Silver Falls Grace "Grey" Blumenthal
#1
At the base of a thundering fall, where the water churned and pooled, on an evening that was kind for undressing old bones.

It was a good place for it. Not that this was her decision by any means, or even premeditated as a possibility other than a vague "likely soon." But for a while now, months, it had become harder to shift. She was very intentionally isolating herself from the others in the wake of this, the fact that she still had not fully healed from that other animal attack. While she'd visited the Cove twice, she realized how traumatic it would have been for her dear Yujin to find her there.

It was so difficult and frightening to try to shift to heal, only to struggle worse and worse through the process. Better to wait for the guided force of the moon.

Well, the moon had decided for her that seventy five years was enough.

Giving into the start of it was easy. It was the same, disrobing, laying her clothing on the grass. She even had the chance to sit such that her aged and bony feet were allowed to dip into the water. Eyes on her mottled skin, waiting for it.

Waiting and waiting.

And then the ripples were not only the water, but her as well, the process beginning. She filled her lungs with air repetitively, trying to soothe herself through it. The intention was to survive. To keep herself going on. To make it through this night.

The problem with turning smaller was how the lungs received less and less air as it went. It was a sensation she'd been used to for a long time, this creeping headiness amidst the pain.

Pain, because her organs were all shrinking, moving, reforming. But also because now her bones were joining too, a feeling as though a razor was shaving them into shape and form, peeling away in layers. The way the joints broke and attempted to reframe. Attempted.

Because it was all passing as well as it could before the joints were involved. The problem began in her neck, the way the spine attempted to fix itself along the skull from bipedal to quadrupedal. Grey gasped a voice gone raspy, those tinying lungs not giving her much to express with. It would not move up, would not affix itself.

Fingers too, then, the wrists stiff, refusing to pass from the in between. Shoulders locked in pose, giving her an unhappy hunch, ribs scoring against inner flesh as they attempted to shift to the position they needed and could not for the failures of vertebra and still-fractured sternum alike. Hips searing, thighs locked against knees that ground away at cartilage in vain. She found herself paralyzed for it, somehow brought to writhing on her side. Tried to cry out, but it didn't make it far. The water drowned her out. The otter was panicking, their shared heart thrumming danger. Danger, they had to stop. Danger, they could not stop.

The moon decided.

It was too long for someone of this age, with the reckless kind of life she'd lived. Maybe she wasn't the oldest of her kind, but life and its ends were never predictable that way across individuals.

The kindest thing the dying virus could do was shut her off. A gift for the pain, that she could be briefly rendered unconscious before her heart actually gave out. Struggle continued past that for a time. It didn't matter: the end was the end.

An hour later simply left a lifeless old woman lying nude on the bank, feet still afloat in the water.


I'll leave this open for a week but any response would have to be a one off unless two characters show up ♡

#2
Having taken a trip up to the other side of the falls to shift for the full moon, Adelle's bear had eventually discovered the body. She sat by it most of the night to guard the old woman's remains and so she wouldn't be alone. Adelle knew she was dead from the smell that lingered in her nostrils. When she came to after her two-hour sleep on the beach, Adelle took the woman's pulse then called 911.

She told them of discovering a body at the base of Silver Falls. Told them rigor mortis had set in long before. She was asked to wait with the body until someone could arrive on the scene. So she did. Thankfully her clothes were nearby.

Adelle waited, not fazed that she would have to explain the reason for her being there that night. Adelle wasn't grieving. Wasn't upset by her discovery. Just mildly curious as to what led to the woman's demise. She knew there were most likely people who would mourn the Jane Doe, so she stayed, sitting a few meters away from the scene and the clothes that had been left in the woman's wake. She thought about rifling through her things, to find a piece of ID but ultimately decided the less she touched, the better.

Perhaps the woman had been a shifter too? It had been a full moon, and she was nude. It would make sense.
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