corpse dieudonné

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ooc;; set sometime after never satisfied <3 being vague for now since idk how that one ends exactly. for @Echo!!

TW mention of death
Chaotic pelt ripples under moonlight with each soft step, multicolored eyes nearly appearing to glow. He's a brute in stature, certainly, built with plenty of muscle - but something lurks in those eyes that speaks to more intelligent thoughts than one might expect. It's odd that he's heading towards three years old already, he thinks. Odd that it's been months since the loss of his wife and his daughters. Odd that he still grieves them as much now as he did when he lost them. The hollow section where his heart ought to be aches, the edges not yet worn smooth.

He hadn't known he was capable of such vivid, violent emotion until he'd met Zoé. Hadn't known he'd ever been capable of such wild grief - that he could be broken in such a way. That he could be broken at all, really. Maybe not on the outside, not where anyone could see, but the sharp edges in his hollow chest speak volumes to him. Exhaling a sharp breath, he shakes his head and continues walking until he reaches the water, gazing out across the waves with a stony expression. Ah, Zoé, he murmurs, all trace of his accent disappeared, how I wish you were here.

His voice is soft, meant only for himself, but perhaps if someone were nearby they might could hear it. Looking up at the sky, at the blanket of stars that remind him so thoroughly of her, he settles to his haunches and wonders if she's watching. If she and their daughters are somewhere out there, waiting for him to come home to them. Watching over him until his number gets called. It's a comforting thought, if a foolish one; he's not much of one for superstition. He's never seen a ghost, never believed in them, although his grandmother often told stories about such things from her homeland.

He almost wishes, for a moment, that her stories were true.

New faces in Scilla were uncommon. In fact, it seemed they lose more members than are retained and at least half of the Bezras still didn't want to be here. Echo was warming up to it, once she got used to the warm lagoon waters and gentle lapping waves she quite liked it here. However, she harbored little fondness for Dieudonne; learning how to comingle with them with a degree of harmony but never truly bonding with any of them. She rolled with the punches, found solace in her swims and medicinal studies, and mostly kept to herself and the other Bezras. The best thing about the Dieudonne is that this arrangement appears to work for them as well; they weren't fond of having their ways questioned and Echo was happy not to ask.

The new man on their borders was the strangest Dieudonne she's ever seen. Like Bezra children, they were typically few in marking and earthly colored. Keiran's mottled appearance being perhaps the busier of the Dieudonne she's met. Yet, @Corpse was a wholly different creature and Echo could not help but be intrigued by his peculiarity - especially the second tail that intermingled with the first.

Echo was a good girl, always minding her own business so she did not engage the man right away, simply passing glances at his tail from afar. Over time it nags at her - picking her thoughts like a thread until eventually, she works up the nerve to approach him and ask curiously "Why do you have two tails?" It was the kind of tactless question that was as harmless as it was ignorant and her tone more akin to that of a young yearling than an older one nearing adulthood.

corpse dieudonné

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The soft query that interrupts his late night musings might, under any other circumstances, have been irritating - but tonight, he's simply glad for the distraction. He takes a moment of consideration before answering, and unlike the last time she'd seen him, his voice is unaccented. I was born this way, he says, his voice rumbling out from deep in his chest. His tone is polite, and he's deliberately gotten rid of his accent in order to make himself more easily understood. Having met quite a few people on his way to Amaryllis who hadn't been able to understand his accent, he'd learned to rid himself of it at will. I'm not sure why. None of my family members look quite like I do. A self-deprecating smile twitches his lips upwards, though only briefly.

My mother says I just wanted to stand out. His appearance certainly does that, although he's found the chaotic patterning of his pelt to be more useful during hunts than one might think. The confusing overlap of differing patterns seems to disorient prey and make it hard for them to lock eyes on his exact position, and it helps to camoflage him amongst trees and shrubbery. Still, he's never really thought about why he looks the way he does, or why he has two tails - it's not usually a topic of conversation. He shrugs one heavy shoulder and looks back up at the sky, wondering what his deceased wife had thought about his looks. She'd liked him enough to marry him, so he supposes she must not have minded his peculiarity very much.

I don't think we've met before. I'm Corpse. It's in his best interest, he thinks, to be polite; it certainly never hurt anything, at least. Maybe his quest to rebuild his family's image can start here, amongst those who belong to the pride. After all, if their pridemates go around telling everyone how horrible his family is, any and all attempts at PR will be utterly wasted. He's not certain even now whether it's even worth trying to fix things for the family - it might be too late at this point. Still, @Echo hasn't been rude, just curious, and Corpse sees little point in snarking at or otherwise attacking her for no reason. He's not even hungry right now, so she doesn't resemble food at the moment - not that he'd hunt members of his own pride.

It's not a good idea to kill where you sleep, considering doing so tends to lead self-righteous pricks right to your den to bitch and moan about how horrible you are. Some of them even try to kill you as punishment for killing so many others! He hasn't experienced such an event firsthand, but he's been raised on his mother's cautionary tales about such things and knows better than to ignore his mother's wisdom. Why he doesn't treat his grandmother's ghost stories the same way, he can't say - except that advice about hiding your less savory habits just seems a little bit more... believable than ghosts. More useful, too. Surely, if ghosts existed, his wife would've been one. Surely, if they existed, his wife would've come to him after her death. If his grandmother was right, then... then why hadn't his wife showed herself after she died?

And once again, he's jabbing his own open wounds with a stick.

His response is taken into silent consideration as Echo listens to his divulgence that he wasn't quite like the other Deiduonne. It's a plight that reminds her of a certain small golden brother of hers who was also just a bit different than the rest of the Bezras. Echo had never considered that might shape his life experiences any differently until now. It is okay if @Corpse was a bit different than the other Dieduonne. They could use a bit "different", in her opinion.

She sits, brown eyes drifting from his tails back to his dark face and satisfied enough not to ask more about his tails. There is a faraway wistfulness to his tone, now unaccented and quite easy to understand, as though he were thinking of something different or perhaps just needed to focus more on speaking when not using his native language. "That's a cool name." She comments, thinking it sounded more like a cool edgy nickname than a real name given by one's parents. It seemed to fit him. There is a lingering hesitation before she finally replies "I'm Echo." To a Bezra, names held a superstitious power and while she did not go as far as to use a facade exclusively as Bee did, she found trust difficult in Amaryllis. She had been scorned on more than one occasion and had not been here but a few short months.

Yet, he is a pride mate now and that meant something and he seemed to be polite and conversational Dieudonne - different as he had put it. Maybe he would entertain just a few more questions from her if she just asked. "Can I ask you about the Deiudonne?"

corpse dieudonné

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He does, in part, struggle with the English language - his grandmother is as fluent in it as she is in French, and he envies her that. Of course, his grandmother's native tongue is English, so he supposes that might have something to do with it. She hadn't been raised amongst her father's people - for he was who had been one of the French killers - and had learned French later in her life. She had also learned the ways of her father's family later in life, but had embraced them despite being of a gentler nature than any other member of the family that Corpse has ever met or even heard of. He wonders if he doesn't get his strangeness, in some part, from her. @Echo's response to his introduction is met with a small, strained smile; jagged at the edges, but genuine enough. As genuine as he can be, at least, when he feels so very hollow inside.

It's... nice to meet you, Echo. If he's hesitant in saying it, it's only because he hasn't really made up his mind just yet about the younger feline. She seems harmless enough, though, and thus far is providing him a much-needed distraction from the ache in his chest and the memories in his head. For now, his flashbacks are muted and nearly non-existant, but he knows better than to believe this girl has cured him with her questions. She's a distraction - but distractions don't stick around forever, and sooner or later he'll be alone with his own personal hell again. Can I ask you about the Dieudonné? Her voice draws him further out of his head, this particular question one that he's happy to oblige. What do you want to know? There are certain things he will not reveal, but he's content to answer at least a few questions about his family.

A ghostly smile tugs at her lips in an automatic response to his own tense smile. He says it is nice to meet her, but there is a pause there and Echo wonders if she is bothering @Corpse and he is just being polite. She would keep her questions short then. "How many are there? Do you know them all?" Her own family was also numerous, but more and more she begins to realize that there are even more Dieudonne out in the world than there may be living in the pride. A large family was something she was used to, as her own was quite large as well, but something so far-reaching and vast that they might not even know each other was a strange concept to her. Though she and some of her siblings may feel like strangers at times there was a shared history that would forever connect them.

corpse dieudonné

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Her question makes his lips twitch in mild amusement. We are legion, he rumbles, shrugging. I don't know all of my relatives. Just the ones I was raised with, and the ones I'm descended from. His pedigree had been drilled into his head, as it ought to be with every member of the family; each of the bloodline should know which of the original four sisters they descend from. It's a test of sorts; not knowing which sister is your ancestor is a failure. Multicolored eyes peer back over at the younger feline, stern features softer than usual with appreciation for the distraction she provides. Anything else you'd like to know? He's happy to oblige @Echo's questions for as long as she wishes to ask them.

His voice rumbles as he says something cryptic; legion. Echo is unfamiliar with the word, but it must mean numerous. After all, she knew all the Bezra (as far as she knew). She nods both in understanding and an indication that she had more questions for him, shifting somewhat uncomfortably beneath the intensity of his off-colored gaze. Even softened by the circumstance of this conversation, he was an intimidating-looking lion. "Yeah. Do you know why you have so many enemies?" @Corpse was new here, but maybe he could provide some insight to her as to why she and her siblings were subject to relentless assaults from outside lions - ones that seemed to hold hatred in their hearts for the enigmatic family. "Ever since we were claimed," There is a twinge of emotion on the word, not quite bitter but not positive either, "the attacks do not stop." She is caught in the middle, resenting the lions who would harm her and her kin even more than the ones who hold her here but feels as though - especially given the circumstances of her own claiming - the Dieudonne are not as blameless as Amara would lead her to believe.

corpse dieudonné

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I do not know for certain, he stresses the word, biting it between sharp fangs with a certain aggression that is not directed at poor @Echo, but rather at whatever fool has been running amuck causing all the hatred to begin with. But I suspect some male member of my family is behind the problems. We are lead by women for a reason - men are too... he pauses, lip curling upwards into a disdainful sneer, stupid and impulsive to be left to their own devices. If there is a matriarch in these lands, it is her duty to stop whatever nonsense is going on. He doesn't add it, but he thinks that if there is a matriarch here, she's not running things very well.

If it were Corpse's branch of the family, well... his mother and grandmother would've slaughtered him the second he stepped so much as a toe out of line. However, if there is not a matriarch, then it falls to the non-idiots of the family to keep whoever is running around in line, unless there are women still here to do the disciplining. Since, evidently, no disciplining has been done... Corpse is beginning to have the uncomfortable and undesirable feeling that discipline is going to fall on his shoulders. If there is no matriarch, and are no women of the blood here who are willing to discipline whatever male has run our name through the mud, then...

He heaves a heavy sigh, shaking his large head. I suppose I'll have to do something about it.

He seems upset, and @Corpse's response leads Echo to believe that not all the Dieudonne are like the ones she's met here. Violent and stubborn, but also steadfast in their own way. To be honest, she hadn't even known that they were led by women specifically. She had assumed that both Vermier and Amara ran things, and knew Cassine was being trained but nothing else. "Vermier." She offers. It seems there are some gaps in the Dieudonne's knowledge that she could help fill in herself.

"He stole a cub from some other pride, or so they say. They came and won him back a while ago and I haven't seen them since. A different clan started invading soon after but I don't know why...they are nasty." She holds no understanding greater than her own experience, but she had been there at challenge after challenge at the borders; been there to witness the unending scorn the lions of this land feel for the Dieudonne. "We were claimed too, but we crossed the border...trespassing. Not stolen." No one comes to free them or fight on their behalf, as they had with Bait. No pride with great numbers march on the borders to liberate the feral Bezra children. At this point, would any of the Bezra's leave even if freed? They stuck together as a family, their threads to each other stronger than the chains that bind them here. As long as one wishes to stay, they would likely all stay.

Needless to say...it was complicated. This once-prison has become her home.