May 6th; Late afternoon; Sunny; 48 ° F, 9 ° C

Things seemed to have settled well so far, or so Borden believed. Against his sons' wishes he wandered just a little beyond the markers the little family had already established, just to see if there was anything else he might remember. Every tree and every stone seemed to welcome him the further he went, though every so often when he felt he might get lost, he sidestepped back towards where he knew the scent of his family could guide him back home. Sometimes he would stop and other times he attempt to gauge himself while walking, which resulted in nearly walking into an obstacle somewhere on his left side.

He had just been thinking about how to get back to the place where he had met Jaysyek - somewhere in the north, he had thought, in the Thicket, perhaps - when he caught himself square in the neck and shoulder with a low-hanging branch. His breath sought refuge in his lungs with a hiss and instinctively, he leaned towards his right, collapsing on the ground as he angled his graying head so that his good eye could take a good look at what had caught him by surprise. He squinted as the evergreen needles came into focus and he let out a sigh. A smile fought to tug the corners up his mouth upward. Now that they - him, Jaysyek, and a small portion of his family - were in a place that he was familiar with, it seemed easier now to smile. Titan's experimentation with feeding the recovered Leader various amounts of a certain mushroom had certainly begun to show desirable effects was also something to commend. Not only did it seem like Borden had become mentally stable, but the more he had gotten used to the shadows of the cedars and firs, the more he seemed to have come back into his own. He had become as he was before they had left the Cedarwood. The only thing that was different was that he had no little ones to dote upon. Of the litters he had sired, he now only had two of them to enjoy along with Kade and Ava's two daughters, and they were all very much adults now. The last time he had smiled beneath these trees, he had been strolling along with 7-month-old Ryvet and Renier, quietly enjoying the stream with Calla, and even chasing Taima through the underbrush if only to give in to play rather than scolding her for the tenth time in the past few days for disobeying his markers.

While sprawled out on his side, he slowly let his head rest on the forest floor and closed his eyes. Distant memories echoed in his ears; he swore he could hear the laughter of his children in the distance, the sounds of their tiny footsteps exaggerated with the rustle and crackling of dried pine needles underfoot. After sometime his wagging tail had slowed and laid limp on the ground.

Not far from his domain, the Grizzly Hollow Lord had merely fallen asleep with the sun warming his faded coat, overcome with things he had never thought to remember again, even in dreams...

For quite sometime, Borden and his "daughter-in-law" laid in the afternoon sun, basking in its rays until the sun had shifted enough to cast their part of the Cedarwood in a cool shadow. It had been a couple hours or so until Borden's skyward ear gave a small twitch and his chest rose as he took in a deep, conscious breath. When he exhaled, he slowly opened his eyes to discover soon after that he was not alone, that the warmth concentrated along his ribs and along his back was not a sunspot or a filtered beam of light. Without looking, a few twitches of his damp nose told him who she was.

It pleased him to realize that Quil's name and face had come quickly to the front of his mind, but he did nothing to address her being there, nestled against him. He merely smiled through half-lidded eyes, listening to his own heartbeat for a while as it became its own harmony when paired against Quil's rhythmic breathing. She was sound asleep, or so he believed, and kept quite for the time being.

There was a familiarity in this, even if this was - quite possibly - the very first time he had the chance to casually make Quil's acquaintance. For what he knew, she very well might have been one of his own, like Arlette, like Fenru, like Theo and Aiyanna... Even if he was not aware of what had transpired between Rook and Willow Ridge, he knew deep down that Rook had cared for her (her altered scent confirmed this fact) and that was reason enough for him to extend his care and affection.

The grizzled Leader let the silence linger on between them even further, his tail lifting and slowly falling back onto the carpet of pine needles a number of times as he simply listened to the forest around them. The crisp evening air eventually began to blow their way and when he took another deep breath, he let out a calm and collected sigh, a tenor note sounding from him in utter contentment.

His ears perked at the sound of her voice, a heartfelt apology, thinking that she had disturbed him, that all she had wanted was to enjoy the afternoon sun with him. His tail slowly lifted in a partial wag, sweeping across the top layer of pine needles and other soft debris that blanketed the forest floor. "It's okay," he assured her, his mellow tone likened to a distant thunder storm well over the Mountain of Dire. "I didn't mind... still don't, actually." He, too, was stiff and it was with a couple of winces that he lifted his head so that he could at least glance at her from the corner of his good eye.

From what Borden could see, she reminded him of Kade and of Nolan and Aiyanna. Ghosts, he thought, but he didn't let the thought rob him of the warm smile he had wanted to give her since they had met. He relaxed and let his head fall back to the ground before slowly rolling back over into a sphinx-like position with his forelimbs stretched out in front of him. His head lifted with the soft popping of a few neck vertebrae as he turned to look at her, where she was sprawled out comfortably at his back.

In the coming and going of Breeding Season, something that Borden had actually truly forgotten, it had eventually occurred to him as to why Rook had been so elusive. Quil's mere presence confirmed his assumptions and he could not help but to bashfully look away while the smile on his face broadened to touch his eyes. "It becomes you," he complemented once he had gotten a hold of himself just enough to meet her eyes again. "Should have known that he had chosen you."

Even in the last light of the afternoon, just minutes before the coolness of the evening, she was radiant, aglow from the anticipation of new life... her children, his and Jaysyek's grandchildren. "How are you taking to it?" he asked. "Are they kicking yet?" There was no doubt about Rook (and Cinder) providing her with whatever she might need but, while he wished he had known beforehand so that he could contribute to looking after her, he knew that at the very least he could be there for her. He could be that sort of paternal support she could benefit from in her own parents' absence.