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 Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:09 pm
 As it turned out, Dubhe's pride was not unfounded. He was a wolf who lived and breathed for hunting, and it was evident in the way he carried himself -- that easy grace, the way he moved in silence, the hyper-vigilant air that took over those deep violet eyes when focused. Looking at him now, you would never believe that he had once been such an overactive, eager pup.
The pack -- such as it was -- had not done a poor job of fending for themselves at all, he had to admit, but they were certainly better off with him there. It wasn't right for mothers to shoulder the responsibility of hunting for their pups, and that agitating blue wolf sure wasn't doing much to help, and the pink fellow was only useful when he wasn't off counting butterflies or whatever it was that caught his fancy.
Really, it was commendable that Cue had managed to do so much with what he had. And Dubhe grew to respect him for that if nothing else.
Tonight, though, was a night for resting. Belly filled with meat from the kill they had taken down, the three of them, Dubhe stretched himself out amiably near their makeshift shelters.  Most of the others had gone to bed for the night, the pups tucked away for the evening inside the dens they'd spent so much time digging, expanding, refining. This had been the longest they'd stayed in place for a while, and Aislin was glad of it. It was nice to take some time to regain some energy; carrying and nursing so many pups had been exhausting.
Curiously, for a wolf who spent so much of her time dreaming, Aislin was feeling rather little inclination to sleep. She nibbled delicately at some meat and thought about their circumstances, and her mind wandered off so much that she barely realized how their new hunter was watching her.
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Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:31 pm
 Though it had been the norm for his experience in the past two months or so, Cue had not yet gotten used to the overwhelming quality of the love he felt for his mate and children. He was moderately functional when away, but even the merest passing thought of Aislin's face, of Indie's sweet, long-furred belly, would slow him down and make it difficult not to rub his face in the earth in reaction to his improbable, bountiful grace.
Thankfully, these spectres did not intrude during the hunt. He had held his own with Sindre and Dubhe despite their vastly different worlds, and it brought a taste as sweet as honey to his tongue to return to the family with a kill and friends in tow.
And as much as it pained him, he had played the host. He had restrained himself from spending the night trapped in Aislin's eyes, from cleaning the bodies of his children one by one as he memorized their solemn, peaceful faces. Instead he played the alpha, shepherding the gray wolves through their little encampment and taking utmost care to remain thoughtful and serene whenever possible. And they seemed to be settling, as amicable as they had been upon their first meeting, yawning and picking their teeth with the happy look of wolves who enjoy the bustle of pups and pack life. Cue sat happily near them, feeling the good fortune of this meeting in the tingling of his paws.
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Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:58 pm
Aislin was not compelled by Cue's same need to play the host. It had not seemed to occur to her that any sense of decorum might be important to uphold, and she she crept over to him and rubbed her maw along his cheek and buried her face in his chest. "We missed you today," she said, quietly. "We always do."
Erm. Dubhe looked around a bit uncomfortably at this show of affection. Sindre had gone off to stand guard -- a formality, but one Dubhe had insisted was necessary despite the safety of their location at the foot of these lonely mountains. Still, he was regretting it now; his would-be brother would give him a bit of an excuse to talk to someone and leave these two alone.
But alas, he had no exit strategy, and so instead he cleared his throat. "So, Cue," he said, politely looking elsewhere before letting his eyes drift back toward him. "Have you given thought to where you're headed? On a more permanent basis, I mean."
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Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 12:30 am
There came that all-encompassing adoration..when Aislin made her debut, Cue could think of nothing else but to kiss her face, to smile into those smiling eyes and look for what they were saying. At this point, it only took a few moments to get this egregious display over with, and soon his was smiling from Aislin to Dubhe and back. "As much as I would like, no." The sweetness of his perfect love seemed to fall away in pieces. "What we are clear on is that we had to get away. And that has been all we've heard..." a glance to Aislin for confirmation, "so we keep moving farther." The little wolf's brows contracted. "I had hoped to find some other sign, but the voice has been silent since we left the old pack."
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Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2014 9:11 pm
Aislin looked toward Dubhe, tilting her head thoughtfully and examining him as though seeing him for the first time. "Yes," she agreed, glancing back to meet Cue's eyes and resisting -- just barely -- the urge to become lost in them again. "Well get a sign, when we've come close. The dreams are quiet, because the light knows we're on the right path and doesn't want to frighten us."
Dubhe considered this. It all seemed rather dodgy. What if they never found what they were looking for? What if there was nothing to find in the first place?
But then, he had never been an acolyte. All the talk of religion and faith flew over his head, even though many of his relatives had pursued that path with great fervor. He was a much more literal wolf: Tell him what to believe, who to worship, and he would do so. It wasn't until his injury that he had even begun to truly take store in the word of the gods, but his experience had been life-changing. He had felt something, in the quiet and the pain, and though he couldn't say exactly what it was, it was something.
"Tell me about your light," he said, finally, genuinely curious.
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Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2014 9:16 pm
Cue pursed his lips and thought for a moment, which was all it took for the memory of that crackling presence at the back of his eyes to ignite. It was so difficult, to know something with certainty but not be able to offer proof, to find words that expressed it! 'Belief' was the word, but it was like believing in the sun itself; there was never doubt, only the inability to impress your feeling accurately into another. He sighed and twisted an ear back, looking briefly over to Aislin before he tried.
"I don't know why we have it," he began. "I don't think that we're a particularly special groups of wolves, except that we were open, and we wanted change." Another saccharine smile over to his mate. "What happened instead was...it was as if I had lived my whole life in a dense forest, and the only sky I knew was what I could see through a tangle of boughs. The only water I knew were the streams and ponds that laced through the undergrowth. And suddenly, inexplicably, I stumbled out onto a great stretch of dunes, and before me was a sky so wide and endless it was crippling, and a water so vast and restless that I couldn't even identify it for what it was. A whole world appeared before me, and I realized that what I knew, what I understood to be complete, what filled my life from day to day, was so small."
The orange wolf had a look on his face that suggested he was moved close to the point of tears. "I have never felt so humbled or so reverent in my life. I didn't stumble into this of my own accord, I was shown. There is something out there that is aware of the world to a degree that I can't even fathom, but it chose me to have a taste." Cue didn't look proud, but confounded. "I knew from that moment that I must do something with this feeling. I am still trying to figure out what. For now, take my loved ones away from danger, and remain reverent, and not take the sweetness in my life for granted."
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Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2014 9:47 pm
Aislin's brow furrowed. The imagery that Cue was using -- it felt significant, more than a metaphor. But why? How? It was like an image from a dream. An expanse of desert, rolling hills of sand and scrubland, and in the midst of it pools of shimmering oasis, water in all the colors of the rainbow, the sky blue-blue-blue overhead. Was it simply that he was conjuring it so vividly in her mind? Or had she seen it, somehow, somewhere? In her dreams? Or in his?
Whatever it was, the collision of his words with the images in her mind incited a shiver of excitement, a rush of dopamine down her spine that caused her heart to skip a beat, bursting in her chest with an inexplicable gladness. This, this euphoric feeling -- this is what they had come so far to find. This is what spurred their pawsteps.
"Most wolves are too full," she said, adding to her mate's explanation. "So nothing gets in. We were all so empty, that the light could pour right in and full us up."
Dubhe listened. Normally long talks of any kind addled his patience, making him want to get up and do something, but he bore this sermon with the smallest amount of fidgeting, just a few claws tracing over and over into the earth before him. His ears twisted in contemplation.
"In my pack, we worship several gods," he said, finally, tentatively. "They govern the domains of the land, birth and death and the like. But it's...not the same, I don't think." He lifted violet eyes up toward these unlikely alphas, and he could feel something radiating off of them -- a certainty, a confidence, that he was unaccustomed to. He had met acolytes who were passionate about their beliefs, or comfortable with their relationship to the gods, but none had ever felt so....full of life. It was a little staggering. And it left him wondering what he should think.
Again, he wished Sindre were here -- Sindre with his moon goddess and his sacrifices. Before meeting him, Dubhe would've scoffed completely at these wolves, but now, he wasn't so sure. The world was bigger than his mountaintop, and full of all sorts of wonders.
"I think I would be frightened, being chosen like that."
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Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2014 9:09 am
Cumulonimbus had brightened as he spoke, had sharpened somehow. He was now watching Dubhe with an alertness that was close to predatory, a target sighted and ready to be driven into the fold. He nodded firmly at Dubhe's observation. "We had stories like that growing up. But they only felt like stories...I think everything felt like that. Like we were being told how to act and what to feel, only there wasn't any feeling under any of it. A flat life."
And frightened? "Sure. I was lightning-struck. I was terrified. But now I feel alive. I can't imagine turning back to the life that I had before."
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Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2014 7:44 pm
Aislin was starting to nod off, her mind already cluttering with images so that it wasn't clear what was dream, what was reality, what was memory, what was fantasy. For the yellow wolf, those demarcations didn't matter. The lines between those categories were blurred and fluid, and one thing could exist in all realms simultaneously.
Dubhe's ears flicked forward. Well, he wouldn't go that far. He had certainly felt something when he was praying to Rhiavet. But who was he to say what that something had been? Perhaps all gods were one god, or perhaps this light of theirs was just a different name for one of the gods he already knew. Did it really matter?
"And that's the only time? It's never happened since?" he tilted his head, then added, in a quiet voice. "I guess that's all you'd really need."
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