It was somewhere between a heartbroken cry and a roar of anguish and rage. Panther blood forced through human veins taints more than just the instincts. Right now, she could feel her pulse split between the slow defeat her human soul felt on the horizon and the disgusted anger that beat through her hybrid heart.
Her skin showed the web of scars that stood as testament to her internal suffering. They all seemed old, despite the constant abuse her skin, the color of Savannah sand at dusk, contrasted by the striations the wind had rendered upon its surface, withstood from inhuman nails blended with blades wholly unnatural. Regeneration was as common to her bloodline as the demons that plagued the minds of those the world thought invincible.
Invincible. If only that weren't so near the truth. She could have ended her pain so many decades ago, so many fractured friendships ago, so many lost loves ago. Instead, her eyes traced the uneven surface of her bedroom ceiling while wounds an inch deep ceased to stain her satin sheets, retreating to the gentle discoloration of another ancient scar.
They had called her ancestors Wolverines, knowing little of how that same ferocity inspired anguish in the minds of those who bore its gift. They had served in wars and hidden in peace, laid open the road to new and better civilizations while slashing through the crumbling tapestry of hateful regimes better left forgotten. And now, they had culminated in her. She was a queer blend of the Wolverine and Panther bloodlines. Brown skin marking the darkness of night that pumped through her veins, both tempering and amplifying the vengeful rage upon which her Wolverine heart survived.
Her existence was no less than poetic. And every day, she hoped to end the stanza, close the piece, bring silence to whatever artistic throat uttered the destiny of her people in such pretty, and inadequate, words.
If her people were the heroes, then the antagonists would surely be the Sabretooths. The clans were not always at war, but they were locked in an eternal dance of passions that raged from the fiercest hate to the deepest love. Generations shed blood and gave birth, hunted, mated, did everything but live normally. When at peace, or even bonded by love, the two groups melded so sweetly, amplifying their strength and countering the weakness in the other. The discord of their rivalry was equally striking.
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I wonder where this should go...
