Cedarwood Forest Medium build and mis-matched eyes? You must be a Lyall...

Northern edge of Cedarwood Forest between the Thicket of Secrets and Blackberry Fields. Maybe another Lyall wants to jump in?

Limbs finally free of the lankiness of youth ate the ground steadily on his journey back to the lands of his birth. He was like a salmon, honing back on the river he had been born in. There was no mistaking these trees, although whether they too, would recognise the young man that took shelter under their boroughs, or take him for a stranger was yet to be discovered. Ryvet Borden Lyall was much changed after his year of absence, there was a confidence bordering on arrogance in his steps, and a smirk that constantly tugged at the corner of his mouth, more ready to offer a laugh than a growl or a snap. All but gone was the small boy terrified of witches and getting lost just a few steps from the borders of his home. The boy had become a man.

As the scent of cedars washed over his snowy coat, he dared to rub his flank against the coarse bark, trading several loose white hairs for the grit and fiber now lodged in his once pristine coat. The soft feeling of pine needles underfoot was all but ignored as the young man tested the air for any trace of his family - Mother, Father, Brothers, Sisters - anyone that could help shed light on what had occurred to splinter the tight knit family across the lands of Relic Lore and beyond. Finding little in the way of guidance he thought it best to head to the old bear den, the very first home he could remember... He simply had to try and remember the way...

The night he had left Whisper Caverns territory for what seemed like the fifth or sixth time in search of beneficial herbs, he had told @Namid that he would be back soon and assured @Bishop that he was going to broaden his search for answers (scour the lands just beyond Grizzly Hollow and Cedarwood Forest and, possibly, figure out if his mother and father had any other connections within the Lore). The two-day journey from his hiding place atop the Caverns to the northern reaches of Northern Eden had been memorized by heart and it took him just a little more than 48 hours to find the familiar stretch of thickets and the recognizable scent of the once-ripe blackberry brambles. His window of opportunity to gather the last of the summer season's plants was closing quick; and, he supposed, if he did not come back with plants, he hoped to return to the Caverns with answers, which would be promptly presented to Namid along with his next course of action. She had promised to him, after all, that she would stick by him regardless of the situation at hand. If he stayed within Whisper Caverns, she would be there, and if he opted to leave, she had said that she would follow.

With all of this in mind, the young Lyall ventured onward, but something called to him with a whisper of the autumn wind. Had he not been the spiritual and superstitious youth he was, he might not have turned around and pursued the silent call of his name...

Rook... Rook, over here...

He shook his head but it did not stop his feet from picking up speed and backtracking towards the very place where he had met the first of his missing older siblings - his sister, Taima, the obviously pained woman who had resented his presence at the old bear den. Deeper and deeper he went, letting his nose lead him for the most part before startling him with the discovery of a fresh scent trail that wandered through the trees. Something bright caught the corner of his eye; he would have missed it if he hadn't been looking closely. The traveler was marking the trees...

Immediately, his face took on a rather disgusted expression. As far as he was concerned, these were his lands. Well, perhaps not yet, but they would be soon enough if only he could figure out what he wanted to do and how to do it all with or without Bishop and Namid's help. Moving with haste as to see where exactly this rogue male was traveling to, and downright assuming he was headed towards the heart of what was once Grizzly Hollow (really, though, it seemed that nothing else laid to the south other than that), Rook began to run, only stopping until he caught sight of the ivory-furred stranger just meters ahead of him.

"Excuse me?" he amiably called out, wagging his tail in a gesture of salutation, "'scuse me, you probably shouldn't go that way." His lips sealed tight as he thought about the possibility of Taima hanging around the area. "Are you looking for something?"

Chances are I have a BEN WHISHAW gif for that.

It was a terrible habit, but one he had always had and the scent of cedar wood only seemed to magnify the issue. When he wasn’t stopping to rub his flank against the coarse trunks as he went he would momentarily stop and lift his leg against the base of a tree, a stray bush, a blade of something that managed to stand just a little bit taller than everything that surrounded it... It left a rather offensive trail behind him, but he always managed to find his way back if he ever became... disoriented.

Thankfully whoever it was that had crept up behind him managed to catch him on a far more innocent flank marking, and at the sound of another approaching he allowed his tail to wave harmlessly at his rear before turning to face the stranger. For a moment, the white wolf paused, his eyes falling on a wolf that at a distance looked all too familiar. The dark mask and barrel chest almost stopping his heart in motion, but the voice had not been nearly deep enough, the youth before him still carrying the tell-tale signs of his age. He had some filling out to do yet and Ryvet allowed himself to breathe.

“Sorry, I-ah, mistook you for someone else!” He offered with a chuckle while the younger man was still at a distance. The suggestion that he should not continue that way however stuck out in his mind as odd. The last time he had been by there had been no scent of a pack, Kade and Ava had all but evaporated or so it seemed. Had he been a more observant wolf, Ryvet may have noticed the younger mans eyes, so similar to those he had last seen almost a year ago. “I’m actually looking for the place I was born, I figured it’s as good a place to start as any...”

The stranger greeted him warmly, a snicker and a wave of his tail signaling to the boy that he was quite possibly genuinely sorry for... staring at him for a moment too long. It made Rook quirk a brow, but as the other, older male explained that he was looking for the place he had been born, the younger Lyall tensed. His fur bristled in apprehension. It was a close call; logical explanations deduced that this fellow - white fur, vivid eyes, medium build, and all - was either Taima's brother (and, in turn, his brother, whom he thought he could recognize straightaway), Kade's son, or some other individual who had once called Relic Lore home (in a few versions of his parents' telling of why they had relocated, it seemed that the peril was enough to drive other families away too, but whether or not Rook could fully believe it, he could not be sure). His head angled to one side, as if he were doubting what the man had said; but, all too suddenly, he realized that he knew better than to repeat the encounter he had had with Taima.

"Well," he started, his left paw lifting once before being set back on the ground. "I just thought I'd mention that you'll want to be careful. There's a... u-uh..." Oh, the stuttering... that was it... it was apparent he was lying. In utter defeat, Rook squared his shoulders then closed his eyes briefly as he shrugged. When he set his mismatched gaze on the brute again, he sighed. He might as well just ask and be done with it all already.

He pawed at the ground now, taking a few steps closer to the gent. Rather than fire off the one question he wanted to ask, he started with the unassuming sort first, "If you lived here some time ago, did you know Kade?" To Rook, it was only logical at this point, for anyone to go seeking the heart or southern portions of the Cedarwood had to be searching for his father's old grounds (and, not, say, Cut Rock River, which he had mistakenly not placed to memory after @Namid had told him to stay well away from the forest to the west). One might supposed that a part of him was still pining to go home, and home, to him, meant somewhere where he had family - his siblings, particularly - to spend time with. They, more so than anyone else, would know of or at least understand the hell he was currently enduring.

Be careful? There was something in the way the younger wolf stuttered that pulled at something deep in the pale wolf, a whisper of a memory carried on the breeze, but before he could catch it, it had slipped through his teeth, like so many rabbits in the heart of winter. His blue-grey and sage-green eyes finally, truly took in the yearling before him. One eye blue, the other gold - when he swung his head the right way he could almost be mistaken for @Renier... But surely he would recognise his own blood...?

When the young wolf mentioned Kade, Ryvet’s initial reaction was to smile but even that quickly turned sour. The guardian had been good to them, a silent protector never further than a frustrated or scared squeak away... But he was gone. He had been entrusted to keep Grizzly Hollow, and now that too was gone. “Once.” He responded, unable to keep the bitterness from his words. “I was actually hoping it had all been a bad dream, and I’d find him here this time...” the pale wolf confessed, drawing in a deep breath through his mouth, before exhaling with a snort. It didn’t matter now, life went on and all that dwelled here now were ghosts (or so he thought).

“I actually came here looking for my parents, and my siblings...” he finally confessed, although truth be told he thought that Taima must have surely perished if she had not yet made her way to the Greying Glades like the rest of them had. “My name is Ryvet. Ryvet Borden Lyall...” he cocked his head to the side one final time to consider whether or not he should add what he was going to say next. Add another year and it was entirely possible, although to see one without the other attached at the hip may have been what really threw him. To hell with it, what did he have to lose? “and you look an awful lot like my little brother Rook...”

Clingy Rook is clingy. :s

Rook might have smiled back if the other male's grin had remained. Instead, it turned into something bittersweet, leaving the boy rather puzzled. "Once," he had said. "Kade isn't here," he relayed his older sister's words. The statement didn't stop the man from continuing though and, when he did, out came the very words that he had used sometime ago. Rook's ears fell back and, again, he fought the urge to stay in place. Something was so very familiar about him that it spooked him; he wasn't sure if he ought to draw closer or run away. Lord help him if he managed to get into another fickle situation like he had the last time he had come to the Cedarwood.

Then, there it was: the green light, the guiding light, the revelation. This was Ryvet, the tall ivory-furred sibling he had known since birth, and all the grown man had to add after that was, “- and you look an awful lot like my little brother Rook...” His eyes widened and his jaws parted as though he had seen an actual ghost. His heart could have swelled up from newly recovered relief. He had tried, but once his name had been spoken, the yearling saw no other option other than to scamper up to his brother and press the side of his face into the white fur of his brother's shoulder.

His tail was a blur behind him as it waved about and a string of whimpers whistled and hummed from his chest and muzzle. He was shaking now, the whiskers of his brows touching one another as he both braced himself and waited for the anxiety to fall away. He cried, "You're here... You're really here."

The younger wolfs reaction was almost instantaneous and Ryvet was left with barely a chance to react beyond leaning backwards and bracing for impact. His lips drawn in a tight line of worry and his ears folded flat still unsure if this reunion would be a happy one (he had after all, left without much warning - telling father at the borders on his way out, with his memory was no guarantee the rest of the pack would hear of it). Even through his folded ears he could hear his little brothers whimpers and the flailing of the boys muzzle was poking rather than ravaging the older wolfs neck so he allowed himself to relax, his casual smile returning as he dropped his own head to mouth at the chocolate and cream legs of Rook and playfully shove him back a little, even going so far as to lift his left paw and place it across his siblings muzzle while he continued to in wolf terms ‘tickle’ his younger siblings front legs and chest.

Even now he had grown, the desire to play remained. The last time he had seen his brother he was still all legs and ears, and while Ryvet had often cared for the twins, enduring their pouncing practice and having his ears and limbs painfully tugged on he hadn’t really reached the point where he could reciprocate their roughhousing, but now was not the time. “Yeah, Aniu told me mum and dad came back...” Even with his carefree new outlook he couldn’t keep the worry from his tone. “I figured this was the best place to start...”

The reunion was well received and the energy of it all could have easily prompted the Lyall boys into the spirit of play. Rook's eager and excited nuzzling was reciprocated with the gentle nipping of his forelimbs and shoulders. A growl that sounded more like the cooing of a dove sounded from him and, upon being tickled, he rolled over in the space in front of his older brother. In the dirt, his tail swept the pine needles off to the sides. He tucked his arms to his chest and he stared up at Ryvet who, in his eyes, was upside-down against a backdrop of crooked cedar tree boughs. A goofy grin was given but it did not remain for long.

"Yeah," Ryvet had said. "Aniu told me mum and dad came back..." Rook's brows came back down and he rolled back over to right himself, remaining in a sphinx-like position on the ground while his sibling quickly added that starting in Cedarforest, where Grizzly Hollow laid abandoned and in ruins, was a good place as any to begin his search. "I don't know where Mum is," he said quietly, "but Dad is with me... with the pack I'm with."

He took a deep breath, the air escaping his chest and softly hissing through his clenched teeth. "Have you seen Renier? Dad keeps saying that Ren's around but I haven't seen him, and Mum, too." His large ears quivered as they kept folded against his skull and he averted his own dual-colored eyes, staring down at the carpet of dried needles and the assorted browns that made up a variety of forest debris. "He also keeps saying that he wants to go home and I... can't do that. At least, not yet."

"Please help me?" he requested, daring to seek out his brother's green-and-blue-eyed gaze. "Bishop's not even trying. If she could've taken Dad back, she might've by now, but she can't do anything either. We're stuck."

There is a deer that was killed by a lynx nearby. +10 Health

Ryvet Borden Lyall

It was a strange feeling to have his brother belly up in front of him once again. He tried to maintain his carefree facade, but when his brother spoke his ears dropped and his eyes widened, the way they had when he had been caught in some mischief as a pup. He shrunk back on his haunches and his shoulders slumped as he gave his brother room to rise (in more ways than one, because at the very centre of his being, Ryvet Borden Lyall was still a follower at heart).

 

I don’t know where mum is, but dad is with me, in the pack I’m in. It was guilt that filled the young mans chest. Once again it had fallen to his youngest siblings to bear the burden of his fathers ailment. Trying to keep the casual smile on his face (and failing miserably), he continued to listen as his brother went on. Renier? He hadn’t seen his brother in an age and a small shake of his head was all that was offered in response. The corner of his mouth pulled down as his brother continued on. “Which home though? The Reach? Here? Bertram Valley? He would only take off again if we got it wrong.” he voiced quietly with a sigh. Stuck was not a state the pale man was willing to find himself in again and yet he felt duty bound to help his brother out.

“What of Taima? Has there been any word?” he finally dared to ask. After all, trying to find his sister was how he got lost in the first place. But if he hadn’t, he would never have found himself.

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(This post was last modified: Feb 05, 2015, 04:16 AM by Ryvet.)