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 Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 10:59 pm
 Iosef was heavily splattered with mud when he made his way across the territory to Tui's den. The sun was only barely beginning to come up over the horizon, and he actually paused for a moment in his travels to look up at the pale tendrils of pink and gold that crossed the sky.
But more than his appreciation of a beautiful sunrise, Iosef was perhaps lagging because he had quite a lot on his mind. It had been a long night of bad memories and worse dreams, and though the effort spent cleaning up the nursery area had cleared his mind somewhat, it had not done much to calm his nerves.
And then there was the new nanny...Seraphin, her name had been. There was something different about her, unique amongst the sisterhood. She felt important, somehow, and that unnerved him.
"Tui," he called, softly, sitting at the mouth of his new friend's den. He hoped it wasn't too early for the white wolf, and then reminded himself that, if Tui were to survive here, he would need to be acquainted with the early morning wake-up call after all. "Tui, if you don't mind...I could rather use your assistance."
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Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:12 pm
 Tui had been drowsing, finally, through the the last of the storm and darkness, but he jerked automatically to wakefulness at the sound of Iosef's beckons. Pulling his string-bean legs to order underneath him, he stretched and tried to blink the sand from his eyes, aware enough of his new situation that he'd be happier not considering it just yet. He poked his head out of the den and, faced with the sight of sweet little Iosef and no one else, broke into a bashful, grateful smile. "It's early," he murmured, glancing around these foreign woods, "how long have you been up?"
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Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:25 pm
Iosef smiled. "Sorry for the early hour," he said, apologetically, lowering himself to the muddy earth. His silky pelt was already quite thoroughly splattered, and there was a hollow, sunken look to his violet eyes. "I thought perhaps you would appreciate the opportunity to get your work out of the way early in the day, while there were fewer pack members likely to stumble across you."
He smiled. "And if you're lucky, you can manage a nap during the hottest hours of the day, so long as everything is as it should be."
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Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:34 pm
"I don't mind," he said, still smiling bashfully, as he crept closer to his muddy guide. "It looks like you've already done a good bit of work today." Iosef looked tired, too; hopefully that meant storms of last night's magnitude were not so common here.
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Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 12:22 am
He nodded, already starting back in the direction of the mound of tree limbs he had left in the forest. A restlessness had overtaken him; the more that was going on in Iosef's mind, the more he had to work to drown it out. "I was woken early by the dawn patrol, to come and aid the new pack nanny in securing the area for the pups," he said, by way of explanation. "But I only dragged the limbs out of the way -- really, we should find a purpose for them."
He paused, glancing over his shoulder at Tui and smiled. "I feel I should apologize. You've been through a lot in just a few days, and must be a bit overwhelmed."
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Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 12:38 am
Tui picked his way after him, noting the bustling sort of edge Iosef had acquired overnight and feeling his chest begin to tighten with nerves - instantly dissolved by an over-the-shoulder smile and dose of understanding. He looked down and tried not to fill the burns of shame he'd suffered all over again, but in doing so became so grateful for some time alone with Iosef that his knees felt weak. "I'll be all right," he said quietly, bluffing. "At least if there are no more interviews, anyway."
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Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 1:27 am
"You've done well. Don't let them intimidate you." He paused. He wasn't sure that's quite what he meant. He shook it off, hoping Tui would understand what he was getting at. "It's...not normal, for a grown male to choose this lifestyle. Most are born into it, or taken into the fold when they're quite young."
He halted, as they approached the thicker patch of woods. There was still a bit of low-lying fog here, tendrils of mist that wove amongst the trees. "Your timing was bad, as well, and that's my fault. To bring a new wolf into the fold after an attack on the Queen was poor form....and then to have left you alone just after. But you've done well," he repeated, and there was pride in his voice. "And besides. There's no threat on the pack, after all, seeing as the would-be assassin is now father to the pack's heir." If there was a light touch of irony in his tone, it was made innocent by the gentleness of his eyes.
"Anyway." He glanced around himself, assuring they were alone -- though he needn't have worried, this patch of woods was rarely frequented by the patrols, and the sisters would usually choose to train somewhere with less densely packed trees. "Now we've got some time, did you have any questions before we get to work?"
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Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 4:26 pm
Of course it wasn't normal - he pressed his eyes shut for a moment, struggling to keep everything that was Not Normal in him down to speaking at a whisper. It helped that he could gladly divert himself with pack intrigue; he had never lived in a group so large, and it was something of a struggle to hold in his head all these disparate characters.
And, questions? He bit his lips and looked downward, and felt so lost he couldn't fathom a direction to start in. "I guess not," he said quietly, wishing intensely that the whole pack would sleep 'til noon today.
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 4:00 pm
((RP log from AIM, for we are lazy!))
Of course it wasn't normal - he pressed his eyes shut for a moment, struggling to keep everything that was Not Normal in him down to speaking at a whisper. It helped that he could gladly divert himself with pack intrigue; he had never lived in a group so large, and it was something of a struggle to hold in his head all these disparate characters.
And, questions? He bit his lips and looked downward, and felt so lost he couldn't fathom a direction to start in. "I guess not," he said quietly, wishing intensely that the whole pack would sleep 'til noon today.
He regarded Tui for a moment, questioningly, knowing full well that the wolf must have so many questions he had no idea where to start asking them. Iosef felt a wave of pity for him, and pondered what he could do to make the job easier. "Well. Here's our task at hand," he said, nodding to a rather formidable pile of sticks and tree limbs that he had gathered with Seraphin's help. "I don't like leaving these just lying here to attract mice, but I can't quite think what to do with them."
Finding himself unable to keep up much eye contact, Tui's face faltered and fell at Iosef's glance. He studied instead, with a certain degree of false intensity, the mound of branches before them, his ears twisting backwards as he struggled to problem-solve - never, ever his strong suit. Glancing worriedly to the little wolf, he hesitantly offered an idea. "Well, I suppose...we could use the larger branches to mark a part of the territory line...in case a wolf isn't paying attention to smell, the border could be marked with sticks?"
He pondered this a moment, and then grinned. "Sounds as good as anything I'd come up with," he said. It would offer a little extra security to the border, and give him a good excuse to show Tui the border lines, which was important knowledge on its own right. "Alright then. They're a bit unwieldy, but none are too heavy...the way I was doing it earlier, is I'd loaded up a few of the heavier branches with the smaller ones and drug the whole thing out here. I figure we can do that again, and just drop them periodically until they're all disposed of?"
He was glad to have another wolf as a sounding board. Glacier was still too young to do much serious work, and Achilles...well, Achilles didn't really qualify as a slave, which in truth Iosef was just fine with. "We'll take turns hauling and dropping, then?"
There must have been a little color coming into his cheeks at Iosef's approval, but Tui was helpless to quash it; this was possibly the first time in his life someone had praised him for a thought he'd had, and the novelty of it rushed to his head like too much oxygen. "That sounds good," he managed through his distraction, stepping a little awkwardly forward to shoulder his load of branches.
"Alright then," he said, volunteering for the first shift of hauling -- primarily because he knew where they were headed -- and grabbed an awkwardly-built sled of tangled limbs by one jutting branch. His jaws and neck muscles were already aching from his morning's effort, but he didn't mind, much. He walked in silence for awhile, glad that the heat was still hours away, and felt his thoughts trying to ebb down into that dark place they had visited last night. To avoid that, he lifted his eyes to his white-furred companion. "You don't talk much, usually, do you?" He asked, a bit awkwardly around a mouthful of branch, but clear enough that hiw words were distinguishable.
Tui wasn't sure what to feel as his private life got dipped into once again - he was still jittery from so many hard glances from Penthesilea and Cleite, and so much hasty patchwork to create a half-respectable history for them, but it was difficult to get that kind of anxious around Iosef. He let out a tiny puff of a sigh, suddenly powerfully grateful to have someone with him who understood much of the kind of wolf he was. Or, someone who understood him, and didn't use that knowledge to hurt him. He pulled his lips taut into an unhappy kind of smile, and shrugged. "I'm not really good enough at talking to do it much," he answered in his defeated, muted voice.
Iosef's nose wrinkled. "I don't think so," he said, dropping the sticks. they had reached the near-most corner of the territory border. "Here's the line, more or less," he said, sniffing at a tree. "From here we just go straight back that way, we'll just drop these along the way..." he faded off, peeling a stick from the pile and setting it down to mark the corner. "And, anyway, I think you do quite admirably. I hate to admit it, but you should have met some of our old slaves. They could hardly string a sentence together. No wonder, really, that the sisters found them so worthless." He glanced up, looking a bit sheepish but also a little rebellious. He was about to say something, but felt a fluttering in his chest, and looked away quickly.
Funny, how receiving praise felt just like panic - Tui found his muscles tensing and his heart working up to a sprint, and he clenched his jaw and stared fixedly at the border, tried to feel which side he should be on. He shuddered, just a little, and went to lay some wood along the border line. "I never thought I'd have to say so much to be allowed to be the dirt somebody walks on."
He laughed at that, a genuine, good-natured chuckle. "Only the best are allowed in Antianeira, and that includes the dirt." His fondness of the pack was evident; whatever it said about him, this was clearly a wolf who believed in the infallibility of his pack's culture.
Tui's smile got as genuine as it could manage, and he mumbled around his branch, mostly to himself, "I hope I make good dirt." But inevitably, the idea resonated into something terrible inside him, and his hangdog smile left to leave him looking haunted. He fiddled silently with branch placement for a long moment, before returning to drag the pile further down the line.
Iosef paused, sensing a change in his companion's energy, and he drew alongside him, concerned and perhaps a little curious. He wondered what he was supposed to say. "I didn't mean to offend," he said, softly, although he suspected that he had rather little to do with the mood that had overtaken him.
"Oh-" Oh, god, he wasn't used to not being alone. Having Iosef standing next to him brought him back to earth, but it bit at his heart; he was so small and delicate, and the way his face opened up and waited...it made him hurt and it made him anxious, and he didn't know why. "I'm sorry, no, I'm not offended or anything." He glanced nervously around, and backed up a little, tried to rally himself. "I just got stuck on something sad," he mumbled, wincing at the line; personal unhappiness was not something you just casually chatted about.
"Ah," he said, withdrawing from his space -- suspecting that a wolf who had led a hard, solitary life would have ample respect for personal boundaries -- and dragging another limb down into their would-be fence. He smiled a bit wanly. "I spent a good portion of my evening doing that," he said, not sure why he was sharing that particular tidbit. "It's the weather. Gets under your skin, clouds your heart."
He knew perfectly well that the weather had nothing to do with either of their problem, but it seemed as good an excuse as any.
He felt his heart thump-thumping again, less with nerves now than with respect and gratitude for a wolf who could be so kind. He smiled and looked down, and found himself trying to steal little looks at Iosef, trying to fathom how he could be so vulnerable but so sweet, so confident in a pack full of amazons. "I expect nobody's waking up this morning and feeling refreshed," he agreed, going silent to jerk their sled through an awkward clump of roots and brambles.
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Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 11:14 pm
((SO lazy! whee ))
"Quite right," he said, although his brow furrowed a little, thinking about one individual he had met that was rather perky this morning. He considered mentioning his meeting with Seraphin, but couldn't think of a reason that he wanted to bring it up. So instead, he turned his attentions back to the border they were marking, and hoped they wouldn't run into anybody doing patrols. He really wasn't looking forward to any short-tempered warriors this morning. He glanced back nervously at Tui, debating if he was supposed to say something or not.
Tui felt the familiar kick of anxiousness as his glancing informed him of inevitable awkwardness; he bit his lips and tried to find a place for his unseated mind to land. Now that he wasn't running, and he wasn't dead, he couldn't remember a time when he felt so dithering, and the best reassurance he could afford was a dim hope that things would settle in for him; that he would learn to duck his head without thinking, to scurry with Iosef's mystifying pride and efficiency. It was almost too much to think about. He gave a little shiver and looked over to Iosef again, catching him with a look that was almost unsettlingly intense. "So, who are the nice wolves here? And who should I be afraid of?"
He smiled. He had been waiting for that question. "You'll do best with the other newcomers," he said, his tone somewhat conspiratorial as he continued laying down sticks. "They're not accustomed to having slaves, and will give you the most leeway. Beelu -- she's the dark-furred one with the shaggy mane -- lived with humans for a time. She's got a strange way of speaking, but she's nice enough." He paused a moment in thought. "Taiyou. The white one, with the gold on her back. Although...well...she's perhaps a bit too friendly." He thought on his own interactions with her, and moved along quickly. "As for who to avoid...Thealia and her daughter can be...troublesome, sometimes. She hates males more than most. Recently she had a litter, and would have drowned the males if Penthesilea had not stepped in and delivered them to our ally."
Tui's face furrowed at this news, and he grabbed a branch and rushed over to its position on the line, using his bounding over the terrain as an outlet for some of his fear and nervousness. Anyone who culled the weak was a serious threat to him. But he looked back and nodded, still trying to learn; maneuvering socially to gain an advantage was foreign and frightening to him, but this seemed like an easy rule: other newcomers were safest, and treat Thealia like she would very possibly kill him.
He moved a bit slower, but came up alongside him after a moment. "Penthesilea is intimidating, but she is fair. Just be careful when she is in the presence of the other veterans -- she has a reputation to maintain, and if she doesn't, she risks open war again in the pack, which nobody wants. Oh, and there's a new pack nanny," he added, casually, "Seraphin. I met her this morning, and she seems...uncommonly kind. Gentle." His eyes flicked up, near to his, and the insinuation was clear -- 'like us'.
He pulled a little smile, an almost rueful one - something that expressed the undesirable place in the pecking order as the whipping boy, the doormat, but something that enjoyed the thought of puppies, especially paired with gentleness. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as he spooked himself thinking about Iosef - how had he ever met a wolf who could conspirate with him on weak personalities? And how could he be just as weak, just as walked-on as Tui, and still be so sure and happy?
Iosef realized that they were making good time -- they were nearly out of sticks, in point of fact, and perhaps it would be time to run back for the next batch. The sun was creeping higher in the sky, the beginnings of warmth coming down, and he realized that the day would be unpleasant and humid. Not something he looked forward to. "Everybody else," he added, as an afterthought, "is easy going enough. You shouldn't have too many problems." He smiled a bit ruefully. "In one regard, at least, we are lucky that my sister Varia is missing in action."
Tui couldn't help but look quizzical - he'd had the impression that Iosef more or less adored his sister, and on top of that he had a hard time imagining someone made up of the same things Iosef was ever getting too frightening. "Oh?", he peeped, slowing en route to their dwindling supply of markers.
"I...you know about Terreis," he said, halting in his step; he wondered why he was bothering to bring this up, as it wasn't really something he enjoyed thinking about, much less discussing. Then again, it weighed so heavily on his mind this gloomy morning, that he had no other choice than to release it...and Tui was a willing audience, and a non-threatening one at that. "The one who lives with our allies, and whose pups I recently visted. But our older sister, Varia...I have not seen her in some time, now. She and Terreis left at the same time, but she has yet to return. I don't know what happened to her." And, though he was pained to admit it, there was an underlying current of 'and I don't want to' tagged on silently.
Oh, he knew that look; that uncomfortable, repressing face. His brows ticked downwards in compassion, and he tried to write this into Iosef's story: the sister who loved him, the sister who made his eyes bright and his face light up, and now the darker sister. Tui wondered what he wasn't saying; was it worse than drowning male pups in a river? Or did he just not want to mention it because it involved him closely? Anyway, he had little he could do but keep his mouth shut.
He glanced back over his shoulder at Tui, seeing the inner cogs twirling about in the white wolf's brain, and he sighed. It wouldn't do at all to have him drawing erroneous conclusions. Best to n** that in the bud, before it got out of hand. "When the pack was falling apart, some of us chose to leave rather than become embroiled in the fighting. Myself, my two sisters, and our Mother. And a warrioress named Alkaia, who had....taken me as a consort," he said, delicately. Alkaia was another matter altogether in his thoughts, and one he wasn't ready to share with another living soul. So far as he was concerned, all of his memories had been buried along with her body, and could stay that way. "We traveled, for awhile, but Varia thought it best to separate. I was slowing them down. Which was true," he added, with the apologetic air of one who knew he shouldn't complain. "But...well, anyway. She and Terreis left. Mother and Alkaia stayed." His face grew dark, and he stopped abruptly, realizing they had come to the wood pile. Silently he grabbed another load of branches.
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Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2010 11:52 pm
Tui stood and let the brooding wolf move off on his own for a moment, unused to the predicament of stumbling into someone else's troubles. Trying to think on it, he hassled from the diminishing pile a mess of dead wood, dragged it out to the borderline with unself-conscious jerks. Once he came back into Iosef's working space, he made his sorriness known with accommodating too much personal space and flickering, orphan-eyed glances. He couldn't think of a thing to say, but he dearly wanted Iosef to stop his dark mood.
Iosef labored for awhile in silence, and then shook his head, as though to clear the air -- and his thoughts. "It was their choice, to stay. I did not ask it of them. I asked...nothing...of them." He swallowed, firm in his resolve, and smiled half-heartedly at Tui, an inviting, sorrow-sharing smile. "Family, you know?"
With unusual focus, Tui met and held Iosef's hangdog gaze, willing himself not to feel the insistent pang - Family, you know. "It hurts," he murmured, offering what he had of a summary for the subject, blinking downwards, back up again. It was so difficult not to know who someone really was, he thought, especially when you go on and hope you do, anyway. He went back to his branches, his mouth dry with bark, and tried not to look so much at Iosef.
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