Cold Water Creek the town without me

@Kino. Takes place after immediately after otb meeting, but kinda vague on the outcomes. some edits now that the meeting is over

She didn't want to look like a baby, but it was hard to stop the tears. Unlike like the last meeting that Sahalie had left before the end, this one she had gritted her teeth and stayed for every last word. But the horror that moved in her heart was not a fear of what would happen, of everyone's anger, that some would leave them —the external world. All of those things were unspeakably painful, but even worse to her was her responsibility, her own desires that had been selfish and hurtful to her pack mates. She had thought that speaking plainly, opening up about her feelings was the right answer. Always. At the meeting she had been the first to bare her opinions. But she had not realized what wounds this would open, what awful things her packmates would say to their own family members. And Sahalie had done it. 

She just hadn't expected reality to be so harsh.

Now she sat on the bank of the creek, watching the sluggish, unfrozen water move underneath the thin sheet of ice above it. She had come out here to get a drink, to be alone, but seemed to have lost the ability to put any of her intentions into action. She didn't know how to move anymore, now that she was finally out here. Vaguely she wished that she was not actually alone. She felt unbearably stupid.

(This post was last modified: Apr 05, 2016, 10:08 PM by Sahalie.)

 

Kino knew she probably didn’t want to eat, not after what had just happened. He wasn’t sure if he had eaten the full week after his mother’s death, but he knew that she needed to. Shock was hell, and Sahalie was definitely in it. Walking together she had been like a zombie, eyes bleary and almost unseeing as she moved through the territory she had been raised in but what likely seemed like a battle ground at the time. He’d let her take the wheel wordlessly, but gave her a nudge every once in a while to keep her going. Then, when they’d reached the bank of the creek, he’d decided to give her a few moments to collect her thoughts and get her the nourishment she’d need.

About twenty minutes later he was back, a white hare clutched in his jaws. His chest hurt as her sobs echoed around them, wanting nothing more than to wrap her up and take her away. But that wasn’t always the option, and he had the feeling that Hal wouldn’t be too keen on the idea. That was perhaps the difference between them. She’d have the courage to stick around and make things better despite her current state, that much he was certain of, whereas he had ran when things got hairy. It was something he admired, truly.

Moving forward he dropped the prey a few feet in front of her then approached slowly. “Hey, what’re you thinking about?” he said, sitting down close enough to lend his body warmth. The former prince briefly wondered when he’d suddenly become an affectionate wolf, thinking back on the relationships he’d had in the past. Perhaps the only one he could think of would be his sister, and the thought sobered him for a moment. Of course, he had made a vow with Hal that they would be like brother and sister who why shouldn’t the bond be relatively close?

A lynx has left behind the remains of a deer. +5 Health

@Kino omg i've missed them so much :D

Pale and lifeless, a rabbit suddenly landed in front of her, it's head lolling back at the breaking point. It seemed so ominous that it took her breath away, and for several seconds she just stared at it. Even with its glassy eyes she could sense the panic that rose within them in the creature's last moments. And it felt like all the horrible things she had heard and all the uncertainty all around her. It felt like Anna.

A familiar sound rattled her from her strange, dangerous thoughts and her head jolted upwards towards her friend. Right: Alastor had bought the rabbit. She had asked him to come with her, because she had wanted to talk. He was trying to draw the words out of her after enduring near silence on their walk out here. Her strained expression softened as she stared at his blank, patient face, hating herself for subjecting him to the meeting and then to the massive undertaking that was dealing with a rain-cloud. Eyes falling back to her paws, she sighed softly. "Just now? I was thinking that the rabbit reminded me of a packmate that died some months ago..." 

But suddenly she realized how rude that sounded, how ungrateful. Her dark head burst up again and she shook her head frantically, "I mean, I mean I really appreciate you bringing it for me. Thank you. I just... sorry. I'm sorry you have to see me like this. This isn't...really me." Not most of the time, anyways. Reaching back into her memories, though, she could sense a smaller version of herself sitting in this attitude in the darkness of the den for hours at a time. Her at another time, an older time she could barely remember. 

Except these weren't the things she wanted to talk about. Instead she attempted to change the subject, to shift the focus of the conversation to anyone else. Alastor was a natural substitute. "What are you thinking about? What did you think of the meeting? You...you didn't say much." Her voice started strongly, going through the motions of her characteristic, excited prosody before fading back to the subdued softness. It was fine that he hadn't said much, certainly it was better that he hadn't added his opinions to the violent din of everyone else's bitterness. But it worried her when she could not see inside the minds of others, had no idea what they were thinking. A half-hearted smile fluttered on her face.

 

Hal stared wordlessly, wide-eyed at the rabbit for what felt like forever. His brows pinched together, even more worry tightening in his gut. What had he done now? Then, she seemed to come to, her expression softening as she met his gaze before her golden eyes lowered to the ground and he swallowed noiselessly. She expressed that she had been reminded of a dead packmate by the hare and the corners of his maw turned down into a frown. Suddenly, her head was shaking and her eyes were wide again as she began to ramble about how grateful she was, apologizing for her how she was behaving. Leaning down he leveled his gaze with hers, topaz pools staring into molten sunshine sternly. “Sahalie, you have nothing to be sorry for. You’re okay, you’re gonna be okay,” he said. By god, if it were the last breath he took he would be sure of it. She couldn’t break, couldn’t be destroyed like he was. He wasn’t worth saving, but she was.

Pulling away as she shuffled, clearly searching for a way out, he waited for her choice of subject change. "What are you thinking about? What did you think of the meeting? You...you didn't say much." she asked, her expression changing like a kaleidoscope until she settling on a partial smile. The boy shifting to a laying position, allowing his frame to get comfortable before replying. “I think…that happiness is important. Life sucks sometimes, it gets really heavy and when it gets really heavy you need someone or something there to make it a little better. If you don’t have anything else, why not be happy? If Drestig wants to leave to find that, then why should anyone stop him? Is it any better than having him mope around here putting us all down?” he said in a rather blunt fashion, his Kino personality poking through. He paused again, thinking for a moment before looking over at her. “Even if it’s hard, like…really hard, sometimes you just have to go. And sometimes you just have to let someone go.” the silvery child said.

 

/me crawls back in sahalie's head

Suddenly he was nose to nose with her. Though she had never thought of blue as a particularly hard color, his gaze was as intent and as solid as the mountains. Her ears swiveled backwards. She bit her lip, wanting to correct him, to tell him "Yes, I have everything in the world to be sorry about!" She had stated the whole argument, she had naively believed in the power of speech to heal. But today she had learned that her words, no matter how well intended, could be a knife. And beyond that she had been blinded—so blinded—by her good intentions to heal that she had not cared for the mechanism or anything. But in this moment with Alastor's eyes burning hotter than her own small suns, she got the sense that, while he would care about this sort of stuff, would tell her she was wrong. Alastor had some sort of faith in her that was sort of astounding —and plenty misguided, she thought. He would believe her about one thing, "Of course I'm gunna be okay, silly." Life had it's ups and downs and, though in the last few hours she had forgotten about this cycle she could see now that, eventually, the clouds would die away. She was stronger than this.

With her most serious face she took in Alastor's view of things. She nodded along at intervals, agreeing that, yes: happiness was the most important. But the nodding died away when the topic turned to something more tangible. Or, formerly tangible. Now Drestig was just another memory. Her eyes sparkled in some sort of rueful admiration: though she wanted to believe herself selfless, Alastor was the only one that was succeeding. It was probably easier that he did not know the man that well. At least her friend was being honest with her; the adults would have given the her the roundabout treatment they always had. This was, more or less, for good reason since she had been awful prone to crying as a child. But she was an adult now. Almost.

She sighed, "Yeah... I know." The silence that filled the space between them was long. "I just wish he could be happy here. I tried so hard to help everyone be happy." Another long pause. "Did I tell you about the time I tried to run away when I was little?" A small, genuine giggle came from her lips. "Right? Me, run away? I was just so upset that everyone else was just. Mopey, depressed. It weighed on me more than I can say. But I didn't understand anything at all. And Drestig was the one to stop me... He told me that if I tried hard to be happy it could spread to other people." The smile she shared with the silver boy now, though, was a little sad. "I just thought it would be like that, you know? That I could stop Drestig from going like he stopped me. Cause I'm glad he stopped me."

"But I was just being dumb. They're not the same thing." She hung her head and plopped down beside him.

 

"Of course I'm gunna be okay, silly." she said in her usual matter-of-fact voice, and his maw curled at the edges. There she was, his excitable little friend. But, as quickly as she had appeared she was gone back under a passing storm cloud that was normally reserved for himself on most occasions. When they had switched rolls he wasn’t sure, but he had no doubt that they would likely go back to normal before too long. For the moment, he didn’t mind at all being the girl’s shoulder to lean on. It would always be there if she needed it, for however long she could reach it.

She spoke and he listened, pushing past the silence that stretched and laying in it comfortably until she continued. She spoke of a time when she’d tried to run away, his brows raising in surprise. He couldn’t picture the small dark girl trying to permanently leave the Bend ever, not with how much pride she seemed to have in it. And the thought of an actually depressed Sahalie was absolutely out of the question, something he refused to even come to terms with in his mind. She was the light that shone through the fog that hung around him, cutting through his hard exterior to his gentler self as easily as a cold wind. It didn’t please him to think of her unhappy, but still he remained silent and attentive.

Kino’s mouth twitched down at the corner when she mentioned that Drestig had told her to try and be happy and that eventually it would spread to everyone else. It was true that Hal’s good nature was occasionally infectious, he was a prime example if any, but to try and be the light of the entire pack was a lot to put on a young girl. That much was shown by how hard she was being on herself that the man hadn’t been content enough in these lands to stay. She flopped down unceremoniously next to him and the pale former-prince turned to lay his large head over her flank, curled up around her like they would occasionally be in the communal den. “You’ve done a great job, you know. If everything was as bad as you say it was, then it’s done a complete turn-around. You make a lot of wolves happy here, I’ve seen the way everyone looks at you. You are so bright, you’ve saved so many,” You’ve saved me, he wanted to add on, but he knew it wasn’t entirely true. There was always that part of him that would be buried, but was still itching to get out. The malicious part of him, the part that wanted to hurt others for the fun of it because he’d been hurt himself. The part that wanted to inflict pain and tear things apart like a hurricane, to cause destruction because if he couldn’t be whole nobody else should. But he was in front of that, and he would just have to keep running ahead of himself to make sure that part of him never saw the light of day.

“But…you can’t save ‘em all. You can try and reach everyone you can, be the little patch of sunlight on a rainy day like you are and brighten up the dreariness, but understand that sometimes there’s a gust of wind that closes up that little bit of light for a passing moment and then things might not be so okay anymore. But you’ve still got Drift, you’ve still got your dad, you’ve still got Speiden, and the rest of the pack. And you’ve got me. You have every right to be sad about Drestig leaving, but I don’t think there was anything that was gonna stop it, and that’s okay,”

@Kino god every post you make I love kino more and more.

Her head picked up and she looked at him, hard, almost not registering what he was saying though a rueful smile spread on her face. Complete turn-around was a bold claim. If anything, what Drestig had just done was a complete turn-around. Oak Tree Bend had reached a tenuous—if not exactly stable—state where things would be okay if only wolves kept their mouth shut—which Sahalie had been trying to work on—and now Drestig had turned it all on its head and the whole "talk therapy" plan had failed and things were not okay. How much good could she have done if the solidty of the pack failed so quickly? She sighed, placing her head now across Alastor's paws, knowing that he was only trying to make her feel better. He was trying—just like she was. The words would sooth her eventually, she just had to believe in them. And in herself.

When he declared that "you can't save 'em all," she shrugged her shoulders. Realistically she knew this was the truth but her heart would not listen. "I wanna be more than just a 'little' ray of sunshine, though," Now she was looking him in the eye, "I want to be the sun. The sun. The sun can drive away any shower or storm. I wanna be that." And she hoped that her silver friend would stand by her side. There was still the rest of the Bend, that was true as well. They would just have to be made whole again.

"I know I told you I don't think of myself as a princess. And I don't feel entitled to this pack. But..." The words were hard to get out. The feeling, oh the feeling was there and it overwhelmed her: the rush of adrenaline and the strength was there. "I want to learn how to be the wolf this pack needs. I want to be strong and show everyone else how to be strong. I want this pack to be mine when I'm older." Would Alastor agree with her?

(This post was last modified: Jun 07, 2016, 08:39 PM by Sahalie.)

 

The hard look she gave him partially startled the boy, brows raising in surprise at the little almost sarcastic smile that spread across her lips. This whole…comforting thing. It was new to him. Kino could protect someone, he could throw himself in harm’s way and toss off cold words but when it came to comfort and mushy gushy stuff he was, honestly, at a loss. Sometimes he wouldn’t talk enough, and sometimes, like then, he talked too much. He just didn’t know what to do, and it seemed like nothing he was saying was getting through to her. It was frustrating, emotions were frustrating. Especially if you couldn’t understand anyone else’s.

"I wanna be more than just a 'little' ray of sunshine, though," she argued, and he tilted his head to the side not quite understanding. Her rage continued, and bit by bit he thought he could see it. The fight that she had was astounding for such a tiny body he mused. Perhaps she wasn’t a ray of sunshine, perhaps the sun would be better for her. A bright, warm ball of fire that lit up the world and brought life with it. Yes, Sahalie Sun. That was something he could stand by.

"I want to learn how to be the wolf this pack needs. I want to be strong and show everyone else how to be strong. I want this pack to be mine when I'm older." she ended forcefully, and for a moment he was left speechless. His heart gave a squeeze, a warm feeling filling his chest and a small baffled expression settled on his features. This feeling…he didn’t know what to do with it or where it had even come from. But, leader of a pack, especially if that pack was as large as the Bend…did she know how much that entailed? To lead perhaps a dozen others through their lives, to have them rely on you for their lives and defend you with their lives? To know that if you made one wrong move, it might cost them dearly. Was she ready for that? Staring at her, watching the molten gold that were her eyes flash in determination he decided that no, she wasn’t ready for it.

But she would be.

His baffled expression turned into a small smirk and he bumped the side of her head with his nose, “You couldn’t have asked for a smaller present, huh?” he teased gently. “But…if it’s the Bend you’re wanting, I have no choice but to help you get it.” What was he getting himself into…

@Kino

Alastor always listened to her so quietly, even with his head abuzz with thoughts, and she appreciated that. Quietly, her sides still heaving a little raggedly, she awaited his response and prayed that he wouldn't laugh at her. He had a nice laugh, but she just wanted someone to take her seriously for once. She knew what everyone thought, she could see it in the way they talked to her: they thought she was bubbles and rainbows and softness. But Sahalie wanted to show them all that she was all those things and she was strong. That being all those things could be an asset rather than a weakness. So she hoped he did not laugh, hoped that he believed this too.

What came out wasn't exactly laughter, but the joke and the jostle caused her to deflate a little all the same, momentarily. Sahalie assumed, wrapped up in her own mind, that this was his way of pushing the conversation away and treating it like a whim. It was not a whim. Mechanically, she smiled back.

Yet Alastor continued, and her ears perked and swivled uncertainly, trying to hear the humor in his tone now. "You gotta promise me," she said, leaning in so that she was nose to nose with him now, squinting into his eyes, "Cause I'm pretty darn serious. And there won't be no slacking."