Riddle Heights i'm a child, i'm afraid [bwp]

@Kino anyone else is welcome to join. ~24 hours following coyote attack. Maybe someone from AH?

They'd already wandered through the last place Sahalie had seen Kyna, standing among the soft moss buried under snow. But Sahalie hadn't expected to find her sunset friend settled there. Kyna had specifically said they were looking for a home on the mountain. It made sense: she was born on the mountain. Sahalie herself had returned to the Vale of Secrets to settle close to where she grew up. Only, Sahalie had no idea where Kyna had lived before coming to Oak Tree Bend. Slowly, her eyes followed the sharp silhouette the piled rocks made against the sky. The range stretched for miles. She could be anywhere.

Already the pair were exhausted, and not just because of the thinning oxygen and hazardously slanted ground. Their pace had been much quicker than they had intended as they tried to flee the coyotes. No scents or sounds gave them any indication that they were being followed, but Sahalie wanted to put as much space between herself and those noisy runts as possible. Finally, the adrenaline was beginning to run dry and she felt herself slowing down. The last thing she wanted to do was make a misstep and end up rolling down the mountain like she had as a little girl. Definitively she plunked her butt down and sighed: they were stopping here for now.

"I've never seen anything like that..." she said after her heartbeat slowed to a normal rate, "That was just..." There were no words really. Wild? Yeah, coyotes were wild animals. They lived in the wilderness. Crazy? As far as she knew coyotes had only a few brain cells to rub together, so they were normally pretty crazy. Worrisome? Oh yeah, big time. But what were the chances of something happening like that again?

Grumbling, trying to find a way to lay down on the disorganized jumble of rocks, the girl added, "They interrupted me, the bastards."

(This post was last modified: Apr 24, 2018, 04:26 PM by Sahalie.)

They’d made it up the mountain, the whole while Kino’s shoulder burning from the bite. He kept his mouth shut, gritting his teeth through the discomfort. He wished he’d have taken some pointers from Draven about herbs, because he knew squat. With his luck he’d try to heal himself and ingesting some fatal poison. No, he just had to hope that the mutt hadn’t been carrying too much crap in his mouth. His own mouth was a little sore, but thankfully wounds in that area healed amongst the quickest in the body. He just wanted them as far away from those coyotes as they could get, and so did Hal it appeared.

Finally, she plopped her butt down decisively and he followed suit. His head moved to lap at the wound on his shoulder, clearing the dried blood and attempting to remove any bacteria. His auds swiveled to catch his words and he grunted in agreement through his cleaning. He looked over at her as she grumbled, head tilting curiously. “What else did you want to talk about?” he asked.

Cause I've got issues, but you got 'em too

Alastor Leigh

So give 'em all to me and I'll give mine to you

Sahalie was much closer to Kyna than she thought – she probably wasn’t too far from the place the redhead had been born, in all reality. Even now, difficult as it was, the woman came across Riddle Heights to seek solitude in her childhood home. She could have founded her pack on the skeletons of where Silent Moon Plateau was reigned, but… That would have been too strange.

Kyna huffed irritability. The walk used to be joyful, and easy. Now it felt like she was lugging an extra wolf (or two) in weight with her – a simple walk was more like a waddle. Everything ached, right down to the tips of her toes. It definitely hadn’t been like this with Revon.

Deciding she was going to need a quick rest before returning home, the woman paused – that was a voice.  There were two voices.  Ears cupped forward, curious who would loiter so close to pack lands when she realized how familiar that one voice was.  The first one, the female.  She knew that voice.  She knew who it belonged to. Kyna struggled back to her feet.

“Sahalie? Sahalie!? Is that you?”

(This post was last modified: Apr 16, 2018, 08:07 PM by Kyna. Edit Reason: oops Kino sniped me )

A wild dissertation appears!

If Sahalie had paid closer attention to the things that Quentin had tried to teach her she might have remembered something useful for Alastor's torn shoulder. Except Quentin was like half a lifetime ago and Sahalie had been a very poor student. All she could recommend was lick it, and keep in clean. She wasn't sure if those were redundant instructions or not. At any rate, the boy was grooming himself instinctively, and there was no point in wasting her breath. These were automatic things, she guessed. Like digging holes. The thought drew a sigh from her: it was hard not to think of the putrid-smelling scavengers wiggling and yipping in the shitty den that she had dug. Even if Sahalie had only ever intended it to be for practice it felt wrong for the coyotes to have it. They didn't need to take it like that. They could have waited for Sahalie and Alastor to move out.

She wondered if it was a good or bad thing that they were on a mountain now. No way to dig a hole here that she knew of.

"Well I was going to ask—"

But she never got to ask.

"Kyna?" It wasn't really a question, because there was no other wolf it could be. Immediately Sahalie shot her mate a glance. What luck! They wouldn't have to go uselessly dragging themselves all over Serpent's Pass looking for a rabbit in a warren. Grunting, the girl was back on her paws with a little effort and clamoring up the brief rise separating her from her old friend. The ground flattened out neatly under her paws into a plateau, and before her was an enormous version of a wolf she had not seen in a whole year. Kyna had always been big like Alastor—they were nearly the same size—but now she was like a mountain herself. Instantly Sahalie was very sure that Kyna's litter would be much bigger than the one she would be having.

In the end "Oh my god," was the only thing that she could say.

Sahalie opened her mouth to speak, a whole half a statement escaping her black lips before they snapped shut. A voice carried on the breeze, one he didn’t recognize at first. It wasn’t until Hal uttered the name that it came back to him. His brows jumped in surprise and his bright blue gaze met her molten gold, both of them thinking the same thing. Surely they couldn’t be that lucky, could they?

His mate was up on her feet with some effort before she was heading toward the voice, the silver man following suit. They followed up a rise then onto a plateau and, sure enough, the fiery woman was there. She was unmistakable, her stature and unique coloration making sure of that. And, she was very clearly pregnant. Her sides ballooned out even more than Hal’s which surprised even him. Who was the lucky suitor? He stood back with a smirk, allowing the two woman to reconnect. He offering a bob of his head to the old friend, figuring Hal would do enough talking for the both of them.

Cause I've got issues, but you got 'em too

Alastor Leigh

So give 'em all to me and I'll give mine to you

Whatever Kyna had been planning on doing, it had flown out the proverbial window. She hurried as fast as she could (which, admittedly, was not fast at all these days) over the stones, wide paws picking a careful path. Having lived on the height for almost a year, it was practically second nature at this point….but being swollen like a bloated carcass sure made it difficult to balance. She gave another soft huff, enormously thankful they were on the plateau and not the slope – and that Sahalie was moving to meet her halfway.

Small miracles.

Despite the utter effort, her tail wagged aggressively behind her, and once she was finally close enough, brushed her cheek against her childhood friend’s. It felt like it had been forever. “You found my mountain,” she said breathlessly, eyes roaming over the dark female first, and then falling to Alastor. It was then that she saw his silver hair had been torn up by something. Her brows furrowed deeply. “Are you two alright? What’s happened?”

A wild dissertation appears!

@Kino

Quickly, she glanced back to the silver boy coming up behind her. Like usual, he was already fading into transparency, waiting for her to handle the situation. It was something that he had been doing for quite awhile now, but it had shifted from occasional to habitual ever since they left Quaking Vale. Alastor didn't want to lead anything anymore: conversation or her—except to tell her she couldn't travel when she wanted or she had to sit in some dumb hole. This behavior had been sort of irksome before, but, feeling particularly hormonal on this day after all of all the fearing for her life, his life, and the life of her children it was down right annoying. This was their friend, Kyna! They had grown up together! Did he really have nothing to say?

"Don't know that we could miss you, you're huge," Sahalie said, partly in admiration and partly in mild horror. But clearly Kyna could see that the two of them had been through the ringer, and that Alastor in particular was worse for it. "Honestly if I hadn't been there I wouldn't have believed it. We got ambushed by a bunch of coyotes. They weren't scared of Alastor at all." But for all the world Sahalie felt that this was the end of the matter, and that it was just a strange little band of coyotes doing their own weird coyote thing. She had no idea what tribulations were awaiting her.

Expectantly, she looked over at Alastor, begging him to contribute for once instead of being her shadow.

He watched as Kyna rushed forward to greet Sahalie, tail giving a small wag at the interaction. He was happy to see Hal reuniting with old friends. Perhaps this would be good for his dark mate, help bump up her spirits in some way shape or form. He noticed the woman’s fiery gaze look to his shoulder and his auds gave an embarrassed flick. The concern was evident there and she wasted no time asking about what had happened. His gaze turned to Hal.

She explained the events and he nodded in agreement to them. Truthfully he also had a hard time believing it, even then. He hadn’t thought they would come closer, in fact the main reason he had been concerned about a large number of them was that he thought there was a large carcass near them. And, with large carcasses came even larger predators. When they’d actually attacked, he’d been floored. He’d chased off his fair share of coyotes and even killed a few, but even then they’d never reacted in pack formation like the coyotes they’d come into contact with had. Something wasn’t right.

Hal’s molten golden gaze turned on him, his brows raising in surprise but he took the hint. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, it was the weirdest thing. I’ve never seen them react like that. They almost had, like, pack mentality or something. I wounded one and normally they back off after that but they just kept coming. We ended up having to bolt,” he replied, hoping that was good enough.

Cause I've got issues, but you got 'em too

Alastor Leigh

So give 'em all to me and I'll give mine to you

Kyna did not get along so well with her almost mute mate for an inability to pick up on silent social cues. She wasn’t entirely sure what was brewing between her pair of friends, but now didn’t seem the time to ask. Perhaps once everyone was fed and they had a better look at Alastor’s shoulder, she would prod.

As it were, she listened carefully, ears swiveling forward and back as Hal and Alastor explained exactly what had driven them up the slopes. A pack of coyotes? She almost wouldn’t believe it, except Sahalie had no reason to lie to her and those injuries were clear as day. Her ears fell back as she frowned.

“That’s…very strange,” she agreed, mouth tugging at the edges. “Perhaps they were starving.” Desperate, with no other means, so that danger and death did not seem like such a risk. Hopefully, they’d stay where the pair of loners left them. But as for now… “C’mon, we’ll be safer in Aurora Heights. The pack isn’t very big right now…” Not for lack of effort, but breeding season seemed to have taken its toll on the eligible bachelors formerly among their ranks. Kyna sighed and shook her head, determined not to get frustrated with the situation. “But we have caches. And supplies. No healers, I’m afraid, but Greer has picked up a few things from his sister.”

The more she thought about it, the more she realized they really needed to fix that whole ‘medic’ situation. Kyna turned, angling back towards Aurora Heights and began slowly – she was in no mood to do much more than amble. She turned to look, to make sure her companions were following.

A wild dissertation appears!

They were like a pack—that was probably the weirdest thing about it all. Coyotes, as far as she was familiar with, were mainly selfish, solitary creatures that ended up on their own because they were no good at working together or putting the needs of the group first. They could band together, on occasion, but their groups were without structure or discipline, nothing like a pack at all. But she had seen those coyotes yipping in the distance, seemingly conferring neutrally with one another before deploying a plan of attack. It was exactly like wolves before a hunt, and that was down right uncanny and she didn't like it one bit.

Kyna was disturbed, but far removed from the experience. The news didn't really affect her in the same way, probably because she was trying very hard to make sense of their ridiculous story. She was willing to believe them, though. "I was digging a den, they wanted it. That's why they drove me out." She still had no proof for this claim but it just felt like the only explanation to her. Were coyotes really that smart that they could devise a plan to get out making a den on their own hard work? They certainly didn't like getting their paws dirty—after all, they usually scavenged anything that the wolves caught and killed. But this seemed so different, such a stupid thing to take on a wolf for.

The sudden offer of shelter, however, was enough to put a halt to her dark musings. It didn't matter if the pack was big or small for it was certainly bigger than two silly, young wolves gallivanting all over the valley on a mission. Alastor might not be big enough to scare a coyote off, but heavily scented borders surely would. The rest would follow. "Oh that would be so wonderful. We just need somewhere to stay a few days," she said breathily, starting after her childhood friend, hoping she wasn't being presumptuous and stepping on her toes like she did with Serach. "Me an Al have... a whole lot to do and we were heading over the mountain, but we were actually looking for you cause... well it had been a long time."

"And I'm pregnant," she added, smiling shyly.