Leigh Glen That would be enough

 @Sahalie I'm actually crying rn set on 12/29

 

His paws had taken him to a surprising place. The timbers. Slowly the ground had begun to be pecked with trees, which then transformed into a forest of massive timbers. He felt like he was being enveloped in something warm, but he couldn’t tell if it was comforting or suffocating. Perhaps a bit of both. It had been about a day and a half since he’d stormed off from Sahalie and he was having mixed feelings. He couldn’t tell if his reaction had been justified or not. She hadn’t meant to do that, it had been something that she’d said in the heat of the moment. He was sure of it. But it didn’t take away the sting any less. The silver yearling wondered why he’d come here, of all places. But...perhaps there was something that his subconscious had been trying to tell him. So, he’d gone to sleep late in the night buried in the crook of one of the trees. It felt like he was a pup again.

He felt nauseous.

Another curious thing he’d found...the markers for the Crest were gone. There was nothing left of them besides the bones of the caches. The revelation made him nervous for some reason. Now, he had no clue where the man who had given him so much hell resided. He could be anywhere, he could sneak up behind him on his travels and he would never see it coming. But, another part of him was hopeful that maybe they’d left the lands all together. At the same time, a dark part of him found that unpleasing. The part of him that wanted to do unto the man the harm he had done to him. He shoved those thoughts down, leaving a bubbling uneasiness where it used to be.

It had taken him most of the morning and a sparsely picked at meal for him to decide what he’d come here for, and he wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for it but then again he didn’t think he’d ever be prepared. So, he resolved to make his way down to the glenn. The entirely journey consisted on him stopping more than once, spinning in a circle torn between turning and going forward, then steeling himself enough to take a few more steps. The sound of trickling water reached his ears and his pulse quickened, his mouth going numb but he pressed forward until he left the lining of trees to appear in front of the beauty. The winter had frozen much of the water, but it only added to the magnificence of the scene. And the horror he felt.

Standing completely rigid he looked around, his heart hammering wildly in his chest. His mind ran through the events that had transpired in this place, the events that had made him who he was today. A wolf he hated, a wolf he couldn’t stand to be so much that he’d tried to change his name to become someone else. But he knew he could never be someone else, nothing could remove from him what had happened and the scars that had been carved into him. It had only been the wishful thinking of a young boy. A stupid young boy.

Slowly, his gaze traveled to the spot that Minka’s body had laid. He sucked in a tight breath, the image of her lying there almost as if she’d just been sleeping burned forever into his mind. He moved jelly legged to the spot before collapsing onto his rear, his eyes burning but he held back tears. He couldn’t speak, a lump forming in his throat. Hi, mom, he thought, lowering his head to press his nose to her grave.

(This post was last modified: Jan 04, 2017, 11:37 PM by Kino.)

Sahalie actually had no idea where Alastor had been born.

The trees that engulfed her as the ground began to slope up from the lowlands were a small boon. She felt more at home and she decided that she like it up here, even though it was a little hard to breathe. With the foliage thinned out she could look back out over the tundra, seeing all the land laid out before her without having to climb up the jagged cliffs of the mountains and worry about rock slides or avalanches. The land seemed gentler here, and the girl found herself wishing that she were here in spring time to see all of the colors. Her breath frosted in the air as she turned around, looking for Alastor's half-swallowed tracks in the snow, and continuing onward. Sahalie wasn't sure what to make of the circles in the snow: indecision or confusion, was he looking for something or was he trying to come back to her? At any rate, she thought little of the fact that he had come out here. She figured he had just picked a direction and run.

Being entirely on her own for nearly a day and a half felt strange. She was entirely alone with her thoughts and shaken by the complete indifference of the universe. The sun still rose without a pack around her, the clouds moved and the snow fell. Alastor wasn't here and somehow the world didn't immediately fall apart, but boy was she lonely. And all this loneliness left her a lot of time to collapse into guilt over the things she had said to the boy who had, more or less, given his whole life to her. She had, so often, taken for granted that he was always there for her because he had wanted to be. But he was also there for her because he had no one else to be there for. Sahalie was, very often, upset and saying hurtful things even when she should have learned, over the many months, what sorts of things upset Alastor. She had been trying to tell herself to Stay Positive over the last week, but no one told her that her manta should have been Grow Up instead.

She was not in Oak Tree Bend, anymore, and she was not a child. There was no one to protect her from the damage she caused besides her own tongue and it was high time that she realized it. Beyond her, the girl could hear the hushed sound of a half-frozen waterfall. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth as she continued up the hill, hoping to find the source and quench her thirst with something besides snow for the first time in awhile. The ground under her paws shifted and now she was wandering downward into a small glen that cradled a frosted lake fed by the waterfall she had heard. And, with no climax at all, Sahalie discovered the friend she had been searching for. Sighing, she walked up to his side and studied him in this odd position, his nose to the ground though he was clearly not tracking anything.

"Hey," she said softly. "I wanted...to say sorry."

 

So many thoughts were running through his head like rapid fire, thoughts of his past, his present, and his future. The truth was he didn’t know what he was supposed to do anymore. Sahalie had said that he didn’t care about the Bend splintering apart, and it was true that it wasn’t affecting him nearly as much as it was her, but to him, coupled with Hal, it had been the longest constant in his life. To him, wherever Hal was seemed like home but he’d always associated the Bend with the dark sunspot so...had that made it home as well? A sigh passed his lips and the sound of crunching leaves and snow alerted him to the presence of another. He blinked rapidly, giving a sniff because it was definitely the cold temperatures making his nose run, and turned his head to see who was approaching.

He was surprised to see the young Tainn herself.

His brows creased as she approached and took to his side, glad that she had stopped where she had. It would have been an awkward moment to find his best friend walking over his mother’s grave. And next, she was apologizing and he felt a certain tightness in his chest. He’d done some thinking and he’d realized that he’d been the immature one. She had been hurting and he knew from experience that when someone was hurting they said things they didn’t mean. She hadn’t meant to imply what she did, the thought probably hadn’t even crossed her mind, and then there he’d gone running off leaving her alone when she needed someone most. Some kind of best friend he was.

He shook his head, his voice slightly hoarse but low “No, no don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. I’m sorry that I left like that, I know that you didn’t mean anything like how I took it. I guess I was just...frustrated that I couldn’t help you.” And that was completely true. She was always so helpful to him, always found the chink in his armor and managed to slide on through then bust it open from the inside. But...the problem with Sahalie was that she had no armor. She was open to the world, unaware that she was dodging arrows aiming for her heart. He had no idea how to help a wolf like that, and it frustrated him. “I don’t know why I always run...and I especially don’t know why I ran here of all places,” he muttered mostly to himself. Then, it dawned on him that she’d made a day and a half journey by herself and suddenly he was much more worried. Turning he looked her over quietly, making sure that she wasn’t harmed and the knot in his chest released a little bit when he found her unscatched.

blehhhh???? Bad post idunno. Waiting to get to the good stuff

The boy look like he was going to run again, so she took that as a good sign. Things were normal, and this was just part of their normal, cyclical relationship: something would happen, she would get upset, he would try to make her feel better, they would fight, they would make up. Her head shook as Alastor made his own apology. It was not an apology war. "It's alright." Being upset didn't grant her any special immunity, and this was not the first time it occurred to her that she should watch her tongue instead of spouting whatever came to mind. Sure, being so uninhibited felt like something fundamental to her personality, but she would not cling to something that hurt others. That felt just as wrong as letting go of her ideals. Like always, she was not sure if either were the right thing.

"What do you mean 'here'?" she quipped, glancing up to scan the little glade. It seemed a good a place to stop as any. Nothing wrong with it. But Al seemed to imply, somehow, that there was a significance to this place, and the girl had to wonder, "You been here before?" That seemed a little hard to believe, given how far out they were, but then again Sahalie often forgot that her silver friend wasn't from the eastern valley—until she remembered to use it against him. This place, though it struck her as charming, did not instinctively feel different or important to her in any way.

He has been expecting the question, expected her to latch into his words and understand their meaning in the way that she did. Her way of asking questions in the most innocent but straightforward of ways. And this time he wouldn't run from the questions. For once in his life he was tired of running, tired of fighting a losing battle and tired of feeling like the weight of a world weighed down on him. He would never be able to be an open, completely trusting wolf able to place himself fully in the paws of others but at the moment he was as open as he could get. After all, his heart was laying in the ground at his paws.

A soft chuckle came from his maw and he nodded his head, a small, rueful smirk coming to the edge of his lips. “I actually lived here for the first 5 months of my life. I grew up in this forest, though the actual pack lands are a little ways west of here. They're abandoned now, everything and everyone is gone,” he replied with sureness. After all, he'd gone and trekked through the lands to make sure. There was nothing left of his past and it felt a bit like he was free floating.

"Oh," her eyes bulged. Here. She did a double-take, trying to see the forest differently, meaningfully, but it still felt like nowhere to her. She was starting to see that, perhaps, Oak Tree Bend was only special to her because she knew every inch of it and knew so many stories about this place or that. Every tree was imbued with meaning. But it was just another place, really, no more special than the rest. Did Alastor feel special, standing here, reunited with all his memories? Here, the place that he had been born. Her eyes bulged again, realizing how far they had come to get here and how far Al had to have walked all those months ago to miraculously cross paths with her. It felt like they had come from opposite corners of the earth. Alastor had never struck her as a highland wolf yet, here he was, a boy of the uplands come home at last.

Or was that Kino?

But it wasn't here exactly. This wasn't the packlands. The girl's head turned towards the sun's resting place, galled by the ever mounting distances. But maybe this place would have been like Red Fern Forest or Umbra Copse was to Sahalie: paths that she still walked every day, something that still felt like home. Did this place have its own name, too, she wondered. The girl wondered about every inch of this place, she wondered about all of Alastor's memories that didn't belong to her.

"Gone?" she said, her mouth turned in an uncertain little frown. Alastor didn't necessarily seem upset by this, but then again she knew how he felt about any of the wolves that remained after his mother had passed. Still, she felt an empty throb in her chest as she imagined coming back to a deserted Bend. The blue woods of her birth would be so sad without any wolves to fill it. Perhaps five months was not enough to feel that connection. "Then..." That left some questions, namely: "What are you doing here instead of...over there?" She wanted to see his packlands.

 

He could see her putting the puzzle pieces together slowly in her mind, working out the kinks and straightening the edges of the piece of paper he’d written his secret on and then thrown in her face. But, what all had she connected? Kino watched all the emotions flutter across her face, an open book as always. Sadness, curiosity, awe, all wrapped up in that little fluffy body. How she fit so much inside of her he would never know. He waited for her questions that he knew would come, as sure as he breathed Sahalie Tainn would have questions. And this time he wasn’t going to fudge around the answer.

“I don’t really know. I just sort...ended up here. I guess…” he paused, took a deep breath to try and loosen the tightness in his chest. “I guess I just wanted to see her again,” he replied, looking back down at his paws. To where his mother laid in the ground. “This is Leigh Glenn. My mother’s maiden name was Minka Leigh, the last part of which I adopted when I changed my name. This is where she was buried, right here,” he finished, pushing it out into the open with an effort that made his heart thunder in his chest. No tears pricked his eyes, no anger or resentment burned in him. He wasn’t even sure it was sadness. It was just...heavy. A pinching tightness that fumbled his breathing, his muscles tensing ever so slightly then releasing. There wasn’t anything he could do about Hal being there, he wouldn’t keep it from her anymore, but he did feel bad about unloading all of this on her. She had so much going on, the last thing she needed was his bullshit. He worried that he was starting to drag her down with him.

fff bad post cause my mind is tired and i'm all over the place. delayed this because i wanted to give you a good post but maybe that post will never come xD

Her. Sahalie's face scrunched as she stared at the unmarked snow before her friend's paws, not getting it for the first moment. But when he breathed the word 'Leigh' it all started to come together. Wide-eyed, Sahalie realized she was staring at a grave. The final resting place of Minka Leigh, Alastor's mother. This was her first time hearing that name. She wished she had asked before. Sahalie had grown up in a whole forest of graves and still she never knew exactly how to stand, how to stare, or what to say, but she was struck with the same awe she had felt at Rissa's Rest: this was a woman who had, despite Sahalie's ignorance, a major impact on her life and the lives of many others. This was a part of history. This was a part of Alastor, a part she didn't really know at all.

Gauging how Alastor felt was difficult. His voice contained no emotion she was familiar with. Did it sound resigned? Maybe a little. Sad? That didn't quite capture it. The sound was just loss. So much time and space had come between Alastor and his mother since her death. Guiltily, the girl remembered haughtily clinging to the thought that a dead mother might have been better than a run-away who didn't want her. No. This felt so much worse, so much more confusing. 

Slowly she took a seat next to him, her breath swirling in the air as the snow melted around her paws. "I bet she's glad to see you again. She'd be so proud to see how you've grown." Sahalie didn't know much about mothers, but she knew this was true. Minka was such a pretty name and Sahalie immediately pictured a beautiful woman, maybe a little smaller than Al. And since she had no idea what else she could look like, Sahalie assumed Minka was grey like Al. She wondered how much Al took from her mother. "What was your mom like?" Sahalie hoped that he would remember. 

 

Hal came to sit next to him and he allowed it feeling neither the need to be comforted nor the need to push her away. It just...was. "I bet she's glad to see you again. She'd be so proud to see how you've grown." his friend said with all the optimism she could muster and he appreciated it truly. Looking down at Minka’s grave he wondered if she would be proud of him. He wondered if she would be able to look on him with those same bright, loving eyes and say the words “I’m proud of you.” He swallowed thickly, the tightness intensifying until he felt choked. How he longed to hear those words, to hear her voice and her laugh. The boy wished with every part of him that she would be proud of him, that he had managed to do something right in all the wrong he had committed.

“What was your mom like,” she asked and he paused for a long moment. “She was beautiful...so, so beautiful. She was brown, cream, and red with eyes like yours. But...when she’d smile you could see little grey flecks in them. Like they were some sort of surprise you’d only get when you made her happy,” he breathed, the image of her face flashing past his eyes as if she were standing right in front of him. Like he could reach out and bury his face in her soft fur. “She was always so strong and resilient. I’m named after my dad, Tokino, but she never...she never looked at me like I was him. She never treated me as anyone other than me even though it had to hurt sometimes, seeing a little shadow of your murdered mate who would never get to know their children. Mom was the glue that held us all together. She was etched into the fibesr of every single one of us. She didn’t force herself there, she just sort of...appeared,” he choked out, voice hitching every few sentences. His heart hurt, it hurt so much but at the same time...it was relieving to tell someone. To finally get out some of the things he had kept pent up inside of himself for so long. “I miss her...every day.”

you can either wrap it up with your post or archive here

Minka, in fact, looked nothing like Alastor. Sahalie had always been an admirer of cream, brown, earthy toned coats—a rarity back in the east—and without even picturing her face the girl felt that Minka was beautiful. Squinting a little, Sahalie tried to picture her friend with any amount of brown in his coat: he'd be handsomer for it. She snorted. Apparently Al had inhereited his looks from some other wolf in his history, but Sahalie always knew where she came from: the golden Tainn eyes and the dark Tainn fur. (No one had really pointed out to her that Tainns came in all varieties and flavors. She hadn't seen many of them that weren't black).

Minka sounded exactly like the kind of wolf she wanted to be.

Her own heart fluttered painfully at the sound of his faltering voice, and she pushed her nose into the depths of his silver shoulder fur. It was a feeling she had no direct relation to, but the emotion was strong as it rolled over and she was reminded of all the things and wolves she missed and what kind of pain her friend was in. "I wish I could have met her. Or anyone from your family. You've met my dad and Drift, after all." And he knew Darrah and Reiko and Treyah. And Ruenna. And Kisla. Her family was even larger than this but his felt so...small and fractured.

"I know she misses you too."

Did her mom miss her?