Spectral Woods the perks of being a wallflower.

Backdated to 4/19 -- For @Aponi and @Serach (if interested!)

If she had really pushed herself, Kyna probably could have made it to the borders of Oak Tree Bend much more quickly than she did. It had been the entire purpose of her journey away from her home and her Greer – that she’d stopped to visit Sahalie and Quaking Vale first was simply a delay tactic. The point was to steel her nerves…and find a suitable gift, of course. She might not have parted ways on particularly good terms, but the Archer still had some manners about her.

The marmot tasted like ash in her mouth as she set it down. Its lifeless eyes stared back at her, and the young woman sighed. She had to do this. It would only eat away at her. Greer’s parents had died recently – she’d already lost her father. Did she really want similar news, knowing the last time she’d screamed and raved at Aponi like some sort of lunatic?

She was not certain if she could forgive the woman, not yet – but they were close, and Kyna knew better than to ignore it. It was now or never. She needed to get home as quickly as possible, dig herself a den, and-- One step at a time. Kyna lifted her strawberry muzzle and called for the pack’s alphas; she was here to see her mother, but she had to apologize to Serach, too.

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..... I am sorry that Aponi is well....Aponi

 

Aponi stared at the hare that had been pointedly laid before the birthing den where she had been napping. It's pelt seemed brilliant against the snowy backdrop and it's scent would have made her salivate any other time of the year. Right now though, right now all it did was make her stomach roll uneasily. These presents had been appearing regularly while she had been sleeping, the scents attached to the morsels ever changing. The pack she knew meant well and that the food was good for the pups, but her nausea this year stood unmatched to any of her previous pregnancies. So instead of eating it the expectant wolf stood there staring at it, steeling herself to attempt to enjoy the rabbit despite her gut's protests.

When the call rose up Aponi immediately stepped over the rabbit in relief, not having touched a single hair on it. It took her a couple of moments of quick trotting for it to really sink in who had called, Kyna. Another mother may have been relieved that she was well enough to be at their borders, ecstatic to see their daughter come to visit. Another mother was not Aponi. The realization only slowed her paws, she would attend to the call but she would do it at her own damn pace. The Donata certainly wouldn't rush her swollen body and arrive huffing and puffing to see the blonde girl who had deserted at the pack's time of need. Especially not given how the yearling had screamed at her before her retreat.

Strolling through the foliage and to the border the first thing the blue eyes settled upon was the marmot at Kyna's feet. Aponi's nausea hit her with another wave and she had to take a deep breath to steady her stomach at the sight of it laying there in the snow. Then they saw her daughter's swollen sides. All the air that she inhaled came out in a swift sigh as she shook her head, "Kyna I thought I warned you about what was coming this spring." The words were said with disappointment, like a mother who had found out their child had failed a test. Had that talk been for nothing?

 

She came. The smell of the lead female predated the woman’s arrival, but Kyna could not leave now and fear no repercussions. It was with no great surprise that her mother was expecting again – but now, it was her right. She was the lead female of Oak Tree Bend. Frankly, she could do whatever she wanted. And as the lead of the mountain pack, the strawberry blonde had that very same right.

“Mother,” she greeted the other alpha, offering a small nod of her head. She did not move the marmot any closer. If Aponi wanted it, she would say so. The woman was hardly a shrinking violet. “You did. This was not an accident.”

Just as Lila had been no accident, just as the current litter the woman was carrying was likely quite intentional, too. But her first child? Kyna still wondered if she and Phineas had intended to have a child. Certainly didn’t seem that way. But that was not why she was here, not the matter of her own birth, and certainly not a worry for her upcoming litter. It was, without question, intentional. “My mate and I founded a pack on the mountain. But I wanted to see you before they were born.”

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A wild dissertation appears!

Aponi met the nod of welcome with little more than a slight incline of her own chin. By now Kyna should not have expected anymore, she knew her mother well enough to know that the Aquila's would hold a grudge to their grave. Even if it was against their own blood. The smell of the marmot was still wafting towards her and the silver wolf had to grit her teeth in an attempt to keep her stomach contents down. Her nausea certainly did not raise her mood towards the current meeting.

So that was it then. Kyna had come here to brag about gaining a mate and a pack of her own on the mountain, something Aponi herself had never been able to achieve. Jealousy and possession reared their ugly head but the mother concealed them well behind her composed mask. Smiling slightly, the way someone in customer service might towards a customer who just announced their engagement she glanced towards the strawberry blonde's swollen sides once more. After a pointed stare she lifted her gaze to lock it onto the fiery eyes, "Congratulations on your good fortune, I hope my grandchildren will be happy as healthy." Aponi could be cruel at times but she would wish no ill will onto her own kin. She would never wish for them to do better than she herself, but she did not want ill for Kyna. Or her grandchildren.

Moving on. "So why have you come?" The mother and daughter were not exactly on visiting terms.

(This post was last modified: May 06, 2017, 10:55 PM by Aponi.)

One tooth dug into her lower lip as Kyna fought every fiber of her being, resisting the urge to sigh at her mother’s stiff response. Whatever she’d been expecting of this meeting, that reaction was not it. Listless was not a word she’d often apply to Aponi, but the response couldn’t even be classified as cold. It…it simply was. It left the strawberry blonde on uneven footing, ears falling to an airplane position as she stared forward and steeled herself.

She did not come here to grovel and cry like a puppy. She was still young, but her swollen sides were enough to insist she was no longer a child.

“Because I left on poor terms,” Kyna replied evenly, making no move to approach her mother any further. Pregnant or not, she was all too aware the silver shewolf was still dangerous. “And I did not want it to end like that.” Aponi would not care what happened to Greer’s parents, nor would she care that her daughter still thought of Phineas nearly every day. Quite frankly, it would probably go to her head to know her eldest child still did not want that to be the last time she saw her mother. It was unlikely their relationship would be anything even remotely maternal, but still--

“So I came to apologize to you, but also Serach. I shouldn’t have yelled at you, and I should have said goodbye to him.”

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(This post was last modified: May 06, 2017, 10:40 PM by Kyna.)

A wild dissertation appears!

Kyna's ears fell sideways and somewhere deep in her stomach Aponi felt some kind of sick satisfaction. She wanted nothing more than to go back and stop this relationship from becoming what it had but nobody could do that. If the Donata was a less proud wolf she would have let it all be water under the log but she was a proud woman, and she could not let it go. This though, coming all the way down the mountain while pregnant to apologize or at least be under the pretense of apologizing did ice the bruise a little.

A little bit of the mask slipped away, maybe it was the pregnancy hormones that was allowing her to be vulnerable more often. With Serach and now a little with Kyna, but the reason didn't matter. Her eyes softened a little when she looked onto the pregnant stomach of her child again, this was her daughter and those would be her grandchildren. Taking a step forward, the smallest of steps but she urged to press her snout against the blonde sides and see if the pups would respond to her touch.

Lifting her eyes at the end of her daughter's statement she paused after the first step. This might have been a step forward in their relationship but there was still a lot of history between the pair, two years of misunderstandings and long silences. But, they weren't the only ones who had history here. Aponi couldn't help the note of accusation in her voice, "@Lila should have been the one you said goodbye to. Serach was hurt, but not as much as your sister." Aponi wasn't scolding her as she had when Kyna had been a child and been rude, this was a conversation between adults. However, Lila had just been a child who had been confused by her older sister's sudden departure without a word.

The silence no longer bothered Kyna the way it had when she was a child. Whether this was a product of maturity or all the quiet time spent with her inky shadow, or perhaps a combination of both, she allowed her mother to process with no attempt to hurry the process. She simply stood her ground as Aponi approached, the offering forgotten, and brushed her nose against the redhead’s sprung ribcage. Before the alpha could say anything, someone inside give a small push back – well, it certainly didn’t feel small. A soft grunt escaped her as she glanced back at her sides; when they did that, it felt like she might explode. It only reinforced what she already knew – once her meeting here at Oak Tree Bend was concluded, she could waste no more time returning to her mountain home.

But… She might have to linger a little longer.

Aponi’s accusation drew a soft sigh from her daughter’s lips, ears falling further downwards. “I-- Yes. You are correct.” To be frank, she had not considered what Lila would think. She’d barely even thought in the moment, too fired up by panic and adrenaline. While she’d considered Serach a friend, possibly, ties of blood linked her with Lila. She might not be Celandine, but at this point, she was hardly any better than the haughty princess. Her tail twitched. Hopefully, she would be a better mother than she was a sister. “If she is here, I will speak to her before I go. I do not-- I did not make things easy, I understand, but that is easy for me to say now looking back. I had no idea what I was doing. After you left and came back, after my father dropped dead--” And never would she forget his expression as he crumbled back to the earth. “—I thought you were trying to replace me with a better daughter. I wanted to be a good sister, but I had no idea how. I had no idea where I fit.”

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@Aponi -- And heeeere come the emotions.

A wild dissertation appears!

A young deer has been separated from the rest of its herd. Hunt Opportunity

Aponi could not stop the smile that cracked through her composure as she felt the nudge through her daughter's stomach against her muzzle. So her grandchildren would hold as much fire as her own children then. Lila had left her own ribs battered and bruised before she had been born, Kyna had been much more composed even as a fetus. The joyful expression was short lived as the silver woman returned to the topic at hand, her daughter's sudden departure that had effectively severed her ties with Lila.

The mother considered Kyna's words carefully before she made any kind of response. It took a lot to set aside her ego and admit that she had been wrong, but was that enough to put everything in the past? Her abandonment, the fury she had displayed on the night that she had left? The pack had almost crumbled beneath their very paws and the strawberry blonde had not even taken a single look back at the destruction as she too chipped away a piece of the foundation. It was the last sentence that caused Aponi's own ears to fall back in dismay, was that what her daughter thought she had been doing?

Her first instinct was to drop her gaze away and give some sort of platitude, use the same tone that she had when she had congratulated the pregnant she-wolf. Instead she fought through this urge and raised her icy blue eyes to stare directly into the fiery orange of her daughters, "I could never replace you Kyna, even if I tried. Lila was a surprise to even me and if anything I hoped she would bring you and I closer rather than farther apart." There it was, laid out bare for the Archer to see; the truth.

"I'm proud of you Kyna."

For perhaps the first time, Kyna’s own honesty warranted honesty. Where fear had stilled her tongue in the past, the young adult had done a lot of growing on her own in the past few months, cold and alone on the mountain she so loved. Yes, she had recruited others to join her in her home on high, but @Ember had not been wrong when she had touched on the idea of finding one’s self. Oak Tree Bend had not been bad to the strawberry blonde, but as long as she remained in the shelter of the dense forest, she had no idea just who she was.

“I-- What?”

At no point in their relationship had she ever dared hope that Aponi thought that highly of her. For a brief moment, open surprise rolled over her face before she could school her expression into something more neutral. She shook her head, a small, self-depreciating chuckle falling free from her dark lips. “That is not-- That is not what I expected to hear,” she admitted, her voice hoarse with unlabeled emotions. “That is something I wanted very badly when I was younger, and thought I could do no right. I understand, now, that you need to be able to take pride in yourself before you can worry what anyone else thinks.”

A small smile played across her face. “I would like to be able to bring the cubs down, when they are old enough. So they know their family. Greer’s parents died this past winter, and I-- Want something better for them than how I feel towards Naira.” Better for them than what she dealt with, even if at least half of her troubles were self-imposed.

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A wild dissertation appears!