Lungaia slept for a long time. It was hard to tell, exactly, how long -- with the sky overcrowded as it was with choking ash, morning through evening blurred together as one gray blur. Perhaps it was a few hours. Perhaps it was a day. Whichever the case, she slept curled over the bones of her sister's last victims and had uneasy dreams that tumbled over each other and caused her to whimper intermittently in her sleep.
By morning -- or whatever time she managed to awaken -- she was feeling no more rested than she had before, but her body assured her that there was no more time to be wasted here.
She noticed, as she made her way out of the little den, that there was a mound of fresh earth not so far from where she had left the body. This brought the faintest twitch of a smile to her maw. Honoria. As fine a foundling as she could imagine. Lungaia hadn't expected to survive the apocalypse, but if she had to do so, she could think of few wolves more capable to the task.
The layer of ash and earth coating her fur made Honoria merely a wolf outline against the monochrome landscape and she'd done nothing to clean off the remnants of her night's labor. Nor had she bothered resting- there was too much open space, too many unknown factors in this area for her to feel comfortable being vulnerable.
Fresh blood had been spilt here, and predators would know the scent. Would possibly come to see if there was anything worth scavenging. No, Honoria had remained on guard, ears swiveling with the wind. Her golden eyes were brassy with exhaustion, but the set of her muzzle was determined. She'd not rest until there was an assurance of safety.
"Sorry," Lungaia said, without preamble as she came upon her. "I should not have slept so long."
She took a moment to assess their situation. Like Honoria, she was uneasy about their position -- some distance from home, without proper cover, with the scent of blood in the air. But she also trusted in Kaeerah's sense: if this was the shelter she had chosen, it was likely secure.
No, what put Lungaia on edge was the opposite problem. She expected the forest to be noisy now, filled with panicking wolves and preybeasts running from the flames or hurrying to escape to somewhere with less devastation. Instead, what she found was an eerie silence: No birds chirping in the trees, no squirrels, no lizards in the brush. The place was utterly empty, save the two of them and the ghosts of all those wolves whose remains lay here...kae's included.
Ghosts had never bothered Honoria. The dead were not her domain, and when she'd sent a wolf to join them, it was going to be measured against her soul later. Not now.
An ear turned back to Lungaia's quiet approach, but her only answer to the statement was a rasping grunt. After all, it'd not been her sister they'd slaughtered the previous night. She had no ambiguous emotions to sleep off.
Narrowing her eyes slightly, Honoria looked back towards the shallow den before her tail swayed, lifting a small puff of ash. "Where did this originate?" It was a concession she was making to her foster mother, an attempt at conversation.
A poor one. Honoria didn't often talk.
Lungaia shrugged. "Couldn't say," she said, giving the earth a tentative sniff. "I've never seen fire from the sky like this."
She fell silent afterward for a while, hardly a conversationalist herself, though there were many topics she felt needed to be breached if only she had the words for them.
But not just yet. "Do you want to rest? I'll take watch if you do. Otherwise, it would be best to make our way home." To see how Tui's faring, she thought. To see if the world is ending everywhere, or if it's just a cloud over my own head.
For those who were in a turmoil of mind, Honoria's presence could be actually quite restful. She neither pressed nor inquired, but simply kept an attentive ear pointed towards her foster mother. It was a measure of the bond they had that Honoria actually sneezed, giving her head a rapid shake.
"This stuff smells rancid," she said, voice rasping with the metallic undertone that she never spoke often enough to shake off. "And it's sticky."
It would've been pointless to answer, because there was no clear yes or no to give. Yes, she would've liked a chance to rest, to bathe this stuff off of her fur, perhaps have a drink of water that wasn't tacky to her tongue. That, however, wouldn't happen here and she couldn't relax well enough to actually sleep.
With another slight sneeze, she rose to her paws with a slight grunt.
Lungaia seemed to understand. She nodded. "We're not so far from home," she said, inclining her head in the general direction from whence they came. "A bit further and we can sleep in our own dens, tend to our own wounds." She hadn't noticed it before now, but she was rather stiff, her body littered with the a few small abrasions both from Kaeerah's struggle and from the rapid chase through the brush.
"Recruit some slaves to tend to us," she added, with a little smirk. That was a joke, if a feeble one.
The few minor injuries inflicted had long since closed with lumps of congealed blood and ash. A jagged darkness across Honoria's muzzle was silent testament to the battle that had punctuated their travel here. Honoria's intial steps were slow, her weight taken rapidly off of her right foreleg, but she didn't utter a sound of complaint.
She gave a nod to the first statement, knowing full well that they'd be better off tending their wounds before Tui saw either of them. There was also going to be the laborious task of trying to make light of the situation for his sake; she'd leave that to her foster mother to handle.
...all right, that one caught her a bit off-guard. Honoria actually halted for a moment, turning both ears and a puzzled look to Lungaia.
Lungaia allowed herself a moment to meet Honoria's eyes, the slightest ghost of a smirk on her maw. "Just a thought." She shrugged. The idea of slaves had always amused her -- what self-respecting warrior couldn't find time to deal with the necessities of life on the side? -- but perhaps the amazons had the right idea. Letting someone else take care of things from here would be a relief.
"We'd better think of what we'll say to the others," she said, then, tentatively broaching one of those too-big-to-consider topics. "I'd rather we were...discreet."
Discreet.
Honoria actually chuffed out a rough sound that was her laughter. One ear swung back towards Lungaia as she resumed her steady pace. Who exactly did she talk to? It was all but written in stone that the wolf took whatever she saw and did to the grave. Her head dipped once, acknowledging the request.
Lungaia clarified. "The slave. Iosef's son. I imagine he'll be full of questions when we return."
She was only partially sure of the way back home. Their tracks had been covered in ash. At least little of it was still falling from the sky, though a few bushes still smoldered. That was progress.
A slight sigh heaved her shoulders as she continued on. There was no hesitation in Honoria's gait; one of the things she did well and often was to wander, and finding her path home was second nature now.
"I can take him aside and tend to him," she rasped. One could only imagine what that would mean. If the male would come back alive, it was likely that he might never speak again if Honoria let her feral nature loose without fear of reprisal.
Her brows raised. "I don't think that would be necessary. Or...prudent." She hesitated a moment, allowing silence to fall between them as she geared herself up, however wearily, for the next, bigger topic that needed to be broached.
"Wolves like ourselves...we carry darkness in us. But it's not wise to feed it more than necessary. Kaeerah fed her darkness until it was fat and satisfied, and..." well, you saw what happened there.
"I was never one to see the value in packs before, but I rather like this one. It serves its purpose. I'd like to avoid losing it."
A slight grumble was Honoria's answer as she eeled beneath a branch that was bowed by the weight of the ash clinging to its' leaves. That Lungaia was trying to make a point was obvious; she understood that was the purpose of the halting conversation.
WHY she wanted to make a point, however, was beyond Honoria's reckoning. Yes, they had a pack. Yes, they were members of it. And? It was simply there, something that Honoria dealt with rather than enjoyed. Her ear swung back towards Lungaia, listening more alertly than her overall demeanor indicated.
"Everything that I have is easily lost," Lungaia said, finally, somewhat agitated that Honoria was making her spell this out. She did not feel secure thinking that her meaning could be understood without words. This wasn't like talking with Tui, who seemed to understand her meaning on some primal level with words acting only as intermediaries.
Tui. That was the heart and soul of it, wasn't it. For some reason she could not begin to understand, she couldn't allow that weak little broken fawn of a deer to realize that she was a monster.
"When Kaeerah killed our father, it was because he lost control of his darkness and needed to be put down. We had to kill Kaeerah for the same reason. Don't think that you and I are exempt from that same treatment."
Ah, and there was the difference between them.
Honoria stopped in her tracks and turned her head, fixing Lungaia with eyes that were fairly bronze with weariness. There was, however, nothing soft in that gaze. Nothing weak. To assume that her being tired made her a target was a dangerous assumption indeed.
"You won't need it." It wasn't grudingly admitted, but freely stated, or as freely as Honoria ever said anything. She knew, without it being said, that her foster mother had something that Honoria herself lacked. Perhaps it was a measure of compassion or something to love, something precious that she treasured.
Perhaps it was something as simple as a heart. Whatever it was, Lungaia had it and Honoria did not. Worst of all, she did not feel the lack of it.
"I wasn't worried about myself," Lungaia said, finally.
Was that a familiar landmark? She was certain it was. She could hear the sound of the stream now, a quiet gurgle. Close to home.
"I don't want to do it again," she said. "But I will, if I must. Don't make it necessary."
A ripple moved Honoria's matted fur, but she remained wholly still as she looked at her foster mother.
Well. Wasn't this interesting.
Her gaze was implacable, her shoulders set stiffly. Oh, the warning was clear and she understood it perfectly. It was at once a caution and a promise. Honoria was looking at the wolf who had raised her, who had taught her everything she knew and who would, without hesitation, kill her if Lungaia felt it necessary.
Nothing was said. Nothing needed to be said. Honoria turned away and her pace picked up. Not a jog, nor a lope- she lowered herself to the ground and ran. Away from her foster mother. Perhaps even away from the den that would have been the one suitable place to rest.
Just away. Message received, Mom.
Lungaia cursed beneath her breath. Well, what were you thinking was going to happen? She thought, sourly. You tell a wolf you'll kill them if they get vicious, and then you're surprised when they walk away?
No, she wasn't surprised. But she was weary. It was a warning she'd hoped wouldn't be necessary, but that wasn't her luck. She'd seen it, after the kill -- seen the eagerness and the emptiness. Seen the threat of a shadow in her daughter's heart.
What was it doing there, though? had Lungaia put it there herself? How would that pup have fared if left with her proper family, her birth parents -- whoever and wherever they might be now.
She sighed. What she had wanted Honoria to understand was that she would take no pleasure in that duty. That she hoped the young warrior would have the sense to toe the line, to maintain this facade of normalcy the way she did, so that it would never become necessary. Was that the message she had delivered? She didn't know and, at this moment, she did not have the energy to care.
Let her deal with it in her own time, Lungaia thought, continuing toward the familiarity of the dens. Let her come back, when she's ready.
