Quaking Vale I Can Do No Wrong

Usually Larkspur did well enough with keeping himself busy. On a good day he would start early and find something useful to do, get tired sometime in the afternoon and nap for the rest of the day. Typically he was left alone, with a visit here or there from @Sahalie , or sometimes he'd find himself in a social sort of mood and would visit with whoever stayed around their little sleeping... patch. He tried to be pleasant, but most days just couldn't, which somehow seemed to suit everyone just fine. He had a home here, and because of some sort of unseen force, Larkspur felt unable to relax. He knew he should, and that allowing himself to let one little, small, mostly unimportant thing slide by him would mean that finally the dust of his life could settle.

Instead, Larkspur woke with the birds loudly screaming their good mornings and the only thing on his mind was that one, small, mostly unimportant thing. He'd have to ask to leave eventually, he'd have to at least go and see. Things had been going well and there was definitely no reason for things to suddenly stop going well. And so what if he had more children? All of his children — at least the ones he'd gotten to know, and at least the ones who were living — had grown to be well-rounded wolves. He had been proud of all of his children. It couldn't be that wrong, could it? It could. The thought made his stomach tie up in knots, it made him angry and sad and scared all in one. Quickly crawling out of his worry hole log, he decided to take to pacing around his home. He couldn't decide what to do, which only made him feel more out of place. He could put off everything for another day, or maybe even two. Or a week even sounded fine. Sitting in the unknown seemed safer, somehow, it would make things less real.

Unbeknownst to him, his child would be born that day.

Larkspur was so preoccupied with digging a rut into the soil that Sahalie was not even sure he saw her. There was still a lump in her throat that was hard to ignore, even after weeks had passed. She had been going about life as normally as she could. Luckily everyone seemed too preoccupied to notice that she moved more slowly and more carefully. Like now. In an attempt to play the part of her usual, playful self she hauled and scraped her way onto the log without any dignity. Sahalie was hoping that Larkspur might make some sort of comment but he seemed intent on pacing still. This went well beyond preoccupied and into the territory of worried. "I can get you a stick to chew on if you want," she chirped, stepping to the edge of the fallen tree and letting her legs dangle between the twisted roots that burst from its end. "So you don't eat your home or anything." Nobody missed the rancid pulp coating the ground around Larkspur's oak tree back north. Maybe he was too far gone for chewing, either.

At least she had someone else to worry about besides herself. A challenge to rise to that didn't have her at its center. "There's something bothering you." Sahalie possessed nothing less than the finest Bothering Radar. Her old, marked friend had changed so much over the last few months that she was not sure how he would respond. The Larkspur of last year wouldn't dream of opening up to her. This one might. Maybe. With a little prodding.

Some days Larkspur did take to chewing on the roots. Some pieces he'd managed to gnaw off, which was easy to see by the marks into the roots. Most days he did better, because he did like his tree and ruining it would do him no good. The idea of going off and finding some other hidden-but-not-hidden den in Quaking Vale didn't set well with him. Sahalie had found this one for him and he at least needed to try and make it last. "I can find one," usually Sahalie's state would not have been overlooked by the silvery man, but even he was caught up in his own world. "It can take a good long chew or two. Only need to make it last another year or two," he was trying to joke, but it wasn't very funny. He didn't feel like smiling. Lark continued to pace, feigning looking for something to chew on.

He waited for Sahalie to go on about what she was probably going to go on about. He could almost already hear her complaining about someone (Alastor, most likely) or going on about her pack. It didn't come, and her next words finally stopped his pacing. Sahalie usually did well to keep most conversations off of himself. He had never really liked talking about himself and she had never pushed on it. He had not reacted right away, and instead maybe considered telling the girl what was on his mind. Sahalie would not judge him and he knew that.

Well, maybe if he'd told her everything, she might. But those details were old and unimportant right then. They'd be better off buried and dead and gone.

Lark had stared at her for a long time, trying to picture how she'd react, deciding whether or not to tell her. He felt tired, and thought that he might look more tired. There was little reason to fight it, and less of a reason to put anything off more than he needed to. "I have to leave," he had finally said, "...but I'll be back," he quickly added, although wasn't even certain if he would. "In a few days, or a week."

Her face scrunched up in an incredulous pout. "Very funny." Both of Lark and the tree were going to last more than two stinking years, she was sure. "If you don't like it I can just find someone else to move in there. There are a lotta loners out there more grateful than you, ya termite." She laughed a little as her nose prodded at the grooves his teeth had worn into a root or two and pretended to draw her head away with disgust. But the white man wasn't really laughing. The dry joke was even drier and humorless. A parched lake bed in the summer. And he didn't seem to concerned with following the thread of this joke: Larkspur just kept on walking. He would either tear up his tree or tear up the ground. Sahalie pursed her lips and waited.

She choked, "You what?" Suddenly she was reminded of that older version of him, desperate to reach The North—the edge of the world. He'd been so flighty back then and he seemed nervous now. While the girl hadn't been expected to automatically get the full explanation of what was chewing on his mind, she hadn't expected a request to leave. "In a few days?" What an odd an arbitrary time to leave. "I mean.... yeah?" Did she have any reason to deny him except for the fact that his pacing and dug a trail of worry in her own heart? Any reason besides the fact that things were so rocky still and she needed him here? "I just... don't really get... why. Is it important?" That was what really mattered, if he wouldn't admit to anything else.

"Or a week," he added, as if procrastinating the trek would make things better. In reality, leaving sooner would be his best bet. He didn't know how long it'd take to find the girl, especially considering that he knew little about her besides her name. He was already dreading the whole excursion. If he could have stayed and lived with a calm mind, he would. But this was important to him. Children had always been important to Larkspur. His family had, too, to a point. He felt disgusted with himself, he found himself missing his old life. Not in the real way that it had been, but in the nostalgic way that he saw things when he thought of it.

He could not stand to be still any longer and took to pacing again. He shot her a glare when she asked if it was important, his face wrinkling up in annoyance. "What do you think?" Lark couldn't help but to snap at her, though held himself back from continuing. He didn't need to direct his frustrations at Sahalie, it just so happened that she was the only one around.

If it hadn't been important, he wouldn't be asking. Hell, he might have managed to put it off for another few weeks had the little leader not shown up right then. "I might have children," he stared down at the ground, continuing in the same path. He should have been dizzy, had he actually looked at his surroundings. "More children," he corrected himself. "And if I do, I have to make sure they're..." he paused to find the word. "Safe. Happy. Loved. Things... children need." 

"I ... what?" she coughed again. She knew Larkspur had children. There was no "might" for this. Parsnip existed and she wore his face mask and she didn't magically appear as some uncanny clone. Sahalie always figured there were more of them out there, since Larkspur wasn't exactly young, but she had never set her mind to wondering about how many. Perhaps there were enough that Larkspur wasn't even sure himself. She'd seen too many one-parent litters to pretend that a man not knowing about a whole litter or two of pups was impossible. But why now? Why did it matter now? The cogs were turning visibly as she stared at him, squinting in her dubious confusion. If she thought about it, now was the time of year that all the bloated women would pop. She had been born late spring, and so had the three litters last year. Maybe the season was just triggering these memories and worries. He just had children on the mind—though in truth, children had been on his mind for months now. But there was no one in Quaking Vale about to give birth. Nothing to bring up the thought unless—

"Did you....?" she stared in open-mouthed shock. Her dark face was empty of wrath or disappointment. There was only the blankness of astonishment. "But like... when, when would you have even found the time..to" The eagles really hadn't taken so long. All of her members had had plenty of alone time to scout far afield and do their own thing. That thing. "I need to sit down."

She was already sitting down.

"Fuck, Larkspur," She breathed. Just as freaked out as him.

She couldn't catch a break.

(This post was last modified: May 04, 2017, 12:20 AM by Sahalie.)

There is a deer that was killed by a lynx nearby. +10 Health

"There was plenty of time," although maybe it wouldn't have seemed like that. After his little rendezvous over the mountain, he hadn't strayed far from their group. As he nervously paced, he caught glimpses of Sahalie's expression, but couldn't discern anything from it. He didn't get any more questions, which somehow made everything worse. They were both freaked out, though for vastly different reasons. Sahalie had no reason to worry over his own problems, especially when he was certain that the girl had a mountain of her own. 

When he finally stopped and attempted to figure out what reaction she was having, he regretted telling her anything. He should have just left on his own and without another word. It would have been easier. This wasn't easy. He had to diffuse the situation.

"You don't have any reason to be freaking out," he finally told her. "I'm not... it's not bothering me because I'm having kids," children weren't a foreign concept to him and they didn't scare him. Maybe his first litter, and a little bit his second, but after that he'd understood how things went a little bit better. "And even... I could be wrong. I could go find her and there could be nothing," he had been hoping for months that there was nothing.

"It's more that it... feels wrong." There were a lot of things wrong with his maybe-children, but one thing was eating at him more than the others. He didn't think Sahalie, the girl who wanted to live her life without love (or whatever she wanted to call it), would really understand. "My children were all born in my pack, they all had the same mother. They were the alpha's children, and this girl..." he let out an exasperated sigh.

"No— that is what's freaking me out," she stressed. There was just some woman out there full of his babies. If she was a loner it was simply insane to imagine her bearing and raising any young. Most of her childhood—when Drift was missing—had been just her and even that seemed to require a gargantuan effort on everyone's part. How was she supposed to feed herself if she was—as Sahalie imagined—as stuffed up with cubs as Spieden had been? How was she supposed to provide for them when they finally popped out? Who would protect them from angry, random moose. Or lynx. Or, just as bad, what if she wasn't a loner and Larkspur had caused a whole mess of problems for a whole lot of wolves somewhere. Sahalie didn't have any experience with random pregnancies resulting in real punishments, but certainly everyone acted like it was odd as hell that Spieden and Aponi were pregnant. No one stopped them, but in the end it was a whole lot of puppies and that was overwhelming. Now that the girl had lived beyond the Bend, though, she was aware of the possibility that other packs might not take such "oddities" so mildly.

"Who was she. What do you know about her? You've gotta find her and make this right." To leave a week from now seemed insane. She wanted him to leave right now. "What if she's out there starving somewhere or your kid is starving I just..." There was no indignation in her now, but maybe that would come later when she could slow down and stop thinking about some smaller version of Larkspur starving out somewhere in the valley. "I don't want anyone suffering." But why did he do it?

"I know enough to find her," he wasn't even certain of that, but if luck was on his side, the girl would be where he'd found her. He couldn't remember if she had lived in the pack on the mountain and was sort of hoping she didn't. He had her name and he knew what she looked like, which would only make everything much, much harder. He'd give it a week, or maybe two, and if he couldn't find any trace of her, he could come home.

"No one is starving," Lark firmly said, "And no one is suffering. I'm not the bad guy here," or at least he could try to keep telling himself that. "I'm trying to do right by it all," he just... hadn't taken the first step yet. He'd been more content to nervously pace and chew sticks and sit in his worry than to finally go off on the trek to find the girl.

All of that pacing around and worrying had finally worn him out, so Larkspur finally sat down. "And it could be nothing," he reminded himself again. And, on the other hand, it could be something. A couple of somethings. He slid to the ground, feeling foolish. This should have somehow gone the other way around, with Sahalie coming to him with some dumb problem.

"I'll leave tomorrow."