09-06-2016, 07:21 AM
Scalped sucks in a breath;
She stands splay-legged as the day she was born, her skin a-shiver with exhaustion and fear. Never has she felt like this since the moment the buffalo hooked his horn into her breast and ripped up through the meat and gristle of her, and her boy tumbled from her back and beneath the trampling hooves of the buffalo herd. Her exhaustion comes from climbing the mountain, the trail winding and long. The fear, that comes only from two things: how her children have fared (all of them!), and how she is to deal with the loss of the very thing that has kept her alive thus far - her immortality. She had only discovered it long after the buffalo had been stripped of skin and meat both for the tribe, her boy hoisted into the air on his burial bier, and she, left in the place of the last stride she had taken, sprawled in a gallop and gore.
The earth had rumbled;
She mistook it for thunder and turned her head away, until she felt it leaving her - her immortality.
She felt terribly mortal, terribly new, and that terrified her until she looked in upon her watery reflection in a river - she was still in her prime, muscled and disfigured as far as the red shield on her breast went, the scar remained, ugly and puckered up. Other than that, Scalped was unchanged and it took some time before she thought of her children again, the newest two still new and freshly weaned off her milk that she cast her black eyes about for them. Spear and Spark were nowhere to be seen, and Scalped felt a tear slip down her cheek. She had to trust in Coyote, - certain that trickster had a paw in this! - and the angry beings of this land, that her children were okay. Scalped smelled their father up on the mountain, and only here, after she had climbed its peak, did she feel her immortality steal back into her bones. It straightened her spine, shored up her marrow, and made her blood tingle in the way that only small magic and good medicine can make it tingle.
She sighed; a little happier now that she felt invincible in the face of death and age, and stood there, breathing in the thin air.
She stands splay-legged as the day she was born, her skin a-shiver with exhaustion and fear. Never has she felt like this since the moment the buffalo hooked his horn into her breast and ripped up through the meat and gristle of her, and her boy tumbled from her back and beneath the trampling hooves of the buffalo herd. Her exhaustion comes from climbing the mountain, the trail winding and long. The fear, that comes only from two things: how her children have fared (all of them!), and how she is to deal with the loss of the very thing that has kept her alive thus far - her immortality. She had only discovered it long after the buffalo had been stripped of skin and meat both for the tribe, her boy hoisted into the air on his burial bier, and she, left in the place of the last stride she had taken, sprawled in a gallop and gore.
The earth had rumbled;
She mistook it for thunder and turned her head away, until she felt it leaving her - her immortality.
She felt terribly mortal, terribly new, and that terrified her until she looked in upon her watery reflection in a river - she was still in her prime, muscled and disfigured as far as the red shield on her breast went, the scar remained, ugly and puckered up. Other than that, Scalped was unchanged and it took some time before she thought of her children again, the newest two still new and freshly weaned off her milk that she cast her black eyes about for them. Spear and Spark were nowhere to be seen, and Scalped felt a tear slip down her cheek. She had to trust in Coyote, - certain that trickster had a paw in this! - and the angry beings of this land, that her children were okay. Scalped smelled their father up on the mountain, and only here, after she had climbed its peak, did she feel her immortality steal back into her bones. It straightened her spine, shored up her marrow, and made her blood tingle in the way that only small magic and good medicine can make it tingle.
She sighed; a little happier now that she felt invincible in the face of death and age, and stood there, breathing in the thin air.
ooc: Scalped is reclaiming Immortality as her temp trait. <3
![[Image: commission____scalped_by_pegasusstudios-dahbsg9.jpg]](http://pre10.deviantart.net/5738/th/pre/i/2016/254/d/3/commission____scalped_by_pegasusstudios-dahbsg9.jpg)