Red Fern Forest i'd give up forever to touch you

all welcome. The sky darkens with ash from a distant forest fire.
also some useless trivia about my life: in 2010 a friend of mine went on a rant about this song and how it was the worst song ever written and every time i hear it i think about how freaking angry they were about this song hahahaa (iris by the goo goo dolls)

The most curious thing about ferns was the way they rolled up.

Azra spent a lot of time thinking about this. Probably an unusual or unhealthy amount of time for a normal wolf, though Azra had never pretended—for himself or for others—to be anything close to normal. He was just exactly who wanted to be from sun rise to moon set, which made keeping companions difficult. His travelling buddies did not care to listen to him yammer on about ferns and so he had very politely parted ways with them weeks ago.

Ferns were an old type of plant, older than trees. And when life got too tough they would just ever so carefully curl their tendrils up into themselves. If ever there was a sign that plants were sentient, to Azra it was this, and it made his heart ache. He too had seen hard times, recent and long, long ago. Once upon a time the slight, persistent cough of someone else was enough to set his lung quivering, vehemently demanding air, more air, just to breath. He would curl up like a fern until it felt safe enough to come back out.

Telling stories helped, talking about what had happened to him made it easier to bare and slowly he was able to unfurl more parts of himself to the world. And he discovered that he really did like telling stories, especially if they weren't sad and he could make up anything he wanted and didn't have to stick to some order of events or faithful representation of the ash-stained faces that got harder and harder to picture as time went on. That was not to say he forgot his family entirely—in fact they often wound up in his stories one way or another, a shade of them.

Normally Azra's thoughts did not linger on such difficult topics, but the breeze tasted just so old and familiar. He had to steady himself against the great barrel of a tree. The fire was a long way off, probably just the woods natural shedding of useless old logs and lichen. New growth, Azra reminded himself through closed eyes, new growth. This was as close as Azra dare get to his old home, burned down in a similar casting-off, or something like that. Home was so close, just a couple of miles south but he could not go any closer  or else he would have to see the new stuff that grew all over his old memories. Those were the best memories: of following beetles, pushing his sister into the river, and listening to his dad talk about trees. Seeing them covered in saplings and open sky was too much.

So he sat here and breathed against the timeless chest of the tree, thinking about ferns.

He was not sure if straying so far had been a good idea, but he had begun to feel restless staying in one place, or area. The Valle trio had kept close to the Wildwood since they had awoken in the strange woods, but Andrey did not know if it was benefiting them. He wanted to continue searching for other members of their pack, to see if there was more of them brought to this place against their will, but there was so much ground to cover.

So Andrey took it upon himself and venture East. Take one for the team. Selfishly he wanted to stretch his legs and see more of the place they had been dumped in. While he had been comfortable on the coast and had no desire to leave the pack Andrey had still been curious about what else was out there. What the mountains he saw in the distance looked like up close. How the forests inland differed from the trees along the coast. However, he never got the chance—unless this place was what he had seen from he coast. But surely they—whoever they were—would not have dumped the Estuary wolves so close to home…

His nose twitched as the faint burning smell on the wind but he was not worried. It was far enough to not be of a concern to him (yet) and he did not plan on staying here long. He did not want to be gone too long from his family, just in case they decided to move elsewhere without him or found some more members of the Estuary pack, so he was slowly making his way back west.

But the smell of another stopped him in his tracks and caused him to change his path.

He kept his distance from the pale male as he approached, his chocolate gaze lowered as he woofed a small hello. Andrey did not have the option to be shy or keep to himself—not if he wanted to find his family. If they had even ended up here. There was still a possibility that only a few of them had been scooped up by the unknown.

"Oh!" he breathed, opening his eyes in response to the greeting. His shoulder shifted a little against the tree and his head turned slowly towards the stranger, but otherwise his posture remained largely unchanged. Azra looked like he could have either been hugging or casually leaning against the tree. He was a little intrigued at what the stranger might decide about him.

Because in two seconds Azra had already made a lot of decisions and deductions about the stranger. Most were very obvious: he was young but not too young, very small without being pygmy, and his eyes were brown. Oh, and the stranger was male, of course! On top of that though, Azra piled judgements for things he couldn't know but distinctly imagined: he had passion like liquid gold; his brain held its own unique poetry of self; he loved deeply. A protagonist. And he had questions. Why else would he have stopped? Azra was pretty well hunkered down, his scent was in the air, the white wolf could have been easily avoided.

The age difference had nothing to do with the tone in which Azra replied—there wasn't much of a difference, anyway, "I don't think the fire will be a big deal." Pausing to test the breeze again, finding the fire just as distance as before. The knowledge somehow did little to ease his plain anxiety. He licked his lips frequently, tail wiggling behind him. It wasn't the boy that made him nervous. "Its just a small one. Probably blow away soon." The memories were just so hard to overcome, even if it felt silly.

"Say, do you know any good stories?" Maybe that would take his thunder heart off of the carbon stench still lingering in the air.

(This post was last modified: Jan 19, 2021, 05:16 PM by Maugrim.)

Andrey could not tell if the pale wolf was surprised to see him or not, but he did not appear disturbed or bothered by his appearance. Although the Valle yearling was a little perplexed as to what the older stranger was doing beside the tree, but he kept his questions to himself. That was not the information he was after. His trip east was a selfish trip as he was not interested in making friends or inviting others to accompany him (unlike his brother). Andrey wanted information. He wanted to know who else had woken up here without remembering how they had gotten here, whether they were from the Estuary or not.

The stranger acknowledged the distant fire by dismissing it as a small one and that it was nothing to be worried about. Although it did not really look like he believed his own words. Andrey offered a small smile in response and shrugged to show his own dismissal of the distant flames. The coastal wolf was not worried—but he had also never experienced a fire up close before.

"Say, do you know any good stories?” His expression softened at the question and he quickly shook his head. Afraid not, he finally responded, almost sheepishly. What about you? You look like someone who knows a story or two. The only story Andrey knew was about a wolf and his family waking up in a strange place without any recollection of how they had gotten there and where the rest of their family was.

But it wasn’t actually a story. It was his life.

No stories? That was a bit sad. Stories were how Azra had learned about the world before he could go out and see, taste, touch, experience it for himself. Stories kept him grounded when he was being foolish, and let him escape when he was feeling down. To not know any... well surely that was just a mistake, a misunderstanding. He listened to the ferns bob and whisper in the frozen breeze for a moment. "Oh." he mused with a smile, "I know a lot. I know one about a wolf that escaped a fire... Or a wolf that thought he was a tree. Or a wolf that fell off a mountain...".

"I don't tell them for free though," he quirked an eyebrow. "You're gunna have to tell me something interesting if you want a story. And if you don't want one, then that's fine too. You look like you have a uhh... lot on your mind." But who didn't? If Azra had been a human he would have been a bar keep. He would have been a talker and a thinker, worrying every glass a million times with a rag. Instead, he was just a wolf sitting next to a tree feeling rather untethered.

His brows pinched together as the pale male trailed off, listing a few stories that were tucked away somewhere inside his head. But they came with a price, of course, because nothing in life was free. Something interesting, huh? Does waking up here without any recollection of how I got here count? He asked with a soft curl of his lips as he shuffled his weight. Surely that was interesting enough for the older wolf and, if it wasn’t, Andrey didn’t really have anything else to offer him. But he also was not sure if he cared enough to fish for something interesting to give to the stranger. However, he wanted information from the stranger that wasn’t in the form of a story. His reason for going East was to see if any of the Estuary wolves had ended up on the other side of the mountain… he wanted to return to his packmates with either a member of their pack or information on how to get home.

Azra drew his head back sharply, staring back at the stranger out from under his eyebrows. He was not familiar with materializing in a different spot. Maybe back when he was a cub and he had fallen asleep in some weird, unacceptable place and his parents had carried him back to the den, but that didn't sound like the same thing as what this guy was talking about. The stranger said "here" with a great significance, like this whole place—Relic Lore, as Azra knew it—was unfamiliar to him. "Well," he said softly, a little breathless, "Yes... that would be interesting."

The Donata fell silent briefly before opening his mouth again, "I mean..What?" So wrapped up in his own surprise Azra had responded as if on autopilot—which was not abnormal. "You just woke up here?. You remember must remember...something". Once Azra had heard of a wolf that could walk in their sleep but they never walked very far. To be entirely lost you'd have to walk quite awhile, and chances are you would wake up before too much time had passed. Somehow this boy had come this whole way? Did someone knock him out and drag him?

"Well I might as well let you know that here is Red Fern Forest." This woods practically named itself, sure, but a definitive name might be appreciated. "And more generally, this side of the mountain is the Vale of Secrets." Extra spooky stuff for a land that was otherwise quite normal. To Azra. "And I've never heard of wolves just waking up here before."

A nearby creek is full to the brim with fish. +3 Health

Clearly Andrey had given the stranger the answer he had been looking for and had successfully captured his attention. Maybe having no recollection of how he had gotten here would work out in his favour. If this wolf could provide him with any useful information. But he was not hopeful. It was easier to be pessimistic about his situation instead of getting his hopes up with every wolf he encountered. This was a big place and he still did not know which Estuary wolves ended up here. It was possible that the Valle-three were the only ones.

I remember being chased on the beach back home, at the Estuary, he started with a dismissive roll of his shoulders, by some strange two-legged creatures. And then nothing. He frowned. And then I woke up here. Well, not here specifically, he continued, the words just tumbling off his tongue one by one, on the Western side of the mountain in a burnt forest.

Alright that was enough information for the pale stranger. He did not want to share his whole life story with him. Do you live here, then? He asked after the male shared the name of the forest and the region they were in. He seemed familiar with the territories—maybe he was a local.

Azra had seen a beach before. In fact, you could reach the coast in two weeks or so if you walked at a steady clip with minimal stopping. Standing at the edge of the cliffs, with the wind tugging so hard it might have blown his whole coat if it was springtime, Azra had seen the end of the world. But the ocean stretched so far in each direction that the wolf merely nodded along thoughtfully, figuring that he had seen a different stretch of the water than this boy had. It was silly to suppose that the world was so coincidentally small.

"Hoomans, I think," Azra tried to helpfully add. That's what he thought they were called at least, thought the pronunciation had varied in all the places he had been to. Their presence usually coincided with all sorts of weird events: giant glowing lights, strange rhythmic and harmonic howling coming out of boxes, very very loud sticks. He had not the slightest idea how they might have been involved in this instance, but that they appeared and suddenly this guy disappeared wasn't the most surprising thing in the world. However the fact that they had come here—here— to Relic Lore was. Azra had never seen or heard any mention of Hoomans in Relic Lore. They were in other places, but this place had been untouched. This news was quite troubling.

The question gave him more pause than it ought to have. Azra found his mouth was open, closed, and then opened again before any sound had come out. "Well... I used to. I just came back to the area. I was born here, south of here. You looking for anything specific?".