No worries! It is beautifully written. :) Now, if I can just get mine out right. xD Wind is hard to write sometimes when family is involved.
He didn't have to answer. No, Rowan didn't have to say anything and Kuwindwa would have understood. She had shared very little, and thought she would share no more. She watched his muzzle fall from the corner of her eye, and when he spoke she didn't move immediately, as if she thought she might frighten him into silence. It wasn't long after he began that he paused and Kuwindwa thought he might cease his telling altogether, but he pressed onward and what he said next made Kuwindwa wish briefly that she had never asked, for her sake and his. He looked shaken as he relived what he could remember... the way his hackles raised, had to pause like he couldn't breathe. Kuwindwa looked away, unable to look upon him in such a vulnerable moment. Her own heart clenched as she remembered something else entirely, and she wondered- but no, she had to remain here, in the present. Her haunches sank to the wet ground, a different heaviness clutching at her even as Rowan felt himself lighten.
She'd failed as a guardian. She'd failed, failed,
failed... They drowned. A family was broken, torn apart...
and they blamed her.
It was a strange connection she felt, a connection where there should be none. She imagined, for just a moment... if those babes had lived. Would any of them have grown into a wolf like Rowan Attaya? No. No, they would have grown up loved by their mother and father, and Wawindaji would have protected them like her own.
Kuwindwa kept her face carefully in check, but her heart trembled and for a moment she forgot physical pain in favor of shattered emotions. The sorrow that flashed across her face might have been for those puppies, but it lingered as she contemplated Rowan once more. This wasn't about her. This was about him, and a question
she'd asked, and an answer he was too gracious for giving. And she would listen, and offer what she could, and maybe she couldn't fix his broken family, or the broken family she left behind, but maybe she could offer... something.
She recognized herself in his words.
"I believe you are wise." Kuwindwa spoke softly, her gaze turning to the water... singing sweetly of life, but she knew how it had taken.
"Wiser than I." As she whispered those words, she heaved a soft sigh. She was pretending, and had for so long the line between who she was, is, and should be was blurred past recognition... so she would keep pretending. She would never be Wawindaji was dead. Still, when she looked up at Rowan again her eyes were almost warm and the smile she offered was genuine, though she wondered if it could offer any comfort or peace. She felt none.
"Where I came from, your name – and your family name – carried weight. One was expected to uphold that burden with honor. For a long time I believed family was nothing more than name and blood." She didn't want to patronize the male across from, so she paused.
"...I no longer think that way." Family is more than just name
and blood. She had learned this truth by experience and tried to live by it. Her pack was her family. Her charges, her kin. Those children, her nieces and nephews. And thus the betrayal had hurt that much more...
Kuwindwa hesitated before rising again, this time managing to remain utterly silent – she was far from miraculously healed.
"I apologize for prying," she bowed her muzzle,
"but thank you. For telling me." She knew what it was to seek something you could never have, to have your purpose so clear before you, and realize it was suddenly gone, or different than you thought.