Sierra Hills cartwheels overhead

it is dialogue o'clock in this house

It felt maybe a little better to have that secret out in the open, even if it wasn't really a secret anymore—Alastor knew, Aponi surely knew, and Naira herself wasn't blind. But it was good to finally say it outright. And while Kyna didn't exactly agree with Sahalie, she at least didn't seem to be making any judgement, which allowed Sahalie's shoulders to loosen from their perch near her chin. Why wasn't Kyna allowed to talk to her? It seemed strange that Aponi might have a problem with the older woman who had been in the pack since Sahalie had been born, and Sahalie couldn't be sure that the women had crossed paths before Aponi's arrival in the Bend midwinter. But they must have. Aponi didn't really associate with any wolf ever since she first joined, making it even less likely that Aponi and Naira had gotten off on the wrong foot or Naira had offended her within the last year or so. What was their history?

"You were always family," Sahalie whined forcefully, a little distressed by her friend's sullen attitude. "I'm... I'm sorry she couldn't have changed sooner, couldn't have changed without Lila, but... I think you were always family, just, a different sort of family. I think Aponi knows she messed up." How had she messed up—besides leaving? Sahalie was beginning to realize with every passing day that she did not know Aponi so well. "I don't know though... I get you.."

"I guess that's what I'm upset about, too, sorta. Like my dad's trying to have this other family now. He's with her, alone all the time. With the kids. He went off to look for Nayeli when I was so young... but he should have stayed with me. Idunno. I guess it just always...feels like... Idunno I wish he chose me. Or me and Drift. I feel left behind. I feel like he left me behind when I was only two months old."

"But we're still family. And I just gotta work to make it the family I want to have, just like your mom is trying to ...idunno, have the family she's probably always wanted."

 

“…mhm.  Maybe.”

Kyna was not entirely certain she bought her friend’s explanation, but stilled her tongue lest her words fall sharper than her original intent.  She knew very little about Nayeli – only that the wolf was Sahalie’s birth mother, even if she did not raise the swarthy female – and likely knew roughly as much about Naira, for that matter.  Frankly, she did not want to know more.  Less knowledge made her more immune to her grandmother’s duende charm, and Kyna was growing weary of all her convictions being turned on their head.

The youth inhaled, exhaled, inhaled again.  On the second exhale, she opened her fiery eyes and found her friend’s face, searching Sahalie’s expression as if it might provide her some sort of answer.  Where it did not, she tipped her head to one side, and hummed.  “My friend told me something very wise, once.  He does not speak much – I am starting to think he saves his words for only the important things.  Ah, but I digress.  He told me we can make our families, too.  That we do not have to simply accept what we were born into as the be all and end all.”

The strawberry blond rolled her shoulder in a simple shrug, mouth twisting to one side. “I like that idea.  Aponi cannot make me her family when she had shrugged me off before like a burden.  And it is not to say that there is anything wrong with a want for change, or trying to make something work that did not before, but--  But I am not going to suffer for her any longer when I would have given anything for her before, and she’s gone to replace me with something new.”

Kyna’s lip rolled back in a small snarl before she caught herself, and in she took another sharp breath.  It was not Lila’s fault, she had to remind herself.  Lila did not ask for this, did not ask to be born, or for this family.  She was not going to be like Celandine, that frosty bitch, but she was not going to keep rolling over and offering up her belly like a scolded whelp, either.  She was too old for that.  Too old to go licking at her mother’s feet, with her tail beneath her hocks, with her head low like she did something wrong when she was but a little girl.

For a moment, she allowed the silence to roll around between them, and then, “I still miss my father.  A lot.  I watched--  I watched--”  Kyna swallowed hard, willing the ugly memory of Phineas’ collapse away. “I watched him die.  We didn’t even bury him.  I feel guilty about it…even if I didn’t know better then.  Even if there is nothing I can do for him now.  But I just…I just wish my mother would apologize for that, or for leaving me behind, or something.  I don’t…I don’t feel like I belong.  Like maybe I left part of me up on that mountain by accident, or something.  I don’t know.”  She offered Sahalie a wry smile.  “Perhaps we were never meant to.”

A wild dissertation appears!

feel free to try and wrap this up in your next post, since we have their newer thread to get to the heart of some of this stuff

The "maybe" sounded like just a polite formality, as if Kyna was giving her friend's ideas consideration but was not drawn to or sold on them. Sahalie felt a little helpless: she could not change anyone's mind, could not find the words to describe her perspective in a really attractive way. But with an open, heavy heart she listened to the golden girl's sighs as they tried to make sense of the complicated notion of "family." The description of Kyna's friend sounded eerily familiar, and had it been really important Sahalie might have asked if she was talking about Greer—but in the end the knowledge was inconsequential. She pretended it was Greer because it made things easier.

Her mind was a churning ocean of ideals that had been set adrift in her heart by all the wolves she had known in her life. Sven always talked about not abandoning his home or his family, even if they had been cruel to him or cruel to others. There were others in Oak Tree Bend that felt this way about deserters, but the ones with the strongest opinions, in the end, were the ones that had left. Maybe-Greer had said, once upon a time, that he wanted what was best for his family, but what was best for his family was not what was best for him—not in so many words, of course, but that was the gist. So what was the answer? Was a wolf supposed to suffer for their family or was that suffering pointless? Sahalie wasn't sure she had ever seen family as the wolves that had given birth to her, but it did always seem to be made up of the wolves who had been there when she was born: everyone who had had a hand in raising her. She didn't choose them, but she could always choose to add more.

Could she get rid of any?

Her dark lips twisted in concern: there was no doubt Kyna had suffered, but it was confusing to hear that she had suffered under her mother specifically. Then again, Sahalie had never really known or been close to Aponi. She had seemed like a nice enough woman, though maybe that was not true. Was she replacing Kyna? Her gut clenched. It seemed all too familiar: the story of a mother abandoning her children. A dead father. Her young heart ached. "No," she said quietly, "I don't think we were ever meant to."

She sighed, "I don't know what the right answer is... about family and stuff. I just want you to be happy Kyna. I want everyone to be happy. Some wolves are happy when they know they're doing everything they can to keep their family together, some don't. And..and I don't blame anyone. I think if you want to make your own family you should do it." A genuine smile played at the corners of her mouth. "I think happiness is important."

 

At least she was not alone in this mind set.  Well, Greer agreed, of course, but it was nice to know it wasn’t just their little bubble of friendship.  A strange feeling crept up in her chest and the girl slithered forward, jumping beneath the other girl’s chin with the bridge of her nose.  There probably wasn’t a right answer to what they were feeling – the closest they’d get was happiness, and even then, there was no set guarantee.  It was different for everyone, wasn’t it?

With a soft sigh, Kyna nudged her friend again.

“I think we’ve dwelled on this long enough,” she decided executively.  With their long heart-to-heart, the eagles that had first drawn the girls together had long since disappeared, their courtship ritual over soon after it had actually started.  There was nothing else to watch, and probably little else to say.  Besides, she didn’t want to make Sahalie feel any worse.

“C’mon.  Let’s go back.  Perhaps we can ask the others what the eagles were doing.”

The happiness they’d have to find one day at a time.

Exit.

A wild dissertation appears!