Spectral Woods with your soul trapped between the tides

I'm going to assume that this is after @Kisla's trip.

I don't even know where to start, Ice responded, and Serach dipped his muzzle in silent agreement. Where do you begin when it comes to filling in three years of history and lost time? Serach wasn't honestly sure, and for a moment he wished for Triell's presence to help him fill in the gaps for the story he was about to tell. But at least for now, it was up to Serach to tell the tales about what had happened to the Bend in Ice's long absence. Taking a deep breath, the leader took two steps backward to widen the space between them. It was about to be filled with three years worth of history, after all.

"I suppose at the beginning, at least the parts I can remember," he said, a grin on his lips before his brow furrowed in concentration as he decided where to start. "I'm the only one of mom's children who still lives in the Bend. Before mom died, Kisla left to go looking for you. In the spring she came back with a new mate in tow - Maksim Baranski. He was the leader of a pack on the west side of the mountains, but last year they relocated to this side - up north. Hearthwood River is what they're called now. Kisla's got four children of her own - may actually be a grandmother now too," he paused to take a deep breath and look for the older man's reaction. His oldest sister had been very fond of Ice and his absence had worn on her just as much, if not more, than the two pups he had actually sired. "Fenru is also a father, although I've never met his family. He left in the spring of that year and returned very briefly just this past fall before going back to his family. Arlette Lyall is his mate, if you've ever heard of her." He could not be certain, but it would certainly not surprise him. Relic Lore used to be much, much smaller.

"Sceral..." Serach chuffed. Picking up his paws one at a time, he shuffled them in the snow, destroying the pristine prints his footsteps had made in the process. "You're never going to believe this, honestly. But Sceral left too, maybe two years ago? No goodbyes, just gone. We were both incredibly sad and angry and frustrated as yearlings, and I suppose I should have figured it was going to happen eventually. For a long time, until just recently, I assumed he had died. But a few weeks ago, just by chance, I met a girl named @Lena. Lena Donata." He watched, wondering if Ice would put together the dots just as Serach had. "She's Sceral's daughter, one of two. He has his own pack somewhere far up north and somehow, his daughter managed to find her way here just a few weeks before her grandfather did." It was a coincidence worthy of an epic drama, for all three generations of Donatas-Aesirs-Tainns-whatever-the-hell-they-weres no matter where they currently resided.

"I think I'm the only one who hasn't left at some point...I guess I missed out on that gene. I've been in the Bend my whole life - I've never even been to the west side of Relic Lore. I don't have a family of my own either, at least not really. I am helping to raise five pups from three different litters that were born this year," he chuckled, picturing even now how his mother would have never allowed something like that to happen. "Triell and Naira have two, which brings the total up to six for Triell. My fellow leader Spieden has two, and my friend Aponi has a little girl. I'm not really sure how it happened, but there's nearly twenty of us now and somehow its up to me to lead us through it all."

With a gentle shrug of his shoulders and an easy wag of his tail, Serach came to an end of his family history report. He was ready to answer questions if Ice had them, but he was also ready to hear another story - one that he never thought he would get to hear. What exactly had taken his father away and kept him for three years?

Sorry for taking a bit. Had one of those phases when I couldn't catch enough sleep/peace to stop feeling like a zombie. :/ Also this post is a beast I'm sorry :(

you do not know who is your friend

and who is your enemy

The task laid before him seemed too vast—a mountain unclimbable, with either salvation or doom at its peak. It was too daunting, to turn the pages and find the tenuous connections between events, and lay them out in a way that made sense, evidence both redeeming and damning. For at the end of the confession building up behind his teeth lay the guilt which sheared through him like a white-hot dagger: that at some point he had remembered, but tried to not acknowledge it.

It was those words he were afraid of stringing together into coherent sentences, to give them life in the chill pre-winter air, and watch them sink into those soft, pale ears and into the forgiving heart beyond. How far could he push Serach's mercy? How could he tell the tale of injury and forgetting, without getting to the remembering? He felt it in his pulse, a weak shadow growing stronger, bolder, a darkness with the name of fear riding with his blood again.

He was tired of being afraid.

And he was saved from having to find the frayed ends of loose threads and fumble them back into a recognizable pattern, of a broken man struggling against a future in which the grief devoured him.

Instead, he was told a tale of Oak Tree Bend, of Kisla and Fenru first, the remnants of another era long gone by. And hearing those words spoken were like a knife of a different kind, striking deep and true in his heart. Suddenly grateful for the few steps between him and his son, he turned his ears back and looked aside. Kisla, whom he had never figured out, never known how to cure—she had gone looking for him. For him. What had they thought, when he never came back? Had any of them come back? His red traveling companion, even Cali..?

Somehow he doubted it. Those who left the River and Bend wolves didn't generally come back.

And they had grown up, the children of the River, with families of their own, now. At the mention of Fenru's mate, Ice nodded, slowly. "I met Arlette when she came to live in the Bend," he interjected quietly, his voice heavy again. The memory of her was faint, of a well-spoken pale little she-wolf come to shake off her ghosts. If not for her connection to Fenru, he probably would've forgotten her, and so much else, when his head hit the unyielding rocks of the Hills. And much as he was glad that they had found a future together, somewhere, it cut him to the core to know that Fenru wouldn't be there when he finally got home again.

Serach went on, to speak of Sceral, and he was right; Ice wasn't sure he ever wanted to believe this, and for more reasons than the sheer incredulity of it. Something about the boys' upbringing struck him as tragic, and his heart hardened, wishing they would never have had reason to be sad, angry, frustrated yearlings, with wanderlust firing up Sceral's bones and taking him away. Ice couldn't blame him. He knew the need to leave all too well, to get out of the space full of ghosts, haunting your every moment. Nor was it easy to believe that Sceral had daughters—he must've been, what, two when he fathered them? Much too young, he should've still been in the Bend, taking care of little brothers and sisters, but that hadn't happened, and it was, in part, on his shoulders.

Then Serach said something about a grandfather and Ice's face froze into an expression of confusion, because for some reason it hadn't hit home that his son had children of his own, which meant that he had grandchildren, which, yes, quite logically made him a grandfather.

What, he thought.

"What," he said.

Serach went on, but Ice remained struck into stillness and silence—he heard every word, but only processed them a moment later, as if he lagged behind the real world in some strange way. Serach had never been on the other side of the mountains, and part of him wanted to interrupt, offer to take him there, see his past, what he was sprung from, the Swift Rivers of their past, to listen to the Hush Meadow, get lost in the Thicket of Secrets, see the Arbol Rosado in its full spring bloom.. but his son was already talking of pups, and not just a handful of them, but five, from no less than three mothers. What, he wanted to say again, vaguely outraged by this blatant flaunting of pack hierarchy and how things should be, but Serach only chuckled so Ice curbed his desire to question the sanity of allowing three litters to happen in the first place.

But then he said something magical: he said Triell and Naira, and for a moment, Ice remained in an equipoise between outrage and apathy, suspended between two equally strong forces of disbelief and wrath; old hurts and bitter betrayal.

"What," he finally blurted out, a bit too late as it happened more at the mention of Spieden's name than anything else, but Serach went on—fortunately, for Ice didn't want to keep processing this. He had known, whether Triell had told him or not he couldn't remember, that Triell wanted to forgive Naira, or something like that; that he thought fondly of her, as a friend, and Ice had the vague notion that maybe he had met Naira after the whole thing with Poison Path had blown over, but he wasn't sure, and really, who was he to judge Triell when Ice himself had been fast friends with Ava, of the very same pack..?

Ice was staring, sort of incredulously, at Serach, as the latter finished with a shrug and a careless wag of his tail. He didn't seem to mind, and Ice found himself wondering where he had gotten that gene from—certainly neither Corinna nor Ice would've allowed such a pup-fest to ensue. In the silence following the tale of three years of the Bend—or rather, the results of three years of absence from the Bend—Ice just kept staring. Finally, he let out a low, "Naira, huh?" before shaking his head, his large, pale scruff standing out briefly like a mane. Times and things change, he told himself sternly, and this isn't your pack anymore.

And now, he owed his son a story.

"I was shaken after Rissa's death," he began, slowly pulling the recalcitrant bits of memories from their resting places, and piecing them together in a manner much more solemn than his son's. "It had just been too much, and finding her.. I.. It did something to Fenru, it did something to all of us, and in the wake of that, Aiyana left with Borden from Grizzly Hollow, and suddenly we had no children of that litter left—in a way, it was like she died, too. I was caught in it, trapped in it, and more than that, when we sent Triell and Marsh ahead of us, none of them came back at first. I cared a lot for both of them, and it gnawed at the back of my mind.

"Then Triell came back, when you and Sceral were first let out of the den. He told me Marsh had died. And I couldn't handle it. We left to escape the ghosts, but I just brought them with me instead, and made new ones, too." He fell silent for a moment, wishing he could tell a tale in the same easy, carefree manner, as if things were going to be fine, but somehow he had begun to doubt it again. "Then Cali Swiftpaw disappeared. Corinna probably knew I needed to get away for a bit—I was probably distant, sad, all sorts of things, so she told me to go look for Cali. With me, I had another red male, but I don't remember his name anymore. And so, we set off as the summer waned.

"We didn't find Cali. Winter set in harsh and early, so we turned back, but everything went wrong. Ice broke on a river and swept us away, and I lost him in the blizzards, and what could I do, except go back home empty-handed? And I almost made it, I came to the Sierra Hills, and I know I looked down upon the Lore. Then—nothing, just a vague memory of the earth disappearing beneath me and the sky tilting, and the next thing I was coherent enough to know was that I was.. somewhere else, feeling slow and weak and dizzy, my head pounding, and I had no context. I knew that my name was Ice, I knew I had to go somewhere, but I couldn't fit the pieces back together. I've come to the conclusion that I must've fallen going down the mountains, hit my head, lost my memory, and simply happened to wander off in the wrong direction." He sighed, and scraped a paw in the snow. "I'm still not sure I remember everything. Things from—before, they're kind of, hazy, in a way. Less clear." He tilted his head, realized that he had almost forgotten a question which had burned in his mind along with all the others; "Did.. did they ever come back? Cali, I mean, and the male I left with?" He paused for a moment, in case Serach wanted to answer, before going on with his tale. "Anyway.

"I went north, just by pure chance. Took up with a pack called Red Salmon Cove, but I was still hounded by the feeling of having to go somewhere specific, so I couldn't bring myself close to them. And despite the name, we mostly tracked caribou herds in our territory. Then.. Serach, I'm sorry... I remembered, I don't know when exactly, maybe sometime this spring, but with the memory came knowledge—of what I had left behind, all I had lost, of who I had abandoned, betrayed, of how I had become like Indru..." His voice was nothing but a fragile whisper. "So I denied that I had remembered, I pushed the knowledge deep below the surface, to avoid the pain and the guilt, but as autumn approached, I realized I could no longer hide it from myself—and maybe, I had had enough time to reconcile what I had inadvertently done."

There was so much he didn't know about Serach. And there was so much Serach didn't know, about him, about his past, things they should've known, things that would've been naturally shared between father and son: tales of the west side of Relic Lore, maybe of Ice's own upbringing and trials, the past of Swift River and how it had suffered.. How much of this Corinna had told him, Ice didn't know—was the fact that Naira was allowed into the pack a sign of what he hadn't been told? "I began to head south, and I must've passed into the Lore not too far from Kisla's pack." He pulled a small, weak grimace. It seemed ironic, that he had come so close to her, and not stumbled over her. "I.. stopped by Rissa's resting place on the way, met Triell's yearling girl.. and then I came here, but.. I guess, in my heart I already knew that Cori was gone..." He faltered, and wondered on how thin ice he trod as he looked at Serach for a moment. "She named you, you know," he said softly. "Just pulled your name out of thin air, called you an Aesir." (But you're not, you're better than me—) The name had come out of his mouth with bitterness.

He fell silent for a moment, letting his eyes travel the familiar forest, before he heaved a small, white-smoke sigh into it. He had nothing more to say—he was only stalling, afraid of being turned away now that he admitted that.. that he had tried to deny his past, and forget the things he had finally remembered. "I'm just sorry I didn't have the courage to return sooner," he finally said, quietly. But he was done being a coward now, so he shifted his silver gaze to Serach's face, afraid to read disappointment there.

until the ice breaks.

let the stars above shine in your soul

No need to apologize <3 My fault for holding this up. It's a lot to take in and respond to haha Maybe another one from you and we can wrap this thread up and do a family thread with Lena?

It was a lot, and with every word Serach's already exhausted emotions were pushed to an even further extreme than he had ever known they could go to. He had told the story of the Bend before at various points throughout his life, but this was one of the first times he was telling the story to somebody who had known very intimately how the beginning had started but was lacking the ending. For his younger family members, it had fallen to Serach to fill in the gaps at the beginning. In many ways, it almost felt cruel to explain to Ice what Kisla and Fenru were doing now as though he was some sort of expert - his father had known them for longer than Serach ever could and was in many ways much closer to them than Serach was. But today was not a day to hold back, and despite all of the emotional exhaustion it was causing, the Bend leader continued on with his story.

For his part, Ice was mostly silent which allowed Serach to speak freely. There were only a few minor interjections. Confirmation that Fenru's mate Arlette was in fact a familiar name, and so not entirely unexpected, as well as surprise at perhaps the biggest reveal given yet that day (and there had been many). Nodding his head, Serach shrugged his shoulders to silently confirm and say, What can you do? in response to the first "What". Lena's existence had certainly been a shock to Serach himself and he was still trying to come to terms with what that meant - he could only begin to imagine what that would really mean for Ice.

The last interjection came later, as Serach explained the circumstances the Bend currently found itself in. "I had the same reaction," he murmured, a chuckle in his tone. He had certainly been shocked when he had discovered that there would be three litters that year, he didn't blame Ice at all for being confused or shocked about the developments that had led to it. As for Naira...did anybody besides Triell really understand how that had come to be? "I suppose you know her too, don't you? She told me she used to be a part of the River before she left to start a pack of her own." He didn't know all the details, but that enough had come out of their interactions with one another.

And then it was Serach's turn to be silent and listen. It was a story he knew, but only second-hand. It was different to hear the story of Rissa's death from the lips of somebody who had known her and been her caregiver. Looking down at his paws, Serach gulped down the lump that had appeared in his throat. He had known it was Ice who had led the wolves of Relic Lore to avenge Rissa's death, but he had never stopped to truly consider what all that must have entailed and what that had meant. And here we are...so many years later, still reeling from those consequences, he thought as the story surpassed Serach's memory.

As he listened, the big white blur that had always been "Ice" and "father" in Serach's mind's eye became more defined. He pictured the man in front of him now setting off into the woods to search for another missing pack mate in woods vast, deep, and dark. His eyes grew wide as he realized that he had come so close to having been reunited so much sooner. Truly that first winter cruel to Serach, he had just never known how cruel until now. "No, they never did," he said in response to Ice's question about his traveling companions. As for Cali Swiftpaw - she hadn't been seen in Relic Lore ever since, and if she had returned, she had not tried to seek out her sister.

He wasn't prepared for what came next. For the first time since arriving at the pack's borders, Serach felt the hot flames of anger stir in his chest. His pale eyes narrowed, and his brow furrowed as he strained to hear the whispered words. It was a familiar anger - he had felt it when Kisla had come back with Maksim, and when Fenru had come back only for a few short weeks. He had even felt it when he had first met Lena. Having never left, he was incapable of understanding the fear that might accompany the guilt. All he knew was the hurt and pain of those left behind. Taking a deep breath, he exhaled with an audible sigh, shuffling his paws in the snow as he tried to quench the embers before they truly ignited.

There was more to the story, though, and it helped to snuff out the flames. At the mention of Sahalie, Serach looked up, his brows raised in confusion. "You met @Sahalie?" Somehow that didn't truly surprise him - Sahalie always seemed to know everyone - but it struck him as strange that the two should meet. They were both important to Serach, but they were from distinctly different parts of his life and hearing that they had collided was something he was going to have to get used to.

Hearing his mother's name was another punch to the gut, although that was not particularly out of the ordinary for him (he wasn't exactly the best at moving on). But he had never heard that particular fact about such an intimate part of her life - of his life - and it struck him. "It's Donata now," he said quietly. Not maliciously, but it was an important distinction and a fact of Serach's life that despite whatever his parents had original intended, he had grown up more her's than his and he and his siblings had wanted to reflect that. 

"I'm glad you changed your mind and decided to come anyway," he said, his voice a whisper, not quite able to bring his eyes to meet his father's. He could feel the gray gaze upon him, but for several moments, all the younger wolf could look at was his own paws as he tried to process. But as time dragged by, slowly his head tilted upward until they made eye contact. Slower still his lips twisted upwards to form a sad smile, but still a smile. His head began to shake and a quiet chuckle spilled out from his mouth. "This is just...this is just so surreal. All of it. It hurts that you didn't come back when you realized, but I'm so happy that we're even having this conversation it's like that doesn't even matter - not truly." It wasn't an eloquent way to put it, but Serach was running out of words. He could only hope his father would understand him enough to grasp what he was trying to communicate.

"You talked about Cali...something I should have mentioned was Jessie. Back in the spring, she left with another wolf, Drestig, to start her own pack I guess. They wanted to relocate the Bend and...well, the truth is I threw a fit and wouldn't go. Nobody else wanted to either. But I think she would love to know you're back as well, although I don't know where they ended up." He felt a pang of guilt, not for the first time, but standing here now he couldn't help but feel justified. He would have missed his father if the Bend had moved, which just further cemented in his mind that it was always better to stay than to leave. So they had something to come back to, whenever they did. "I don't know if you knew Drestig...he was our leader for a while. When Triell went looking for his first mate Nayeli - she went missing after Sahalie and her brother Drift were born. This summer Triell was injured in a hunt, which is how I ended up leading." It was an extremely short story, but he felt it deserved some kind of explanation.

"Do you want to find Triell? Or perhaps Lena?" He offered finally, unsure of what to do next. There was much more that needed to be said, and it would happen over time. But unlike in a typical join scenario, Serach would not be leaving Ice to figure it out for himself. At least for now, and probably until the shock had truly worn off and Serach was certain this wasn't all just a dream, he planned on going with Ice everywhere.

Okay! If you want to reply again that's fine, otherwise just archive <3 Do you want to start a thread in OTB for us + Lena? :D

you do not know who is your friend

and who is your enemy

Left, Ice thought bitterly as Serach said what little he knew of Naira. More like ran away in the dead of night, pregnant while Cori's mate was gone. 'Left', indeed. She'd fled like a coward, her attempt at going up in smoke like so many other River wolves thwarted—they had noticed and they had known and they had never forgiven, with the exception of Triell. It was an old, old pain, one that tasted too much like betrayal, and Ice had never really faced it. He had never pinned Triell and demanded the truth from him, why he had defended her from him all those years ago. The truth had seemed too painful, but it seemed like even that had caught up with him. If Serach would still have him after his tale was told, he would have to face it—and much as he wanted to keep his peace with Triell, a long-lost and much-loved piece of his past, he wasn't sure how he would react upon seeing Naira's face again.

He realized he had kept talking, because he didn't want to get to the part where Serach would react, and, ultimately, pass judgment on Ice's cowardice. Serach had revealed that neither Cali nor Merlin had come home, and that had been another blow; all of that journey had been for nothing, just one miserable decision after another. Ice gritted his teeth together as he waited, and the first bit of his verdict came, snatching the air from his lungs.

"It's Donata now."

It didn't matter— (but it did—) —but it still hurt. He couldn't have put in plainer: you disappeared, and we gave up on you.

Because that's what River and Bend wolves did. They had not been taught any differently, because those who left, didn't fucking come back, yet here he stood, dragging air down in his lungs but feeling like he drowned. "I don't blame you," he finally said, shouting Donata Donata Donata Donata over and over in his head, and for a brief, insane moment he even thought of changing his name in honor of the wolf who had done so much for them.

But he wasn't worthy.

"Knowing how you've greeted me, I only wish I had dared to come sooner," he rumbled in quiet response, still keeping his eyes on his son's face, both scared of what he would see there, and terrified he would miss any moment of this moment. Then, finally, Serach looked up, with his perfect eyes a blend of Ice's silver and Corinna's green, and it felt like somebody had punched him straight in the gut. He still had a hard time believing it. Both of his sons were alive—and one right in front of him, leader of the pack Ice had inadvertently abandoned, full of life and pain but here for Ice to, finally, love.

In response to Serach's smile, Ice's mouth tugged upwards at one corner, forming a sad, hesitant smile, too. He didn't laugh, though—he felt too empty, not exactly numb, but drained. He had made it, he had had one bitter revelation after another, he had told his story, he had, for some reason he couldn't fathom, been let back. Given a second chance. He didn't know what else was required of him, what more he could do, except stare in silence as more words washed over his ears. He was, he knew, pleased to hear that Jessie was still alive and well, glad that she had found herself a mate to move away with, but sad that she wouldn't be here for him either. Ice said nothing, and his gaze had fallen, until he was staring dejectedly at Serach's feet. He wasn't even sure he would remember all of this conversation come the following day, so while he still could, he tried to cement all of it into his memory. The silence stretched, until Serach spoke again. It snapped him out of his thoughts at least, and Ice blinked and hauled his head back up again.

"Both?" he said, still too shocked to properly understand who Lena was. And in spite of his exhaustion, his tail gave a small wag where it hung limply behind him, and he gave his head a small shake. "I mean, we could just see who we'll stumble over first..."

And that was when he realized it, and his ears pricked, and eyes lit up as he took the first, hesitant step of many towards Oak Tree Bend: he was coming home.

until the ice breaks.

let the stars above shine in your soul

Short post is short.

It felt surreal to take a step backwards and to welcome Ice back into the Bend. There was so much more that needed to be said and would eventually come to light, but for now there was only one thing that needed to be done and that was to let the rest of the pack know that the original Bend patriarch leader had returned home. He wasn't sure which reunion he was more excited for, but Serach was ready for them all. "There's a lot of us these days, I've no doubt we'll trip over someone soon enough," he said with a smile, turning over his shoulder and taking a few steps back into pack territory. Stopping, he turned his head to make sure that Ice was following before offering a chuckle and wag of his tail. "I suppose you don't need me to give you a tour...I don't think much has changed."

Moving into motion again, he was filled with pride as he led the way. It would take a while to tell the whole story, but as they delved deeper into the pack's territory, it would become clear that the pack had thrived despite all their trials and upheavals. Serach had played a role in it all, and it lifted his heart to know that Ice had returned in time to be able to see that.