Quaking Vale dream lantern

@Draven set at night, a day or two after the claiming. clear sky

Heat had faded at last but somehow it felt like Spring itself had yet to arrive. Sahalie could not remember the snows lingering so long last year, which sort of troubled her knowing that her pack was so small and out here alone save for Oak Tree Bend—which was smaller now without her. For once, though, the sky was not coated with snow-filled clouds and for the first time in what felt like ages she was able to watch the stars twinkle at night and it was a refreshing sight as she contemplated the state of things and her life in general. The main question on her mind: was she happy?

It sure felt like it. There were still worries—like the warm weather deciding it would not come after all—and hurdles ahead of her—namely, figuring out a system that would balance her and Alastor's principles—but overall yes this was what she wanted and where she wanted to be. The realization was like a cold drink from Heiress Loch in the summer heat: a small, complete, but welcomed shock. She sighed, finally releasing most of the pent up anxiety she had carried north and south again with her. She'd done it, they'd all done it. Quaking Vale was hers and soon she could set her heart on a new dream and she could reach farther than ever before. Soon, but not now. For now she would just enjoy her success and work out the rest of the kinks. The difficulties themselves wouldn't be intrinsically joyful but she was not afraid of getting her paws dirty and the work would be rewarding.

The last piece of the puzzle, besides her co-leader, was his brother.

It was perhaps the first night since they had claimed this territory that the stars shone unhindered through the trees. It was also the first night that Draven was willing to admit how much he missed the mountain. At the Cove the stars seemed to shine a million times closer than they looked down here in the earth, back on the mountain there was nothing to block the view. While the woman who led was spending her time looking up at the welcome sight of the heavens above the man's green eyes lay focused somewhere else.

Home.

It was a weird word that he hadn't really known what the definition was after his mother had died. It was a word he thought he could define again after reconciling with Alastor and with Neha, but now here without her it had lost its meaning again. He was torn between the two places, the two wolves really who made him feel like he belonged but he had made a commitment and he would see it through. Draven could only hope the Vuesain princess would decide to join them so once again he could feel settled in one place.

So lost in the thought of her he almost didn't notice that Sahalie was also awake, her wandering paws alerting him where he lounged. If it was Alastor he would have chuffed and announced his presence, but instead he remained silent. His gaze watched her as she moved, curious as to what she was doing, wondering if in her head her thoughts stammered like her words during the claiming.

Off to her left she realized that she had mistaken Draven's motionless form for sleep. Had she woken him, or was he being kept awake by other things? Either way that bizarre, summer-canopy stare rooted her paws to the ground as she stared back at him. Sahalie knew nothing about this boy besides the things that had happened to him and Alastor when they were barely weaned. All she had to characterize him by was that he cried loudly over his mother's dead body, and a chill swept over her body as she considered this. Draven had no mother--only a rekindled sibling relationship with Alastor. But was he happy? Did he like it here? The dark boy was even quieter than his ghostly brother, but there had to be something behind those eyes. Some sort of story that was all his own, everything that had happened after his mother, after Alastor.

Only one way to know.

"I don't know why I always imagine I'm the only one awake," she said quietly with a smile, motioning with her snout for him to join her on a walk or something. The others appeared to be asleep and she wouldn't want to bother them. "And honestly I'm glad to share my view of the stars with someone else." They radiated above the bone-white forest like cold, glittering embers expecting something magical to happen at any moment. Perhaps there would be an aurora tonight. That would be a fitting welcome to the new home.

"Please," she added, her smile deepening when it occurred to her that perhaps he would not want to walk with her or talk at all. He was here for Alastor, after all. Not her.

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

At first it seemed like she would just walk by and continue on her own and Draven was fine with that. He would watch until her own dark form disappeared through the thin trembling trees and he would go back to admiring the stone beast blocking out the sky. Then she paused. Instinct told him it was polite to look away and so after a moment his gaze dropped down to his own paws in respect. His own personal feelings of unease towards her mattered little when she was the alpha, this was pack law.

The dark man lifted his eyes slightly and gave a small forced smile to her in return, though the back of his head rang perhaps because you also assume this pack is just yours. Her request did not fall on deaf ears though he would rather stayed in solitude where he was. It reminded him of when Vesper had asked to speak with him within the walls of the communal den. If an alpha asked you to do something, even something seemingly casual and social you did it.

Standing he shook his raven pelt back into place and quickly stretched his legs to loosen them from the stiffness of laying still. Joining Sahalie in her pace away from the others he kept a respectful distance between them, but remaining silent. She had asked him to walk with her after all, and he was fine to pretend that they had just come out here to look at the stars if that made her more comfortable. Draven just prayed she wouldn't start asking questions and forcing conversation.

The fact that he said nothing was a bad sign, but she would have to just push through it. Larkspur had tried to eat her and now he wouldn't live anywhere without her, but somehow this felt worse. When targeted with violence there was a definite beast to grapple with. Silence, though, could mean anything, leaving her no direction to start from except to know that it was important to begin now lest she miss the opportunity forever. Clearly he wouldn't want to talk to her, but Sahalie was nothing if not used to yammering on in spite of all clear warnings. This was all she was good at.  

"I know you came from the mountains, but I'm afraid to admit I didn't really ask Al anything else about you," she admitted, her weak smile directed out into the distance as they headed towards the north. "Al can be pretty... private about things so I didn't really want to press him about it." And what was there to ask Al, really, that was not to personal for her to hear. "Made more sense just to talk to you."

"It just seems so crazy to me that, after all this time, the two of you weren't even that far apart at all." Draven was up the mountain and Al was in the valley, but somehow it took the two of them tramping up and down all of Relic Lore to discover that he was just above their heads. "I've even been up that way a few times. To Fallen Tree Cove. I met Cernan when I was pretty young. Just seems nuts that I could have run in to you, too, without even knowing it."

Any hopes that she would be silent was quickly dashed as she began a monologue about how private Alastor was. The irony of that statement seemed to be lost on her, she didn't want to pry at her co-lead so she was coming to do it directly at the source. He did his best to hum a response at what seemed like the right parts, the breaks in her sentences but he offered her no words of his own. Instead he just kept the slow pace with her and let her talk, Sahalie seemed happy enough to carry the conversation anyways.

That is until she stopped talking and the silence began to stretch out between them. Draven realized then that she was expecting some kind of verbal response rather than the noncommittal hms that he had been providing her with. Without raising his gaze from where it lay focused dead ahead he responded, "Cernan isn't with the Cove anymore." The words were flat, he had never been close with his age mate and the only real time they had spent together had been being attacked by swans. His leave from the pack had just meant one less set of paws to patrol the borders and aide in hunts.

He wondered if that's what the members of Fallen Tree Cove thought of him now.

s

"Oh." She said, stopping suddenly. Sahalie and Cernan had never been close by any stretch of the imagination, but she had liked the boy immensely both in spite of and for his short comings and stammering. If she had been talking to any other wolf the next words out of her mouth might have asked where he was or what happened to him, but Draven's emoitionless tone was like an impossible mountain blocking her path. Either he did not care about Cernan personally, did not know, did not feel that she was entitled to know, or really did not want to talk to her. Given his overall expression and behavior lately, though, Sahalie was inclined to think it was either one or both of the last two options. Which struck a final chord with her.

Her lips pursed. "Look. I may talk 'til the crows come home and look like I was birthed yesterday but I wasn't. I don't know you, you don't know me, but I can tell pretty easily there's something about me that you don't like. Do I like that? No. It kinda hurts to feel like I'm being judged for something I don't know. Are you entitled to that? Maybe. Am I going to try and change your mind? Probably. Do I need us to be friends? No." She wanted to be friends but she wouldn't force that on him or anyone else. Even Larkspur had not been coerced into tolerating her. If he had snapped at her and told her he never wanted to see her again then she wouldn't have come back. 

"I'm an honest wolf and that's all I know how to be. I can't hide things and I can't avoid things. I just want to understand you. Draven. I want to know what you want. You followed your brother out here and if what's important to you is reconnecting with Al and that's it, then that's fine. I respect that. But you could have done that from the mountain. You coulda come and seen him all the time. You want something else, something more. That's what I see, at least. And I just want to help." Because certainly if he didn't like her there was no reason to put up with the future she had planned for the pack. He wouldn't like it one bit. 

He would have been fine to let her continue to drone on about fate and distance and mountain and valleys and stars after his one sentence interjection. Unfortunately, it seemed that his only sentence had opened an incredibly uncomfortable pile of worms. Sahalie stopped dead in her tracks and because it had been silent between them it was very obvious when the sound of her paw steps ceased. Glancing over his shoulder in curiosity towards the small dark woman he almost flinched when he saw her pursed lips. It seemed he had made a mountain lion of the stammering girl.

Turning to face her Draven dropped his gaze respectfully to her paws and prepared for the punishment he was about to receive for.... something. His silence? Not carrying the conversation? How was he supposed to get a word in edgewise? Still, it was within her rights as alpha to roll out punishment as she saw fit and it was his duty to take it.

What came out of her mouth was not at all what he had been expecting. The temper he usually reined in save for a few unfortunate instances rose, despite his best effort to beat it down. His tail twitched behind him in irritation as Draven took a few deep breaths, prepared to bite his tongue and say nothing. Until her last words. "I followed my brother because he is all I have left of my family and I'm not willing to half ass it from the mountain. I left a lot behind to be here today for him so I respectfully apologize for not being happy enough for your standards I will do my best to improve in this area. But my god, I am not the one that needs help Sahalie. I left to come here for him but you're blind if you can't see that he's left everything behind multiple times for you because he loves you and it kills him that you don't feel the same way. I hadn't seen him in a year and a half and he told me that all that matters to him is your happiness even if you don't feel the same way. I don't need your help to be happy but it would be so easy for you to take away his pain."

Realizing that he had stepped way over the line his green eyes dropped back to his own paws and his ears fell back. This time he deserved the punishment he was likely to recieve.

Sahalie's mouth only tightened—though she felt the urge to succumb to her childhood habit of lip-chewing—and her eyes arched a little at the "half-assing" comment, not sure what to make of it. Life had been full of family members coming and going and giving the whole "family thing" a half-hearted attempt at best. Her own father had moved across the mountain to raise a different family with a different women. Somehow it felt like all Tainns were inept in some sort of capacity, despite how desperately they clung to their legacy and the story of this land. But she would never have accused anyone else for half-assing it. Was this maybe because, after being disappointed and stood up so many times, she had just come to fill that hole and those standards with other responsibilities and wolves in life? If Draven had stayed in Fallen Tree Cove she wouldn't have thought more or less of him.

Nonetheless it was a sentiment she could respect, even if Draven seemed insulted by the idea that he could have just "half-assed" it. And her eyes narrow as he insinuated that she was on his case about being happy. She had very clearly explain that what upset her was the fact that he had taken up some sort of grudge against her. Sahalie's tightly clamped mouth sprung open. But she would find out why soon enough—before she could even cut in to correct him, in fact.

If Draven didn't want her help, that was fine, but if he thought she was dumb enough to think he was the only one that needed help then perhaps it should have been Sahalie that was offended. In the split second before the bomb she forced herself to swallow the feeling. In her head she repeated that he didn't know her, and that he didn't know how she was and would work for the good and betterment of everyone else. Yes, the others needed help too and that was why—

Of course he meant one wolf in particular—because he obviously didn't know any of the others—and her mouth opened a little wider, her head rose a little higher even if she was laughably shorter than him, hoping to receive even a second to state her case. She had always felt grateful, if not downright guilty that Alastor had followed her north to south; childhood to adulthood; thick and thin—but.

Oh. That.

Her face looked like it would burst from shock as she stared back at those unsettling green eyes. Blind. Fuck, yeah she had been blind. Through all the jokes about the boyfriend thing, all the stupid fights, her demands and whining about Castel as he swallowed it and moved on. In her foggy recollection that remained of that rotten-apple night she couldn't remember if his face was crestfallen or blank or a grey soupy mess when she had told him. Had he told Draven that? Word for word? She inhaled sharply. Even Larkspur had been shocked. She could understand Draven being upset...but.. Wildly her dark head thrashed to clear her head as her thoughts diverged into a thousand different streams.

He loved her.

Like love loved her?

What else would Draven have meant?

And what about his suggestion to her? Would it just be so easy—that easy—to take away his pain? Was love easy? Was she supposed to just... Her chest creaked painfully. Just fall in love because it would make him happy? Fall in love because Draven wanted her to? But then how did Alastor feel... attaching himself to her in the most tragic and brutal way? She had to wonder how he did this to himself. Could he just... stop? And she had to find out from his brother. This man she didn't even know and he was watching her like a hawk. Waiting for something. Dismayed, she stared back at him.

"It's not that simple..." She didn't want to do this though—didn't want to be the bad guy. Draven would have to suffer through more stammering. "I ... I... I don't want that. I'm not. I'm not ready," the pressure forced her words into a whine. "H...he knows that. And I've. I know I've been selfish. I'm selfish. But he can find someone else. We're so young can't he just find someone else?" No one had ever told her that love was supposed to make her feel wonderful or whole. She didn't know it was supposed to light up her world or make sparks fly. Instead she only felt dreadfully afraid of all the mess and the wreckage left behind for innocent bystanders to clean up. "There's other ways to be happy.." She whispered to herself.