Drooping Willows Might as well face it...

Things had changed... things had really changed. It was an oddity to think that things could turn so quickly, that plans to quietly live out her years and die in peace had warped into one final inferno. Slower senior months became a drawn out hunt for vengeance, the never ending plot to have her cake and eat it with one swift bite to the throat of Kjors. Payback for what he had done, the very same to her beloved Kjell, an eye for an eye - throat for a throat.

As quickly as she had accidentally stumbled on the whereabouts of her ill-favoured son, had the light of her life returned without warning. No longer merely the widow, her sons were alive and believed to be well. She could only be sure of one, but the other was engrossed in a pack, which surely stood for something. No doubt in her mind, Kjors was some lowly subordinate, relegated from the greatness he had always thought he would achieve. The thought alone had her snorting a sound of amusement, interrupting her momentarily from trailing the scent of Kjell by the borders of yet another pack.

"The boy is evasive." Her words were muttered under her breath, and to herself, as her head rose and she peered around, taking a moment to better assess her surroundings. "He remembers everything you showed him." For a moment she felt pride, only for it to come crashing down in her own thoughts with a tightening brow.

"Or you are just too old to keep up..." With a frantic shake of her head, the thoughts were tossed from her mind and her concentration returned to locating her beloved Kjell. Where ever had he been hiding, there were so many things to discuss. There were stories to extract and - not the least important to the ageing woman, details about this @Bishop to unearth, like where she could find her, and what she looked like...

“Maybe y’are slowing down,” a familiar voice drawled, revealing a shadowy wolf slinking forth from the tall willow trees. He hadn’t been seeking out Avari in particular, but come across his mother’s trail – with his traveling companion still missing, his drive to find company elsewhere was increasing daily.

It wasn’t as if Bishop had disappeared without a word, per say, but she had indicated she’d be back. If Kjell were honest with himself, the younger wolf hadn’t said {i}when, exactly, but he had assumed it wouldn’t be long. Apparently, his assumption was proven incorrect, and the male found himself dealing with the harsh realities of winter completely on his own. At least the mother of dragons had raised a resourceful son, if nothing else. (Nothing like his pathetic, stunted, fubsy runt of a brother.) Lonely, maybe, but still well fed, with a thick winter coat that glistened in the sun’s long, sloping rays.

He tipped his head as he approached, looking over the aging female with some curiosity. That she was still alone at this point in the winter, at her age, certainly spoke to some degree of hardiness. It was enough to draw a smile to his otherwise stony expression, and once close enough, he reached forward to nudge his shoulder. “You looking for me? You could have called. Not exactly busy, you know?”

Not only had she failed her efforts to track the boy, but he'd apparently turned the tables and come up on her while she was busily engrossed in her own verbal musings. Had one looked closely enough they might have seen a jolt as the deeper voice struck her from her thoughts, but so apt was she at suppressing fear it was barely visible. Though her heart picked up it's pace for a moment, she slowed it down with held breath. She only had so many clicks in her chest remaining. No sense in wasting them.

"I think by this point..." her voice was strong, proud as she almost leered at her son "...I am entitled to go as slow or fast as I please." If her tone of voice wasn't enough, the firm nod of her head put the icing on her cake. Still the authoritarian it seemed, at least in the presence of those she felt some level of authority around.

"I could have called, sure." Tongue lashed at her lips and she rolled back to sit on the ground with a quiet grunt - perhaps a hint of pain setting in with the cold air of winter at last? "I would rather not run the risk of someone else having come snooping though." Clearly, there was intent behind her voice, and as he met her shoulder she met him with the lightest nudge of her nose against his cheek.

"Sit down, my boy." Affectionate in her address as always, cold heart melting just with that brief reminder that the stunning creature in her presence was her own flesh and blood. "There are some things we need to discuss, and subsequently..." she glanced around momentarily, as though she were worried someone else might have been lurking nearby "...there are things we must do."

“Suppose age comes with certain a certain ‘mount a’ entitlement,” Kjell drawled in response, one eyebrow arching upwards as the woman turned to face him. Age, and achievement, he supposed – but the woman had not only founded a pack with his father, but raised him, survived a murderous rampage, and even managed to make it to the ripe old age of seven years as a lone wolf. (As far as he knew, at any rate, but it really wasn’t worth asking.) She hadn’t simply lived, it seemed, for Avari’s coat was still thick, and her eyes had a certain shine to them.

So the youngest dragon prince settled next to his mother as she relaxed her posture, muzzle shifting from shoulder blade to her cheek. Pink tongue flashed out briefly in the cold air in a single kiss before he made himself comfortable. The elder clearly had something in mind, and curiosity begged him to be quiet and wait.

It came around, sooner than it didn’t, and his ears tipped forward in curiosity. “I’m listening,” he prompted Avari, brows arching again. He had nothing to do, and no where to live – until Bishop returned to the forest of Relic Lore, he had no one else to spend time with, either. “This about packs, or--?”

Whatever doubt there had been about the solidarity of her position as the boys mother was gone. Clearly he was still smitten just to be around her, despite his early hesitations when their paths last met. She had supposedly betrayed him, left him for dead at the jaws of his brother, but all was either forgiven, forgotten or both. A lick to the cheek that her head turned into, thankful at last to have someone back in her life that wasn't just a passer by. It had been some time since she'd had much of an opportunity to settle. Now she had some shred of hope - a chance that wherever her son landed, she might too make roost.

Her first plan had been to interrogate him further into the so-called Bishop he'd spoken of before, but it was almost immediately evident by a single breath that the faint scent she had picked up from her son before was now completely absent. Suddenly the woman wasn't of any importance to the elder. If they were anything more than friends, as Avari had initially suspected (and perhaps hoped) then the boy would still reek of her. Shame. It caused a momentary silence as her mind switched it's priorities.

"Nothing to do with packs, no. Well, suppose there is one involved." Why he would have made such an assumption the woman may never know, guessing that the boy was either getting lonesome, or had merely tired of fending for himself. It never crossed her mind that he might have been struggling to make it as a loner. She seemed to brace herself all of a sudden. How Kjell might react to the news she was preparing to deliver was impossible to know until it happened.

"Your brother." She wouldn't dare name him out loud. "I am... fairly certain he lives nearby."

Avari was not the only one disappointed by Bishop’s absence – while the dragon prince refused to look, told her he wouldn’t, it still ate at him day by day. Abandonment wasn’t something new, persay, but he had thought the younger female to be someone or something different than those he’d loved in the past. Well. Love was a strong word for it. Discarded as something useless, he would keep his mother’s company for the time being, and if he hoped she’d thought of joining a pack, it wasn’t on his face.

That was something he’d learned from her in the time they were still together, at least. Kjell might not have mastered a mask in the same way his dam had, but it was still present as a passive, unimpressed expression lay quietly across his handsome features.

Whatever he’d been expecting, it was not the bombshell Avari dropped.

Ears flew back in an automatic reaction, emotion surging past that well-crafted carelessness, and lips curled up over ivory white teeth. That snake. His tail lashed through the air behind him like a whip as angry orange eyes bored into his mother. “Yeah?” he challenged, chest puffing out. “Well? What’re we gonna do about it?”

While the boy turned on a dime, switching from calm to all out aggressive, the more practised of the two held her ever calm exterior. Her face never turned, but her chest began to pound with absolute excitement. For some time she had feared mentioning his brother, thinking that under the guidance of his caretakers he might have come to forgive his litter-mate. It was a relief to hear and see that the anger still brewed, that the fire his soul had inherited from her was still burning bright and powerful as ever. Was that a twitch of a grin on her lips?

The arrogant challenge went without answer, though she was tempted for just a moment to snap - to put him in his place like she would have done when he was a pup. She rathered instead that the aggression burn, showing still nothing in response, no challenge back nor any submission. He could push his chest out as far as he pleased and show her all the teeth in the world. He was still her boy. She could still tell him off if she pleased. At least so she thought.

"Perhaps you're a more forgiving soul than I am." Her voice was almost as emotionless as her face, turning to watch the rage searing behind his mask. "Maybe you have been taught how to forget." At that she turned, standing, and without a lick of hesitation her nose met his own, her own eyes sizzling with anger as her chest rumbled with a vicious growl and her lips peeled back in a vicious show of teeth. A flash of her former self and a clear indication of why she had once been as feared as she was.

"I should hope not. I did not force you into this world to grow into a coward!" She all but spat her words, refusing to blink as fur bristled, hackles raised with her tail curled and lashing against her back, pinned ears blocking all but the sound of her pulse hammering in her head.

"What are we going to do about it?" Like a flicked switch her seething anger simmered back down to nothing, she eased herself away with a lazy backwards step that rolled into a casual sit and she finally blinked and took a breath, exhaling a calm sigh and returning to that same calm tone of voice that was so pertinent in even the most dangerous or threatening of situations.

"We're going to find him, Kjell... and we're going to kill him."

“Tcht!”

As if. As if. He’d been rescued by a kind couple, yes, but forgiveness was not something they’d offered in their education. It had been enough to heal him, to make sure the youth had enough to survive on his own, and then he was set free – but then, the wolves of Ered Luin had never been raised on petty things like forgiving or forgetting. Noble as he was, even Søren held a grudge when it suited him. There was a reason, after all, that he and Avari had gotten together, despite any differences. He hadn’t always been alpha, but the male always had the ability to reach forth and seize greatness.

His sons were not so different.

While he did not know the man well, Kjell was a ghost of his sire in that particular moment, with a rigid spine and hackles raised. It was not just his pride that had been wounded on that day; how dare his own flesh and blood betray him in such a way? Such a sin could never be atoned for. Even the All-Mother knew that, and while he was not nearly as fanatical in his belief as his elder brother, the younger dragon prince knew well that it was he who sat just and condoned in her eyes. It was he who did not commit such a grievous transgression.

Nor had his life among the rupestrine wolves who’d made their home on Widow’s Peak done anything to wittle away his courage. If anything, such hard living had bolstered his impression of himself – there was nothing that Kjell Sørenson couldn’t do. So his mother’s fierce expression was mirrored, his tail lashing behind him as he snapped his teeth. Hah! Coward. “I wasn’ the one who ran,” he seethed, golden eyes bright as he felt forced to remind the woman that he was not the one who’d abandoned the other.

Let her chew on that for a while.

But her boiling anger did not last, and for a moment he wondered how she was able to let it go so quickly. It took the swarthy male a few extra moments to squash his anger back into the box it typically inhabited. Inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes for a moment, and forced himself back into that carefree state he so usually wore across his face. He did not need to be angry with her. He did not need to be angry with her.

Finally, the younger wolf drew himself upwards and focused his blazing orange eyes back on his mother’s face. A soft huff billowed free, and he furrowed his brows as he realized Avari did not quite know where his brother was in full. “We? Or I?” he clarified, raising a brow. She certainly didn’t seem in quite the state to be clinging any wolves, especially those in their prime. “Thought you knew where he was. ‘m all for givin’ him what he deserves, but—“ Kjell rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “Not much interested in a wild goose chase. I gotta life.”

A life he didn’t need Kjors to ruin.

Lips pulled back as the woman pulled the mother card, imply her age may soon get the best of her. Kjell would not see his dam outlived by that thieving little rat, if he were honest with himself, and some of what the woman was saying did hold a certain level of appeal. Watching his older brother faced with the ghost of a wolf long slain – a smile curled at the corner of his lips as he allowed himself to savor the possibilities for a moment, and then he nodded.

Two wolves knew of Kjors, knew where he might be. This was proving to be more information than he’d initially thought his mother had gathered.

“Well, two wolves ‘s better than one,” he agreed, aware the likelihood of this was fairly slim. It was worth a look. If nothing else, perhaps a little travel would allow him to run back into Bishop – or someone else. Traveling alone had few perks, but they largely did not outweigh the loneliness that crept into his bones, bit by bit, day by day. “Which way?” he asked, tail beginning to swish behind him. “I need to know if this is true. I need t’ know.”