spirit animal -- A female raccoon named Lyssa, but he doesn't ever acknowledge her so she stays mostly out of sight.
mate -- Shanti
appearance -- Anubis was dipped in a pond full of midnight when he was born and then placed down upon the earth. Of course, this isn’t actually what happened, but it might as well be so. His pelt is the color of charcoal, the color of the shadows, of black ink and a dreamless night spent sitting in darkness. His entire body is nothing more than a streamline shadow that get interrupted only nearest his spinal column and on the right side of his back. It is there that a smidge of light entered and stained him, forming what looks to be a half-heart over his back.
The other startling feature about this wolf would have to be the horns protruding from his head. They star just behind his ears and curl up and away from them before coming around, resting slightly on his cheek. They too are colored black and seem to have thin scars running through them, no doubt from him testing them out against rocks and trees. His front legs have what seems to be added fur along the backs of them, though this fur is fine and soft to the touch. It never seems to tangle or grow out past a certain length.
Besides that, Anubis is a rather lean individual. Because he was the runt of the litter, he never became too large and was always on the skinner side of things. He almost looks fragile in the sunlight, but, of course, that changes when the sun actually sets. His shoulder blades are well defined against his back, and his tail seems a tad bushier than the tail of a normal wolf. What’s a little extra hair growth, though?
personality -- Anubis is a rather stoic individual to everyone he meets. He isn’t overly friendly nor cold-hearted, but he doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. He usually doesn’t say much at first, but when you get him talking about something he’s interested in, he’ll go for hours. He isn’t the type of person that people immediately warm up to, and usually, people are intimidated by him. He always has looked kind of intimidating because he hardly smiles…at all. The boy has a way about words though and is a smooth-talker. One could fall in love with the tone of his voice if they wanted because of the way he controls it, how it rises and falls at just the right pitch.
He’s probably the most territorial wolf you’ll ever meet. He doesn’t like people touching his things nor trying to take them away from him. When he explodes into his temper, it better to just leave him alone than keep goading him on and on and increasing it. He’s been known to do very drastic things when in a rage and he doesn’t come down from that rage for a very long time. It takes forever for him to cool down after an explosion. He can be as quiet as he wants to be whenever he sees fit, though his tongue has been known to give off some of the best comebacks known. That’s his mother’s wit and quick intelligence shining through; probably the only piece that she left with him.
Underneath that which his father fashioned him to be, he’s mostly a normal though slightly anti-social wolf...
history -- I was the runt of the litter. The last born, the slowest to escape my mother’s womb, and was estimated to be the least able to fight for anything I wanted in life. I am also the reason that my beloved mother is dead. It was that last contraction, that last push, which robbed her of her energy and life force. She forfeited her life so that her child, her very last child, could gain one of his own. And because our pack was extremely small, no more than ten or thirteen wolves, births and deaths were precious things to be witnessed and experienced. The birth of me and my siblings, all of them being male, was celebrated well into the night though the sunlight was reserved especially for my mother. The pack mourned her passing as the shaman chanted and worked his magic, guiding her spirit into the afterlife for rest. My father, without a doubt, was distraught and broken-hearted after his mate had died and though he never came out and told me it to my face; I still believe that he thinks I am the reason for her death. I wonder, from time to time, if he could choose between his son and his wife, who he would pick.
Since our own mother had perished giving birth to us, my father had to find another couple willing to give us milk and nourishment. And being the Beta of this small pack, finding a willing female to nurse his growing boys wasn’t hard at all. In fact, a rather kind-hearted family decided to become our adoptive “parents” while we were still breastfeeding seeing as their own offspring had perished during the birthing process as well. The shaman came every other day to visit us, checking mostly on our health and commenting about certain information that the fates were telling him as he looked us over. His eye would wander to me last, I’ve been told, and he would mutter about how I took the coloring of my mother and the horns of my father. Both of which are true as my pelt did mirror the inky black of my mother while the virus that swept the land had reacted to my father’s lineage to produce something akin to ram horns on all their male offspring, antlers on the females.
Days seemed to melt into a very long night to us, what with our eyes and ears closed. Only when they opened and we experienced light and sound did we truly begin to appreciate the world around us and all that inhabited it. As soon as we did open our eyes and ears, our father took us away from those adoptive parents whom had feed us and warmed us when our da was too sick with grief to give a shit. From the day that we returned to our father’s side, we were trained as he would have no son of his weaker than the lowly omega, who was, by typical wolven standards, a pretty decent fighter. We were ran until our legs felt too heavy to be moved, beaten until our coats were thick with welts and the skin beneath was broken and bleeding. He trained us to be fierce warriors, to protect what was ours, to never run from battle. He trained us, more or less, to be like him.
By the time we were around the age of eight months, more than half our adult size and with our distinctive markings slowly appearing beneath our coats, the shaman decided that it was time to go through the naming ceremony. In our small pack, it was the Shaman and not your parents who named you. The naming could take place anywhere from a day after the birth of a pup up until a year and if the spirits didn’t give the shaman a name by their first birthday, they were banished from the pack. “It’s inauspicious to have an unnamed soul wandering through our midst,” Likuta, the shaman, replied when asked. My brothers and I, under the strict regime of our father, didn’t believe much in the “hocus-pocus” of the shaman and his ways. Then again, my father didn’t believe in much after the death of my mother.
Anyway, the naming ceremony took place on a night when the moon hung full and round in the sky, seemingly smiling down on the earth. There beneath the moon, the shaman chanted a few lines of speech and the pack repeated as my brothers and me sat in the middle of their large circle, the only other wolf within the circle with us being Likuta. As we looked at him, we found ourselves intimidated by this old wolf and the green snake that had woven itself loosely around his neck. Everyone knew the snake to be Likuta’s spirit animal, Teak, and he was the only in the pack to have such an animal. As my brothers and I approached Likuta, Teak would rear up into Likuta’s ear and his forked-tongue would flicker out and retreat. Likuta would nod sagely, mumble something under his breath and pronounce the name the spirits had given him. And that’s how we were named: Havyn, Marius, Nikoli, and Anubis.
After the naming ceremony, things began changing and they started changing quickly. It seemed as if I was always in competition with my brothers, always trying to outrun them or outhunt them or win a sparring match that would suddenly spring up between us. It wasn’t for showing off or even trying to up show them, but it seemed as if it was dire that I come out above them. More time than not, my father would come waltzing by at the end of such an ordeal, rake an eye over the winner and the loser before snorting and sauntering back off. I was lost to the meaning of this and only took it in stride, honing my skills and improving them with every race, every hunt, and every spar that I won. Little did I know that the shaman had come to my father and told him that the spirits were at work. “The fate of one of your boys is soon to change, Faolan,” Likuta told him, “and I would keep a close eye on that boy so that he will be ready when the spirits finally divulge their plan.”
Other than the random occurrences when I found myself locked in a race or battle against my siblings, I found myself filled to the brim with energy and that energy was only let loose when I ran. I became fast and streamline, my lack of muscle from being the runt of the litter finally playing in my advantage. The little muscle mass I had, I built up, and my willowy body suddenly became a fine tool that I could use to outrun anything, to sneak up on anyone with. I also found myself extremely territorial, which, looking back, my brothers were experiencing as well. It seems that the virus also mutated the genes that my father passed down to us, making our tempers wild and unpredictable and our natures too hostile for others males to comfortably be around unless submission was granted first. Adolescence wasn’t a good time to be me needless to say.
The spring of my second year granted me a life-changing experience that I will never forget…nor would I be able to even if I tried. Running along the stream that cut through our pack lands, I saw the shaman gathering wild herbs and roots he would need later for something or other. I only stopped to pay my respects to him, give a hello and continue running, when he stopped me for conversation. And during that conversation, his eyes were roaming all over me as if inspecting me for something though that something was elusive to my knowledge until he gasped. “You have the mark!” he murmured, his eyes going wide and pinpoint the right side of my back. Not understanding, I turned hesitantly in a circle as if I could find what he was talking about. When I returned to looking at him with the same dumbfounded expression, he moved me to the stream, told me to stand sideways along the water and peer into the blue liquid rushing past us.
That was when I saw the large white half-swoop extending from my spinal column over my ribs before narrowing and meeting back up with my spine but at the sacrum…exactly where the tail was attached at. Not understanding, Likuta went on to explain about a rather strange dream he had been having for the past week about a black and white heart. He only knew that he was supposed to put the two pieces of the heart together and from there, great things will happen. “The fates, indeed, have a plan for you Anubis,” he murmured, his eyes gazing into mine intently as if that would make me believe him. In truth, I didn’t. I just thought he was a crazy old wolf who no one had the heart to kick out of the pack so they gave him a crackpot title and left him to his own devices. Little did I know how true and how untrue his “dream” had been.
The next week was the most hectic week of my life. It seemed as if Likuta had been in contact with an old friend whom lived in a pack not far from out own. When Likuta had told his friend about the dream and the marking that had appeared on my back, his friend had some bright idea about a meeting between me and some daughter of some Alpha and whatnot. I didn’t mind going to meet the female and told Likuta as much, though I wasn’t expecting anything from the meeting. More than likely, I’d just tell her how crazy this old wolf was, thank her for her time, and be back in my den by nightfall. Father decided to join us on our little adventure and we arrived around noon-ish, with the sun heating the earth from directly above us.
As soon as I glanced up from my paws and how when I dragged them along, a little cloud of dust would rise into the air, as saw the white female standing there with her shaman and parents, my heart skipped a beat. I felt it shudder, as if it was trying to remember the normal pace at which to thump against my ribs. In that moment I saw her, I felt that surge of energy, the one that could only be released by running and at the same time, I felt an odd want to merely stand still. I felt…torn, I guess, with the need to run away from what was about to happen and yet watch the events yet to come. I felt the need to protect her, to herd her away from these others males and fight anyone who thought otherwise. My skin itched, tiny droplets of moisture appeared between my pads, and my tail wouldn’t calm down with its frantic swaying…ugh. I was, without a doubt, a royal mess.
Father and Likuta went towards her parents and their shaman while she ventured closer to me and the feeling only intensified. Some deep primal thing inside of my knew that she was mine, that she belonged to no other male but me, and if she or anyone else said differently, they would face my wrath. That feeling scared me senseless and made me giddy all in one single burst. I greeted her formally, bowing my head and pronouncing my name and listened as she did the same, though she wasn’t as formal as I had been. It was understandable seeing as she was the daughter of an Alpha and I was only the son of the Beta pair. Formalities aside, we turned and walked away from all adult wolves in the area and talked.
I don’t know how long we walked and talked and laughed together, but it seemed like forever to me. The longer we went, the looser we became around each other, and it wasn’t long before I could see that she would, if given the chance, become one of my best friends. She was sweet and sincere and honest, qualities that only a fair few had in my home pack. I could tell she could be fierce when she needed to be, but there was this softness to her that I had never known before. Growing up with a father and brothers would do that to you, after all. And her arrogance was endearing and I found it cute, told her so on one occasion or another when she said something or acted a certain way that belayed that overconfidence. When we returned to our respective guardians whom were sitting in a semi-circle, looking quite pleased with themselves and us, we were given a rather startling piece of news: we were to be mated.
At first, I wasn’t sure if I had heard my ears right. Mated? To this soft creature sitting before me? Surely, not. Surely they were mistaking me with someone else, someone who was an Alpha’s son or a Shaman’s nephew. Of course, these feelings of turmoil and indecision was hidden from plane view as, by father’s rigorous teaching, emotions were to only to be shown when they were the exact ones you wished to display. So, until I could decide whether I was frightened, nervous, happy, sad, angry, vengeful or what have you, I merely lofted a brow and looked mildly surprised. She, on the other hand, must’ve been trained in some different art for the female went tearing off into her pack lands and no doubt to her den to cry. And it was in that one act that I found a tiny kernel of irritation for Shanti, for her rude actions, for her lack of discipline, and for her complete and utter disregard of everyone else’s feelings in the matter. And, before I could think better of it, I slid past her parents to where my father and my Shaman stood, and glared at them. “She isn’t the only one seeing the glass as half-empty,” I bit out, trying to sound as harsh as possible. Maybe bad manners would get me a free ticket home?
I wasn’t so lucky. It seemed my snide remarks only sweetened the deal and the flushed at how I would be “such a good mate for Shanti” and someone who would “put order into her life.” The two Shamans only smiled and nodded to each other before walking off and arranging the ceremony, my eyes flicking to my father and the Alpha and Alphess walked off as well, no doubt to see their distraught daughter. “I guess this is all part ‘fate’s plan’ for me life, hm?” His merely gave a gravelly chuckle, one that grated against my nerves and made me grind my molars, before he as well disappeared into a random direction. This wasn’t turning out at all as I had expected.
Calypsis - April 5, 2008 11:21 PM (GMT)
Sweet picture!
Just finish up the appearance section and you'll be good to go.