Red Fern Forest The Secrets That You Prayed For

sorry, it took a while for Io to make a decision on this. I don't *think* she's going to give him away... I'm good with whatever note this thread ends on.

Iopah was not a stranger to revenge, and even less to violence. A million years in the thicket could not have wiped the barbarian blood from her veins or shaken the memory of her parents free. There was a reason she held the reputation she did with the one-eyed male, why she would always spring so quickly to the offensive. And, while she would have gladly ripped the skin from @Kjors' pelt that day, what Avari wanted wasn't as simple what she made it out to be.

It seemed that Avari did not know her quarry as well as she assumed. Brows drawn sharply together, Iopah huffed with little amusement. "And what makes you think he will do that?" Perhaps the Sorenson male had once been upfront and honorable, but he wasn't now - at least, the side she'd been exposed to wasn't. He'd been perfectly willing to draw @Naia into a needless fight, there was no reason it wouldn't happen again. "He is theirs and they will fight for his worthless hide. It's already happened."

"He will not come to you alone." The Kjors she knew would use anything (or one) to his advantage. "He will bring them all out against you." The offer of protection was not addressed, because it was not trusted. A promise to keep her identity hidden meant little from an admitted liar.

Blegh ._. Sorry for the slowwww going here. Bad timing for me. The outcome is okay whichever way it falls :P

It was far too difficult to suppress the quiet little hum as it rolled in her throat, neither a growl nor a purr but a sound of pondering as she considered and assessed everything that was happening and all that was being said. Long gone were the years when she'd had to have these kinds of conversations on a weekly basis with her rivals, and it would be fair to say she missed them. She missed the negotiating and the struggle for power, but what she loved more than the struggle was the victory. "Kjors is too much like his father." A slip of the tongue might have given up her relationship to the male, but the ever cool exterior made it almost seem deliberate. "He would be too proud to risk letting someone else interfere with his... business." That was the flaw in her late husband that had ultimately proven his downfall. When trouble came knocking he wanted to deal with it three-on-one. Avari was all too happy to let him, it prevented the asking of questions as to why she didn't help. "Perhaps I'm out of line for asking, you have your own people to worry about." It was with a polite bow of her head that she conceded some form of defeat, nose turned to the ground for just a moment before it rose again with that arrogant little tilt and but one lash of the tail sparked her tongue into motion gain. "You might instead tell me, then--" and she was deliberately obvious with her probing tones "Where an old bitch might settle with ease for the winter." Point me in the right direction, at least. "Should I climb a mountain, or follow a river?"

totally fine!

Despite whatever this woman thought she remembered of Kjors, Iopah had a very real recollection of her interaction with the one-eyed male. Her dark lips curled back at the mention of the male's father, brows rising slightly in question. What in the hell did he have to do with this conversation? She gave a guttural laugh at the forthcoming elaboration, "Perhaps you and I are talking about two different wolves," The sharpness of her eye was not at all light-hearted, however. "There is no pride in the Kjors I know."

Her gaze settled sardonically on Avari when the woman's gold-hued eyes dipped. This whole interaction was unsettling and she had the same sense of not wanting to turn her back that she had with Kjors. This woman had a silver-tongued way with words and she meant nothing but trouble.

Iopah eased forward a step as the woman continued to question, body language speaking just as eloquently for her thinning patience with this meeting. "Across the mountain." She finally hummed out, having decided who to inflict Avari upon. "There is a pack over there that is fond of one-eyed wolves like Kjors." With that she turned with a low-placed growl; if Avari continued to push the questions, the answers would be made with the Pines' queens fangs.

Perhaps the elder had slipped up in her words, daring to hint that she and Kjors' father might have ever shared a relationship. Perhaps it was not obvious at first glance that the boy carried her genetics, and that was to her benefit. She could handle the thought of him knowing he was being hunted by an older woman. The news that it was his own mother though? She'd much rather that come as a surprise on the day their paths crossed once again. Presuming of course that it ever came, that the boy she remembered did not run and cower. "Something tells me we know the same Kjors." Amused, always studying this still unnamed woman with a quiet clicking of her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "He is proud, he merely has nothing to be proud of." Not that she would know, but her mind had already drawn a picture of a gangly, mangy and underwhelming wolf whimpering at the paws of his superiors on a daily basis. Her drawing had two eyes however, and news struck her ears that this had come to change. One-eyed wolves? She hid the tension on her face by turning it to look about with her gaze settling on the distant mountain. Of course. Nothing like a nice flat stroll through the fields. Suppose she could go around, but what good would that do her? "I'm sure they are very lovely wolves." Oddly, her voice softened, perhaps having found some comfort in the fact that the conversation was coming to a close, something she was more than content to admit now that she had a direction - some information. It was what she'd been looking for and graciously received. "Unfortunately one of them is not." Whipping her head back around to face the other woman, she offered the slightest of bows. "My gracious thanks." Rising again, and rising as tall as she would have done had she still an empire of her own, she offered little else, and there was little she could give beyond what she had already sworn. Secrecy of course, to take the face and place of where she'd learned these details to her ever nearing grave. Unless she were stopped - unless there was something else to be added, the aged woman would turn, and start to the other side of the mountain. The games were only just beginning...