Cedarwood Forest don't say we have come now to the end

May 6th; Late afternoon; Sunny; 48 ° F, 9 ° C

Things seemed to have settled well so far, or so Borden believed. Against his sons' wishes he wandered just a little beyond the markers the little family had already established, just to see if there was anything else he might remember. Every tree and every stone seemed to welcome him the further he went, though every so often when he felt he might get lost, he sidestepped back towards where he knew the scent of his family could guide him back home. Sometimes he would stop and other times he attempt to gauge himself while walking, which resulted in nearly walking into an obstacle somewhere on his left side.

He had just been thinking about how to get back to the place where he had met Jaysyek - somewhere in the north, he had thought, in the Thicket, perhaps - when he caught himself square in the neck and shoulder with a low-hanging branch. His breath sought refuge in his lungs with a hiss and instinctively, he leaned towards his right, collapsing on the ground as he angled his graying head so that his good eye could take a good look at what had caught him by surprise. He squinted as the evergreen needles came into focus and he let out a sigh. A smile fought to tug the corners up his mouth upward. Now that they - him, Jaysyek, and a small portion of his family - were in a place that he was familiar with, it seemed easier now to smile. Titan's experimentation with feeding the recovered Leader various amounts of a certain mushroom had certainly begun to show desirable effects was also something to commend. Not only did it seem like Borden had become mentally stable, but the more he had gotten used to the shadows of the cedars and firs, the more he seemed to have come back into his own. He had become as he was before they had left the Cedarwood. The only thing that was different was that he had no little ones to dote upon. Of the litters he had sired, he now only had two of them to enjoy along with Kade and Ava's two daughters, and they were all very much adults now. The last time he had smiled beneath these trees, he had been strolling along with 7-month-old Ryvet and Renier, quietly enjoying the stream with Calla, and even chasing Taima through the underbrush if only to give in to play rather than scolding her for the tenth time in the past few days for disobeying his markers.

While sprawled out on his side, he slowly let his head rest on the forest floor and closed his eyes. Distant memories echoed in his ears; he swore he could hear the laughter of his children in the distance, the sounds of their tiny footsteps exaggerated with the rustle and crackling of dried pine needles underfoot. After sometime his wagging tail had slowed and laid limp on the ground.

Not far from his domain, the Grizzly Hollow Lord had merely fallen asleep with the sun warming his faded coat, overcome with things he had never thought to remember again, even in dreams...

(This post was last modified: May 12, 2015, 09:45 PM by Borden.)

Well, what do you want from me?

It was a miserable ordeal, truly. She had dealt well with the changes for a time, but her belly was as round as it ever had been now, keeping her from sleep and comfort for a growing number of days. Not only that, but she was becoming more and more anxious. Yesterday morning she'd awoke from a dream that she couldn't remember only to lay wakefully, restlessly at Rook's side until daylight touched the sky. When he'd kissed her goodbye and departed to, as she assumed, round the borders, she'd wallowed in the den alone for a time, tossing and turning and unable to find sleep again. She'd waddled her way through the day, poking around the territory in search of Cinder, who (given her strange mood swings toward her mate) was the only face she craved to see. To her dismay, today was much the same. Sleepless, cranky, and with a feeling of apprehension churning deep in her gut, Quil meandered through the cedar trees. Here and there, one of her sides would brush against the ancient trunks and clumsily she would make to maneuver more carefully. She tried with much sincerity to round on the borders but was able only to cover a meager number of miles before succumbing to the overwhelming feeling of exhaustion that was not like her. Plopping down on a patch of thick grass as the afternoon sunlight poured down through the canopy, the girl stretched her neck to address her belly as if it were a thing all its own. "The sooner you come out of there the better, the lot of you." She spoke candidly. "─I can't get anything done around here, what with you all stealing the life from me. Surely your stay in there is nearly up." Melodramatically, she rolled to her side and plopped the side of her face onto the ground, stretching her legs as far as they could go with a mighty yawn before going limp and allowing her tired eyes to flutter closed. ...For a time. A scent came upon the breeze, sweeping over her as the leaves overhead shuddered. It was one she now knew well, musky and heavy and intertwined with the smells of grass and dirt and cedar. Borden was near. To her feet as quickly as her state would warrant, Quil made her way along the trail he'd left. Eventually and from a distance the girl spotted the Lord of the Hollow where he lay, peeking her head around the woody curve of a cedar trunk to gaze at him quietly. Her belly grumbled and the tip of her tail flicked mindlessly as her golden eyes looked him over with intent curiosity. Why did she feel so nervous? Borden had never given her reason to fear him and, maybe it was because she was hormonal, or lonely, or exhausted, but...she just wanted to...to...curl up next to him. Gulping down the fear that she might wake him, disturb him, or set off some chain of events that might lead to an episode, Quil tip-toed closer. She circled once around him, attempting to find an ideal place to settle, before finally just giving in. Curling up softly, slowly against the curve of his spine, she rested her head on his ribs, took in a deep breath, and closed her eyes. Saturated with his warmth and that of the sun, sleep had never came so easily.

(This post was last modified: May 12, 2015, 09:13 PM by Quil.)

For quite sometime, Borden and his "daughter-in-law" laid in the afternoon sun, basking in its rays until the sun had shifted enough to cast their part of the Cedarwood in a cool shadow. It had been a couple hours or so until Borden's skyward ear gave a small twitch and his chest rose as he took in a deep, conscious breath. When he exhaled, he slowly opened his eyes to discover soon after that he was not alone, that the warmth concentrated along his ribs and along his back was not a sunspot or a filtered beam of light. Without looking, a few twitches of his damp nose told him who she was.

It pleased him to realize that Quil's name and face had come quickly to the front of his mind, but he did nothing to address her being there, nestled against him. He merely smiled through half-lidded eyes, listening to his own heartbeat for a while as it became its own harmony when paired against Quil's rhythmic breathing. She was sound asleep, or so he believed, and kept quite for the time being.

There was a familiarity in this, even if this was - quite possibly - the very first time he had the chance to casually make Quil's acquaintance. For what he knew, she very well might have been one of his own, like Arlette, like Fenru, like Theo and Aiyanna... Even if he was not aware of what had transpired between Rook and Willow Ridge, he knew deep down that Rook had cared for her (her altered scent confirmed this fact) and that was reason enough for him to extend his care and affection.

The grizzled Leader let the silence linger on between them even further, his tail lifting and slowly falling back onto the carpet of pine needles a number of times as he simply listened to the forest around them. The crisp evening air eventually began to blow their way and when he took another deep breath, he let out a calm and collected sigh, a tenor note sounding from him in utter contentment.

Well, what do you want from me?

She had been dreaming of someplace beautiful. It was warm where she was; in the distance, the peaks of ice-capped mountains loomed, and all around her was an endless field of wildflowers ─ all bearing the colors of the sun. Not but a few lengths away was @Cinder , playing and bounding through the blooms and tall grass with a childlike look of innocence lighting up her beautiful features. She smiled at Quil, her eyes alight with happiness that that Quil couldn't, in her reverie, recognize was something she hadn't seen in ages. Rook's voice echoed in the wind, the tone of it soft and sweet but there were no words to be heard. Late afternoon sunlight bathed them all in a golden radiance and she was safe and content, the whole of her being sated. And then...something caught her eye. A flash of something dark among the sea of flowers. She stretched her neck to get a better look, but no matter where her eyes darted she was alluded. She took a single step, and then another one, standing as still as the mountains themselves as the wind cut across her nose. For a moment there was nothing. The light was bright in her eyes. She breathed, the sound of the air rushing into her lungs the only thing to be heard as silence drowned out the laughter of her sister and lover. She looked over her shoulder to see where they had gone, but they were nowhere to be found, and Kade stood in their place. His eyes were piercing, their silver depths seeming to hold all of the answers she had ever wanted and all the love that she had ever needed. His fur was shimmering, and she could see every strand of it as it framed his handsome, young face perfectly. "...Quil..." he called to her softly. Her stomach lurched in her belly and her heart skipped a long beat. For the first time in years, she heard his voice, and it was just as she remembered. She moved toward him, a hesitant trot becoming a speedy lope as her strides ate up the distance between them, and...she had almost made it. In the blink of an eye her father was gone and all of the sudden she felt dizzy and heavy, hopeless and as if every feeling of love and joy had been sucked from her along with the air in her lungs. The air was cold and the sky turned gray and icy water was rushing and rising all around her. She looked down to see her feet submerged, then her ankles, and then it caught on her belly ─ wide and swollen and inside it a hundred little heartbeats. And she had no time to move and nowhere to go before it felt like it would swallow her whole and sweep her away. ─ ─ Quil's eyes fluttered slowly open, her body feeling heavy and stiff. As she woke she felt the rise and fall of her own head with that of Borden's side, and she was still warm despite the chill in the evening air, and she was safe here amid the cedar trees. Lifting her head gently as if not to wake him, her golden eyes fell upon his face. He was awake ─ for how long, there was no telling ─ and she in a way felt surprised to see the mask of peace that touched his grayed features. Perhaps she should have felt silly or out of place for having intruded on his afternoon nap, but just as she'd felt when she'd come across him, Quil simply wanted to be near to him. Her ears folded backward atop her sable crown."Forgive me." Her voice was low and soft and somehow as steady as the earth beneath their bodies. "...I didn't mean to disturb you, I just...wanted to be with you here, beneath the sunlight."

There is a family of deer nearby. Hunt Opportunity

His ears perked at the sound of her voice, a heartfelt apology, thinking that she had disturbed him, that all she had wanted was to enjoy the afternoon sun with him. His tail slowly lifted in a partial wag, sweeping across the top layer of pine needles and other soft debris that blanketed the forest floor. "It's okay," he assured her, his mellow tone likened to a distant thunder storm well over the Mountain of Dire. "I didn't mind... still don't, actually." He, too, was stiff and it was with a couple of winces that he lifted his head so that he could at least glance at her from the corner of his good eye.

From what Borden could see, she reminded him of Kade and of Nolan and Aiyanna. Ghosts, he thought, but he didn't let the thought rob him of the warm smile he had wanted to give her since they had met. He relaxed and let his head fall back to the ground before slowly rolling back over into a sphinx-like position with his forelimbs stretched out in front of him. His head lifted with the soft popping of a few neck vertebrae as he turned to look at her, where she was sprawled out comfortably at his back.

In the coming and going of Breeding Season, something that Borden had actually truly forgotten, it had eventually occurred to him as to why Rook had been so elusive. Quil's mere presence confirmed his assumptions and he could not help but to bashfully look away while the smile on his face broadened to touch his eyes. "It becomes you," he complemented once he had gotten a hold of himself just enough to meet her eyes again. "Should have known that he had chosen you."

Even in the last light of the afternoon, just minutes before the coolness of the evening, she was radiant, aglow from the anticipation of new life... her children, his and Jaysyek's grandchildren. "How are you taking to it?" he asked. "Are they kicking yet?" There was no doubt about Rook (and Cinder) providing her with whatever she might need but, while he wished he had known beforehand so that he could contribute to looking after her, he knew that at the very least he could be there for her. He could be that sort of paternal support she could benefit from in her own parents' absence.

Well, what do you want from me?