Umbra Copse On the outside, always looking in

For @Sahalie  -blindly fumbles for Kino- It's gonna take me a minute to get back into the groove of him

If I ever leave I could learn to miss you

They’d re-entered the Lore the day before and decided to settle for the night just south of Clandestine Brook. They’d need all the energy they could get if they were going to face the wolves of the Vale after leaving them for so long. Thus, he and his friend had curled up together against the harsh climate and attempted to get some shut-eye, though he was fairly certain neither of them had slept very well. There were too many nerves because how were they supposed to tell the wolves “Hey, we’re back but we can’t stay because we’re looking for Laurel. Be back maybe?” Especially after having formed the pack then essentially leaving them to the birds. He cringed to think of it, especially the earful he’d likely receive from his brother. Still, he found he was looking forward to seeing them and seeing how big his nephew had gotten. The lad had been but a little pup when they’d left and now he would be almost fully grown.

The pair had gotten up after sleeping in a little bit, trying to salvage what little sleep they could before trudging forward. He walked in front, paving a way through the snow mounds as usual to allow Hal an easier journey behind him. He did have to admit, though, sometimes it was a little funny to step over a decent sized drift and watch her bunny hop over. Kept her on her toes and provided him with amusement through their tough journey. Soon, however, he knew they would be approaching the borders. He hadn’t caught wind of it yet though he knew he should have by that point, which made a funny feeling bubble in his stomach. But, he pushed it away. “Seems they’re being a little lax on keeping up on the borders,” he commented to the Tainn, turning his head to glance back at her as they moved forward.

With sentimental boy as my nom de plume

Something was off. Normally she was the only thing that was "off"—random, meaningless things like a fallen twig would cause her eyes to water, or the shape of a cloud would make her suddenly fall silent. For most of their travels she had been quiet: one half of her worrying about what to tell the wolves she had left behind, the other half of her confused and shamed by the feeling of relief brought by not having Laurel around. She was free and she was trapped. In a way the current moment was like a perverted mirror of her old life where she could travel around with little obligation, answering to only a few, Alastor by her side. But childhood had never come with so many heavy burdens. A pack left behind, a lost child of a lost friend. They were going back to Quaking Vale because it seemed a likely place to start or maybe even a likely place to end up, but she was uncertain of how to answer her shame. Sahalie had been young and stupid to think she was ready for all of it: to lead a pack, to become a mother, to support the happiness of dozens.

But the faces of her former packmates did not come to greet her, nor did their scents. They were nowhere near where the heart of the territory had been, and she couldn't be sure where the border was anymore, but certainly there should have been signs of the comings and goings of other wolves. There was nothing. Just stale, winter air.

To be honest, she was pretty relieved.

She had failed.

The failure was hard, but not the hardest thing on her. It was that she seemed to keep failing, to keep getting into fights with Laurel, to keep feeling so ruthlessly unhappy for no reason, to keep feeling the guilt of dragging a bunch of wolves out into the wilderness on a fools errand. But if Quaking Vale was gone that meant the failing was done. It had ended.

Maybe she could start again.

And probably fail some more. But she felt herself daring to hope.

"Yeah," she breathed, a distracted as she had always been in the last few months. Did she dare to believe they were gone? Maybe they had just shifted things over somewhere. "I hope... they haven't fallen on hard times." She wasn't referring to any lack of Alastor and Sahalie—the "brilliant prodigies"—but simply because of winter. But with every pawstep she saw and smelled and heard with increasing clarity that they were gone. Utterly gone.

The little trees shivered.

If I ever leave I could learn to miss you

He watched her foggy reply, the kind of reply that he commonly got these days. They had left because Hal needed space, needed some time to heal whatever malady was infecting her and causing her to be so…unhal. And he had followed her, of course, because though they had set up the Vale to be their home his home would always been with the girl. He’d followed her time and time again, watching and joking and trying to take care of them. Some days it seemed like she was okay, other days not so much but he remained faithfully beside her day after day because he couldn’t want anything else.

He’d attempted to forge a relationship with the boy Laurel, the one who somedays reminded him so much of Larkspur with quick temper and sarcastic words, and other days reminded him of the girl who’s raised him. Kino tried hard to not let the boy’s lineage define him, tried to give it a clean slate and even when he was reminded he tried to remember the good in the pale man. Who he believed, beneath all that rough and tumble exterior, really could be good. He remembered the touched look he’d had when Kino had asked him to be his advisor. He didn’t quite know where he stood with Laurel, but for all he was worth he at least hoped that the boy knew he had tried. The silver man was trying again, trying to look for him to at least make sure he was okay.

As they neared the borders he grew increasingly concerned as the scent still wasn’t showing up. The land thinned out further and further until he paused, looking around him. He’d scouted the borders, protected them, served them. Made sure he knew them like the back of his paws. They should have crossed the borders a long time ago, but they hadn’t. There was nothing here, nothing but carnage and the end of something they had started but not been around to finish. This, of course, begged the question.

Where was his brother and nephew?

He turned to look at Hal, topaz gaze searching her for a reaction to their finding. “They’re gone,” he said, putting thoughts into the open. It was something they’d both realized, but freeing it into the air made it all the more real. Their job was to find Laurel, yes, but...what else would they do now?

With sentimental boy as my nom de plume

He said what he was thinking, but nothing about how he was feeling. He appeared to be staring at her—keeping him in her peripheral was about as much as she could manage—waiting for what she felt. Feeling her out. He was wary of her. All this had been for her, after all. Another thing to feel awful about, she guessed. He just wanted her to feel the same way but it was so hard to feel anything at all, and what she did feel always felt incorrect... off.

"I'm kind of... glad," so many things were different about her but she was still honest. "I mean. I'm worried. We haven't seen any signs of bloodshed or a fight or anything... bad but that doesn't mean something didn't happen but I'm..." The words caught in her throat. Another cloud shape floated over the sun. This one was dark and stormy and it reminded her of her broken relationship with her father. Irrelevant but unavoidable these days. And still, part of her was saddened by the vanished Vale wolves. They had given up on her, she had given up on them, and they'd both given up on Quaking Vale. A dead dream. It was the dream she mourned, along with her pride. "I'm glad there's no one to get mad at us. I don't think I am ready to face that."

Except the lack of wolves here complicated things. Clearly Laurel wasn't here, and there was no one to tell them if Laurel had ever been here. Sahalie and Alastor had hoped they would be granted a place to stay and some support—even if she didn't exactly deserve it. But their situation was largely the same as it was outside of Relic Lore. They were alone. "We gave up and they gave up too."

It was just sad.

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

If I ever leave I could learn to miss you

Sahalie’s words were blunt, but he could understand them. He, too, in same way felt a sense of guilt. Though he was concerned that the Vale was gone, he was mainly concerned because now he had no idea where his brother and nephew were. They were the first and only things to pop into his mind, not how the others were doing, not if something bad had happened. An area that, even in her depression, Hal seemed to excel in compared to him. Empathy for others, the ability to think beyond herself. Kino still seemed to only care about things that directly affected him, meaning Sahalie and his blood family. This didn’t mean that he now wasn’t a bit concerned about something horrible having happened to them, but it perhaps wasn’t on the top of his list of things to think about in that moment.

When she mentioned she wasn’t ready to face them he nodded quietly, completely understanding. But, now that they were back he felt some sort of responsibility to see what exactly had happened. Even if they had moved it didn’t mean they had to stay with them, but perhaps just...check in? “Honestly, me too. I was dreading this whole interaction,” he replied sheepishly, tail sweeping behind his large silver frame.

Her last sentence, as usual, held a large amount of harsh truth to it. They had given up, had run away from the responsibilities they’d instilled upon themselves because no matter how much they’d tried to push past it they’d been young and naive. Leading a pack was a huge responsibility, something meant for wolves who were more stable than the friends had been at that time. It didn’t mean they would never be ready for such a task, but perhaps the Vale had always been meant to fall. “Maybe...it just wasn’t meant to be,” he suggested, plopping his butt down with a sigh. “We gotta learn somehow, right? You and me, we make a lot of mistakes. But we always learn from them. Maybe we’ll find someone who knows what happened one day, but right now we just gotta focus on Laurel. Figure out what our next step is, keep moving forward.” That was the biggest thing he’d learned in his life, and he’d learned it from the dark Tainn sitting next to him. If it weren’t for her he’d still be the big brooding boy he’d been just a year ago. Well, more brooding anyways. He’d slowly learned to keep moving forward instead of getting stuck in the past and now he was trying to help his friend do that as well.

With sentimental boy as my nom de plume

Confrontation had never exactly been Alastor's strong suit, so she was not really surprised to hear about the dread that had been nagging him. Answering to responsibilities, expectations was, in the end, an act that curdled the bile in her stomach. She'd never really had to do that, before—be accountable to anyone. Before she was just a cub. Sure, there were some "expectations" others had about her—how she would react, her strength of character, her duty to Oak Tree Bend, her relationship with her family—but these were small things, assumptions that could be corrected. But as a leader there were things she should have taken care of, as a mother there was a wolf she should have cared for, and as an adult there were consequences she should have cared about. It was easy to forgive a pup. An adult? Not so much. Even one half grown.

The next thing he uttered struck a chord with her. Sahalie had never really considered life in that way—if a happening was meant to be, if it would happen that way no matter what. To the girl, life just happened. The immediate reasons for any particular event or action were usually clear, and she had always been so rooted in the physical, momentary world around her that she had never taken the wondering a step farther. If there was a Reason with a capital R, if there was a purpose served by one outcome or another for any particular circumstance. That isn't to say she dwelled on the possibilities or the what ifs. Life just happened. To her, to everyone. Either you picked up the pieces or you didn't.

But what if...

What if she had been on this collision course since before her eyes ever opened. Before a single spark ignited the Wildwood. Awash in her own inability to help raise herself from the ashes of repeated failure, the thought of her actions being, ultimately, a foregone conclusion was deeply comforting. It made her feel like she had not fallen off the path or lost the plot, because there was only one path she could never leave and one plot she was always a part of. Alastor was right. Quaking Vale was an empty, smoldering pile of failure but it was not pointless. They gave up but they also gained—

—The mention of Laurel brought her back to reality. She began to worry at her lower lip again. It was hard to tell Alastor that, actually, she would rather solve the mystery of what had happened to Quaking Vale. That was the easier thing to do. None of those wolves could stare at her the way Laurel did: hungry, questioning, bitter. "What if Larkspur...went with them though?" Perhaps Lark had been the one to propose moving them. He had always wanted to be in the north. He was a leader before, he could have lead again. "I mean. It's his kid."

That was harsh.

"I just don't know where Laurel would have gone if he's not... here."

If I ever leave I could learn to miss you

The concept that whatever happened to them was meant to be was something that he had to believe in. To think that something just happened to someone was frankly quite depressing. If all the things that had happened in the man’s life had just happened then he thought he would still be really down, thinking he was the most unlucky man in the world. But, the concept that his losses meant something in the grand scheme of his life? Well, that was a lot better wasn’t it.

Though it killed him, his mother’s death was meant to happen. If she hadn’t died he was pretty convinced he might have turned out like a spoiled little prince. Her death made him stronger, more independent, but it also made him appreciate those closest to him more. Made him protect them more fiercely and love more wildly, even if it was in secret. He was meant to meet Hal, who had pulled him from his darkness and taught him what a relationship was supposed to be. Though she didn’t reciprocate his romantic interests they were still there for each other, would do anything for each other because there was love between them. Platonic, but still love.

Kino watched her kaleidoscope expression, the emotions crossing her dark chocolate features hinting at something near...hopeful? She seemed to lighten, almost lifting into a lighter mood. It encouraged him, made him feel he was doing something right. His heart hammered in his chest. Then, he said the wrong thing like he tended to do and suddenly they were back at the beginning.

He wanted to shove his big fat mouth in a snow drift.

When she mentioned Larkspur he almost scoffed. Yeah Larkspur might have been the kid’s dad but what had he really done for him? Brought him to the Vale then pawned him off to Sahalie and Kino to take care of. Didn’t even try to follow them when they took off. Yeah, some father. But, the two were alike. It was possible. He looked at her, pondering the same question in his head. “Well...I guess the only real way to know is to go find them, despite what I said earlier. Maybe Serach and Aponi would know? They’re pretty close to here and they were sorta our allies,” he said, head tilting in the manner it did when he was curious or in thought.

With sentimental boy as my nom de plume

He didn't really sound like he wanted to go find them. Them probably being Larkspur. But along with Larkspur there was his brother—and with a small jolt she remembered that his brother also had a kid. The little boy would come around looking for Laurel from time to time. But what was his name? And there was Castel: the better love story. That boy that followed them around. How many others? Her brain was foggy. All of these wolves who were supposed to have been her packmates, her friends, her responsibility. It was possible that they left because they didn't want her or Alastor to find them. She had to find out, though, "I have to know before I can start again."

"It sounds dumb, I guess. But I'm always just going to wonder about it all. I don't know if Oak Tree Bend will be happy to see us," because she could never be sure how Serach worked. But she did know he had been deserted, he didn't like deserters, and that was what she was. Sahalie never made an exception for herself. "But I just want to see home again." Her birth home, her blood home. "I want answers and it feels like they'll have something. They have to." Her voice hitched on something. She stared at the ground, then at Alastor's snow-soaked paws.

"I'm sorry I have to be like this. I want to be the strong girl I used to be. It was all so natural before..." But now everything was work. In the before-times she simply had to set her mind to something. These days there was a whole process involved: first, she had to figure out what she felt, then how she wanted to feel. Step three was to figure out how to accomplish a task. And step four was the hardest of the hard because she had to figure out how to stay motivated and keep her mind from slipping. This was an extra task that other wolves did not seem to have to worry about. Before anything was possible. Now she was just unsure. "Thank you...for dealing with me. I ... I know..." she looked at him sheepishly, "I know how you feel about me. And I know that's probably why you do it. Put up with me."

What was she so afraid of? That loved died, disappeared, or deserted? Alastor had never done those things. He was always here...

If I ever leave I could learn to miss you

His friend stated that she needed to know before she could start again and he gave a quiet nod. In his mind, Sahalie had never been one to leave things unfinished. They may have left the Vale behind in order for her to try and heal but that didn’t mean they’d left out of malicious intent. There had been a lot of things going on and both of them had felt like what they’d been doing hadn’t been what was right for the pack. They’d decided to hand the reins over to someone else who they thought could better look after it then go and find themselves, then come back and help. Obviously that hadn’t worked out, but now that it was gone they did perhaps owe it to them to at least search out the party and see if they were okay. See what had happened.

She expressed that the Bend might not be the happiest to see them and he also agreed with this statement. He knew they didn’t take kind to deserters, but really who could blame them?  In addition to that, who could really blame the band for leaving after everything had happened? Spieden had been like a mother to Sahalie, someone who had already been abandoned before and to see the older woman suddenly go off like that? Surely if the leading pair’s parents had suddenly gone off their rocker and ran off they would at least go and see if they were okay too. But they couldn’t know until they tried. Hopefully, problems aside, they would still be able to get the answers they needed from the pair.

“Whatever happens I’ll be there next to you. I’m not gonna let anything happen. Never have, never will,” he assured. He didn’t mean that he was worried they would attack them necessarily, though with Aponi one could never be too sure, but rather if they started attacking them with words and insults. Hal had already been through so much, she didn’t need more wolves telling her that she was horrible or that she was doing everything all wrong. He’d be her buffer.

Next she went to apologize and a frown pulled at his silver lips. His head dipped down to gently nudge her shoulder. “Hey, you don’t have to apologize for anything. We all have rough patches. And, for the record, I still think you’re pretty strong,” he said with a lazy grin, tail sweeping behind his large frame.

The sweeping of his tail stopped when she said that she knew how he felt. It felt like his heart stopped beating and for a moment he just looked at her, speechless. She couldn’t mean…that, could she? There was no way she could know what he was in love with her. Ever since his realization he’d tried his hardest to hide it, make everything seem normal because he knew how she felt about the whole relationship thing. He didn’t want her to feel pressured by this feelings, because he’d long since come to terms that it would be unrequited. The man would suffer in silence, tuck her close to him at night because that was the closest he could feel that she was his and only his. He took the little things he could get and that was okay.

So, he did the only thing he could think of. Push away the thought and the hope. “I’m not doing anything I don’t wanna do. And yeah, you’re right, how I feel has a lot to do with it. You’re my best friend and the biggest constant that’s ever been in my life. I told you, where you go I go. Now and always,” he said, offering a cheesy grin of his own to offset the oddly serious mood. Though, everything he said truly was serious.

With sentimental boy as my nom de plume