Fallen Tree Cove I just want you to know

For @Neha It's safe to say that Draven has been really reserved since September, not outright rude but definitely avoiding all interactions and insisting that everything was fine

November 22nd, Partly cloudy -1F/-18C

Winter held them firmly in their grasp now whether they were prepared for it or not. Things had changed around the cover while Draven had been keeping to himself and spending all of his time out of territory. Namid no longer led and she herself was much more reserved, Moonshadow had returned and taken up the crown and the pups were practically adults now. Snow covered all the open areas and while the smaller puddles were frozen the lake just looked uninvitingly cold despite its liquid surface. The teen no longer had the excuse to be out looking for herbs all the time though he still spent as much time as possible in the infirmary, sorting and memorizing.

His mind often wandered to Neha before he could force himself to focus on his work, he knew he had pushed her too far away to go back to what they had. He had had her for a brief period of time, journeying to the Hollow whenever he could to see her but then he had just stopped. Draven had been so wrapped up in grieving the anniversary of his mother's death and the depression afterwards that he couldn't bring himself to interact with anyone. Too easily this became his silent routine, even when asked his only reassurance was that he was fine, everything was fine just busy preparing. The Lagina had never explained to her and now it would be much too late and even if it wasn't he didn't know the words to fix this.

Leaving the safety of the infirmary into the biting cold of the outside air Draven made his way down towards the lake for a drink. It would be only a brief break before he would return to where he had practically been living and he could get back to work. Depression may not have its claws in the dark teen anymore but the routine he had taken up had never broken, he had pushed everyone away and had too much pride to seek them out now.

Sorry for the wait here!
<3

Ever since her return home, things just weren't the same as they were before. She had missed so much. There was such change. Her much admired mother had stepped down from leadership, leaving Moonshadow to take her place. She still did not know why Namid had chosen this route, nor the tragedy that lead to her downward emotional spiral. Nathaniel, their guardian was gone. Her brother and younger sisters, she saw very little of. And Draven, she saw him even less. So much so that his telltale scent barely lingered at the borders these days. For Neha, this new atmosphere within the pack was unsettling. It made her stomach twist into tight knots, striking her nerves with uncharacteristic apprehension. What on earth had happened while she was gone?

Instead of being her usual upbeat, bouncy self, the day found the pale agouti wolf in a rather somber mood. Everyone she was closest to was being so distant. But her close friend, who had gone out of his way to visit her in Grizzly Hollow? That hurt. She expected better of him as a friend, instead of dismissing her concerned prodding, almost coldly. Neha was no fool, despite the same old answer Draven gave time and again. She had developed a perceptive side. To the point that from just one look at those she knew best, that she could tell if something was wrong. It had only been for his sake, and out of sheer politeness, that the normally straightforward princess refrained from forcing answers out of Draven. Any other wolf would have been subjected to her almost demanding, sassy attitude until she got what she wanted.

During the middle of one of her shifts doing a thorough patrol, Neha was surprised to find that his scent was relatively fresh again. He must have returned, from wherever it was he went off to. Uncertain if he would be sticking around for long, or planning to vanish on yet another of his lengthy absences, she altered her route to the lake. Which was hardly a bother for her, as her patrols always consisted of checking the perimeter of the vast body of water. Her paws squelched and crunched through the snow and mud, staining them a dark brown color, but she didn't notice. Her brown eyes were fixed on the tall, dark form of the male she hadn't seen in so long, knelt at the waters edge. As she approached, the longer she looked at him, the more she became aware of a slowly building spark of resentment. Stopping a few wolf lengths behind him, she announced herself. "Draven. I've been wondering when I'd find you again." She said, without the usual sprightly warmth in her voice, but instead a more monotone one.

Neha can often be found close to Aleister's side and therefore may appear in any of his threads.

The water that splashed into his mouth was freezing but not nearly as cold as his body felt the moment Neha's scent filtered to him. His maw faltered and froze above the water as he heard the paw steps approaching before he recovered. Draven's mouth felt dry but he knew no amount of water could fix it, he could only pray that the princess would keep moving with her patrol. He couldn't stand seeing the confusion and hurt in her brown eyes, the look he knew would be there as it had been every time he had seen her recently. Everything had stayed the same and yet so much had changed between them in the last two months, all of it had been his fault.

So he continued to lap at the water, hoping the sound of footsteps would keep going. Hoping that he could selfishly pretend that he hadn't hurt her when he had stopped visiting her in Grizzly Hollow, that it had been coincidence every time he had noticed her trail and changed his direction. Namid might not have known why he had been depressed but she understood the feeling that had gripped him, but how could he put that into words for Neha? She was such a brightness, a sun really, so how could she understand the darkness that was within him?

Yet when she spoke and the yearling lifted his head he saw only a shell of what had once been such a blinding beacon of hope. Her tone was emotionless and there in those warm eyes was exactly the expression he had hoped wouldn't be there. Dropping his gaze in shame he could only offer, "I'm usually in the infirmary," it was a poor excuse and Draven knew it but he didn't know what else he could say.

Even the brightest of suns could be overshadowed by ominous clouds of darkness. But if their light was strong, then given time, they would eventually break through the forlorn shadows, triumphant. Just as the sun itself was blocked out by clouds temporarily, this phase in her life, represented just such a time. It too would pass, sooner or later. The same could be said for Draven, except no one could predict how long his own darkness would hold back the light. Perhaps weeks or months...perhaps an entire lifetime.

She hadn't known what to expect from the Lagina after she had addressed him. Silence? The same old indifference? When he turned his head to look at her with those mossy green eyes, a stab jolted through her chest. She found it painful...awkward to look at him. As if he were some stranger she had never met before. An entirely different wolf altogether. Her ears folded back, pinned firmly to her head while she registered the one sentence he uttered. Of course he was! That much was obvious enough for any idiot to figure out, given his interest in becoming a healer, just like her. Her dark lips tightened into a thin line as her stale emotions vanished, morphing into something more, the flames of irritation gradually flaring.

Her ears shot back up as a huff escaped her lips, tail swinging with the first signs of agitation. "Yes. That's true." She replied evenly, almost too calmly. A step forward, but then another. "But I don't believe that. How does that jive with how faint...how lacking your scent has been in and around the territory?" Her brown eyes flashed, more severely now as she pinned him under her gaze. She had caught him....backed him into a corner, and they both knew it. Her nose didn't lie, and neither did those of everyone else who called the Lake their home.

 

 

Neha can often be found close to Aleister's side and therefore may appear in any of his threads.

Even with his gaze planted so firmly upon her paws the boy couldn't mistake her anger, the way the air swished past her tail as it lashed. Draven steeled himself for it, knew that he deserved it even but what he wasn't prepared for were the words that came from her mouth. That paired with the tone that they were spoken with made it sound all too much like an accusation. He had stopped going on his long trip months ago, before the snow even really set in. Sure he avoided the others and he still left for trips that required him to spend the night elsewhere but he was far less absent than he had been at the beginning of the fall.

Draven's green eyes shot upwards, filled with anger of his own. Standing his ground as she walked closer his own dark tail began to twitch behind him in agitation, face composed other than the anger clear in his gaze. Before he could raise his banner in indignation a thought occurred to him; Neha outranked him. It was something he had always objectively known and it had never bothered him before as his lower rank was not something he often focused on. The yearling had no desire to be a leader, being a healer would be enough for him. But in this very moment he wished they could be equals.

But they weren't, even if their ranks had aligned they wouldn't be equals.

Neha belonged here and Draven had only been taken in due to an injury and @Namid's pity and he had been trying like hell to show that he was worth it ever since. Even when he had been lost and drowning and Neha had been gone and he had been travelling he always came back with herbs. The though finally cracked his mask and the annoyance and frustration showed through, "Perhaps you should check your nose Princess. I never spend more than a day out of the territory, my border patrols are just less frequent than the others as I am studying in the medical den." The yearling regretted the words the minute they left his mouth but there was nothing he could do now. Just like always he fucked it up.

In wolf society, where rank meant a lot, it was not something that Neha was concerned with right now. She may be a Princess by blood, and heir to the crown as the firstborn, but she never let that go to her head. She wanted to enjoy her youth before the trials and hardships of adulthood could be ignored no longer. She wanted to learn more, expand her knowledge and skill set. And yet, her she was, face to face with Draven and just one such challenge that life as an adult, was guaranteed to throw in her path.

She was not quite bristling yet, but she was being pushed close, especially given Draven's snippy, heated retort. That took her by surprise, as she had never seen her friend angry, much less annoyed before. Like the fearless little spitfire she was, the pale agouti Princess rebounded, standing her ground. With a curl at the corner of her lip and a dismissive snort, she tossed her head to the side. "Fine. I admit that my nose was wrong, for once." Her brown eyes glared past the lake, down towards the distant treeline. "But maybe that is because I have been so damn distracted in trying to figure out what the heck has gotten in to you." She turned back to regard him, drawing her head up just a little higher. "Though you know what? I might as well quit while I'm ahead. I have been trying to help you, Draven. But what good will that do if one doesn't want to be helped?" She ended coldly, with that same indifference he had shown her. Deep down of course, she still cared. Her heart was just fogged over with anger and hurt, so maybe a taste of a different kind of medicine....his own, would work a miracle. Grumbling under her breath, ears flattened, she turned to resume her lone patrol around the lake. 

 

 

Neha can often be found close to Aleister's side and therefore may appear in any of his threads.

There is a family of deer nearby. Hunt Opportunity

The curl of her lip and the cold way she turned her eyes away from him felt as if Draven had been struck across the face, worse even. But what had been started here today couldn't be stopped. All of the frustration that he had felt in himself and the alienation he had caused had reached a boiling point and no amount of frozen lake water could cool it. Despite it all he held her tongue as she admitted that she had been wrong and claimed it had only been because she had been trying to figure him out.

Don't let her figure you out, she'll run.

The thought ran through his mind so quickly that Draven was almost taken aback, but he knew it was true. Everything that he touched and he cared for came crumbling down around him. His mother and her pack, his siblings, Namid's own mental health and because of it the Cove. If Neha really knew what happened when he cared she would flee as far and fast form him as she possibly could and she would never look back.

Suddenly the dark face flinched as if this time he really had been struck across the face. A kind of wild desperation mixed with hurt entered his eyes as he retorted without thought, "Help me!? You weren't even here Neha." That he knew this hadn't been her fault didn't make the pain of it any less. The truth was he had needed her when he had been grieving and she hadn't been here, couldn't have known to be here but wasn't here all the same.

She stopped dead in her tracks, all four paws sinking gently into the dampened soil by the lake. Although she had heard him, her ears remained pinned. The only sign of acknowledgement she gave was an ever so slight turn of her head, but not enough to fully look at his face, dark with turmoil. Her chest tightened, knots forming around her heart. She didn't know what to feel. Confusion? Sorrow? Outrage? This had all spiraled out of control so fast, and her racing mind didn't know which way to turn. Neha did not come here looking for a confrontation, even if her mood had been less than chipper. But Draven had the fuel to add to the fire, which was only growing more and more out of control.

Finally something snapped, and jolted out of her daze, suspended between emotions, the Vuesain whirled around sharply. She was a speedy little thing, closing the space between her and her darker counterpart in just a few strides. Her lips were drawn taut, shielding the flash of teeth he may very well deserve. Her body shook, from her legs up to the gentle tips of her ears, as she sputtered, at a loss for words, only briefly. "H-how dare you! How the hell could I have helped you then, when I was all the way across the mountain?!" Now she threw all caution to the wind, her tail slicing through the air, her voice echoing across the lakeside. She didn't give a damn who heard her...let them come and witness this fiasco, however painful it may be for her to be scrutinized under their eyes.

"What do you think I am, a mind reader or something?! I had no way of knowing if something was wrong with a mountain between us! And what's more, you were the one who stopped visiting!" And it was true. When Draven had first started seeing her in the Hollow, everything had seemed fine. But then, all of a sudden, his visits had ceased. She could have chalked it up as guilt for being away from home for too long. Immersed in studying her little tush off, of course she would have no way of knowing anything was amiss, without someone to relay that to her. She had to pause, moistening the inside of her cheeks, before finding her voice again, this time a little calmer. "Ever since I came back...everything...everything has changed. Including you. Time and again, I have tried to be there. I always have. But you...you just shut me out." A lump formed in her throat...she couldn't stand to look at him. But she would not run...she would not back down, even as the first hot tears of anger and hurt ran down her face.

 

 

Neha can often be found close to Aleister's side and therefore may appear in any of his threads.

@Neha exit and archive on your next post? <3 Sorry this took so long

As soon as she paused he knew he had made a mistake, but his pride was too much to bear to apologize. Instead he stood tall, resolve steadying him as he waited for whatever her reaction to his words would be. Oh, and what a reaction it was. Instantly she was in his face, body trembling all over as her brown eyes flashed through emotion after emotion. His own feelings were well hidden behind the mask he put on, not even an inkling of what was happening in his heart portrayed on his face. Her words, as hurtful as they were, were true.

He had stopped visiting, she was across the mountain, he had never spoken of his grief to her before she left or after she had returned. But, there was a single point left that he hadn't voiced yet. Green eyes grew cold in his head as the tears began to fall down her cheeks, "You left Neha. You left your mom and your baby siblings, you left your pack and your home. You left." That was all he had to say and now it was out there.

He didn't wait to hear what she would say or look to see her reaction. Instead Draven turned away from her and walked back towards the infirmary, away from whatever it was that they had been. Whatever it had been or could have been laid in ruins behind him, and he had too much pride to look back and see the smoke. Laginas had always been good at running when things got hard afterall.