ROOK LYALL

March 24th; Morning; Partly Cloudy; 19 ° F, -8 ° C

Construction on the den-site that he had been working on for Quil had been slow for the most part. Apart from the times when he occasionally helped his mother or wandered about just to keep tabs on Cinder or Ryvet, Rook was here, digging away and covering his forelimbs, chest and muzzle with the mud that had come with the spring thaw. What had once been just a simple pit alongside two moderately-sized boulders had become something rather decent. It was a tunnel now just long enough for Rook to step all the way in with only a bit of his plume-like tail showing above ground. As far as he was concerned, it was only halfway done; he had definitely made up his mind that he wanted the underground space to be roomy enough to fit at least three adult wolves inside.

Turning around in the tight space and stepping back out onto the surface, he suddenly felt the odd burning sensation that someone had been watching. His right ear turned sideways as his brow quirked. "Impressed?" he questioned, having expected his beloved or his older brother to come by. But, no one was there... At least, he thought so until he heard the strangest bird noise from somewhere on his left, and it had gone like this: a very alert and inquisitive hooooo hoo?!

Rook felt he must have jumped a good two or three feet in the air but what had come rustling across the melting snow and the damp pine needles was a little hopping bird. An owl, in fact, and by the looks of its feathers it must have been rather young and naive. It ducked its head down to pick up a small twig in its pointy little beak and put it down at his feet. The wolf lifted the paw it had drawn closest to and cautiously stepped out of the tunnel.

It chirped again, staring up at him with its wide, youthful brown eyes. Obviously, Rook wanted nothing to do with it. The teeny-tiny thing was barely big enough to consider an easy snack and he didn't have food to give it. So, why the bird had come bouncing his way was, quite frankly, both odd and irritating.

The owl nuzzled up against the dirtied paw that was still firmly on the ground. Rook switched his arms, lifting his right paw out of its reach and shifting his weight back onto his left. It bounded about beneath him, weaving figure-eights around his limbs. "Oh, good Lord," he muttered, awkwardly trying to evade the bird by taking a few steps backwards.

One of his back paws snagged on a larger evergreen bough that had fallen to the ground and he found himself sitting on the ground with a heavy thump. The feathered thing skittered over to him, continually chirping and nuzzling its forehead into his side. Out of caution, he lifted his tail as he stood up with something of a wince and grimaced at his new "buddy." "Could you go away, please? Can't you see, I'm not a big burrowing owl like you..." The owl insisted on skipping about in the space in front of him, still cheeping about like it had so much to tell him. Out of options, Rook growled at it and even showed the itsy-bitsy bird a bit of his teeth. It hooted back at him and offered him another dried pine needle.

The Lyall gave an exasperated sigh, his lips pursed as he stared at the owlet, "You're a twit."

ROOK LYALL

Even if Rook's growls had come across as harsh or wholly agitated, the young burrowing owl continued in its little frolicking, making a small pile of pine needles for the wolf to take note of. The Lyall was about to raise his paw to brush the little thing aside and carry on with his work (if he was going to have this place ready for Quil, he would need to finish sooner rather than later) when the tiny bird let out a panicked screech. Rook's mismatched gaze was torn away and he looked around to find, not Quil, but her sister. His jaw had gone slack and, upon realizing that what she had said immediately concerned the pesky hook-beaked creature at his feet, he straightened up and hastily swept the owl aside and behind him. It cheeped in alarm, its saucer-like eyes staring at the darker wolf in fear.

"I-It's... It's not a pet," he stuttered, looking at her as if she had said something incredulous. "I was minding my own bus'ness when it had come around." A muffled hoot came from behind him and he looked over his shoulder at it with something like a glare before returning his gaze to Cinder again, "Now it won't leave me alone."

He stood up and lifted his tail in a gentle wave. The owlet, upon being revealed, stared at the other yearling with wide brown eyes, "Its nest must be around here somewhere. It's still covered in down." It hummed a low note and Rook shook his head as he stepped to the right. The chick followed suit, hiding behind Rook's left hind limb as if it could have been fully concealed behind a spindly back paw.

"It must've been lonely," he commented on this with some sort of confidence in the matter, as if he had already known that was the reason why the owl had come bouncing his way. Speaking of which, though, he offered her a small smile, daring to not pay heed to the sarcastic tone that had greeted him, "How are you today? Anything interesting about?"

For the moment, the owl chick had fallen quiet, suddenly all too interested in a grasshopper that had hopped by. It jumped and the owlet jumped after it, leaving the safety Rook's shadow. The masked yearling's tail wagged and, in genuine interest in his companion he also extended, "Are you settling in all right?"

ROOK LYALL

A resounding “No” came as Cinder's response and Rook held his breath as to brace himself for any other veridical thing she might have to relay to him. She felt that they - the wolves of Grizzly Hollow - were not a pack at all, that they were living the lives of refugees. A wince formed on Rook's masked face but he was quick to address her main concern when her train of thought had trailed off. "I haven't," he assured her, his voice firm and steady on the ears. "If I had, I would've made sure to quell it. I would never even think of doing such a thing." It might have been a bit hasty on his part but he would soon come to soothe her further, especially after her admission of being frustrated.

The last days of the Breeding Season were coming to a close, though it was apparent that hormones were still running on an all-time high. Her scent might have teased at his nostrils, but he knew better than to do anything else than speak to her. She was nothing like her sister, that much was for certain. "Tell me then, Caelia," he started. "What it is that I can do for you to make you feel like you're apart of the family."

It might have been a little forward on his part and he knew it by the way he sealed his lips into a hard line as he looked her over once more. A part of him sorely wished now that he had actually taken the time before to formally introduce himself and at least get to know his beloved's sister. Somewhere not too far behind him the little owlet was hopping after the grasshopper, chirping every now and then between his words. "All of this won't feel like a pack unless you, too, make the effort. I'll remind you, time and time again if I have to, that we consider you as one of us. The names--" He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth for a brief second as he assembled his words in his head, "The aliases and all, it's not just for our safety. It's something my sister and I used to do, it's not a game, it's for a sense of having a bond on another level. Like having a secret that no one else in the world could ever figure out."

ROOK LYALL

"Cinder," he repeated after her with the softest puffs of air forming the syllables of her name. He would remember next time to use her true name when they next spoke; in being someone who was constantly misnamed, Rook should have known better than to introduce such a concept to the pack, but it was too late to retract it now. The idea that pseudonyms did provide the pack with some measure of safety still held strong, though, too. It was probably guilt and a burning need for some sort of familiarity that brought him to propose such a thing. Back within Renegades Reach, Rook had to constantly test himself at his father's unexpected whims. Sometimes, he was Rook, other times he was "Graham" which was meant to be his actual name some couple years ago. Then, there were days where he was expected to answer to a number of monikers, all of which he knew now by heart and whom they all actually belonged to: Prosper, Renier (sometime after Renier had left home), and Theodore, and Hocus. It had dawned on him now just how juvenile and unnecessary it all was and how he had somehow terribly attempted to inscribe his guilt on everyone else as if it would lessen the burden even further. At the end of the day, it didn't.

For a while the owlet at his back continued on its merry, chick-like way, chasing the "hopper" without a care while the two wolves talked. Rook paid it no mind, focused on what his soon-to-be sister-in-law had to say. "I know," he whispered in admission, recalling the few tales he and Quil had once exchanged in a cavern well away from the neighboring pack lands. Even as she drew close to him in some sort of embrace that demanded for an understanding, a sense of trust, and a need for that sense of familial bond. "And, I'm sorry. I hadn't anticipated them to do what they did."

"Fix it," she then told him as she stepped back from him. She smelled almost like her sister - almost - the underlying notes that suggested to him that she was related to Quil and vice versa were the same, but her own unique scent had a signature note to it that distinctively told him that Cinder Attaya was her own identity. Rook met her stern gaze, nodding once to relay to her that he would keep his word. After so many things had gone wrong, he vowed to himself that this conflict would be one of the very first that he would mend along with gaining and keeping Cinder's trust.

"I swear... by my life.."

ROOK LYALL

The little owl had come back as soon as Rook's ears had come to consider Cinder's question. It hopped and peeped with the still live grasshopper in its mouth, but as the Lyall tilted his head downward to smile at the little thing, insect had freed itself from the grasp of its beak and off it went again. To Rook's relief, though, the grasshopper had had a stroke of misfortune and hopped right into the hole in the ground where the fledgling and its parent(s) had made their home not far from Quil's future den. Hopefully the feathered rascal would remain there for the time being with a full tummy and leave the wolves to their words.

"Because I need to know that it's possible to build and keep the family that I thought I had lost," he answered her in all truthfulness. "My father won't be this way forever and I wanted to bring him home... then... maybe..." His words felt as though they had all been caught at the back of his mouth, tangled up in one another until he cleared his throat, "Then, maybe when the day comes when he's no longer here - in body or in mind - I'll still have my family and a place I could still call home."

"I know what it's like to miss your parent or your siblings, your litter mates... We're here because I want to relieve that pain. To not have to miss anyone so long as we're here. I thought that maybe, just maybe, if I could re-establish the place where my father last felt he was home, then everyone else would return." He thought to mention the fact that his brothers Prosper and Theodore still inhabited the place but thought better of it and continued, "Grizzly Hollow was to be a sanctuary, a place for them to come home to and for us to find peace... and not just wait for them. We're here because I wanted the chance at a fresh start."