This is a private rp between myself, @Chogiwae, and @Imperfect_Autumn, but you're welcome to stalk!
Four strangers in their late teens meet under the most unlikely of circumstances—–a full moon, freezing March temperatures, and a strange forest surrounded by twisted rumours. Shadows that contort and solidify to form horrific beasts, man-wolves darting between trees, whispers of dark magic in the air. At least, those are the stories passed from mouth to mouth by the residents of a town near to the fabled woods.
In reality, the forest holds nothing but a tiny, crude village home to a raggedy pack of werewolves. Not cruel monsters or bloodthirsty nightmares, but an exhausted, tight-knit family of outcasts bound by something much stronger than blood. By day, it's easier for them to pass as regular humans. But when the nights grow longer and colder, as the moon waxes into a full, glowing circle, a transformation begins—-a transformation from man to wolf. They do what they can to survive, but winter is ending… and danger is coming.
Name: Joseph Colombo (goes by Joe)
Age: 19
Gender: Male
Age When They Were Turned: Hasn't happened yet.
Appearance: Tan skin marred by crisscrossing scars and dotted by the occasional moles and sunspots. Dark brown eyes (almost black), very short (nearly buzzed) brown hair. 6’1”, broad shoulders, muscular build (especially around the chest), a mouth that seems to be in a permanent scowl, but makes deep dimples appear when it curves into a smile. In wolf form, he has grey-brown fur, a large, muscular build, dark brown eyes, and a patch of white fur on his forehead (plus lots of scars).
General Attire: Casual attire, generally anything easy to move in. Cargo pants, monochrome t-shirts, usually shades of brown or tan. When he’s not on the job, he’ll wear jeans and a white t-shirt, maybe some hiking boots. Hates hats no matter the weather, wears a maroon scarf when the weather gets colder, loves his brown leather jacket, and always has a small golden cross necklace on beneath his shirt.
Personality: Acts very tough and closed-up, very up-front as opposed to passive aggressive, gets angry quickly and easily. Overprotective, insanely loyal, a surprisingly strong moral code despite what he’s forced to do for a living. Surprisingly nurturing and gentle when you get to know him, much more practical than creative. Sticks to the facts, goes with his gut instincts, understands the importance of careful planning instead of running into situations unprepared. A perfectionist, needs everything to be neat, super tidy, and perfectly in place.
Backstory: Grew up under two strict, harsh parents who frequently beat him when he did wrong. Many siblings and cousins who he was close to, but his interaction with the outside world was kept limited. Since his parents were important members of the New York mafia, he was sent out on missions at an early day. He killed his first target at age 13, something which still haunts him to this date.
Other: Left-handed, tough parents, the oldest child (two younger brothers and one younger sister). Loves dark chocolate, struggling to recover from his addiction to cigarettes.
Name: Sienna Storm Douglas
Age: 18
Gender: Female
Age when they were turned: 15
Appearance: 5’ 8”
https://pin.it/jalzb26gwbei6l
General Attire: Black or white turtlenecks, maybe a leather jacket if she feels like it. Dark jeans. Maybe a mid-thigh to knee-length floral skirt with leggings or tights. Black Converse. She’ll often wear a floral print skirt or dress with a leather jacket and black combat boots.
Personality: https://pin.it/tgj5jit2svwgyo
(90s and 10s)
Backstory: When she was 15, Sienna was walking through the woods near her house in the late fall. She’d always been curious about the woods, not believing the rumors that were told about them. It was said that there were vicious monsters roaming the forest, cold-blooded killers that would tear a man to shreds without a thought. People used to disappear into them and not return for months, usually coming back smelling like some strange animal.
She didn’t believe the rumors until she was experiencing them herself…
She was bitten by a wolf, a starving, hungry wolf that she’d startled. Soon, she could feel ice and fire battling for space in her veins. It felt like she was being torn apart from the inside out. A few minutes later, she was a dark brown wolf, hints of her red hair visible in her fur when the light hit it at just the right angle. It was odd for a wolf with such dark fur to have bright blue eyes, but she did. She’d kept her human eyes in her wolf’s body.
Other: Right-handed; she’s the only daughter in four kids, with two older brothers and one younger. Her parents were worried out of their minds when she disappeared for the winter, and then they thought they were going crazy when they saw her shift. When she was still a wolf, they knocked her unconscious and carried her out to the woods, where they left her. She was then found later by one of the pack.
Name: Rhys Griffin Blau
Age: 20
Gender: Male
Age when they were turned: Born wolf
Appearance: 6' 2"
https://pin.it/plhx5rrjnrf2ws
General Attire: Jeans, tshirts, sneakers. Basically anything pretty casual.
Personality: He's pretty calm and unshakeable. Kind and friendly, pretty outgoing. He's a total sweetheart and will get flustered at certain things. Easy smile. Twinkling eyes that make you think he's planning something.
Backstory: There's not much to tell. He was born a wolf, raised in both worlds. He does find it easier to be a wolf, though.
Other: Right-handed; has a younger sister named Jinger Rose. He's a silver-gray wolf, fairly large.
Name: Zenith (Zee-nyth (rhymes with myth) Faith
Age: 18
Gender: Female
Age When Turned: 17 (nearly eighteen)
Appearance: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/09/2d/5d/092d5db69034e06593c0c8dd3ee7b9f0.jpg
Her wolf form is brown-fur with a patch of black on the fur around her nose. She has golden rings around her eyes. She's small and doesn't seem to be very tough-looking.
General Attire: She prefers easy-to-move-in clothes. Due to being a werewolf, she wears inexpensive clothing in case she shifts and tears up her clothing. Those include a size bigger shirt and pants, as well as sneakers.
Personality: Soft-spoken and humorous, but also sarcastic and a little tempered. She's an introvert but can hang around in groups if she's familiar and comfortable with them. She's extremely loyal and forgiving, which are two of her flaws, and cries rather easily. Zenith loves to read, explore new places, and is extremely curious by nature. She's also philosophical and knows what to say and when to say something. She believes in self-comfort and space, so she most likely leaves someone alone for a while before approaching them if they're upset. She hates unneeded deaths.
Backstory: Zenith was drawn into a forest due to her curiosity a month before her eighteenth birthday. She was following after a sound and a beastly appearance. There, she was jumped and bitten by a wolf she can't seem to remember, but she swears it had fur the color of moonlight. She was later found unconscious and brought to a secret village of wolves. She never went home in fear of being disowned by her father, but later, once she was more stable, she faced her terrors.
Other: Ambidexter, loving father. She's smaller as compared to other wolves her age, and weaker, too, but she makes up for those losses with her stealth, agility, and brains. She has the tendency to use foods as swear words. She is also the type to have the 'Swear Jar'. She makes funny faces when she's in deep thought, and some times she'll stare right at someone while she's lost in thought.
(Wait, but she would be turned at 17. Because of our plan…)
(Oof, sorry. Lemme correct that!)
(Okie doke! Don't forget to change the other part, too!)
(I love Zenith’s name, Oml)
(She's great~! I love her!)
(Thank you~ Both you and A!)
Leaves crackled and crunched beneath the thick soles of my hiking boots. A chilling breeze stirred the brittle branches on each towering tree. Rodents skittered through the underbrush, the occasional insect buzzed past my ear. Besides that, the forest was silent.
I kept my fingers wrapped firmly around my handgun, seeking solace in the cool metal and the bullets held within. But the comfort was empty, nearly nonexistent. I was completely alone, an eight-hour drive from my home city, and on a mission to murder a lonely old logger who lived in the middle of the very same woods the heavy townspeople spoke of in fear and distrust.
Shadows that moved and solidified. Vicious monsters with enormous fangs. Bloodthirsty man-wolves and things that went bump in the night. And all of it complete bullshit. This was a forest. An old and slightly creepy forest, yes, but nothing more. No phantoms drifted between the fractured glimpses of sky visible from between the bare branches above. No vampires lurked in the dark. The woods were normal.
Trees. Bark. Decaying leaves. The last traces of leftover snow. An uncomfortably chilly breeze. There was nothing abnormal about any of those.
It’s just superstition, I told myself, picking cautiously over the fallen tree that my flashlight had illuminated. You’re almost there… You’ll be home soon…
As a wolf, my main instinct was to find food. Food food food. I was practically starving, or that's what I would say we're I human at the moment. It was easy to exaggerate as a person, but it was much harder as a wolf.
Now, I was stalking along the forest floor, underbrush swiping at my sides. Something cracked behind me, and I spun around to bare my teeth at it. It was a look that said, "Don't mess with me. I've killed things bigger than you have."
But there was nothing there. The twig had snapped a little farther away than I'd thought. All I saw was the glimpse of something slipping away. Curious, I decided to follow it.
I curled up against a building, knees pressed to my chest as I breathed heavily. A month—it had nearly been a month since I’d been Turned. If they’d told me I was a werewolf, I wouldn’t have believed them. But the intense craving the first week, and then the transformations made it harder to not take their word for it. I had been bitten. I was one of them.
And I wanted to go home. I was so afraid of these creatures. If I disobeyed, would they punish me? Would they eat me? They’d forced me to eat, and when I had refused, they all but shoved it down my throat. Perhaps they wanted me to survive, but I couldn’t help but think maybe they wanted to fatten me up. I was terrified. I was deathly scared. The thought of interacting with any one of them now caused a sniffle to escape my lips as my eyes watered. I was eighteen and I still couldn’t help but cry easily. I blinked the tears away and stood up shakily. I couldn’t stay here. I wasn’t one of them.
But as I stood up to walk away, I tripped on my own two feet.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me. I jumped, but was quickly reprimanding myself. Idiot. It’s probably just an animal. I cast a glance over my shoulder anyways, but saw nothing and resumed my pace.
The bitter cold seeped through my brown leather jacket, a gentle wind slipping through my short hair. Thankfully, winter’s last snow had mostly melted away, leaving behind tiny snowcaps and puddles of slush. All that remained was the jarringly low temperature and the unforgiving light of the full moon above.
The steady beam radiating from my flashlight flickered dangerously, causing me to curse out loud. Just before it flickered a second time, I managed to catch sight of a cabin up ahead… my destination. Almost there…
Rhys:
Not everyone likes being part wolf. In fact, some people hated it. For me, though, it was just a part of my life. I neither loved it nor hated it, it just simply was.
I was making my way down the sidewalk, hands stuck in my pockets to keep them warm, when I heard the sound of someone sniffling. Turning around, I didn't see anyone at first, but I stepped closer to where the sound had come from anyway.
A girl stumbled in front of me, and I caught her by her shoulders to keep her from falling. A look at her face made me wonder if she had been crying, if she'd been the one I heard sniffle.
"Woah… Hey, are you all right?" I asked softly.
Sierra:
A twig snapped under my foot, and I almost growled in frustration. Normally I was quieter than this. I could sneak around without a sound.
The stranger person — yes, it was a person, I had scented him — continued walking. Where he was going and what he was doing, I had no idea. All I knew was that he was in my forest, close to my town.
I stopped with my back against a tree to triple-check that I had ammo left. The shadows seemed to stretch across my feet, battling back the cold, silvery moonlight in a playful game of tag that neither would ever win.
One, two, three… I was set. All that was left to do now was to but one of these bullets through Mr. Johansen’s head. What he’d done to offend Angelo (or the ‘Angel of Death’, as we called him), I had no idea, but I also had no choice but to obey my boss and his Lieutenant, my father.
I sighed and pushed myself off the tree to resume my previous pace. By now, taking a life wasn’t a big, traumatic deal. It was just…. something I’d rather not do. A tiring endeavour. At least, that’s what I told myself…
A soft sound from behind me pulled my attention away from the cabin up ahead. I tensed. Was someone following me? Slowly, I spun around and shone my flickering flashlight in the direction that the sound had come from. I couldn’t shoot or I would blow my cover….
My entire body froze at the sound. I couldn’t help it. One of them was touching me. I was touching him. I swallowed thickly and my head lifted up to look at him, straight into the eyes of a creature I thought didn’t exist at all.
And it was unfair. It was unfair that they were monsters yet so painfully beautiful. It was unfair that they could have voices so soft it could put you to sleep. So unfair, because it made my fear of them seem silly and childish. This man was one of them, he was a wolf in a man’s skin, but the way he held me with such gentle hands made me want to crawl away.
I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to go home.
“Ye—yeah…” I stammered and briefly wondered if he could smell the fear on me just as much as I could smell the calm in him. “I’m—I’m fine…”
Sierra:
Something bright suddenly shone in my eyes, blinding me. I growled at it, shaking my head to get it to go away. It stayed, even when I closed my eyes. What was this?
Shaking myself again, I stepped forward, trying to ge away from the light. It only got worse, and I growled again. I couldn’t see, and that was a problem…
Rhys:
My nose twitched involuntarily at the smell of her fear. She was scared? Of me? Why was she…
I shook my head a little. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that this girl was half scared to death.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured gently, letting her shoulders go. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
I took rapid breaths, trying to calm myself down. Why was I such a coward? I shouldn’t have walked into that forest. My father had warned me not to wander off, but I did it anyway. It was my fault. I was such an idiot.
I swallowed thickly as he let me go, and I took a step back, wrapping my arms around my middle. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him in the eyes.
“I’m okay,” I breathed out. “Thank—thank you.”
Why was I thanking the ones that got me into this situation? It was one of their kind that stripped me off of my humanity. Why was I suffering?
Rhys:
This girl… she smelled familiar. I didn’t know why, not yet, but I was sure I would soon.
“If you’re sure,” I murmured, giving her a glance over to make sure she wasn’t bleeding anywhere. “Can I ask what startled you?”
Sierra:
Something bright suddenly shone in my eyes, blinding me. I growled at it, shaking my head to get it to go away. It stayed, even when I closed my eyes. What was this?
Shaking myself again, I stepped forward, trying to ge away from the light. It only got worse, and I growled again. I couldn’t see, and that was a problem…
My eyes widened in surprise as a huge wolf stepped into the light from my flashlight, shaking its head and growling. I took a stumbling step backwards as fear shot through me. If my pursuer was human, my response would have been vastly different. But the sight of the deadly, carnivorous animal turned my blood to icy slush.
I couldn’t shoot it, or else I’d alert the logger I so desperately needed to kill. Failure to complete my mission within the given time slot would earn me up to fifteen lashings all the way across my back. I couldn’t afford to lose this, but the wolf only stepped closer and closer. My flashlight flickered a fourth time. But the animal only kept advancing, until my fear response took over. Without stopping to think twice, I raised my arm and pulled the trigger.
The shot went wide.
