Umbra Copse the suburbs

Something bad, then.

When wasn't it something bad? Ice's ears flattened and his tail drooped—and his heart beat furiously, in denial, trying to roar so loud it would drown out the facts, and replace it with fiction. Sunshine and love and joy and not at all the bitter sting of loss. His jaws pressed together, his own teeth pricking the gums and lips. So much destruction.. everywhere, and always. It was depressing to know that the world spun like this.

Rowan's face had turned guarded, a steel mask over his eyes and the set of his jaw; Ice's silver eyes were soft and apologetic. He hadn't know this story would be a bad one, too, though he had suspected. His run-in with Eirian hadn't helped either, and even though he'd gone on to find what looked like an abandoned pack area, there had been no signs whatsoever of what had happened to the Rapids pack.

A flood. Kisla was swept away in the river again, Naira—not so cowardly then—throwing herself into the roaring mass of water to find her, and keep her safe. Ice let his gaze slide off the other wolf and to the spring-hinting ground. "That must've been after I ..disappeared," he admitted quietly, nearly wincing on the last word. He didn't know what else to call it, though, and made himself look at Rowan's face again. "I'm sorry to hear. I went looking for her and the Rapids when I came back, but.. this explains why I found nothing."

He'd left the world and found it in the paws of the next generation when he came back—he was just a leftover, something that didn't have the good grace to follow the rest of his kin into oblivion. Life beat too strong and hot in his chest.

A world without Ava seemed both unfair, and darker. He had nurtured hope that she and Kade had done like so many others, and abandoned the Lore for greener pastures, but the story of the demise of Darkwater Rapids made it seem improbably; just a fool's hope. He shook his head, uncertain of where to go from here.

let the stars above shine in your soul

Rowan watched the hesitant optimism on the older wolf's face sink and disappear as soon as he began to speak. He looked sorry, even, that he had placed the burden of the story upon the Attaya though Rowan did not place this blame on Ice. Eventually the silver gaze fell to the ground and a pained admission followed. "It's no one's fault," he managed quietly, batting away Ice's guilt that his disappearance might have had anything to do with the Attaya family demise.

Ice continued and wisps of gratitude began to emerge from Rowan's frozen heart that this pale wolf had gone in search of their family. He was the only one who had cared to. Why hadn't this wolf been part of Darkwater Rapids? Would it have changed anything? He refused to let his imagination springboard off the thought that wandered in his brain. The flood had taken with it all it could and wasn't it better to disappear than to die? Ice, wherever he had gone off to, at least lived to tell the tale.

The silence between the two wolves thickened. Ice did not lift his gaze off the ground, and Rowan wondered just how good of friends they could have been - no one else seemed so sad when he'd told them Kade was gone, as well. A question rose to his tongue on a wave of anxiety. This was his only chance to learn more about the family he was leaving behind. Praises had been sung of Kade many times to him already. As a yearling he was delighted with those stories, using them to bolster his will. He too had the blood of courage, of fortitude, of resilience. Now that he was older, however, he could imagine his parents as individuals - so who was Ava, this wolf who had stolen the heart of his Guardian father? What parts of his mother lived on in him? Could Ice indulge him with memories of a time prior?

He had to try.

"What was she like? My mother."

adopt thea?

Rowan tried to ease his guilt. It was beautiful, and it was unasked for, and Ice felt something tighten further in his chest. You would've been proud of him, Ava, he thought. To care for a stranger—for that was what he was, even if he had known his mother—was a rare thing. Then, it had been a storm, the blackness of night, and his voice humming into its din. She had come out of it, like a shadow.

"What was she like? My mother."

Shadows and stars. The black water under the moon—too elegant to be a raven, but a bird in flight. A small smile curved his lips. To think that she most likely was dead.. that her mischievous spirit laid to rest... It was hard, even for him. Maybe, if he had been here when the flood had come, it would've been easier to understand. His gaze flicked up. Some part of her still lived on, but their tongue-in-cheek encounters.. were they truly over? He had lived in ignorance of it, always on the lookout for a piece or two, a clue, but had he finally found what he sought for—an answer? It wasn't one he would've liked.

"Charming," he began, then realized how odd it sounded. Had he been infatuated with her? He wasn't sure. He had loved her but his heart had been sworn to another, and his allegiance had laid elsewhere. "She was witty and clever. I want to say spirited, but without it being very obvious." He pawed at the soggy ground, and studied Rowan again. "Black as the night. A bit lanky, like you, but shorter. Bright amber eyes."

Briefly, he glanced at the sky—or up, at least, since the fog hid it from view. The stars had been out when they'd met the first time. "It was a bit of a forbidden friendship story between us. She belonged to a newly founded pack that had hurt mine badly. I was out in a storm, trying to process, when she showed up and.. I talked her through some things, and I guess it helped her come to some kind of conclusion. I wanted to hate her on principle, but she was too damn charming. Our packs lived relatively close, so we met up a fair bit. We..." It hurt to think about. It hurt to talk about. All those lost futures. "She and Kade founded Darkwater Rapids, while Corinna and I went on to make Oak Tree Bend. I ran into Ava shortly after, in the red mountains, and.. Everything was going to be great, y'know? We had two sons and she had you lot, and we were going to introduce Kade and Cori properly to one another and take the kids on trips so you'd get to play with each other and stuff..."

He hadn't meant to go off on that tangent, but he had, and now he felt weirdly guilty about it. He wasn't sure how much about Ava that part had been... "But it didn't end up like that," he finished, softly. Suddenly everything hurt too much.

let the stars above shine in your soul

( i'm so sorry for the longest wait ;___; )

As Ice began to speak his dark ears tilted as forward as they could possibly go, his dull gold gaze full of an almost child-like wonder. Rowan did not judge any part of the description, allowing the words to form a vision of a wolf who he had somehow known completely and known not at all. Charming. That was a trait of Quil's. Wit was all Cinder's. Clever... well, it didn't much sound like him. Perhaps that was the luck of Mace's draw, wherever that brother of his had ended up. Perhaps with Ava. Perhaps not. That was a question not even Ice could answer (insert an ooc lol here). Then, lanky like you, Ice elaborated, and he felt his heart lighten. Those two words indulged him in a longing he harbored so deep down he wasn't aware of it until just then: Like you. A wolf black of fur and amber of eyes appeared in his mind, but for a brief moment pain returned to his heart, for it was not Ava he saw. He wondered if Iyes tried to piece him together in her head, too.

Rowan finally found a moment to blink, letting his eyes fall while the pale wolf's pair sought the sky. That alone would have been enough, but as Ice continued he realized he was being given a privileged look into their shared past that might have never existed, if he hadn't ended up in this - the right place, the right time. In his mind he was transported to a time long ago, perhaps a night with stars, and he listened reverently. The ill-fated setting of their meeting surprised him - especially the part where Ava was supposed to be a wolf Ice hated for what her pack had done to his. Mothers were perfect, weren't they? How could she ever make a bad choice? The dark fur he nestled up against in the humid den of Darkwater Rapids was quickly being replaced by some other wolf - one he was finding quite interesting. One he might have liked to know himself.

Something changed in Ice's voice, a nuance which he might not have noticed if he hadn't been so enraptured. The pain threaded into his story stuck the Attaya wolf with its needle too. They were nearing the sad part again, the part where Rowan showed up, a point in the story where two paths diverged in a yellow wood. There two sets of wolves started two different lives, and the perfect plan emerged. His heart sank as Rowan wondered how different his life might have looked if those plans had actually come to fruition, if he'd had puppy playdates with Ice's sons, if their families would have become as close as the monochromatic friends had been. Heat prickled the corners of his eyes as tears threatened to fall, and for the first time in his life he wanted to turn back the clock even further than the flood.

Softly, the story concluded.

Silence sat around Rowan for far longer than it should have. He was grateful to the pale wolf for baring so much of his past to him, but a crushing sadness sat upon his chest that made it impossible to speak. He heaved a breath to topple it, struggling to pluck words out of the cold that was enveloping his brain. Their pain was not felt in isolation, he knew, and he wanted to alleviate some of the hurt that had formed the foundation of the male's concluding words. He sought Ice's gaze, lifting his dark muzzle and parting his jaws like rust had formed where his tears had fallen.

"I'm so- so grateful, Ice. Thank you for telling me. I would have never known..." The obvious part tumbled from his clumsy tongue, trying to voice something to feel kind on their weary hearts. "I think you meant a lot to her. She must have cared about you so much." Of that he was certain, for even a child could understand another's capacity for love. And if there was any one thing he could remember about Ava, without the help of anyone else, it was the warmth of love that radiated from her chest each and every time he saw her. "And I think, if we had met when I was young like you'd planned... I would have liked you very much, too." To his surprise, he mustered a thin grin without much force. "I do now, at least."

adopt thea?

No worries. <333 I'm worse.

He thought, then, of how he had come out of the fogs in the Spectral Wood, and asked for his son—his son, who had seen only a stranger, and a particularly weird one at that. Serach had been too young to develop more of a grudge, fortunately, but he must've been raised on scattered stories of the looming white presence of his childhood, just like Rowan had been raised on crumbling memories. He swallowed a little, trying to rid himself of the burning lump forming in his throat. What had it been like for Serach, to watch a mythical figure from his past step into the present?

Ice had no way of finding Ava, whether it meant finding the she-wolf or finding bones. He had no way to pull her out from the folds of his thick fur and placing her in front of Rowan, so he did the best he could. He spun the framework of her story with words, fragile and fleeting things, and he realized that if he just prepared himself enough, he could talk about her for.. hours. Her ghost there next to them, the closest she had ever come in years—it was almost like she was there, in the corner of his eye...

His wicked witch of the west.

His throat was closing up, so for a moment, his only response was a shrug of his massive shoulders, before the gold gaze trapped his and kept him there. He wanted to say something, apologize for not having been there, for.. for not having been able to save her.. for not even knowing what he should've saved her from.

After a moment, an answering grin spread across his graying maw. "I like you too, Rowan," he said quietly, "and I think Ava would be proud to see who you've grown into. And.. if you'd like, you'd be welcome to come stay with us, in the Bend." He was sure he could convince Serach and Aponi to take Rowan in—he seemed the honest, hard-working type, and if Ice put in a good word for him?

But he didn't dare to get his hopes up too high. Rowan was looking for his daughter, and Ice knew that that was a hunt one could not call off.

let the stars above shine in your soul