Nomads Pass venenum

This fortnight, the rains seem to have stopped.

June 3rd; Late Morning; Overcast; 54° F/12° C

Damn that girl... Just... damn, Damn, DAMN! Whenever Mapplethorpe seemed to have use for her, Taima Lyall seemed to be absent or, rather, out of reach and evidently unavailable. Though his ascension in rank had brought on his confidence, natural tendencies he thought he had forgotten, and even a bit of paternal instinct, it also came with the undeniable lust for power and control. In keeping in step with his daily routines of tending to @Naira, making sure the borders are kept well-marked, and somewhat making sure @Datura and his mate were keeping out of trouble, he had started to move in different circles from the rest of the pack. While he may have attempted to keep tabs on the wolves under Naira's command, he also went about the mountain in search of ways on how to better himself. On the outside, he seemed to have remained the same - reserved, strict, and protective - but, inwardly, the Advisor had begun to twist and restyle himself.

No longer did he just desire to keep his hold as his prized position as Naira's personal Advisor, but with the arrival of Aponi and Nova, something within him now burned with an enthusiasm and eagerness for something more. If his dominance had ever gone to his head before, it was now perfectly safe to assume that Mapplethorpe was now constantly under the influence of what was perfectly acceptable by a man of his stature. Up and down and around the Pass he stalked along the paths he knew now by scent alone, the trails he alone had established when he arrived to the heartland as a lawless and starved soul. Though he walked alone, his puffy tail was held up high like banner born by a flag bearer and his hackles were bristled. His eyes, however, were narrowed as they swept across the rain-soaked terrain. At least the rain had stopped pouring and, for once, he did not have to worry about the princesses possibly drowning within their stone den while he was gone.

For quite some time, Mapplethorpe kept on his beat, checking landmarks whenever they sprung up along his path and making sure the scents of the rest of the pack remained present, no matter how faint they initially came to him. It was only until he came to the base of the Mountain of Dire did he completely come to a stop. His head and ears, which had been lowered for the sake of traveling across the rugged packlands, rose up in a diligent manner and it was with silent vigilance did he take in the spaces between the trees that made up the edges of the Ghastly Woods.

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taima lyall

be careful of her with him

It must have been a miscalculation, a mishap, or maybe even a fluke on Mapplethorpe's part; for, once the old Advisor had come to the mid-western borders of the Pass, Taima Lyall had appeared as if on cue. His stark gold eyes cut across her as she emerged from the Ghastly Woods and she instinctively lowered her head and averted her eyes once she mentally made a path in which to approach him without directly looking at his face. She kept her gaze focused on his paws and once she was close enough to him, she turned in slow motion and, with utmost caution, lifted her head to touch the tip of her tongue to his chin. At this time of the year the mountain spiraea shrubs were blossoming - especially with the recent and near-constant rain spells over the past few weeks - and it clung to the man's coat like cologne, making his usually leather musk uncharacteristically sweet. It was nothing like Borden or Kade's signature scents but something about it, coupled with the recent past they had and hadn't made together, pulled at her heartstrings.

The way he carried himself, even offered himself to her, just standing, there reminded her of the men she had left behind in the west. "H-hi?" she stammered, her dark ears folding back upon uttering the small greeting. Her tail wriggled about behind her, wanting to outright wave around and tuck itself against her abdomen just because he, of all the pack members, the man who had rescued her and Datura from the depths of Dragonfly Fen, was there beside her. Her gaze apprehensively looked him over, tested the air around him just in case she had missed something on the wind that she should have been aware of.

The words piled up at the back of her throat, a million different questions firing off in her head as she watched as he scanned the edges of the Woods. She could have asked what he was doing, offered her help, queried about whether or not she could do anything, asked for an impromptu assignment or task... but instead she questioned him with a concerned frown, "Wh-what's wrong?"

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(This post was last modified: Jun 20, 2013, 01:48 AM by Taima.)

He had merely finished gawking at the expanse of trees when something silvery caught his eye, snapping his attention back to where his line of sight had just been. At first his hackles rose but, then, he recognized her, the very soul he had meant to hunt down earlier this morning. Taima. She merely stopped to balk at him and to her hesitance, he sternly stared her down. Her head craned downward and her muzzle along with it. Mapplethorpe's tail rose to complete his exhibition of dominant displays - head, ears, and tail. All held high... the actions alone radiating his authority over her.

The girl immediately sensed it, much to his satisfaction, and he watched as she strode over to him, keeping her eyes down and away from his face. That was one thing he did appreciate about Taima; despite the fact that she had spat in his face and defeated him bluff for bluff in the southern forests, she still regarded him respectfully as her superior and Leader. Even as she sidled up to his left shoulder and paid him the reverence he was entitled to, he did not move, still staring straight ahead at the territory lines he had re-drawn hours ago. "H-hi?" her voice came to his ears, light and annoyingly weak.

He did not react. Her tail beating at the air next to him made the fur along his shoulders bristle but upon catching her next stuttered statement, a question, his fur smoothed out and he turned his head to look at her. His eyes went to hers effortlessly; the girl had grown a bit since her retrieval in Dragonfly Fen and he found that their shoulders now lined up beside one another. For several seconds, he took in the details of her face, the gray and muted tan tones that made up the mask around her eyes and long her muzzle.

"Nothing," he answered, his reply a tad harsher than he had meant it to sound. His tail attempted to wag, as though mirroring her own waving plume would soften his answer into a more genial or personable one, but it was no use. Her mannerisms at present were starting to border on being defined as " submissively irritating." Like how @Asta had backed down the few times he had met him, her posture screaming out in declaration that she was undeniably lower in rank... "Why are you stuttering?" he shot back, the seriousness of his voice now purposefully turing his query into a concerned - and visibly cross - one. If there was anything he both enjoyed and hated most, it would have to be what Taima was doing now... putting up an over-cautious front to buffer and practically bubble-wrap the precious ego-centric side she witheld inside her. She was certainly not this way when they had first met.

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taima lyall

be careful of her with him

The girl winced and the edges of her mouth drew into a hard line that steadily drooped downward the longer he did not look at or truly acknowledge her. At least Borden, Kade, and even her brothers turned their heads to gaze upon her face. Ready to cry out for him to say more, to show that he was not ignoring her, she was taken aback when he actually looked back at her and uttered a single word, "Nothing." She clenched her teeth together, her eyes darting from the side of his neck to his goldenrod irises. If nothing was wrong then why was he solemnly staring out to the landscape in front of him?

Her tail managed to grow still but she gave a jolt as he continued to speak to her in a brassy tone. She forced herself to sit, once again looking away, the triangular points on her skull nearly vanishing against the coarse fur along her neck. "N-nothing," she answered, willing herself to stay put. If anything was considered the most insulting of affronts it would have to be the simple inkling of wanting to run away. She and Mapplethorpe owed it to one another, essentially, to defy him was something even her bull-headed personality would not even think of doing. But even if he had proven to be quite honorable and respectable in the fact that he had led the wolves of Nomads Pass and brought her along with Datura to the northernmost part of the mountain, it did not mean that he was reprieved of the fearsome and eerie side that she had first confronted.

First impressions were for forever...

Taima swallowed and shook her head, trying now to imitate him now by shakily bringing her head and ears upward. She blinked a few times, hoping fiercely that he would drop his query... Unfortunately, she knew for a fact that he was probably not the type to easily dismiss such things. After all, Mapplethorpe was nothing like her father.

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(This post was last modified: Jun 20, 2013, 03:03 AM by Taima.)

It seemed that she was parroting him and her own answer of "Nothing" made him quirk a suspicious brow. "Something" he retorted, not convinced in the slightest. For minutes she kept her eyes trained on the forest in the distance, sitting beside him. Oh, she wasn't going to run this time...

"Do you fear me, child?" his tone had touched upon his Latin-speaking tongue, rendering it into an esoteric question. He sniffed, his lips sealing into a trace of a petulant expression. Mapplethorpe had to tell and admit the fact to himself often - he could be quite intimidating if he so wanted to be. He had not been blessed with the bulk or brawn to muscle his way through the world and had mastered the art of subtle but effective intimation, the wordless body language that belonged to their species - canis lupus - alone. It was apparent that his mannerisms had worked quite well on the girl next to him.

He had to give a scoff; having not had the experience with raising (or, at least, looking out for) cubs - until now with Aponi and Nova's arrival - he had yet to fully understand the thought process of a yearling. Sure, he had been a yearling once upon a time, but he knew quite well now that he had a very different upbringing than most. "You shouldn't," he abruptly disturbed the silence between them. "If there's anyone you should fear, it should be them... Them, as in others who do not call themselves @Naira's subjects."

"Wherever you have come from - your parents, your siblings, your old pack - forget them," he murmured with a low rumble of his vocal chords, still looking over the young Lyall. "I.... We... are your family now." A part of him wanted to laugh but managed to keep the urge at bay; she more than likely would have thought he was laughing at her... at her present circumstances. "Funny," he mused. "The girl I met a month ago wasn't like this at all. She spat words in my face... then made me swear fealty to her without even wasting her breath."

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taima lyall

be careful of her with him

Her ears couldn't hold their positions at all. One moment they were skyward, the next their tips were pointing outward then lowered again. The second she tried to bring them back up, he countered her with a word that was pronounced so slickly it felt like it stabbed at her eardrums. She held her breath, waiting for some sort of lecture to pour off of his tongue and lips. It never came. In it's place, a posed question teased her.

"Do you fear me, child?"

Taima immediately looked to the Advisor, her eyes bright with the most curious of expressions. If she was going to be honest with herself, she had been scared... But, how'd he know? Was it that apparent in her gait and flighty movements? The Lyall would have thought she had done a good job at evading and hiding her emotions; she had overlooked the fact that Mapplethorpe could have picked it up from the scents she carried over her dappled coat. Before she had the chance to ward off any of his speculations, he continued. "You shouldn't." She nodded silently, committing the fact to memory and attempting to attach some sort of rapport to her superior's name. If Mapplethorpe had harbored any ill-will towards her, he would have acted upon it, right? ...and she wouldn't have been able to stay in the Pass for as long as she had - a whole six weeks and counting.

He proceeded to weave sentences into her head, telling her that the wolves she had known - her mother, her father, her siblings and litter mates, the wolves she had grown up with - were no longer important. What was important here and now were the wolves who called themselves a Nomad under Lady Naira's rule, her new family... A wave of sadness hit her; since coming to the Pass all she could think about a the back of her mind was how her real family was faring. Mapplethorpe had just barred her from even thinking of it, saying that she shouldn't be scared - of him or of her pack mates. The family she had known didn't matter anymore; she should have found a family in Naira's rulership.

She had, she realized and the tawny brute was right should fate give her the chance... If her plans with @Datura could come to fruition, she would have and perhaps even bear a family of her own... here... within the heart of Nomads Pass. And her children would be Nomads like their father and grandmother before them.

Taima's gaze fell away then and one of her rust-colored ears turned toward him when he ensnared her attention again with the tone of his voice. "Funny... The girl I met a month ago wasn't like this at all," Taima wanted to stick her tongue out, to shake her head and shed herself from the impression she had left on leading male. "She spat words in my face..." Her tongue curled over itself inside her mouth and she fought to keep her expression straight. "Then made me swear fealty to her without even wasting her breath."

A smile climbed up along her muzzle, touching her eyes as she looked at him with a raised brow. "Good, someone had to," she parried, her tail genuinely waving from the change in his tone of voice. "Or else that girl wouldn't have gotten anywhere when she had plans of finding a new home." She recovered herself enough to gaze back at him with a smaller grin, comforted for the most part by how quickly he changed the topic so that she could ease back into the conversation she had started. "Wanted to see how you'd fare, anyway," she fibbed, attempting to rebuild a small part of the wall that had kept her emotionally separated from the brute. "Figured a lady's guard would have exhausted all his resources until he found a way to get back to her?"

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She came around... Mapplethorpe mentally let out an airy sigh. There was no use in intimidating the girl; he had spent the better part of the morning actually searching for her and was not about ready to follow her if she decided to run off because of something he said or didn't say. "Well," he lent, inclining his head slightly to his left toward her. "I did... I have... And, yet, here you are." He began to grin, the graveness in his voice and the aura around him lessening by the second. "My patience has proven to be quite effective... Wouldn't you say?"

Just as she had done before, he turned his gaze over to the trees where Taima had emerged from, his eyes scouring over the mud patches the near-constant rainfall had created over the past few weeks. If it hadn't been for his sudden interest in the tree line before them, the tawny male would have sat down beside her; but, his nose reminded him with a gust of rain-touched breeze that there were territory borders that might have been washed away. He had to refurbish them lest he wanted to run the risk of having unwelcome rogues trespassing into his and @Naira's part of the Lore and endangering the princesses - and heiress - he dutifully protected.

"Come," he slowly strode forward and started for the edges of the Ghastly Woods, feeling the mud beneath his paw pads and the webbing between his toes. His banner of a tail returned to its authoritative position in the air, lilting slightly from one side to the other with each step. "You're running border patrol with me." For a few long strides his gait was slow as he expected the yearling to adopt the same pace and keep up with him. When he had the feeling that Taima might not heed his one-worded request, he threw out her name just for good measure, "Lyall."

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taima lyall

be careful of her with him

Upon explaining that he had ultimately relied on his patience to bring her to him, rather than the other way around of him looking for her, Taima blew a raspberry at the older man. "Sure," she ridiculed him, her true personality shining through at long last. Whatever... The man might not have seemed like the lazy type but Taima chalked it up to the Advisor having quite the streak of sheer luck...

As Mapplethorpe continued to eye their surroundings and what laid beyond the invisible markers he kept day in and day out, the silver heiress idly scratched at her throat and neck, tilting her head and neck towards him as she attempted to get her leg at the angle needed to reach the itchy spot just below her lower jaw. One of her russet ears touched his shoulder and he moved immediately after beckoning her to accompany him. Thinking she had upset him, she watched with sad eyes as he began to move farther and farther away from her. Touchy much? Then came and explanation and she brought her leg back down to its normal position at her side. Within seconds, he called out to her and, this time, it was not as friendly...

"Lyall."

The terse pronunciation of her last name brought her quickly to her feet and to his flank after hastily running to his side. Border patrol was usually what she did when she wasn't trying to find one of the pack's many hidden caches or pup-sitting her prince's younger sisters, so when Mapplethorpe announced what she was going to do with him, she did not protest. Walking along the trails and paths the pack maintained on a daily basis was the easiest way to find time for herself - whether it meant evading others or actually pulling her own weight within the pack. When it came to actually walking alongside the Advisor, she found herself withdrawing into her thoughts, listening to the sound of her footsteps as it formed an off-beat rhythm that played off of his footfalls.

Her ears fell back again and her head lowered, making her already willowy frame even more streamlined and ideal for traveling. They hadn't traveled far when she spoke up again, suddenly afraid of what would happen if she allowed even the shortest period of silence to distance her from him or vice versa. "Mapplethorpe?" she chirped his name quietly, her eyes trailing along his side, up his shoulder and to the back of his head. "Did you... Did you really consider leaving me out there... in the Fen?"

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Taima followed and Mapplethorpe silently praised her from the back of his head. Just when he thought he was ready to enjoy her company with her simply accompanying him as they ensured the perimeters of Nomads Pass was safe, she piped up and he tried hard to not lose his cool. He simply just was not up for answering her questions when he was trying to indirectly trying to mold her into what he thought was suitable in terms of becoming Datura's mate.

"Don't even dwell on that," he curtly replied, not even stopping to look at her as he reforged his path through two distinctly crooked trees that grew a few meters away from one another. "It's in the past." His lips pressed together into a hard line, his ears cupping forward as if to shield themselves from any more of Taima's unnecessary musing. "Let me just say that... If I had wanted to leave you there... if I had not belief in what you had told me then, I could have just walked away, retrieved Datura and be done with it all, bringing him back home and such." He chanced a glimpse at the girl's face by slightly turning his head and looking at her from the corner of his eye. When he parted his jowls again to speak, it took a second or two for the next words to come, "I'm glad I didn't."

Mapplethorpe turned his head and eyes forward again, listening hard not just for anything on the borders but for any sound of relief on her part or anything that came in response to what he had just told her. Having not had children of his own, he had not yet even realized that even with Taima, he was still acting upon his still undeveloped paternal instincts. "Just..." he faltered, hastily trying to cover up his hesitance by dropping his gaze as he pretended to acknowledge that he had unexpectedly stepped on something unpleasant. "Focus. Keep your eyes open. If you are to be the Queen or reigning Princess of Nomads Pass, you will learn how to properly maintain these markers and you'll need to," he brought his gaze back up as he started to walk around towards the incline that led up into the Pass itself, "you'll need to get your endurance up and hone your tracking skills."

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taima lyall

be careful of her with him

He snapped, "Don't even dwell on that. It's in the past." Taima pressed her lips together, feeling the air in her nostrils burn as her eyes glossed over. The waves of emotion bubbling up from the depths of her chest only ceased when he continued to let her know that he could have walked away, but he was glad that he hadn't. She continued to keep quiet, too stubborn in her ways to open up to him again, let alone open her mouth to dispute him and make him confess that he only said that he was glad to appease her. He was right though that that occasion was in the past and that it no longer applied to the present. It had been dealt with and she was here... living with Datura instead of starving in the confines of Dragonfly Fen.

After a few minutes Mapplethorpe suggested that she focus and keep her eyes open. If she was to be a future monarch of Nomads Pass then she was to pay attention and learn from this experience that was being personally presented to her. Without a saying another word, she obeyed. If he did not have her best interests in mind then, she was certain, he probably wouldn't have brought it up. Tilting her head up just as she had seen Naira do every so often, she continued along with him, taking in the sights and sounds, attempting to memorize what bits of territory she was sure to remember if she came face-to-face with them again. The Advisor did have a point though it all she eventually understood: if she didn't focus, didn't keep her eye set on @Datura and the lands that were going to be theirs to inherit one day, then she wouldn't have anything...

Past every tree and with pressing her paw to every surface beside the place where Mapplethorpe had set his own paws, she slowly began to settle into what was to be her new routine. Without Nomads Pass, she would have been nobody, and the pack without Taima, she believed, would be nothing more than future-less kingdom as Datura Aquila would have been alone and mate-less, with two younger sisters who would shed the Aquila name when the time came. She, alone, held the ability to strengthen their pack if only given the chance to bestow upon the family her own contribution to the bloodline.

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