle?!

Please...don't let this be it. Let me have my leg back. Let me walk again. Let me run. Please, I need my legs! Fix it, someone,please! Was it too late now? Don't let it be too late.

He whimpered a little, but bit it back down. Not now. Any time but now.

That's when he saw a shadow marring his pool of flame. Bane's eyes narrowed and the pale fellhound approached cautiously. The shadow took shape and form, semblance of limbs and head and moving chest--alive.

Bane would have kicked it, probably, but the state of his legs didn't allow this. He would have poked it if he had something to poke it with, but fate had robbed him of even that simple resort. So he simply dropped down next to it and shook its shoulder. It was too dark to determine gender or any real identifying features. He could tell it was a rodent sort of species, but beyond that didn't particularly care to know more. His world spun and oh so very little mattered in the midst of it. Except that there was this thing and he wanted it to wake up. Because if he couldn't rest, then like hell if anyone else deserved to.

"Hey. Hello? You...alive?" The hand that was shaking its shoulder suddenly snapped back--the clothes were wet, and only now did he recognize the rusty scent of blood in the air. The smoke had covered it well before.

[€l SonikkÜ]

Her eyelids fluttered, but her little form moved lifelessly at his prodding. The fires over the sand illuminated her face in golden flickers, high contrast against the shadows set over her dark fur. So surreal, like something straight out of a dream.

But after a moment, what seemed like longer, her brows lowered, twitching over her now squinched eyes.

"Hey. Hello? You...alive?"

His words bounced through some forgotten chamber in the back of her head but they were never really clarified. Rough edges, so to speak. But she knew someone was talking. Some stranger. And perhaps that was what coaxed her eyes open.

Teal orbs, unfocused and disoriented, drifted sightlessly over his face. "Wh..." She closed her eyes again, and shook her head in a very weak movement, as if disguisted at just how much it took out of her to speak but at the same time, too exhausted to care. And tried again, "Where...is this...?"

Then suddenly her eyes flew open and a hand covered in a thin glove flew up to grab his shirt. "Wait! You! You're one of them!"

[Pyre]

Bane's eyes went wide, but next second he was being pulled towards the figure by a pitifully weak hand--but then, Bane was pitifully weak himself right now. "Hey! Wha' d'ya--" his eyes narrowed at the hand and he smacked it with his own. "Watch it." He snarled a little, whether meaning to or not. Look, he hurt. Everything hurt! He ached in places he didn't know was possible, and cuts and scrapes and a broken leg and injured pride, it all swelled up into that snarl, sick of this woman, sick of people, sick of...

His ears flattened and he continued to glare for a long moment, his flames flaring up and then dying down, as temperamental as he was.

"Sorry. Just...so you're alive. What the devil happened to you?" There. Short and to the point. Even if all sense of civility was lost--that's okay, Bane didn't care for it. Heh, she looked in worse shape than he did. Well, at least she still had both her legs. He couldn't muster much sympathy.