Verdant Mosses [m] Down in the Valley

@Kyna 3/12, up at the edge of the mountains and whatnot

Sahalie had not been here since she had met Greer. That had to have been about a year ago.

It had been a hot day when they had met. Today, a steady snowfall covered the plush, now-browned mosses that she had rolled in. It was hard for her to separate this location from her memory, even when it looked so different. Ironically, she had not spoken to the man when she had lived at the Monadnock. Greer did not talk much anyway, so there was almost no point. Sahalie simply hoped he was happy now, living away from the problems of Willow Ridge like he had wanted only last winter. She exhaled, wading back through the snow to look down and out over the hushed, white valley. This was the real reason for heading into the higher elevations by Riddle Heights: she wanted to pick a new direction to scout in, she felt as though all their patrols had missed something.

Her eyes could only reach so far without going up higher, which she really didn't want to do. Nothing called to her, in particular. She knew the lowland woods like the back of her paw and it all felt like home. This should have meant that anywhere would be perfectly fine to settle—but she didn't want to settle she wanted to thrive. There was a place for her, some place she couldn't remember, hadn't thought of, or had yet to discover, and it was waiting for her.

"Soon."

(This post was last modified: Mar 26, 2017, 07:36 PM by Sahalie.)

Things, Kyna decided, finally seemed to be looking up. The start of the winter had been bad – though probably not as bad as her first, for that December had seen the death of Phineas Argyris – with Aponi’s poor decisions and the dispersal of half the Oak Tree Bend pack. It had been entirely her own choice to leave, but she did miss her friends. Sahalie, specifically, though she would not mind the company of Marina or Alastor or perhaps some of the other puppies.

Still. She had Greer, now – and roughly a week after she’d found the man, the terrible itch beneath her skin seemed to have disappeared entirely. In fact, Kyna was feeling all rather well as she descended from the mountain in search of something to eat. Greer had something to attend to, and she saw no reason not to feed herself.

She had no idea that want for a meal would lead her towards another very familiar scent. What was this, all her friends popping out of the snow like daises? “Hal?” she called, nose low to the ground as her pace increased, eyes bright as she sought out her friend’s familiar form. “Hal? What are you doing out here?”

A wild dissertation appears!

Her name echoed off of the snow like out of a dream, and the girl slowly turned around with her ears poised and her tail wiggling behind her. She had not seen Kyna in months after the girls had tried to stick together in the little ragtag, emotionally-damaged band that had left Oak Tree Bend. The interceding months had been so overwhelming and full that there had not been a lot of time to wonder what became of the girl that had walked away—the choice that Sahalie had made in the end, too. To think that after all this time they had both gravitated back to the southeast valley, a magnetic pole in their life, was a wonder. Sadly—but not surprisingly—there was nothing left of Oak Tree Bend attached to either of their coats. Her heart beat quickened as she realized the scent coming towards her was not as familiar as the voice of one of her oldest friends. Her eyes bulged.

Kyna was pregnant. Greer's scent was all over here. Sahalie making sense of all the information in the airwaves was vaguely dizzying, and she wasn't entirely ready to own to the conclusions that her instincts shouted her her. Kyna's scent did not match Sahalie's ever increasing signals of estrus, but she did not smell normal by any means. But how could she... The girl shook her head, her cheeks warm and her chest tightening. Should she call her out on it? That would... be.. odd?

It felt awful to feel anything besides completely happy to see her friend again.

"I could ask you the same." Except maybe that would come with an explanation about the thing-that-eagles-do. It was probably better that Kyna share that on her own terms. At any rate, Kyna had asked her first. She smiled through her confusion. "I'm looking for a new home, actually. There's... just so much to tell you. So much has happened." Seeing Sven after so long had been the same: just an overload of information, a backlog of stories. But if she did not divulge everything now, surely more things than time would come between them.

As Kyna bounced forward, keen on greeting her friend, it did not escape her notice that the other girl seemed a bit more hesitant about their reuniting after what could only be argued as a very tiring winter indeed. Perhaps it had been harder on Sahalie? They’d split ways, after all – the darker girl meant to join up with Spieden (in Greer’s pack, no less), but now Hal was down here. Perhaps something had gone wrong? She wanted to ask, even as she bumped her nose against the younger girl’s cheek.

“I’m doing the same, I suppose – or, well. Sort of. I’m not really looking, anymore. I decided I wanted to stay on the mountain, this time. Where I came from, before my mother and I came to Oak Tree Bend.”

She’d never wanted to leave in the first place, but the Kyna six months of age had not the spine to tell her mother anything, and the Kyna who’d watched her father die right before her eyes had not the desire to stay anywhere near his bones. But the seasons changed, and the wound did not ache so badly – and there was little she wanted more than to live where the skies were open and the air was cold. With Greer, of course. He’d finally decided to stay. But that was clearly not what Hal had come for.

“Are…you going back to Oak Tree Bend? I thought you and Alastor were going to meet up with Spieden.” Or something like that. Maybe she should have gone too, but – no. Being a loner this past winter was exactly what Kyna actually needed.

A wild dissertation appears!

Could Kyna tell that there was so much on her mind? It seemed that way. But in spite of everything, she seemed eager—happy—so perhaps Sahalie should not have worried so much about how life after the Bend had treated the sunset girl. Parting ways had been the right thing for her, and the girl's buttercup eyes creased at the corners to hear that her friend had been living where she had been born. To Sahalie it had always been clear that her own birthplace in Oak Tree Bend was special, even sacred, but lately she had begun to realize that this was something inherent in the land itself rather than a characteristic of her personality. Serach, her father, even Alastor to an extent, felt drawn back to or attached to the trees or the rocks or rivers that they had grown up in, no matter how short their childhood was. It was good that Kyna was back on the mountain. That was where she needed to be.

"Oh!" She chirped, suddenly realizing how Sahalie being out here, so close to her old home, probably looked to Kyna. "N-no." She was trying not to make it sound like she never wanted to go back to Oak Tree Bend—a place she still loved with her whole heart and wolves that she held no grudges with—while also struggling to make it clear that she was definitively On Her Own like an Adult™. "We did meet up with Spieden. And we settled in Whitestone Monadnock where she knew a wolf, I guess. And uhm. Well, Greer was there—" but now he was out here? "—But. I don't know. Spieden was doing okay. She wanted to show the kids Salmon River where she grew up." Always life circled back on this theory of origin. "bAnd me and Al... we did not fit in here." There was no easy way to explain that.

"It was just so... intense. Most of the wolves actually came from a different pack, Willow Ridge," which she was not sure if Kyna knew anything about, "And they left because of some conflict going on there that I don't really know much about. But it's just.... so pressurized. You gotta always be in top form, always looking for ways to improve the pack and yourself and...." It wasn't that Sahalie couldn't get behind that message. She was always trying to better herself, but the ways she tried to better herself just seemed at odds with what everyone else was doing at the Monadnock. She wanted to improve herself emotionally, at her core. Everyone else looked outwards, at their bodies and their skills. "It just wasn't for me. I had no idea packs could be so...different."

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

“I-- Wow. You weren’t kidding when you said a lot had happened.”

Kyna chuckled softly, perhaps a bit depreciating as she glanced down at her own feet. And to think, she was worrying over her own situation. It seemed things were not any better further north. She’d never really caught wind what Whitestone Monadnock was really about, for she never crossed into the borders. Greer had never invited her, either, though it seemed increasingly apparent that perhaps there was a very good reason for that. “I knew wolves at Willow Ridge – Greer, before he moved. And Niles, albeit briefly. I haven’t been there in a very long time. But…that does not sound like a good place to be.”

Not for her, and clearly not for Sahalie and Alastor, either.

And thankfully, no matter how Greer felt about it, he didn’t seem intent on bringing that atmosphere south to the mountain with him. Which uh, was probably something she should address. “He came down here. Greer, I mean. He ah-- We--” Why was this so weird to talk about? She should be excited! And she was. Sort of. But it was scary, on some level, and perhaps the entire weight of the situation hadn’t sunk in entirely yet. “We decided to make our own family soooo I’m Kyna Archer, now.  He's my mate.  And I like it better, I think. I mean – I’ll always miss my father, but – It’s more like me, and less like his ghost.”

A wild dissertation appears!

"Yeah," Sahalie said with a giggle that was equally inhibited, and a casual shrug that was meant to say, "What can ya do?" Because it was all behind her now, nothing she could change except what she would make of her experience up north. She wasn't moving on so much as she was moving forward, and she intended to make something good of her time at Whitestone Monadnock, to use the information somehow. For now it only served as a means of defining what she didn't want in life, but perhaps later on it would be helpful in understanding the walks of life that other wolves came from, that she might encounter on her borders. Would she turn those wolves away? Tell them not to worry so much, to slow down?

Kyna reminded her that of course she would have known about Willow Ridge. Greer would have told her. Her ears flopped about on her head, wondering how she could be so silly. Niles, too, apparently came from Willow Ridge—which was a huge surprise, given that he didn't seem like any of the Ridge wolves that she had met that were always so passionate, order-driven. But the boy didn't talk much, despite the fact that he was attached at the hip to one of the most talkative wolves ever. Briefly, she considered mentioning that @Niles was with her before her friend continued on anyway. Perhaps another time. There seemed like there were a lot of things the boy wanted kept to himself, anyway.

"W-Wow!" the shock of hearing it was far stronger than smelling it on her fur. It was something far more official than Sahalie had first assumed: they were mates. The word commanded a certain amount of respect and was shrouded even more thickly in the depths of adulthood. Sahalie knew little about being mates. Were Triell and the woman mated? Or was it just what the deed was called? Did Kyna know how it worked? She had been friends with Greer for so long but now they were more than friends—something Sahalie had never dared to move past in her life for fear of self-injury. But Kyna apparently wasn't afraid. Sahalie blinked several times, suddenly seeing the sunset girl in a whole knew light. She seemed impossibly far away in her own wordly maturity. Kyna knew what mates were. She had a new name. "It makes me so happy to see that from the bottom of your heart that you are happy, Kyna." Because that, at least, was what really mattered.

More quietly, "Does that mean.... that you did it?"

She felt like a foolish child to phrase it in such a way, especially to Kyna now that she was all worldly, but she had no other way to say it.

For a scarce few moments, Kyna found herself wondering if she’d ruined her friendship in that moment. Silence was not usual for the pair of young women -- even if talking was not usually the redhead’s role -- and it fell over her thick and uncomfortable like an unseasonable blanket of snow. It was a change, certainly, but just because she had taken Greer on as her mate did not in any way lesson her friendship. She had known Sahalie almost as long, and did not want to lose the girl when there was no reason to.

At the very least, the Tainn seemed to be happy. If it wasn’t genuine, she had no reason to actually suspect the other wolf of anything else. The smile returned, albeit a bit more hesitant, but then, Sahalie asked the question. She knew this had to come up eventually – so why was it embarrassing?

The memory of the eagles sent her cheeks burning – but Kyna gave a small nod anyways. “Uh…yes. We did. I…wanted it to be official…and that was the only way how. It seemed like a very good idea at the time.” Heat did that to a girl’s mind, she supposed. But the heat was over, and Kyna was fairly certain that it wasn’t simply Greer’s magic touch. “…I love him. Which is more than my parents ever had, really.”

Something occurred to her then. (Those goddamn eagles.)

“…there was absolutely no shrieking involved. Just. So you know.”

A wild dissertation appears!

What an uncomfortable conversation, and yet just like those eagles Sahalie could not turn her mind away from it. It was actually sort of exciting to hear about, the risque stuff that the adults were never going to tell her but she could trust Kyna to tell it straight. What was this arcane ritual of mateship, what did it mean to any of them? In her own, especially heightened hormonal state, Sahalie was embarrassingly attentive once she swallowed her immediate repulsion, reminding herself that this was just another part of life—more or less a rite of passage from how @Larkspur made it sound. Being official would have sounded like a required part of being "together" the way a leading pair was meant to be had Sahalie never met a bonded pair in her life.

So being official was important—to Kyna, at least, but perhaps someone had put this idea in her head. Sahalie had to admit that she didn't have any "better ideas" either, even if it didn't sound like a "very" good one to her. But what the sunset girl said next left the dark girl stranded on her own, selfish island wondering if her eyes were being opened for the first time. Kyna loved Greer. Somehow Sahalie had figured out so much: the scent changes, Greer and her being together, but that dangerous L word had not occurred to her in the slightest. Why should others be so afraid of it, after all? Was that what Kyna felt? What did love feel like? These questions Sahalie could not even open her mouth to ask her, her face burning ever more hotly in her childishness. Truly, it seemed like Kyna had so much more figured out than she did. Kyna had been so much more productive in these last few months.

Real girlish laughter bubbled from her finally, so relieved to hear that there was no loud noises. So wolves didn't do it exactly like eagles. She felt pretty foolish. "Uhm it didn't...hurt did it? Like. Doing it."

"What are you guys gunna...do now? Like what if you get pregnant?" It seemed sort of dangerous for her friend to get herself knocked up with no home to speak of. Any wolf Sahalie had ever known to go into heat basically ended up pregnant. Male touch was like, contagious.