The early morning light glinted off the creek's surface. It lit his face from a distance, and even if the air still held the night's chill, something about how bright the sun's reflection was made him feel warm. Spring always suited this place; every season did, really, but the green of the new foliage and the colorful, blooming blossoms of the scatterings of wildflowers was truly very beautiful. Beads of dew hung on every tip of every blade of grass, some quivering in the wind before losing their hold and sliding down to meet their ends where the earth began. He stared at it from afar, soaking up the peace that the place of his birth offered him and holding tightly to it as he tried to forget, if only for the morning, every last trouble that weighed on his shoulders. Just inside the entrance of the familiar and abandoned cave a slender tree branch lingered, what leaves remaining on its knobby, stiff stems now crumpled and dead. It was hard to believe how much time had passed since the flood had nearly killed him here, harder still to believe how much had changed. On the inside, Mirren still felt like the boy who for a short time played with his littermates right here on the banks of Copper Rock Creek. He still felt like the golden boy ─ one of the lucky ones who grew up beneath the guidance of his parents and had a home that he could choose to leave if he so wanted. In a time when so many souls lost those they loved, in a land where so many children suffered their first winter without the familiar warmth of their mother's touch to fall asleep into, he had made it. But...the years had passed, and though he'd left Sequoia Vale on his own accord and with his beloved @Nios to face the unknown with, Mirren missed his family more deeply than he'd ever hoped he wouldn't have to. Secret Woodlands was the home he chose, and loved, and protected ─ was the home where his first child would be born ─ and he had no reservations about that. Still, as the days passed and he grew older, wiser, weathered, he wondered what had become of the Tainns. His Tainns. Did Ruiko still reign beneath the redwoods? Had Aeylen raised cubs who may never know their eldest brother's face? Where had @Vaeta disappeared to while he'd been in Storm Plains, and why hadn't he seen his brother. To some of these questions he knew the answer. It was hard to accept, but the distance that defined the state of his blood family was of his own doing and he knew it. A deep breath and a long sigh quelled the disappointment in himself he'd never let the world see. Slow, steady strides delivered him across the clearing that seemed untouched before he felt the shadow cast by the crag's stony towers fall cold across his snout. He thought that he could do it this time. He thought that he could step foot inside the Creek wolves' old den, to relive the glory that was forgotten by all of the world except for him, but once again he fell short. Damned old cave. It was the one place he loved most and the only one that would bring him to his knees. The sun sat high in the mid-morning sky and the songs of the birds above reminded him that it was time to go home. |
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