Oak Tree Bend Lullaby

For @Sahalie

Night. Clear skies.

Jessie was restless. She had been, ever since Hotei’s death. Sleep did not come easy to her and neither did peace of mind. The time that she was not sleeping, the woman tried to be as productive as possible. She would generally do border runs, her paws leading her along a path that she was quite familiar with. Tonight, however, Jessie was strolling throughout the territory, her head turned to the stars above her head. She sighed softly. When she felt that she wasn’t in the presence of any other, she sat down and continued to turn her gaze towards the stars questionably. With no one to watch her, to observe how she was doing, Jessie let the sadness wash into her heart and into her gaze. While she wanted to scream at whoever was listening and ask them her questions, she remained quiet, wanting to remain on her own. So she spoke softly, ” Why did you take him from me? Things were finally right…and then you just had to go and fuck everything up.” Her voice was laced with pain, sadness. The widow was still deeply mourning her lost partner. While he was not young, he had not been old enough to be taken from her. And yet, that was exactly what happened. Jessie broke her eye contact with the sky and looked towards the earth, her lip curling bitterly. What had Hotei done to deserve dying? What had she done to deserve losing him? Jessie Tainn

feainne-stock & Dawnthieves.de

@Jessie

The soft sound of spoken words caught Spieden's ears, their tone low and broken, even pleading. While she was just too far to hear the words, it was evident the speaker was hurting. Perhaps it would have been best to leave them well enough alone. But if anything, Spieden was a curious wolf, even to a fault. She couldn't just leave something alone without knowing what it was. Perhaps she could have been spared many unpleasant things in life if she could ever reign in the need to know. While time had dulled the edges of the haunting images of her father's gruesome demise, she really could have gone without witnessing such a thing in the first place.
 
In defiance of her better judgement, Spieden diverted her course slightly, following a set of smaller pawprints in the snow illuminated by the faint starlight. Her wet leathery nose twitched, picking out Jessie's scent out from the scents of oak and ice. She stopped in her tracks, nearly turning around right then and heading back the way she'd come. It wasn't a secret that her and the Tainn woman did not get along. 

But something held Spieden there, a hesitancy drawing her forward despite the sour relationship between the leader and the second. Jessie was still a pack mate, somehow a quite loyal one even with all the ups and down's the pack went through, she'd never left. And as a subordinate, that left Jessie under Spieden's care, just the same as any other wolf of the Bend. It was second nature for Spieden to ensure the physical well being of her pack, providing food and security. But the emotional aspect was something that had long since been neglected. Emotions were a vulnerability, one that had been trained out of her early life and only recently rediscovered in her fostering of Sahalie and Drift. She had learned that cubs needed more than just food and warmth to survive and thrive... Perhaps the same went for adults? 

"Jessie?" Spieden said softly, slowly treading forward. The Coho's stance was confident, she didn't fear the much smaller woman, but there was an unusual delicateness to Spieden's oftentimes heavy step. She stopped a short distance away, careful to leave plentiful room, aware that she was already intruding in a way. "Is everything alright?" She asked, scarred ears flicking back, wondering if it would all just blow up in her face anyways.

After many months of wondering where her place was in the pack, what her job or duty to her family members were, the girl had decided it was time to stop. It was clear that the universe would not simply hand her an instruction manual written in a language she understood: it was up to her to choose what she wanted to do with her life. And despite every cell in her body screaming out that this was wrong, she chose to eavesdrop — if only to put together the full puzzle of her environment. If she was to fix everything — for this was the task she had decided on— then it followed that she needed to know everything, everyone.

Her relationship with Jessie was shaky, tentative. She felt like she and grey woman got a long, but that there was much under the surface that was barred from her and the rest of the Bend. Since there was no way to ask aloud the questions on her mind, Triell's precocious daughter opted for the morally questionable route. And here she was, out in the dead of night, making sure to avoid the crunchier snow so as not to alert her packmate. 

Things went from good to great, however, when Spieden's scent and voice joined her target. Sahalie's heart hammered so hard that it was nearly melting the snow against her breast as she crouched behind a tree. Spieden and Jessie were not friends, she had known this for a long time without any explanation. It was hard to even get the two of them in the same place without it being some sort of requirement. Sahalie bit her lip. Maybe the interaction unfolding in front of her could shed some light on the tense relationship between the leader and the second, but she was dubious. If need be she would reveal herself and step in, dissipate any hostility.

For now, though...

(This post was last modified: Jan 22, 2016, 07:34 PM by Sahalie.)

There is a moose carcass that has been scavenged by coyotes nearby. +15 Health

It was the last thing she wanted: to be bothered. But she had been practicing communication since her depression, with Drestig. While their most recent encounters had been more than awkward Jessie had been making an attempt to be more civilized. But then, there were moments when she needed to be left alone when a great darkness entered her soul as it acknowledged the lack of its other half. The voice that broke through her thoughts was an unwelcome one and she forced herself to not turn around, to not snap at her and scream and bare her canines at the woman that she had never gotten along with and maybe never would get along with. Spieden’s question almost made her laugh but she restrained herself, giving the other woman points for even coming to check up on her. Sure, it was her job to come see how she was doing but so many others had neglected doing so, if she had just gone on, it wouldn’t have been any different. The grey woman’s voice was dejected when she responded, ”I suppose you could say that. I’m not dead, after all.” She frowned before finally turning around to look at her alpha, back straightening so that she looked less pathetic than she felt. Perhaps simple pleasantries would get her by, ”And yourself?” Jessie Tainn

feainne-stock & Dawnthieves.de