Larkcall Lowlands it was hard to know who was more crazy: me, or everyone else

Is set after Drestig and Jessie's visit, but they're not on his mind too much in this thread, so his timeline is safe.

How long had Wraith been gone? The spider felt his companion's absence more keenly with every day, waking up without Morganna sandwiched between himself and the dark wolf, though he continued to function as effectively as ever despite it. Whitestone was bigger than any one wolf and yet Craw felt as though it were diminished by the Kael's absence. Greer, Celandine and Capable had all shared one thing in common - their aloofness, their lack of enthusiasm to throw themselves into the pack as packmates should, their desire to keep themselves just a little bit cold. At least two of the three had proven, so far, that they were loyal despite it, but Craw did not know how much he truly knew them, could trust them. If he asked them to jump, would they ask how high, or would they talk back?

He had more faith in Greer, in that department. Capable would give him lip, but might perform it anyway. Craw chewed on his tongue as he walked through the snow, practically noseblind due to the thick white blanket which covered all interesting tracks. He was not really looking for anything. He just needed some time to roam, to get his thoughts together, maybe to spy a black spot coming from the south.

There was no black spot.

Grumbling to himself, Craw moved on, head down and skin prickling as he felt residual adrenaline refuse to leave his system, wound up and tense.

Despite it being a feature of most of her life, the fact that she had been able to wake up for the last couple days straight in a different place, with no agenda beyond which direction she wanted to go in, continued to be an utter marvel. It felt as though she had been given the key to her cramped cage, and was working all the aches and pains out of her unused joints. It was true that she had been handed the key a few days before she chose to unlock it, yeah, but it wasn't as though she had been escaping some horrible torment. Leaving behind Oak Tree Bend, and all the family she had never thought she'd know, had been one of the hardest decisions she'd ever made.

But as she breathed the fresh air of the rolling tundra, skipping through the snow, she knew it was the right one. Besides, she'd try and come back just like she promised - now there was a little place in the world full of wolves who knew her and cared about her, and like dirt was she going to simply toss them aside. While she might not have been the right kind of wolf to live with them full-time, she could offer that, at least. And oh, the stories she would bring back, the tales from around the world! @Serach would still have never left his little corner of the world, she'd bet her tail on it, but that was okay; Ruenna would explore all its nooks and crannies for him. They were so polar opposite, but she had felt a strong kinship in his company, had appreciated his patience and understanding. She thought she was going to miss him most of all.

The encounter with the sad boy on the mountain was playing on her mind, wilting her bouncy steps just a little, but her old habits had returned fast - a lone wolf could not afford to be unobservant if they wanted to survive for long! Despite her distraction, she noticed the large pale wolf striding far ahead, oblivious to everything else, it seemed. Tail rising, Rue considered whether or not she was in the mood for conversation, and immediately laughed at herself for the stupid question. Of course she was. What kinds of wolves lived up here in this bleak place, where the horizon seemed to stretch for days, and there was hardly enough trees in sight to fill a small hillock!

Playing the 'wheel of ice breakers', Rue came up with 'sneak up on', and adjusted her approach accordingly. Skipping ahead so that she might steathily intercept the stranger, she trotted down the gently-rolling incline so as to better obscure herself from his view, and then fell to her stomach. Creeping back up, using the thick snow as cover - and glad for her fairly-pale fur - the girl shifted until the wolf came back into full view, and just by chance he happened to snort and roll his shoulders and give her an excellent view of his face as his yellow eyes fixed on her, widening in surprise.

Rather than jump up in exuberant greeting, Rue paused. That tone of yellow - in those dark markings. Photographic memory triggered, she reached frantically for the books in her mental library, searching for where she had seen them before. It didn't take long, for her archives were impeccably kept.

"...Khai?" she breathed, and then instantly regretted it.

This kind of aimless wandering served no purpose but to allow him to dwell on his demons, to obsess over those which plagued his thoughts night and day - old and new, dead and fresh. Pharika, a name he hadn't thought of in a season, came to his mind unbidden - memories of talks among willow trees, of limping south, of the sight of a dismembered child. He had hoped to think that Whitestone could erase it, could wipe the slate clean - pah. The demons followed him regardless, no matter if he lived on a rock in the sky or a pit in the ground. He had left them all behind, let them believe he was dead, and made a new life for himself with strangers he had met among willow trees. They were strangers no longer, they were his new family, and this whole time he had pushed down the sick feeling that by building a new family, he had abandoned his old ones. It had been more than a year, and here he was, no more north than when he had first met Capable. No, it was @Wraith doing his hard work instead - pathetic.

His lip curled and he growled into the cold, soft and quiet, snorting his disappointment with himself, and then suddenly there was a girl.

Craw stopped in his tracks, staring at the tear-stained face staring back, mind short-circuiting briefly at the unexpectedness of it. He had barely had time to warn her to get lost before her mouth opened, and out came the dirtiest word of all.

As though she had poured gasoline on a naked fire, he raged. That hint of adrenaline surged until it overtook his blood, was all that pumped through it, and without warning he lunged, barrelling into the girl who squealed and reacted too slowly, and a moment later she was a quivering mess on her back underneath him, tail tucked and lips pulled back in a submissive and terrified grin. The saliva hung thickly from his jowls, teeth bared and the snarl neverending.

"How do you know that name?!"

Barely one line after the one which accurately described the traits of a 'Khai' was one which read, in big, bold letters: WARNING, DANGER. Clearly she had just done as she usually did and gotten ahead of herself. She really, really ought to be more careful about these things.

Her faith in her own note-taking was solidified by the electric reaction the name had on the wolf, who looked as though he might explode at the mere sound of it. Mouth flapping open and closed as she searched in vain for some way to take it back, to take it all back, to just turn around and be on her way, it was of course hopeless. He moved with furious purpose and she yelped as he collided with her, their bulk hilariously different, and she didn't stand a chance - would this be it? Had she really come all this way just to be careless now? With a shaking hand, she underlined the written warnings, and made a hasty, scribbled reminder to herself to finish reading all of her previous studies before just blurting stuff out like that.

Why did she always put warnings at the end? Silly girl.

Flinching and squirming on her back, she expected teeth, pain, but instead all that came was his hot breath in her face, and a voice so rough that it felt like being grated over uneven rocks. Towering over her, Rue peeked an eye open, though she rather wished she hadn't from the sight that greeted her - and yet she realised that her knowledge was what was keeping her untouched. It had also caused the problem in the first place, so she wasn't too grateful for that, yet. Having tossed aside all her notes in her abject panic, Rue went to gather them up, shaking, obedient.

"I m-m-m-met one," she whispered, feeling as though she'd forgotten how to talk, "h-h-he-"

The scar on his neck, visible through the way the fur parted, caught her eye. She paused. Checked a few notes. Glanced at his horrific face again, and double-checked.

"Are y-y-you... Craw Khai?"

She sputtered and hesitated, and a more reasonable wolf might have acknowledged that it was more difficult to think under such hostile circumstances - but in that moment, Craw was anything but a reasonable wolf. He pressed down harder, the growl in his throat urging her to respond, tempted to just rip out her throat for the crime of knowing that word. But then he wouldn't know how she knew - or what she knew.

This strange wolf was the first one in over a year to say that name, to recognise him, and if he had obsessed for months over the barest hints of a wolf called Pharika, Craw was hardly about to brush off a wolf who almost certainly knew who his father was.

Suddenly everything was rushing back far too fast and he wasn't strong enough to hold it all back.

Her reply came quietly, stammered through fear, and it was all confirmed, surely. She had to mean Murdoc. The idea that he was in the presence of a wolf who might know anything that had happened in the last year made him salivate harder than fresh meat had when he was starving.

Then his name was on her lips, and the anger bubbled up again, the sound of those two words paired together enough to bring the taste of bile to his mouth.

"No," he hissed, "never again am I Khai." Pressing one paw on her chest, so she could not escape, so she might feel one ounce of the mass weighing him down, he repeated himself: "How do you know that name."

The fact that her prolonged survival depended entirely on what she knew was only becoming clearly, but it hardly made her feel any better. What if once he was satisfied, he just... disposed of her? Remembering what she had been told about Murdoc Khai, she couldn't help but shiver. Maybe if she dragged it out, satisfied him with what she could remember, sooth his obvious anger -

- oof, the heavy paw on her chest forced most of the air from her chest, and she struggled to inhale, wheezing almost in the same way as he seemed to with every breath. Well, of course he would - that old wound on his throat was pretty nasty, by all accounts. Wolverines were no laughing matter. All her neatly jotted-down details were being found in rapid succession, and she was glad - not for the first time - for her excellent scribal abilities. If it was going to be possible to bore him with what she knew, it was a good thing she knew a fair amount.

It wasn't the first time something like this had happened. She really needed to be more careful. If she made it out of here in one piece.

The fact that this wolf had shunned his father's name came as no surprise, considering what she remembered. Clearly her previous explanation was found wanting, and she struggled for enough of a lungful to be able to offer him more. Please don't kill me. Why was it always the messenger...

"I was exploring the w-waterfalls - had heard of the biggest one, O-oldedge, and wanted to s-see it! I met a wolf who t-told me how many lives it had c-claimed, how many had fallen to their deaths below, how many b-bodies had been found washed up over the years. Wolves and elk and coy-" He pushed harder, and growled louder, and she took the hint. "All except - except one! So I'm a s-sucker for stories you see, so, so I wanted to hear more, and he told me about the family which had torn itself apart. About how a w-wolf - Craw - had tried to revolt against his father, but he'd lost, he'd gone - he'd gone over the w-waterfall - and they hadn't found his body yet, but they'd found the other one, R-row - Roake Cropper, and th-there was a rumour that he'd survived - you, you'd survived - and would come back to finish the job, that it wasn't o-over. That it was just part of your plan. B-but you never came back, you just vanished, and now they didn't know w-what to think or do, because they wanted to l-leave the fields but your daughter refused, she said y-you-"

His head swam. It all felt impossible. After so long, so much waiting, so much needing, some non-visible part of him had just accepted that it wasn't his life anymore. The vocal part, the part which planned and seethed with hatred and craved vengence, it persisted, but as he stared at this wolf who was his solitary connection to the life he'd once had - had once been his everything - he realised that he had, on some level, accepted it as the past.

That part of him fractured and shattered the most he listened.

The possibility that she was lying was infinitesimal, she knew too much, everything she said lined up with his reality. His old reality. Accepting her words as factual, hearing it confirmed that they had felt abandoned - that from their point of view, he had just gone, without warning, never to crawl back up - was a shiv to the gut. Who was this wolf who had told her so much, was the question burning at the forefront of his mind, but he couldn't interrupt her, couldn't stop the tidal wave of information he was so thirsty for.

Until she said something impossible.

Your daughter.

"What."

She frowned, caught off-guard by his blank interruption and the disruption to her flow. Her mouth opened and closed a few times in bewilderment, and he stared at her, all his pistons firing at the wrong times, the cogs shunting out of alignment, the oil low and gears crunching against one another painfully.

"You said - daughter. You said my daughter."

"... yeah. I said your daughter."

She stared at him, and they both blinked at each other in unison. Whether or not he realised it, whether or not it was intentional, the aggression had slipped from his face like a fish off a smooth stone, and what was left behind was nothing but pure disbelief. She might as well have said that she'd met the moon and together they'd ridden off merrily on the back of a sparrow the size of an elk. Why he should have fixated on that particular snippet, she had no idea, nothing in her notes pointed to an obvious reason. But with him still stood over her and his teeth far too close to her face, hey, what was she gonna do, laugh at him about it?

"I didn't meet her, but he told me about her. He-"

Impossible. Improbable. A fantasy. His faith in her truth was spiraling towards the ground uncontrollably, for surely she had to had misspoke, had to be lying, had to be wrong. Ever since falling into the waterfall, he had fuelled himself with the fury born from the fact that both of his precious living children, who he had worked so tirelessly to raise, to create in the first place, had been violently and heartlessly taken from him. He'd seen her blood. Had smelled it. Had been the one to find his son's corpse. She was dead, too.

He, she said again, and something jumped past all the dull fuzziness in his mind to establish whether there was any possibility that she might be right.

"Who is 'he'?"

There are several fresh rabbit tracks in the mud. Hunt Opportunity