you do not know who is your friend

and who is your enemy

The task laid before him seemed too vast—a mountain unclimbable, with either salvation or doom at its peak. It was too daunting, to turn the pages and find the tenuous connections between events, and lay them out in a way that made sense, evidence both redeeming and damning. For at the end of the confession building up behind his teeth lay the guilt which sheared through him like a white-hot dagger: that at some point he had remembered, but tried to not acknowledge it.

It was those words he were afraid of stringing together into coherent sentences, to give them life in the chill pre-winter air, and watch them sink into those soft, pale ears and into the forgiving heart beyond. How far could he push Serach's mercy? How could he tell the tale of injury and forgetting, without getting to the remembering? He felt it in his pulse, a weak shadow growing stronger, bolder, a darkness with the name of fear riding with his blood again.

He was tired of being afraid.

And he was saved from having to find the frayed ends of loose threads and fumble them back into a recognizable pattern, of a broken man struggling against a future in which the grief devoured him.

Instead, he was told a tale of Oak Tree Bend, of Kisla and Fenru first, the remnants of another era long gone by. And hearing those words spoken were like a knife of a different kind, striking deep and true in his heart. Suddenly grateful for the few steps between him and his son, he turned his ears back and looked aside. Kisla, whom he had never figured out, never known how to cure—she had gone looking for him. For him. What had they thought, when he never came back? Had any of them come back? His red traveling companion, even Cali..?

Somehow he doubted it. Those who left the River and Bend wolves didn't generally come back.

And they had grown up, the children of the River, with families of their own, now. At the mention of Fenru's mate, Ice nodded, slowly. "I met Arlette when she came to live in the Bend," he interjected quietly, his voice heavy again. The memory of her was faint, of a well-spoken pale little she-wolf come to shake off her ghosts. If not for her connection to Fenru, he probably would've forgotten her, and so much else, when his head hit the unyielding rocks of the Hills. And much as he was glad that they had found a future together, somewhere, it cut him to the core to know that Fenru wouldn't be there when he finally got home again.

Serach went on, to speak of Sceral, and he was right; Ice wasn't sure he ever wanted to believe this, and for more reasons than the sheer incredulity of it. Something about the boys' upbringing struck him as tragic, and his heart hardened, wishing they would never have had reason to be sad, angry, frustrated yearlings, with wanderlust firing up Sceral's bones and taking him away. Ice couldn't blame him. He knew the need to leave all too well, to get out of the space full of ghosts, haunting your every moment. Nor was it easy to believe that Sceral had daughters—he must've been, what, two when he fathered them? Much too young, he should've still been in the Bend, taking care of little brothers and sisters, but that hadn't happened, and it was, in part, on his shoulders.

Then Serach said something about a grandfather and Ice's face froze into an expression of confusion, because for some reason it hadn't hit home that his son had children of his own, which meant that he had grandchildren, which, yes, quite logically made him a grandfather.

What, he thought.

"What," he said.

Serach went on, but Ice remained struck into stillness and silence—he heard every word, but only processed them a moment later, as if he lagged behind the real world in some strange way. Serach had never been on the other side of the mountains, and part of him wanted to interrupt, offer to take him there, see his past, what he was sprung from, the Swift Rivers of their past, to listen to the Hush Meadow, get lost in the Thicket of Secrets, see the Arbol Rosado in its full spring bloom.. but his son was already talking of pups, and not just a handful of them, but five, from no less than three mothers. What, he wanted to say again, vaguely outraged by this blatant flaunting of pack hierarchy and how things should be, but Serach only chuckled so Ice curbed his desire to question the sanity of allowing three litters to happen in the first place.

But then he said something magical: he said Triell and Naira, and for a moment, Ice remained in an equipoise between outrage and apathy, suspended between two equally strong forces of disbelief and wrath; old hurts and bitter betrayal.

"What," he finally blurted out, a bit too late as it happened more at the mention of Spieden's name than anything else, but Serach went on—fortunately, for Ice didn't want to keep processing this. He had known, whether Triell had told him or not he couldn't remember, that Triell wanted to forgive Naira, or something like that; that he thought fondly of her, as a friend, and Ice had the vague notion that maybe he had met Naira after the whole thing with Poison Path had blown over, but he wasn't sure, and really, who was he to judge Triell when Ice himself had been fast friends with Ava, of the very same pack..?

Ice was staring, sort of incredulously, at Serach, as the latter finished with a shrug and a careless wag of his tail. He didn't seem to mind, and Ice found himself wondering where he had gotten that gene from—certainly neither Corinna nor Ice would've allowed such a pup-fest to ensue. In the silence following the tale of three years of the Bend—or rather, the results of three years of absence from the Bend—Ice just kept staring. Finally, he let out a low, "Naira, huh?" before shaking his head, his large, pale scruff standing out briefly like a mane. Times and things change, he told himself sternly, and this isn't your pack anymore.

And now, he owed his son a story.

"I was shaken after Rissa's death," he began, slowly pulling the recalcitrant bits of memories from their resting places, and piecing them together in a manner much more solemn than his son's. "It had just been too much, and finding her.. I.. It did something to Fenru, it did something to all of us, and in the wake of that, Aiyana left with Borden from Grizzly Hollow, and suddenly we had no children of that litter left—in a way, it was like she died, too. I was caught in it, trapped in it, and more than that, when we sent Triell and Marsh ahead of us, none of them came back at first. I cared a lot for both of them, and it gnawed at the back of my mind.

"Then Triell came back, when you and Sceral were first let out of the den. He told me Marsh had died. And I couldn't handle it. We left to escape the ghosts, but I just brought them with me instead, and made new ones, too." He fell silent for a moment, wishing he could tell a tale in the same easy, carefree manner, as if things were going to be fine, but somehow he had begun to doubt it again. "Then Cali Swiftpaw disappeared. Corinna probably knew I needed to get away for a bit—I was probably distant, sad, all sorts of things, so she told me to go look for Cali. With me, I had another red male, but I don't remember his name anymore. And so, we set off as the summer waned.

"We didn't find Cali. Winter set in harsh and early, so we turned back, but everything went wrong. Ice broke on a river and swept us away, and I lost him in the blizzards, and what could I do, except go back home empty-handed? And I almost made it, I came to the Sierra Hills, and I know I looked down upon the Lore. Then—nothing, just a vague memory of the earth disappearing beneath me and the sky tilting, and the next thing I was coherent enough to know was that I was.. somewhere else, feeling slow and weak and dizzy, my head pounding, and I had no context. I knew that my name was Ice, I knew I had to go somewhere, but I couldn't fit the pieces back together. I've come to the conclusion that I must've fallen going down the mountains, hit my head, lost my memory, and simply happened to wander off in the wrong direction." He sighed, and scraped a paw in the snow. "I'm still not sure I remember everything. Things from—before, they're kind of, hazy, in a way. Less clear." He tilted his head, realized that he had almost forgotten a question which had burned in his mind along with all the others; "Did.. did they ever come back? Cali, I mean, and the male I left with?" He paused for a moment, in case Serach wanted to answer, before going on with his tale. "Anyway.

"I went north, just by pure chance. Took up with a pack called Red Salmon Cove, but I was still hounded by the feeling of having to go somewhere specific, so I couldn't bring myself close to them. And despite the name, we mostly tracked caribou herds in our territory. Then.. Serach, I'm sorry... I remembered, I don't know when exactly, maybe sometime this spring, but with the memory came knowledge—of what I had left behind, all I had lost, of who I had abandoned, betrayed, of how I had become like Indru..." His voice was nothing but a fragile whisper. "So I denied that I had remembered, I pushed the knowledge deep below the surface, to avoid the pain and the guilt, but as autumn approached, I realized I could no longer hide it from myself—and maybe, I had had enough time to reconcile what I had inadvertently done."

There was so much he didn't know about Serach. And there was so much Serach didn't know, about him, about his past, things they should've known, things that would've been naturally shared between father and son: tales of the west side of Relic Lore, maybe of Ice's own upbringing and trials, the past of Swift River and how it had suffered.. How much of this Corinna had told him, Ice didn't know—was the fact that Naira was allowed into the pack a sign of what he hadn't been told? "I began to head south, and I must've passed into the Lore not too far from Kisla's pack." He pulled a small, weak grimace. It seemed ironic, that he had come so close to her, and not stumbled over her. "I.. stopped by Rissa's resting place on the way, met Triell's yearling girl.. and then I came here, but.. I guess, in my heart I already knew that Cori was gone..." He faltered, and wondered on how thin ice he trod as he looked at Serach for a moment. "She named you, you know," he said softly. "Just pulled your name out of thin air, called you an Aesir." (But you're not, you're better than me—) The name had come out of his mouth with bitterness.

He fell silent for a moment, letting his eyes travel the familiar forest, before he heaved a small, white-smoke sigh into it. He had nothing more to say—he was only stalling, afraid of being turned away now that he admitted that.. that he had tried to deny his past, and forget the things he had finally remembered. "I'm just sorry I didn't have the courage to return sooner," he finally said, quietly. But he was done being a coward now, so he shifted his silver gaze to Serach's face, afraid to read disappointment there.

you do not know who is your friend

and who is your enemy

Left, Ice thought bitterly as Serach said what little he knew of Naira. More like ran away in the dead of night, pregnant while Cori's mate was gone. 'Left', indeed. She'd fled like a coward, her attempt at going up in smoke like so many other River wolves thwarted—they had noticed and they had known and they had never forgiven, with the exception of Triell. It was an old, old pain, one that tasted too much like betrayal, and Ice had never really faced it. He had never pinned Triell and demanded the truth from him, why he had defended her from him all those years ago. The truth had seemed too painful, but it seemed like even that had caught up with him. If Serach would still have him after his tale was told, he would have to face it—and much as he wanted to keep his peace with Triell, a long-lost and much-loved piece of his past, he wasn't sure how he would react upon seeing Naira's face again.

He realized he had kept talking, because he didn't want to get to the part where Serach would react, and, ultimately, pass judgment on Ice's cowardice. Serach had revealed that neither Cali nor Merlin had come home, and that had been another blow; all of that journey had been for nothing, just one miserable decision after another. Ice gritted his teeth together as he waited, and the first bit of his verdict came, snatching the air from his lungs.

"It's Donata now."

It didn't matter— (but it did—) —but it still hurt. He couldn't have put in plainer: you disappeared, and we gave up on you.

Because that's what River and Bend wolves did. They had not been taught any differently, because those who left, didn't fucking come back, yet here he stood, dragging air down in his lungs but feeling like he drowned. "I don't blame you," he finally said, shouting Donata Donata Donata Donata over and over in his head, and for a brief, insane moment he even thought of changing his name in honor of the wolf who had done so much for them.

But he wasn't worthy.

"Knowing how you've greeted me, I only wish I had dared to come sooner," he rumbled in quiet response, still keeping his eyes on his son's face, both scared of what he would see there, and terrified he would miss any moment of this moment. Then, finally, Serach looked up, with his perfect eyes a blend of Ice's silver and Corinna's green, and it felt like somebody had punched him straight in the gut. He still had a hard time believing it. Both of his sons were alive—and one right in front of him, leader of the pack Ice had inadvertently abandoned, full of life and pain but here for Ice to, finally, love.

In response to Serach's smile, Ice's mouth tugged upwards at one corner, forming a sad, hesitant smile, too. He didn't laugh, though—he felt too empty, not exactly numb, but drained. He had made it, he had had one bitter revelation after another, he had told his story, he had, for some reason he couldn't fathom, been let back. Given a second chance. He didn't know what else was required of him, what more he could do, except stare in silence as more words washed over his ears. He was, he knew, pleased to hear that Jessie was still alive and well, glad that she had found herself a mate to move away with, but sad that she wouldn't be here for him either. Ice said nothing, and his gaze had fallen, until he was staring dejectedly at Serach's feet. He wasn't even sure he would remember all of this conversation come the following day, so while he still could, he tried to cement all of it into his memory. The silence stretched, until Serach spoke again. It snapped him out of his thoughts at least, and Ice blinked and hauled his head back up again.

"Both?" he said, still too shocked to properly understand who Lena was. And in spite of his exhaustion, his tail gave a small wag where it hung limply behind him, and he gave his head a small shake. "I mean, we could just see who we'll stumble over first..."

And that was when he realized it, and his ears pricked, and eyes lit up as he took the first, hesitant step of many towards Oak Tree Bend: he was coming home.

you do not know who is your friend

and who is your enemy

until the ice breaks.

you do not know who is your friend

and who is your enemy

until the ice breaks.