Round Stone Crest Though Thunder Explodes

ooc: Minor time skip because I really don't want to write another post of Draven being completely incoherent. Assume it's been a few minutes or so of Draven in hysterics.

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It took what felt an awful lot like forever for Draven to finally start regaining control of himself, and even then any progress he made was fought for tooth and nail. It was hard enough that he didn't feel like he was calming down so much as he was dragging himself through cold, heavy, slimy muck with no way of knowing how far he still was from solid ground. He was aware of Raela and Calanthe there with him and sort of understood that they were both saying stuff that was probably supposed to make him feel a little less terrible, but as long as he was busy trying to stop crying so much, there was no way he was ever going to hear a word they said. He was limp with exhaustion by the time his sobs finally started turning into quiet, randomly spaced snuffles. If he had been standing up, he knew he would probably have fallen over by now. His throat hurt from crying; his face felt sticky with the tears drying on his fur. His lungs felt wobbly like the rest of him, making breathing slowly and calmly too much of a challenge. Gasping was the only way for them to drag air back into him, and every gasp made the muscles in his back and chest hurt all over again. It would take too much to move yet, and he was warm and felt shielded from the world as long as he stayed still. It was easier to just relax and try to breathe. It was easier to stop thinking and stare off across the shelter at nothing in particular. It took longer than it had for him to stop crying before something like strength started coming back to the boy's limbs - like strength, but not, because it wasn't so much that his body had recovered as it was that he was laying awkwardly and his legs were cramped and sore. It was more necessary effort that made him finally shift around a bit until blood started flowing back to his toes again and the stiffness in his muscles began to fade. He thought for a moment that maybe he should say something to either Raela or Calanthe - or maybe to them both. But he didn't know exactly what he should say, and trying to think of why he needed to say anything in order to get some inspiration was too much work still. It also wasn't at all worth another breakdown just to figure out what to say, so just for now anyway, he said nothing. He desperately wanted to sleep, but his hungry stomach was still gnawing on itself and the thunder was still roaring outside. He figured he should try to eat, then, while he was thinking about it. His half-eaten rabbit was just a few inches away from his nose... but that was really, really far away. He didn't know if he could stretch that far right now, so he lay there still, eyes locked disinterestedly on the carcass. He'd get to it once he stopped feeling quite so much like a boneless pile of jelly.

(This post was last modified: Oct 08, 2015, 11:14 PM by Draven.)

Bit by bit the world seemed to slow its tremorous and violent shaking. By the time her eyes had stopped producing so many tears; and her lungs tired of the crying; it appeared as though the boy between them had finally come back to peace. When the boy shifted his weight she finally drew back; appraising his face with moist, glowing eyes. A single sniff punctuated the movement, and she stared silently between him and Calanthe; taking in the sorrowful faces beside her. The silence seemed like something too fragile to touch just yet; and Raela remained still. The child's eyes spoke of his desire to keep eating; but it was obvious that even that impulse was now too weak to be truly followed. A long, quiet sigh left her lips after yet another dangerous growl from the sky.

Brows knitted together; lifting with concern as she once more lowered her head. She had to say something now; in the depths of his outburst she wasn't quite sure that the youth had even heard her. She searched his face; digging around and waiting for the child's dull eyes to connect with her's once more. This was important. "Draven." the Queen said softly; her mouth barely moving. The rain itself might have drowned her words if she had not been so close to her audience. "I know we can't fix any of this," her voice began, trying carefully to pick the right words, "But we can assure you that you will be left in peace from here on out." That was all the prince really needed; security. Stability and safety in this horrible; cataclysmic time.

"Your parents and your pack don't want to see you hurt any more." The woman affirmed, shaking her head slowly. "You don't deserve to be treated like you were. If you ever feel like it might happen again let us know, any of us," she clarified, briefly glancing to her other companion as she was directly mentioned. It was nice to also have her support in this. A moment passed with her tongue pressed tentatively against the roof of her mouth in indecision. Should she tell him? Sighing through her nose and grimacing in surrender, she spoke again.

"I lived somewhere else when I was a pup," she relented, watching for his attention. "My brother was killed," she shortened; skipping the scarring details, "and when I cried for him the pack attacked me." Raela waited now, pulling her head back and letting the facts sink in. "They hated it when anyone cried," though truly there was much more wrong with them than that. The thunder returned again, and she paused before changing from story to lesson. "And that was wrong of them Draven. They were the ones who were uncomfortable with it, just as your siblings were, but it didn't give them the right to attack. They should have just left if they didn't like it," she steamed, her mouth drawing into a hard line. But it was done with. "Draven you are not responsible for their comfort no matter how much they seem to think so. Especially when something has hurt you this much and when it is clear that they do not care about yours. No wolf has the right to take out their unhappiness on others, or to tell someone how to grieve. Their words were false and selfish and I don't want you to think anything else." Of all people they should have comforted you... she thought; saddened by how quickly the family had torn itself apart. They were so self absorbed that Draven's feelings hadn't even occurred, had they? 

            

Calanthe stayed perfectly still until she felt Draven move again. The last thing she wanted to do was disrupt the boy before he was ready to bring himself back under control again; he needed this chance to weep without interruption, to grieve openly without being made to feel as though he had inconvenienced either of his companions in the process. This was exactly why she had hoped his sobs had drowned out the words of his siblings. This was the wound she had been afraid they would rip open in him. Now he bled from two, where the rest - hopefully - only bled from one.

When the darkling boy finally shifted, she moved as well, pulling herself out of his way so that he could lay more comfortably on the ground. The crying, it seemed, had stopped for the most part, though tears still rolled down his face periodically, those green eyes watering now and then as some thought or memory jabbed at the open wounds inside him. His gaze was distant, but not as hollow as it had been before he broke down, and with some spark of relief Calanthe realized he seemed to be very seriously considering moving towards his rabbit again - though she also noted, and with no small amount of concern, that he wasn't actually making that move just yet. Still, it at least showed that his mind was moving on to something less painful, and after having weathered the storm of his sorrow, that could only be a good thing.

She didn't interject this time when Raela reiterated what had been said before, though she was glad to hear the sentiment repeated for the boy. In a hurricane like his, surely anything that was not torturing him from inside his own mind had been lost on the former prince. Neither did she add any anecdotes of her own to Raela's lesson. There was nothing she could add. She did not know what it was like for one's family to turn against each other in a time that should be soft and silent - her own family, her whole pack had always been staunchly united in times of grief, even despite their divisions when all was well and there were no deaths to mourn. She was only among the cognoscenti of grief itself - only knew the pain of truly losing everyone and everything. If Draven sought guidance as he struggled through his sorrow, she could offer up her own experiences then, but now... now was not the time for that.

No more words, she decided as Raela fell silent once again. No more words. It's a time that is dead. Instead she curled close to Draven again, bracing him, offering herself up once more as a wall between the boy and the cruel, stormy world beyond their shelter. Raela was right about one thing: No one who thought Draven - or anyone else - mourned the wrong way had any right to have others tiptoe around them. No one who attacked another for they way they grieved was worth the comfort and care of their companions... but she didn't say as much aloud, and doubted she would ever phrase it as boldly as she did in the privacy of her own thoughts. There are words that are better unheard - better unsaid.

Raela's words sank in slowly, sluggishly, as though each syllable was a drop of water dribbling down through his fur to land against his skin. The worst of his emotional turmoil was gone, though only for the moment; he knew it would probably come back again, like it did in the mornings when he woke up feeling relatively normal and then slowly sank down into depression as the day wore on. But it didn't cloud his mind just at the moment, and that left him better able to listen to Raela and try to understand this time what she was trying to tell him. That didn't make it make any more sense. If he didn't deserve to have been treated the way he was that night, then why had it happened at all? The Kino and Ari he knew wouldn't just go after somebody the way they went after him for no reason at all. Min-- ...They had been raised better than that, all three of them had, and so had @Kova before them. If he didn't deserve to be treated that way, why had Draven gotten picked on and yelled at so much for crying? "But I did deserve it." His voice came out bland and without any inflection to speak of. He felt more like he was reading lines than saying the things he really felt - but it was both at the same time, wasn't it? "People didn't start crying until I did. I made people upset when they weren't already." His eyes stung with new tears that he didn't have the energy to try to wipe away. "Kino and Ari were right, because if I hadn't said or done anything, nobody else would have started crying, either. I made everything all about me, and started acting like it was my fault..." His voice choked off again as he squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to remember. Wasn't it his fault? Wasn't there something better he could have done? Nobody knew what exactly had happened. Maybe it was stress. Maybe Mi-- Maybe she had been upset because Draven wasn't as playful or adventurous or smart as Kino and Ari. Maybe she was so sad about that that she couldn't bear being around it anymore. Maybe she wasn't taken away, but left all on her own, because Draven wasn't smart or strong or talented enough and it made her so sad that she d-- "It's my fault," he choked out. "It's all my fault, and I can't do anything to fix it, and if I say it's my fault then I'm even worse then when I say nothing at all, because no matter what I do I can't stop thinking about myself long enough to help anybody else!" He covered his muzzle with his paws, trying his best to hide underneath them as another high whine dragged out through his teeth. "All I can do is hurt people..." It took more time and much more strength than he thought he had, but somehow he cried again, for just a little while this time thankfully. He calmed down faster, drowsy and feeling even weaker this time than he had before, but this time he hardly felt any better for all the effort he'd put in. "Why would anybody wanna help me?" he asked when he'd caught his breath again. "All I do is hurt people... When's it gonna end?"

(This post was last modified: Oct 14, 2015, 02:11 AM by Draven.)

The pup's first utterance since his breakdown was denial; and Raela's face drew inward with concern. Had he not understood? As she listened; unwilling to interrupt the child until he had spoken his mind; it became clear that no, he did not. Not entirely, at least. Responses flooded her mouth but it stayed sealed. She just watched him in much the silent way that Calanthe had. When he quietly wept once more she leaned in close; sensing her opportunity to speak. Ari and Kino would never understand the great damage they'd done. "Draven," she breathed; soft as a spring breeze, "we help you because we love you, and we cried because we love you. You did not hurt us," Raela concluded; looking into his beryl green eyes once so full of life and wonder. How she longed to bring that back. "What happened is what hurt us, you were just the one that was brave enough to let out your pain; so we did too."

"Draven you are supposed to cry when you're hurt," her voice grew back into a regular speaking volume, but carried on with its same softness. "That's how you let us know that we have to help you. That's how we know something's wrong; it's natural. That is not your fault." The woman's words rose in pitch to emphasize her seriousness on this matter. "You can't help anyone if you can't take care of yourself Draven. Burying the pain only makes it worse." The Queen's head drew back; soft eyes looking over the boy once more. "Listen to me, when we are upset you're more than welcome to help us, but when you're upset that means we have to help you too. That's what a family does. It's not one person ignoring themselves, pretending everything is fine and trying to make everyone else happy. There's nothing wrong with being upset. Okay?"

Her ears pricked forward gently as she stared. She deeply wanted Draven to understand. After a moment her lips parted again. "What's wrong is trying to hurt other people like Kino and Ari did. Even if your crying upset them they had no right to attack you. You didn't attack anyone Draven. You weren't trying to hurt anybody, but they didn't care if they did, and it's more than obvious that they hurt you. Do you think it's fair to attack someone like that just for being upset? Just because they made you uncomfortable?" The idea that the boy had deserved it made her skin crawl. It was so utterly wrong and backwards that it stung. 

            

Calanthe's decision not to speak dissolved rapidly away as Draven finally seemed to let down the walls around his heart and told them the root of what was hurting him. Her own body tightened down against a sob - and rage burned in her core, rage for a pair of pups she had once felt only affection for. Had they wanted this? Had they been trying to destroy their own brother this thoroughly when they attacked him? Or had the little beasts really been as hypocritical as she had believed the night it had happened, and did they not realize they had done to Draven exactly what they had accused him of doing to everybody else?!

The pale woman couldn't let him be alone in his pain any more, and laid her head across his shoulders to pull him into a close hug against her side as he broke down again. Something very much like hatred began smoldering beneath her pelt for the two little creatures who had done this to the boy. Wasn't it enough that he had lost his mother? Had there really been any need for them to torture him for the crime of allowing himself to weep for their mother? Or were they so ashamed of themselves for lacking the souls to do the same that they had to lash out just to feel better about their own deficiencies?

"I'm here," she murmured to Draven. Meaningless, maybe useless. ALl she had to give were words he might not even want to hear. "I will stay with you until you are sleeping, and guard your dreams until you wake. You don't have to be afraid. You don't have to hurt alone - not now, not ever. You are safe with us, Draven, I promise you. You don't have to be alone in this."

She let Raela speak next once the boy calmed down again, but she didn't move away from him throughout the agouti woman's speech. She had promised not to leave him, and she planned on paying that forward this instant. No rain or cold or sharp words or wrong thoughts would ever cloud his life again if she could help it. No pain would reach him that didn't first go straight through her.

"There is no weakness in weeping, Draven," she told him when Raela had finished. "There is no weakness in feeling sad, or in needing to talk to others and borrow their strength to get yourself through your suffering. The only weakness anyone showed that night was in what Kino and Ari did to you. They are the bad ones. They are the ones who should feel badly. You did nothing wrong."

What was the greater crime? Was she a monster for saying these things to him, knowing it might deepen the rift between him and his litter mates? Could anything at all even hope to be worse than what they had become? Was it a crime to attack his siblings in front of him, or was she only saying what he needed to hear in order to build himself back up and see things for what they really were? She didn't know, and caught up in her own hatred, she didn't care anymore. They had torn his heart to shreds because he had failed to be as heartless as they were. They deserved no more love or mercy - from anyone.

Draven didn't know what to believe. He wanted to believe Calanthe and Raela had the right of it, and that he had done nothing wrong after all... but how could he? Didn't his siblings know better than they did? Weren't they all just like him, because wasn't that how families worked? They were litter mates. They'd literally known each other their whole lives. Who would know better than his own siblings whether or not he had been selfish? But here was Raela, telling him that he hadn't hurt anybody at all - that he'd been brave for crying before anybody else - and here was Calanthe telling him that he hadn't been weak, and that if anyone should be in trouble it was his siblings. How could crying and making other people feel badly make him brave? How could being yelled at for upsetting everybody else make the ones who yelled at him for it in the wrong? It didn't make any sense to the boy. People started crying after he did, so how could he have not been the reason they were upset? And since he was what started everybody else crying, how could he have not hurt them at all? People only cried when they were hurt or upset, and nobody was crying until he did... The darkling boy let out an exhausted grunt and rested his head between his paws again, too tired to cry any more over this endless circular argument with himself. He wanted the thinking and the worrying and the confusion to just stop. He just wanted to be able to sleep for a little while and wake up and be normal for more than a few minutes before going dark again... "I don't know what to think," he finally mumbled. "I don't know what's right. I made people cry, or start, and that means it was my fault and they were right..." He lifted his eyes to look up at Raela; he didn't have the strength to lift his whole head, not even a little bit, not right now. "I just want to stop hurting."

Calanthe seemed to be on exactly the same page as she was; and for that Raela was grateful. Perhaps if the both of them worked together they could undo the grave harm that had befallen the darkest child before it was too late. She was even more grateful for the pale woman's taking in of the boy; and her constant protection. It was something Draven needed right now; to not be alone and to feel safe wherever he went. Sadly, judging by the lad's unsure reaction, it would seem that the women had even more work to do to even get him to accept these simple truths as he had so willingly accepted his siblings' attacks. 

She was a little shocked to hear him say he wasn't sure of what was right in this situation; though it was understandable given the absolute overload of information and things that had been happening lately. Her russet brows drew together with confusion and concern as the pup seemed to sink fully into this hole that had consumed his short life. A spark of frustration flickered within the Queen; and her response was quick. She locked eyes with Draven as best she could and delivered her retort with a hint of indignation.  "Draven we would not lie to you." The idea that he was still supporting his devilish littermates in this had her fuse growing shorter. She would contain herself for his sake; no matter the cost. He did not need more yelling and anger.  "Why don't you believe us?" She asked in exasperation; her honey eyes shimmering with worry.  "We will tell you that you are wrong until we're out of breath, but you have to trust us. They were not right." She cemented, her ears pricking forward with conviction. 

And then he quietly crumbled; spilling a desperate plea at their feet that dissolved her passionate demeanor in an instant. A quiet whine escaped her lips and she leaned down toward the broken boy. Her tongue slithered out to swipe against his forehead just once before the Matriarch's soothing tones graced their little shelter once more. "I know," she relented. "And you will, I promise. Life will get back to normal somehow, after a while." Memories of Tolas made her tongue stiff and hesitant, but she would try for him anyway. After a few seconds of hesitation, Raela glanced away, continuing in even quieter syllables. "Remembering my brother will always make me a little sad," her ears fell to the sides under the weight of the words. "But I don't live in sadness and pain; and neither will you. It will get better, and as crazy as that sounds right now, you must know I would never lie to you." She shook her head slowly; still tamping down the point she made earlier. "All of us will be here to try and make it better as soon as we can." She was earnest in her promise; once again leaning in toward the youngest Lagina child. A final, quiet whisper of a plea drifted over her tongue.

"Believe me."