Grizzly Hollow the new world has been found

@Quil
@Cinder
@Tomen
Set more or less immediately after Rowan's joining!

Back at the border it had felt like the most daunting part was over - he had won Rook's blessing and belonged among these wolves, including his sisters Cinder and Quil. His nephew, a brand new idea, was practically a signing bonus. Now there were three of Attaya blood he needed to seek out. That would be his exact next step with no time to waste, which brought him upon the old stump that bore the pack den.

Though he approached the site eagerly, each step caused his heart to pound more anxiously than before. He very much wanted to see his family, still in disbelief that they might actually be under the same roof again, but in practice the task was much more daunting. What would they say? Would they be happy to see him? How much had they changed since the last time they'd been together? How much had he?

He stopped some few yards short of the mouth of the den. His sister's scents nearly coated the area, or so he perceived them to, so much so that he could kick himself for believing that their marks comprising Grizzly Hollow's borders were just tricks of the heart.

A bark bubbled in his throat but was stuck between his teeth, dissipated by a nervous wag of his tail. Should he... call for them? Probably, but Rowan simply didn't know what to say. Hello seemed much too casual though it was all he could come up with. Anxiously he pursed his dark lips close together, and decided to simply wait around like a useless oaf - ears perked and dull gold eyes alert for any signs of Attaya nearby.

(This post was last modified: Aug 19, 2015, 12:54 AM by Rowan.)

Though it was a little different this time around, his scent was always the same. In all the time that had come to pass between her childhood and the present, she had never forgotten it and couldn't even if she'd wanted to. It brought her back to a time when the sound of rushing water was the backdrop to every bedtime story, when there were so many of them in the den at night that it was impossible to get a good night's rest, when bouts of tag and hide-and-seek left her paws muddied from scurrying across the damp, mossy forest floor...The scent of her brother brought her back to the beginning.

The last time she'd caught wind of Rowan she'd narrowly missed him; her arrival to Willow Ridge had proven to be days too late. She hadn't known before whether he was alive or dead, but the flutter of hope that had struck her then remained even after the traces of him had faded from beneath the willow trees and somehow Quil knew that their paths would cross again. It was their fate, she and Rowan's. There was no denying that she and Cinder shared an unbreakable bond, strengthened by time and the struggles they had shared, and by the lonely months they had spent apart what seemed so long ago. Nothing would change that. But before tragedy had washed away Darkwater Rapids, it had been Quil and her brother who were as thick as thieves. Of them all, the lost, it was he who she had missed so dearly, it was he who she'd always believed she couldn't live without, and it was he who had eluded her for all this time.

And so it was with temperance that she quietly followed his scent as it wound through the cedar trees, their tops alight with the reddened orange hue of sunset. And, oh, did she take her time ─ stopping to breathe it in here, pausing to hesitate as it grew stronger there. She was afraid of what she would find at the trail's end. Would it be the brother she'd lost years before, or someone new walking in his shoes? Would he even still love her? Had he struck down the memory of their father and mother as their youngest sister had?...She inhaled a slow, steady breath. The task of forgetting the past long enough to be unbelievably grateful for the present required a trained heart, and as she craned her neck to find Rowan's mark on the trunk of an old tree, Quil thought of her son and how excited he would be when she returned to him when the world was cloaked in darkness.

In time the girl would find him, this other part of herself, somewhere in the twilight, in a place somewhere between bittersweet memories of the past and this very moment, and the sight of him was enough to steal her breath away. Her golden eyes fell upon his distant figure with a sea of longing vast enough to swallow them both whole. In her chest her heart pounded away, hard and slow and steady.

"Rowan?"

 

(This post was last modified: Aug 19, 2015, 05:18 AM by Quil.)

The moments between then and now were punishingly long, painfully slow, but forgotten the instant he heard his name in the silky tones that had always belonged to her, his soft-spoken sister. Rowan turned his head to the horizon, squinting against the sunset and its dusky glow that enveloped the form of her and turned her into a mere silhouette - something she had been in his mind for far too long.

"Quil," he nearly whispered, as if she were a ghost and just the breath that passed through his teeth to say her name might whisk away the mirage. But that didn't happen. His sister was there, flesh and blood, his flesh and blood.  "Quil!"

He bounded toward her through amber curtains of twilight, nearly colliding as he pressed his cheek against hers, stepping closer to embrace. Finally, finally, the evidence of his family was more than just a fading scent or dream-like memory. It was a tactile sensation, one that brought his senses more alive than they had ever been.

"I missed you," he said, sorrowful, in every sense of the heart. He pulled away just enough to meet the bright amber of her eyes, imagining for a moment that they were as shining and innocent as the last time he'd looked in them. Rowan blinked to remember it wasn't so. They were adults now - Quil was even a mother - but seeing her made him feel like a cub again. Back before his heart was drowned. But if his soul remained somewhere lost in the rapids, his sister was the lifeboat floating close.

Suddenly he smiled, and for the first time it wasn't wistful or shy - it was wide, happy. All his life until this very moment he had been living in the past, striving to reach this very moment. How could he think of anything else but the present? "I'm so happy you're safe, and that you're here. And I'm here - here to stay. With my family." Family - not foreign in his vocabulary, though it was refreshing not to proceed the word by where is. He'd finally found his.

adopt thea?

The moments that followed felt like a dream. It was as if time as slowed to a trickle, like the world had stopped turning, and as his voice called out her name, Quil's heart simply swelled.

@Rowan bounded closer and she yearned to meet him in the middle but found that her feet couldn't move. Frozen in place, it was all she could do at first to breathe and let her tail fly in circles behind her as her lost brother came near, lost no more. The pair seemed to collide, and for the first time in years she buried her face in his neck and breathed in the scent of him so deeply it that it felt like her lungs would explode. Quil couldn't believe it. Rowan was here, right before her very eyes. "I-I...I can't believe it's really you," she stammered, stepping back to look upon his face with disbelief. In that moment, a smile as wide as the earth and bright as the sun stretched across her tired features, in a way mirroring his, and for the first time in weeks she felt alive. The words 'family' and 'stay' met her ears in his voice. Tears welled in her eyes.

"I-I...I..." She tried to speak but the words caught in her throat and her bottom lip began to quiver, and she trembled. Words couldn't express the overpowering feeling of love and elation and surprise and sheer joy that his return to her meant, and so the girl wept instead, letting the tide of emotion overpower any willpower she had to keep the tears at bay. Pressing herself into his chest, she wouldn't let go. She wasn't ever going to. "I thought I was never going to see you again," she whispered, sniffling and not yet attempting to pull herself together. For a time she just clung to him as the scent and feel of him eventually made her pounding heart still so. Finally, she was able to draw herself from her brother, and the look in her eyes as she stared into his golden ones was of untarnishable joy.

"I missed you, too, and I love you so much."

There was much more she wanted to say, so many things she wanted to share with him all at once, so she began with what was most important.

 

His sister Quil lacked only a pair of pale-plumed wings but she was an angel in every other regard. In her presence Rowan had never been so patient, so kind, but something about her brought out his utmost reverence. Tears, however happy they were, drawn in her bright golden eyes drew from his throat a soft whine while his tail wagged low and quick. He stepped closer (as if they could get much closer!) while the words simply couldn't find their way out of her bursting heart, his smile reassuring her that she didn't need to say anything - he understood her either way. While she wept he only allowed her and stood close, touching his cold nose against her partially exposed cheek to let her know it was all going to be okay.

I thought I was never going to see you again, Quil said, and his heart felt heavy because he knew that at all points in their lives before this exact one, it'd been true. Rowan fully belived he would never see his parents again and that was fact. It pained him to recall that in times past he had really thought to continue his life without Quil, or Cinder, or Mace. Without hesitation he could say the world was so much brighter now that he knew better. "I love you too, Quil," Rowan said, nearly beaming at her for how serious he was. It was just that incredible that they could actually tell each other, and not just imagine it, and not just wonder.

The tidal waves of emotion that had just come flooding through the cedars seemed to ebb finally, and with their withdrawal came an ache in his bones - it was exhausting to feel so much in one swoop. Failing to give his sister any more space he lowered his haunches directly beside her, implying they would be there a while. "I just can't believe there's so much of your life that I wasn't around for," he said, failing to conceal his wistful tone. He wanted so very much to be happy, right now and forever, but he needed to talk to her about so, so much - and none of it was particularly joyful. "I have to know everything that's happened to you. Every last thing, from that one night in Darkwater Rapids - to this very point."

adopt thea?