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 Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 12:38 pm
 It was a good thing, on the whole, that Tui was around.
For a wolf with a penchant for taking in the lost and broken, Lungaia was not particularly well-suited to motherhood. She was lacking a certain degree of maternal instinct required for the task. Oh, it came and went in waves, certainly, and at times she was gentle, protective and loving. But at other times, as the deep well of craziness inside of her stirred and shifted like silt settling to the bottom of uneasy water, she lost her tether to that gentleness. She feared for the safety of those around her, and sought out solitude, disappearing for long stretches to stalk the woods like a shadow and lose herself for a time in that empty space between false memories and current reality.
So it was best for Honoria -- that strange, solemn, silent pup she had found amid carnage -- if someone else were around to help with the raising. And Tui had seemed equal enough to the task.
Sure, the pack had a nanny, and Lungaia could certainly have left the young one in her care instead. But that seemed unnecessarily cruel, given Tui's history with the teal-colored wolf and her trembling consort. And so, while the pup was young, Lungaia had allowed her to stay close to home.
Now, though, she was older, and she was running out of excuses for Honoria's sheltered upbringing. Females of a certain age were expected to train long, hard hours, and it would do no good for any of them if the pup were lingering around in the presence of a slave. So Lungaia had allowed the pup to be spirited away to her lessons, where she presumed the young one was doing well enough.
Honoria's well-being did not concern her overly much. She pup could handle herself. She did, however, wonder how Tui was handling the separation. And so, with that in mind, the dark-furred she-wolf made her way toward where she suspected she might find him, thinking perhaps it would do him good to offer him a distraction.
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Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 1:16 pm
He had found something to do. Wading along the riverbank, drenched and dripping, he had spent the morning watching for fish and failing to catch them. It was a meaningless activity a step or two above the demeaning tasks that used to fill his days, tasks that now occupied newer recruits and the sons of Daughters. No more dragging garbage out to bury, unless it was their own. No more digging holes as an exercise in submission. For several months, he had been allowed to watch their child, a glaring incongruity that he all too happily ignored; any time spent with the pup was a reprieve from his own tumbling mind.
But she had grown. A bright little thing, bundled in dark clothes, her spirit had been ready for the world to test her when they first met. And she was still ready. She would do well here. Tui pushed off the bank and ducked underwater, letting the current bump him steadily downstream. I could go watch her train, he thought, although he wasn't sure he could get away with it. His head bobbed up as he dog paddled toward shore, clearing his nose with a spray of water. In a few weeks. When she's had time to learn.
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Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 3:00 pm
"Not trying to drown yourself, I hope?"
As usual, her words preceded her. She melted free of the shadows, though some seemed to cling to her fur, and settled down on the river bank. Her words were spoken lightly enough, but there was just a hint of something else below it, some hint of concern that suggested he might, in fact, try precisely that.
There was no way of knowing just what trouble a broken bird could get up to on his own.
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Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 4:35 pm
Tui's long ears pricked, and he stopped as he found his footing to look for Lungaia. He felt like he was finding his footing in more ways than one; she was a rock for him to cling to. Or more than that: her gravity seemed to redefine him whenever she was near. He tumbled towards her now, painting the dripping path of his trajectory, head outstretched, tail dabbing upwards. She did things like this, and this was why he would always come running.
"Not permanently," he mumbled, smiling, realizing far too late that he was soaking wet and needed to shake. Fighting back the urge with a shake of his head, he retraced his steps and did the deed ten feet or so away. It felt wonderful, actually. He turned back around to face her. "I feel better about it now."
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Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 5:48 pm
"So long as you don't forget to come up for air," she conceded.
She never liked swimming, much. It tangles up the wings, makes it hard to fly. Wait, that was a strange thought. She couldn't fly; her wings were nothing more than so much glitter on her fur. Why did she think that? Her brow furrowed, a momentary storm crossing her dark eyes, but she shook the thought away. Not relevant.
She flinched as a few stray droplets, caught by the wind, made their way in her direction. "You're not as skinny," she remarked, noticing the way the fur clung to his skin, making him look so pink and translucent and vulnerable.
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Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 6:30 pm
He blinked, looking down at his shoulders and paws. "I guess it comes and goes." After a moment he sighed, holding his eyes wide open, thinking that perhaps taking in all of the world would keep him from circling down into that point of black inside him. "I'm trying...to figure out how people decide what family means." A remorseful tic flickered across his face; there was another sentence under what he said where all the meaning was hidden. But talking was hard. "You find one thing and you stick with it and there's no...you could do anything. But you all do one thing. Good or bad."
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Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 6:42 pm
Her devastated ears swept back against her head thoughtfully as she considered this, trying to parse it. The words made little sense to her. That was not a rare occurrence. She was not a wolf overly accustomed to conversing, and words frequently made little sense. She had no way of knowing whether this was an exception in any way.
Still, for the confusion jumble of syntax he'd offered, there was something else there with more power than words -- a feeling, an undercurrent.
"I'm not sure it means anything," she said, finally, thinking of her own family. The strange, nonsensical pairing of her parents. The loyalty she and Kaeerah had felt to themselves and their father, even as the three were set on a collision course of destruction. Did families ever make sense? "Just what you decide that it means. What you need for it to mean."
Her brow furrowed, and she lifted his eyes to seek out his. "She's ours, you know. The way you're mine."
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Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 7:30 pm
All this was too much. For each one of these things he had frightening questions, he had evidence to the contrary. It didn't matter. His eyes went spooky, staring into Lungaia's face with the sort of intensity that made normal wolves uncomfortable. "That's not true." He crept over to her, touching his nose to the corner of her mouth, sitting to lean against her side. She's going to leave us, he thought but didn't say. Instead he said, "Nobody is ours the way I'm yours," and watched the river.
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Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 8:26 pm
She countered his touch with a nuzzle, pressing her cold nose to the spot behind his ear and licking there tenderly, running her tongue over the patch of thin fur where the pink shone through.
"No," she mused, shifting her chin so it rested upon the back of his neck. A fellow warrior might have passed them, seen this display of intimacy -- so gentle, public, exposed -- and chided her for it. If they had tried, she would have turned and torn them open, root and stem.
She considered his words without consciously appraising them, rolling them over in her mind in a tumble of images. The jumble of memories that were not hers, the way he seemed to fit into all of them like a piece that had been cut out and left empty -- as if a searing ember had fallen through a book, burning a hole through every page so that the story couldn't quite make sense.
"Nobody is anyone's, the way you're mine."
This was not precisely a proclamation of love. It was simply a statement of fact.
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Posted: Sun May 18, 2014 9:22 pm
His eyelids flickered at the touch. That tenderness drew out an ache in him too complicated to understand: it reminded him of boys from back east, of the small blinks of time when he felt wanted, desired. But it went beyond that, and mostly just felt safe. Confusing but safe. And that was it, really. He shifted pliantly to accommodate her, listening to her silence as she slowly mouthed her thoughts. He smiled in spite of himself at her words. "I know. But that's okay."
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Posted: Sun May 18, 2014 11:32 pm
Her touch lingered there a moment before she withdrew. "Would you like me to check in on her, to see how she's getting along with the others?"
To be honest, she was a little concerned about Honoria. It wasn't exactly a worry she could wrap her head around. Words were not something Lungaia was talented at bending to her will. Her thoughts tended to crash together in images and emotions, and converting them into sounds and attributing meaning to those sounds required so much work.
And so the thoughts crashed together now, a muddled mess of quiet anxieties. Would Honoria do well enough to avoid negative attention? Would she get along well enough with the others? Was she happy? Was it even fair to expect her to be happy, to expect anyone to be happy? Would it be less cruel not to even bother with happiness, knowing that in life it's so fleeting and so rare?
But more than any of that, the wordless worry that crashed and bounced in her brain was of a certain self-consciousness. She knew nothing about raising a child. All she knew of families was her own, and it seemed like a poor model to draw upon.
All of this crashed and rolled together in her mind in a matter of a few seconds. Out loud, and rather abruptly considering what she'd said last: "Tui, have you had a family before?"
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Posted: Thu May 22, 2014 6:16 pm
He nodded. "We should still be there. To look out for her." He was thinking about Honoria when her next question landed, more like a blow than an inquiry. He flinched and stiffened at her side, suddenly not at her side but an adolescent again, a child, at the mercy of a wolf whose rules had all but annihilated him. With rapid blinks, he tried to find his way back, but it seemed like an endless swim across stormy seas.
It took a while for words to become an option, and when he tried to talk, he sounded strangled. "It's--" he gulped, "what I said before, about family." His eyes were very wet. "It was a bad thing."
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Posted: Thu May 22, 2014 8:23 pm
She waited patiently for the words to come, rolling down to her belly beside him both for her own comfort and as an instinct to make herself small, nonthreatening. This was not a particularly natural inclination for her. She could not recall a time when she had done such a thing consciously. Then again, she'd never had the need.
She laid her head on her paws, and her shredded ears perked when the words finally came. A similarly knowing, misty look passed over her emerald eyes. "Mine, too," she said, and with a furrowed brow and a stormy expression. "But not pups. And no one has ever been...mine, like this. That makes a difference, I think.
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Posted: Thu May 22, 2014 8:48 pm
It was disconcerting to see Lungaia lolling on her side, disconcerting in a way that made it easier for him to realize where he was. He grabbed lungfuls of air, as if the swim had been real and he could not quite believe he'd made it to shore, all wobbly-legged. Finally, when he was sure that he was safe, he relaxed into a slouch of relief, his hind legs stretched clumsily forward. "It's..." He glanced shyly down at her. This was more than they had ever talked about the thing that was happening, and it was starting to feel like too much. "We have an idea about what we want." The shy look hardened into something that surprisingly resembled determination. "It's not just a thing that's happening."
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Posted: Thu May 22, 2014 9:24 pm
The thought occurred to her: Do we? What do we want?
The second thought occurred to her: What if it's all taken away? What if our families come back to infect our future? What if Kaeerah came back?
This caused an involuntary shudder to roll through her. She was not afraid of her sister, not precisely, but she also knew with resignation that the blue-flamed wolf would haunt her in spirit if not flesh. It didn't matter where Kaeerah was; she was with her, just as their father was always with Kae.
All of these thoughts rolled together in her mind, colliding and roiling like smoke, but there were no words she could put to them, so she remained silent. Instead, what she actually said: "I'm glad I found you."
Hesitating a moment and realizing she had run out of words for the day, she laid her head back on her paws and allowed her eyes to slide closed, a moment to let her guard down in the presence of this odd, weak wolf who made her feel safe for no reason at all. Later, she would go to check up on their foundling.
((and I think that's a wrap from me.))
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