Secret Falls Complacency

@Iopah -  @Triell will be nearby and might pop in if Switch wants/gets a chance

i've been getting used to waking up with you

i've been getting used to waking up here

They had travelled West to the path that would lead them to the Lake, where she had managed to encounter Asphodel and Hemlock. It only took one look for the mother to decide it was time they were separated for their own good and so she sent her daughter home, if only to give her son a chance to find his feet. They confirmed that they had seen no wolf matching Nayeli’s description in that direction and so the duo had moved North, through the godforsaken blood stained forest of her nightmares. It had been a relatively silent part of their journey and only when the final copper coloured fern was left behind them did she begin to relax again. They had travelled away from the Mountain and back towards the red hills, trying to keep somewhere between the two as they continued their journey. Soon they would have to turn back.

She had awoken Triell with a bump of her cold nose to his temple, ensuring he was coherent enough to know she was just going to see if she could catch them some breakfast (she had made the mistake of trying to slip out undetected once, and it was not an experience she wanted to relive, nor force her poor friend through again). The sound of crashing water broke through the heavy fog that still laid about so soon after sunrise, thinking to tick one item off her to-do list she made her way to the water, a quick glance all the caution she bothered with having encountered no scents to put her on edge before she lowered her head to lap at the cool water. She assumed the movement behind her was Triell joining her to quench his thirst too. He rarely fell back to sleep once she was up.

Sounds fine to me, Triell is more than welcome!

Iopah awoke just before the dawn, just as she had for days now. Sprawled around her, hind-feet digging into cream-coated sides, were the Pines pups. They were growing rapidly now, hardly recognizable from the scraps they had been born as. But they were still young, despite how much of the communal den they took up. Her gaze ran over them in the fog of morning and she wondered. Camio and Inkheart were still missing, absences that would be glaringly obvious to Nalda and Arion. A dark foreleg twitched randomly and Iopah reached out to still it with her nose. Did they know their parents were searching? Did they suspect how poorly the searches were going? With a sigh the woman rose, detangling herself with care from the sprawl of pups for a discreet, early morning look for the missing males. Perhaps it was wrong to shield them like this, but it felt like admitting failure to tell them.

"Momma?" A quiet voice came from behind and Iopah's neck craned around at the question. "You's going to look for 'em, right?"

Iopah met the expectant eyes of her younger daughter, they were no longer puppy-blue. "Of course, Bracken." She hummed, taking a handful of steps back into the slumbering pile of pups. Once Bracken was mollified and falling back to sleep once again, Iopah slipped from the den. The morning was quiet, cast in shifting billows of white. She made her usual route, knowing the yearlings would soon be up and along the borders. Her form split the whiteness, cleaving like a ship through water. The falls were an enormous land marker, it was impossible to be lost in ear range of them. Her path went along the water nearly every morning, hoping to see a familiar figure and hoping not to see a floating body.

Today she saw something that was neither. Iopah watched Naira, pale feet shifting in the fog as she left the set-back route for a closer look. The woman was unfamiliar and seemingly brazen as the Reinier came from behind without a reaction. Her tail flicked at spine level, caught between proximity to her land and apparent innocent. Finally she cleared her throat, letting tawny-shaded ears rise purposefully. "What're you doing here?" Questions first, decisions of guilt later.