Larkcall Lowlands i can't take a hint

Fade with this post, but notice to @Wraith @Isuni @Celandine @Greer due to the fact that I assumed that Craw was chilling with an arbitrary assortment of you (but definitely Wraith) at the beginning of this thread: feel free to equally assume that he would have gone straight back to that group to lounge around some more, and would have shared exactly what just happened with Renier, so it's no secret. I'll be posting it in the Common Knowledge bit anyway.

The walk back up to the plateau gave Craw a chance to mull over what had happened, how it had gone against his expectations, and how things could have gone differently. It was clear that Renier's style of dealing with adversity left a lot to be desired, so on one hand it was a good thing that the man had removed himself from the process of recruitment. If only all loners were so thoughtful and showed their weaknesses so plainly and so early! On the other, though, Craw struggled with his previous positive impression of Renier, and had to wonder if they had made a mistake not making sure he knew their plans before leaving the Ridge. Had Morganna deliberately not told him in person, thinking that the news would travel to him organically?

But then Renier's attachment to Morganna was far stronger than Craw had realised. Where Wraith had settled into Whitestone without needing to draw attention to the fact that he was one of the possible fathers of Odin and Kara, it was clear that Renier would not have been able to make that detachment. Wraith was no less a part of their lives, and where there could have been some tension between them over the 'parenting' of the children, they had settled into a very happy unspoken agreement. As far as Craw was considered, Morganna was their only blood parent; the rest of the pack served perfectly well as the family entity. It was a far more rounded, stable upbringing than many puppies with displaced or broken homes. It might have been unusual, but it was working very well.

Craw watched as she gave her gift to the children, feeling strangely faraway, until her piercing gaze turned on him and brought him sharply back to reality. Her answer to what had been mostly a jest brought a soft grunt of acknowledgement from him, knowing now that she was right. "He didn't fight very hard for them, either," he muttered, then moved forward to press his nose into her cheek, shrugging off his ill feeling, prepared to continue the day as if nothing had changed - because it hadn't.