Grizzly Hollow let go of your fears and your ghosts

RE: There is a full moon.

March 11th; Nightfall; Light snow showers; 16 ° F, -9 ° C

Since coming to Grizzly Hollow and remaining within its borders, Rook could not have been more at peace; and, with that peace, came a sense of stillness. A feeling of being whole, at one with himself, centered in all aspects (spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally, and so on). Except, there were a few things that were 'off...' The first of these was the hollow in his heart over the fact that Bishop was not around to see what he had accomplished for their family. The second was this strange feeling that had manifested all over him - at the back of his throat, all along the length of his spine, at the base and tips of his ears, in every digit and all four of his limbs. Sound-wise, it was as though the winter air crackled from static; scent-wise, it was as if all the goodness of Spring and Summer had come early, laced with something that filled him with all sorts of yearning; physically, he actually was not sure what to do with himself.

It was almost sinful to think of @Quil at all hours of the day but, the more he allowed himself to do so, the more he realized what was happening and what the basis for it was. He loved her. He adored her so much it hurt; who knew that one could be so beautiful, so graceful, and yet so strong? He had gone off en route towards Jasper Rocks to meditate and pray when he stumbled upon a different set of thoughts: he and Quil were old enough now to start a life of their own and he had chosen to bind himself to his father's fate. But, what if it could still work? He had managed to secure enough land as to allow himself and his pack mates a lot space to roam, yet still be within minutes of one another from one end of the territory to the other. He could make a den for the both of them and, even if his parents had not been in the picture, he was sure that he could provide for her, care for her, look after her and their family.

A deep exhale and Rook suddenly came to notice how fast his heart was beating. He had to stop in his tracks. It had all come to fast - these thoughts that he had been so content to ignore and put at the back of his mind. Had Bishop been here, such a task would have been very easy with her spiels of being truly pious and focused in their studies of how to live a just and virtuous life. The thing was... it was clear by now just how far Rook had fallen.

The meditation and grasp on faith could be something he kept, but to constantly be held down by all these commandments, testaments, and teachings were suffocating. It had cost him his companionship with Namid (greed), his budding relationship with Beren (lust), his kinship with Bishop (envy), and his place within Whisper Caverns (pride). But, forget the fact that he had possibly sinned or 'done wrong by Pangur's watch,' and then came the discovery that following his heart - and only his heart - had brought him here, to the heart of his parents' dominion... where he and his twin sister should have been born.

As far as Rook was concerned, he was past the point of no return. Forgiven by a higher power or not, he had come this far and he was determined to do everything his way and savor what he already had. He fully turned around, breathing deep now as if he were on the verge of a panic attack. His skin tingled as if several sets of teeth were preening his fur all up and down his sides. The fur along his ruff bristled and, all too soon, desire began to pool in his chest and belly. His thoughts flickered to Ryvet and what his brother might have been up to at this hour in the day.

As if driven by instinct alone, he began to search along the roots of nearby trees, stepping past small boulders and places where the pine needles had piled up high beneath the snow. He settled on a small cluster of boulders meters from where Theo and Prosper's headstones were. Eons ago, they had probably been apart of the same rock formation before it had broken down. Between two of the largest wolf-sized stones, he began to dig, urged by an innate need to create a suitable sleeping space, somewhere where he and Quil could be alone, away from the rest of the family.

 

stay for a while

Quil had settled into what truly felt like her new life comfortably. The moment she'd parted with Willow Ridge had left her feeling lighter somehow, as if all along she'd been weighted down by the fact that she wasn't as content as she'd let on, to others and to herself. After getting Cinder back (right around the time she'd started getting to know Rook), she was happier, sure, and the Ridge sometimes felt like it could be a home ─ one day. But that feeling of kind of belonging to the land of Archer didn't come close to comparing to the way Grizzly Hollow made her feel.

Not only was she finally with Rook, but she thankfully still had Cinder and now, as hard as it was to believe some days, she even had Jaysyek, Borden, and Ryvet in her life. It was one thing hearing tales of the original Lyalls from her father as a child ─ tales of the white lady who had been one of Kade's dearest friends, and of the masked man who had been one of his most valued and respected allies ─ but to have finally met the two of them, to lay eyes on them, had been surreal and an honor. For the first time in a long time, for as long as she could remember, she felt like she was surrounded by family and not one that she had to force to fit. And...everything about this place filled her heart. With happiness, and hope, and fulfillment. After years of feeling like there was just something missing, there wasn't anything missing anymore. Well, there was one thing, but she hadn't been able to put a finger on it until now.

Rook and her adoration of him was constantly on her mind, and just the smell of him gave her goosebumps. When he was around, it was hard to look away or focus on much of anything else, and when he wasn't, she couldn't keep her mind off of him. He was a better man than perhaps even he knew and she was proud of him. He was so special, so dear to her, and there was no denying that her feelings for him were more than they once were. They were deeper than positive regard or even loyalty. They were intricately tied to her heartstrings, and she knew exactly what that meant for the both of them and for the future.

Quil swept over the blue-kissed snows of the night, weaving a path between the towering cedars that would eventually lead to her other half. When she did find him, at work among the rocks, she took in a quiet breath and swallowed her reservations. Her eyes were pale in the moonlight as they trailed the angles of his face and barreled chest from afar. She was so nervous (though he was the last person she ever felt nervous around) but her paws propelled her forward, as if her body was drawn to his own by gravity."There you are," she murmured softly, a smitten grin flickering on her lips as she drew to his side. "...I was hoping to find you out here somewhere beneath the moonlight."

(This post was last modified: Mar 13, 2015, 04:53 AM by Quil.)

A young deer has been separated from the rest of its herd. Hunt Opportunity

Slowly, a shallow hole in the earth formed beneath his paws and a decent heap of broken sticks, pine needles, mud, and snow had piled up to the left of him. He had been scooping a large amount of what seemed to be frozen loam out of the depression in the ground with his forepaws when Quil had happened upon him. His ears perked up and he turned around to receive the warm smile on her face. The evergreen branch in his mouth did little to bar him from returning the sentiment, but he was quick to set it down with a wag of his tail. He raised a paw to rub his nose against the top of his wrist, pretty certain the dirt that had stuck to the edges of his nostrils were nothing close to flattering. A small huff and a snort and he stepped back onto level ground, planting his front paws back into the crisp white snow.

"I was, um," he stammered as she drew close to him. "I wasn't ready to sleep." He cast a sideways glance to the two boulders and the trees that loomed over it. "I thought I would-" He had to clear his throat, his jaw jumping as he recovered from an impending surge of timidness. While he knew that there was something in the air, with Quil's arrival, it seemed that particular something had magnified, multiplied, intensified. It sent both hot flashes and chills all over him, making the tips of his ears burn and his airways sting.

He studied her face, eager now to enjoy this bit of solitude with her. Surely, the rest of the family was elsewhere, further out on the borders, upstream along the river, or at one of the territory's two dens to wait out the snowfall. "Is everything all right?" he asked. "Nothing's bothering you, is there?"

His lips sealed then, afraid that all the words he had left unspoken for the past few months would come tumbling off his tongue. He did not want to overwhelm her, to suffer from any repercussions should he find out that he might have thrust the idea of companionship on her earlier than was expected. They still had their whole lives ahead of them and this was only just the beginning.

Chances are I have a BEN WHISHAW gif for that.

 

stay for a while

To have seemingly caught Rook off guard worked out in her favor. He had this way about him when he wasn't ready for her or something she'd said, which was manifest in many different ways, all of which she found cute or intriguing or inspiring. Tonight, it was the way his familiar lips curled into a most genuine smile around the branch in his mouth. A brow quirked on her glowing face, her smile transitioning into a one-sided grin of satisfaction at the thought that she may have brightened his night. I like it when you look at me like that, Mr. Lyall, she thought but wouldn't say.

"I was, um...I wasn't ready to sleep. I thought I would─"

She looked over the depression he'd dug and to the rocks where his gaze had wandered.

"Is everything okay?"

Quil quietly gulped down the tiny lump in her throat, reaching for the evergreen branch. There wasn't anything wrong and really everything was kind of perfect. She loved it here, and she enjoyed her time with him, granted the months they hadn't seen each other. But she did have a lot on her mind, and...it was hard to think clearly lately...It was even harder to focus with him so close. There wasn't anything bothering her, was there? Did it seem like there was something bothering her? Had she said or done anything strange earlier in the day? What if he though she was bothered. Was he bothered?...She glanced at the whispy-looking shadow that the branch's needles cast upon the snow. Silly girl. Dropping the branch into Rook's concavity (her way of being helpful and shy all the same), she looked upon him and into his mismatched eyes. The way they looked back as he studied her face looked sent a funny feeling coursing down her spine, like little butterflies fluttering in her belly or sparks of lightning on the tip of her nose and in her toes. She perked up.

"What's bothering me is that you've been out here digging holes without me─" she quipped with a lopsided grin, stepping back to admire his work. "─This one is exceptional." As much as being playful would serve to soothe her bashfulness (which were increasingly unpredictable with each second that passed), she didn't want him to worry either. Her gaze fell to her feet, which were halfway buried in the snowfall, for just a moment and then back to Rook's face."...Everything's fine, I promise."

There was so much that was unsaid between them and she was still mustering up the courage to tell him what she believed he already knew about her...that she wanted so badly to be his. "Something on your mind?" 

"What's bothering me is that you've been out here digging holes without me─" she replied, her seemingly playful grin sending shivers back and forth along his shoulders. From left to right and back again, he had to shift his weight onto his right side; and, when she approved of what was supposed to the start of a tunnel leading to some underground space, his cheeks warmed beneath his fur. Her gaze dropped to where the hole and the stick laid, abandoned for the time behind, before them. He took this opportunity to continue studying her, but with her admission that everything was fine, he tucked his chin to his chest in an all too sudden sense of self-consciousness.

He sniffed quietly, the sound answering her first as he truly though of what was so frivolously dancing at the forefront of his mind. "Well," he started. "There's a number of things." His voice had grown quiet, hushed as though he were dangerously close to waking up a sleeping newborn cub nearby or had just been told to keep quiet in an art museum or a library (if he had known about such things in the human world).

"Quil Attaya," he whispered. "I love you. I've loved you ever since I found out who you were." A small pause, just long enough for him to swallow back the trace of nervousness that had crept up in his throat. "And in knowing who you were, what it meant to find you, and all that you are... I can't be anymore grateful for everything thus far."

He had to take a breath, stealing a hopeful glance into her face, the expression that might have been in her eyes and along her lips. "I want to be with you.. for forever." The fur at the back of his neck prickled with uncertainty, but he said it all anyway - to the best of his ability without having to gibber or tumble over his own words. He and Quil had this moment alone and he had waited half a year for the both of them to get to this specific point in their lives. He couldn't stand it anymore, "Quil, I would like to ask you to be my life partner. I never want to be separated from you from this day forward; and, all the things in life that you desire, I want to be the one to give them all to you."

Chances are I have a BEN WHISHAW gif for that.

 

stay for a while

"Well, there's a number of things," he'd said.

A part of her wanted to panic, to tense up and brace for the worst, which could have been a number of things most would have involved a rejection or some mention that perhaps she'd had it wrong all along. A single snowflake touched the tip of her nose where her breath escaped in a tiny puff as she instinctively and unknowingly held her breath, melting away into her as if it had never fallen to touch her to begin with. Rook could have had anything to say ─ about the weather, or Grizzly Hollow, or their mission or her father or the color of the sky ─ but no matter what came next, Quil was hanging on his every word. She looked at him now with eyes as wide and gold as the sun, unable even to blink for fear that she might miss out on him.

"Quil Attaya," he whispered. Her toes wiggled ever so slightly in the snow. She couldn't even remember the last time anyone had called her by her full name.

..."I love you."

In that moment the world grew utterly quiet and it felt as though all that existed was him, and her, and the moonlight. Too sharp to believe the words and too in love to dismiss them, she heard every last word as the beat of her heart slowed in her chest. Lub, dub. Lub, dub. Lub...dub...Searching the crystalline depths of his eyes, she saw her own visions of the future. Rolling field of gold. The grasses tall enough to conceal her as she laid in the summer sunlight. Rook's voice echoing in the distance ─ words she couldn't understand like she did his laughter ─ and the pitter-pattering of little feet drawing near. In the faces of her children she saw a little bit of everyone who she loved so deeply, so fiercely. Ava's eyes. Rook's smile. Rowan's mischeif. Cinder's beauty. Kade's silver shimmering on the black and grey of her sons' backs.

In the thick of winter, in the dead of the night, when it was as though all the earth was standing still, the fragments of her life slowly came together to make her whole, perhaps for the first time. She felt speechless, but...she wasn't.

"I'll stay with you forever," she breathed. "...because I love you, too."

She trembled now, from her very core to the tip of her tail ─ subtly, intensely, wholly. If actions spoke louder than words, then the way she moved closer to him, the way his love drew her near, thundered through the forest. Tenderly, she stepped to the one who would always be the boy who captured her and the man who would keep her. Her eyes, pale in the moonlight, stared into his with a starlight of her own flickering brightly within them, and she pressed her muzzle slowly along the curve of his chin...Forever, they would have said again, and again, and again.

It might have been a bit too formal but the world that Rook had left behind, the one within the furthest reaches northwest of Relic Lore, had raised him to be so elaborate and pious. To simply "take up a mate" was no simple task, their reunion had to be sanctified, some how and in someway, and he had to have previously asked Quil's father, Kade, for his blessing. This was the best he could do - shed his once-obsessive notions about love with other individuals, propose as mannerly as he could, and hope beyond all hope that Sir Kade Attaya himself might not come rushing onto the scene and accusing Rook for possibly stealing his little girl away. He had come too far now to be stopped. They were soon to be considered 'of age,' and he knew very well that they, the both of them, were more than capable of making their own decisions. If he had asked her to come with him and she had chosen to be with him, then those choices were theirs to make.

Her own admission of loving him made him shiver and, as she drew close to him to touch her muzzle along his chin, he had to sigh in relief. "I would have hoped this den might have been something of a surprise," he whispered. "And I had hoped I would have had it finished before you came around." The small smile that had been on his face before returned. "I wanted to have a place for just the both of us."

"It's so far out though, I'm sure we'll be alone for the hours to come," this was something that was said more for his own assurance, but as he nuzzled his nose with hers he closed his eyes. Only when he felt he was able to open them again he focused on her eyes, his brows still raised in what could have been hopefulness. His ears felt like they were burning, the stirring all along the underside of his torso and gut continuing to make him antsy. "Quil?" her name fluttered from him as if he had been holding a butterfly between his teeth all while his heart pulsed in his digits and eardrums. "I'd like to start a family with you. I want... I just... Please be mine tonight."

Chances are I have a BEN WHISHAW gif for that.

 

stay for a while

It was the dream of any girl, to watch as summer days faded and as affection grew into something more beautiful and precious and sacred as the winter snow fell. She had never been overly preoccupied with the notion of mateship, but like all girls Quil wanted to know what happily ever after felt like. Looking back, it had always been Rook. She was taken with him since the first day she'd ever met him, when she'd crossed Skoll to leave the Willows with the tawny stranger with the mismatched eyes. Kind, honorable, and with the heart of a lion, he was. In many ways, Quil saw part of her father in Rook. But the dynamic she shared with him was more than their own attributes or how easily they shared and talked with each other ─ she was Attaya and he was Lyall. No matter what she believed in, she never could shake the notion that, just maybe, fate had played a part in crossing their paths.

And now here they were.

He went on to explain about the hole she'd found him digging and how it had been meant for the two of them ─ a surprise. "...for just the both of us," he'd said. She shared his smile, a subtle one tugging at her lips as heat flushed over her cheeks. Rook always did have a way with making her feel as though she was the only thing he saw. "It's a lovely surprise, Rook, finished or not." Her tail swayed easily at her back and she could barely contain her delight, not only over his surprise but because he had become her dream come true. "I think it's going to be...perfect for us." And she wanted nothing more than to be alone with him.

"Quil?"

"...Please be mine tonight."

Her heart seemed to quiver in her chest and the wind ruffled up her back. Her mouth was dry, her skin prickled beneath her fur, and the scent of him was beginning to overpower whatever inkling of will power she had left. A low whine left her lips as her eyes searched his face thoughtfully. Quil couldn't deny him now, even if she'd wanted to. She yearned to give him all that he wanted, the expression on her face was as inviting as it was feral. Inching that much closer, her cold nose found his ear and she leaned into him. "I'm yours," she dared.

eep! <3

She was truly delighted in it all - every prospect and everything that had gone unspoken with the beginnings of this particular hole in the ground. And, oh, how Rook was enchanted by her. In what little moonlight shone through the retreating snow clouds ahead, she was everything he had ever wanted, hoped for, dreamed of. A soft note sounded from her and he merely beamed back, knowing full well that this was what he had been anticipating. That look that had followed his proposal, the thoughtfulness from both parties in the moments after, the closeness that followed, and the very instant she agreed... It couldn't have felt any more right.

She was his and he was hers. Whatever devout notions Bishop had continually reminded him with from Kiche's teachings and whatever beliefs that he had adopted could take a backseat. All that mattered right now was that there had been a sort of vow between the Lyalls and Attayas; and, Rook and Quil were simply the next generation to make that bond their very own - through loyalty and devotion, mate-ship and love.

Quil pressed herself against him and as she angled her muzzle to bring her nose to his ear, his eyes closed as he nestled the side of his face to her neck. The world could have very well been spinning but that didn't even bother him in the slightest. He had her to hang onto and, so long as they had each other, he was sure that everything would grow still once more.

A sigh was let loose into the long tufts of her brown-and-black pelt, but he did nothing as to separate himself from her or move away. He would wait until she was ready, prepare himself for the emotions that would come right before and soon after their reunion, and look forward to the quiet hours that would find them curled up in their little 'nest' of a future burrow. His breathing slowed though his heart continually raced. "Whatever you'd like to do, we'll do it," he murmured when his eyes opened again, savoring her closeness for the time being. "Tonight, I'd like you take the lead."

(Fade.)

Chances are I have a BEN WHISHAW gif for that.