Dead Empress Backwater buy it use it break it fix it

for @Ozark only. TW: suicidal ideation.

With autumn came stronger storms, winds and rains that soaked bared branches and battered them until they were too heavy and worn to withstand anymore. They crashed down without warning nor consistency and littered the ground with their broken shards, covering caches, capping off dens and clogging waterways. It was a lot of work, keeping an area functional throughout the fall season. Eros was all for it, allowing the physical toiling to distract his mind from the what-ifs of those random projectiles taking away someone else he loved.

He certainly couldn't stop the sky from falling.

Eros waded through a little stream that couldn't even reach his wolfish knees, pulling at a tangle of branches that were diminishing the water's flow and already catching up other debris. They didn't need what was running and clean to become pooled and brackish, especially with this region's history. Tiny minnows swam amongst his paws to tug and nibble at his fur as he worked, like they were egging him on. They had to get downstream, big fish things to do, didn't he know? A little smile blossomed on his maw at the benign thought.

(This post was last modified: Sep 29, 2024, 06:21 PM by Eros.)

Things were, well, quite a bit grim. Ozark knew that much. Though she was a rather 'go with the flow' type of woman and rarely let things get her down (although plenty could rile her up) she wasn't ignorant without the knowledge that much of those within the pack had fallen into an unavoidable bout of depression. Many had died. Many had disappeared. Ozark personally hadnt become too close to anyone and didn't even have much of a relationship with anyone who had gone. Yet even Ozark herself hadn't been invulnerable to the damage. Her sister, too, had gone off somewhere... Somewhere, out there.

And right now? She was in here. She trotted from the lush forestry portion of their lands and into the cleared out part, where roots, trunk and tangled limbs scattered the lands from long decayed and dead trees. Where the river was cut off and the water swelled. She trudged through the murk and back out again until the sight of another caught her in her patrol. "Aye, needs any help wit' dat?" She asked as she came trotting Eros' way.

Eros' little bubble popped with Ozark's accented words, everything changing once he realized he was being perceived. Inwardly, that purposefully-ignorant calm scrambled into spikes of anxiety and he felt as though his core were trembling with some kind of sickly energy. Outwardly, he straightened his posture a touch and forced his smile to widen while his legs locked.

"Yeah sure, if you're not busy with anything else."

His teeth locked around another thick branch then, and Eros began to tug. His cousin shouldn't need any direction or tutelage in moving sticks, and did they really need to chitchat about anything either? All the immediate topics just lead to the inevitable, anyways; it kind of fucking sucked living here. He hoped Ozark would just lean into the work and forgo talking at all, even if it had been a long time since he'd properly caught up with the younger wolf.

It wasn't her fault either that their family was so big. He really should have been a better cousin, when it still could have mattered.

The leader straightened, legs locked, though a smile pasted onto his face. Even if he didnt show it, the grief was still there. How could it not be? He was their leader. They were his family and everything just seemed to be falling apart. Surely, as their leader, eyes would turn to him along with his counterpart. Yet what could be done anyhow? He could not keep his members tied up, so that they could not run off on him. He could not prevent sickness, could not turn back time for age and count not prevent injury every time they hunted for food. Still didn't mean it didn't fucking hurt.

"Oh, jus' doin' some scoutin'." She said with a gruff voice and shrugging of her shoulders. By the time Eros turns back around, the woman comes trudging into the mucky waters to Eros side and snagging the branch just a bit down from his own placement, matching her tugging with his own to clear up the river path.