Spectral Woods Figures dancing gracefully across my memory

@Sahalie . For @Serach and @Aponi. Backdated to evening 2/20.

If I ever leave I could learn to miss you

With their decision solidified the pair had started to make their way up to Oak Tree Bend. There were a lot of nerves involved, for Hal mostly revolving around their reactions and what they would find out and for Kino...well...there was a lot more swimming behind his topaz gaze.

Now that he knew that she, well, knew it was his turn to feel awkward. A part of him felt elated that she had found out and not bolted. That had to mean something good in his mind. But at the same time, that it had taken her this long to reveal that she knew was a whole other story. It meant that she probably wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. That she, in all likelihood, didn’t want his feelings and that also felt like a slap in the face. He was trying hard to not think too much on it but it was so damn hard. It felt like everything was happening a mile a minute inside his head. He’d thought he was past this phase, that he’d calmed down and matured but that was apparently out the window.

It had taken them a day to arrive at the borders and when they got there they made sure to stay a decent distance away. They were already unsure as to what their reactions would be, they didn’t want to get too close. He looked over at her, assessing her and trying to gage her. “Do you want to do it, or should I?” he asked gently, referring to sending up the call.

With sentimental boy as my nom de plume

(This post was last modified: Mar 10, 2018, 08:56 PM by Kino.)

@Serach and @Aponi sorry sorry sorry for the wait. don't really have any excuse besides not wanting to post

She had thought it would make things easier—him knowing she knew—but in reality it just made her feel awkward as the silence had settled between them. He had, of course, played it off like they were just best friends and there wasn't anything else there for him. And she knew that wasn't true. Or maybe it was, now that so much had happened. Maybe? There was a disappointing feeling that settled in her stomach that she could not justify. Did she want him to love her? The thought didn't make her panic like it did initially—well, it did but in different ways, ways that felt like fluttering, gossamer wings. But Alastor didn't talk about any of it, leaving her to just wonder over and over again. On top of that he seemed to be acting odd, distracted, and she couldn't stop herself from concluding that the distraction was related to what she had said. There was something he was thinking about that he wasn't telling her.

When the silver boy finally spoke she felt the guilt crash down around her: they were supposed to be looking for Laurel, for Quaking Vale, but here she was like a bitch in heat worrying about if a boy loved her. Her ears buckled. The Tainn could not imagine anything more selfish. "I should probably do it," she said after taking in a deep breath. She was not as confident as she sounded, but if Alastor were to be the one that howled and they saw that Sahalie was just listlessly standing by it would look... odd. Serach was a wolf she had known since birth. Aponi was her best friend's mother. Alastor was not particularly close to any of them in the way that she was. It had to be her.

She smiled sheepishly, feeling her cheeks blush, "Thanks for the offer, though."

Then she lifted her head to the sky and called for them.

When Sahalie's howl broke the relative silence of the night, Serach thought he was dreaming. He had dozed off, his nose nestled into the tip of his tail to keep it warm. A single pale ear lifted up off his head, but after a moment it was joined by the other. Blinking away the sleep in his eyes, he shook his head as he sat up. He was half-expecting the sound to stop as he did so, but it continued. A thousand quiet thoughts ran through his brain, fighting against the grip of sleep to try and make sense of what he had just heard. But there was only one way to truly find out, so he roused his stiff limbs and rose to his feet.

His trip to Quaking Vale had not been that long ago, and he had left with very few of his questions answered. It was almost funny that the two wolves who could best answer those questions were now on his doorstep, but the anxious beating of his heart only underscored what shaky ground this reunion would be on. The last he had seen her, Sahalie Tainn had left the Bend with her followers to follow after Spieden. Even when he had learned that his cousin had set up a new pack and home to the south, he had not left Spectral Woods to seek her out - at least not until it was too late.

They looked nearly the same now as they did a year ago, he noted as the familiar forms took shape against the trees. Sahalie's small black figure, with Alastor's larger silver and gray one always nearby. Serach's gut lurched as he slowed, walking up to the borders marked with his and Aponi's scents. There was something wrong about seeing Sahalie and Alastor at a safe distance away, but also something fitting about it too. They had given up their right to roam freely past them when they had left, but the anger he had felt then had long since lost its edge.

"It's been a while," he said simply, unsure of what else he wanted to or should say. But his voice was not unkind, and his pale tail even wagged a little bit, brushing against his hocks.

Going ahead and posting to keep this moving. Feel free to post whenever @Aponi

If I ever leave I could learn to miss you

Hal stated that he should probably do it and he nodded in understanding. The Bend was her birth home, after all. He’d asked out of respect, knowing that sometimes she grew nervous of things like this. He hadn’t expected her to take up his offer, but thought he would ask anyways. He watched as she lifted her head, her beautiful voice ringing through the air and he turned forward to wait. It had never normally taken long for wolves of the Bend to answer calls at their borders and he didn’t think it would be any different.

He was proven right when Serach’s form showed up. It would good to see the man still in the lead position, and doing well at that. However, Kino had noted the lack of multiple scents at the border. It seemed that his friend’s birth home wasn’t going as strongly member wise as they had before, which concerned him, but he said nothing. A friendly smirk crossed his maw, head dipping in greeting to the Donata. “Glad to see you’re doing good, Serach,” he offered, topaz gaze flickering over to glance at his friend.

With sentimental boy as my nom de plume

uuuuh...this is just a lot of dialogue sorry :x @Serach

A year and a half had passed since she had last seen Serach. Distraught, broken, leaning on a tree for support was the way that she remembered him. Now he seemed—her eyes darting quickly up and down, her nose wiggling as she tried to catch a whiff of him—okay...? The small homecoming queen did not know what to make of her former leader, pack mate, family, and the subtle disparity of his tone, curt statement, and small movements of the tip of his tail it appeared that Serach didn't really know what to think either. He didn't seem... mad, even if they were maybe not explicitly and entirely forgiven. "Yes," she responded, equally uncertain of how to talk to this man she had once seen every day, until she left with half of the pack.

Maybe Serach was doing well, but the same could not really be said for Oak Tree Bend. It was so much smaller than when she had left it, that much could be gleaned from the lack of variety among the scents around her. This pack had been so large when she had been a child, and maybe that was something she had taken for granted. Maybe this was fine, an okay number of wolves. But it was a hard to swallow pill, all the same. She had never wanted this.

"We..." Sahalie tried to find a place to begin but stopped. There was just so much to be said. "Well... I'm guessing you probably... know that we founded a pack about a year ago... just south of here. And. Well, some things happened that we just... weren't prepared for." Laurel, being the biggest one, but on top of that were all the disagreements, the amount of work, and the self-doubt. "We were just young, dumb kids. Me and Alastor ended up...leaving for a little while to raise Larkspur's son. But he ran off and came back here. And we discovered that Quaking Vale was just... gone." It was clear from the way her voice rattled at the end that this disturbed her greatly.

"I don't... I mean I don't feel entitled to it, to the pack. I gave it up, I guess when I left but... do you know what happened? Anything at all? I just want to find them and make sure nothing...bad happened."

Apologies for the wait!

{i}Wasn't this what he had been hoping for?[/b] Serach couldn't help but think as he surveyed the mismatched pair of wolves in front of him. He had gone looking for Sahalie after all, and he supposed this wasn't all that different. But he found himself incredibly unsure of what to say now that the opportunity was looking him in the face in the form of two gold and two blue eyes. So instead he allowed Sahalie to go first, merely nodding his head at Alastor's greeting - the two men had never been close, and he doubted that Alastor would have ever come back to the Bend's borders if Sahalie had not been with him.

It took a few moments for Sahalie to hit her stride - it seemed she was also struggling for words, and he wondered if she felt confused as he did. Ears perking forward, he listened attentively as she explained, at least in broad strokes, what had happened to them over the past year. Larkspur was another familiar name, one of his cousin's loyal followers who had also left the Bend behind the previous winter. He wasn't particularly surprised that things had not turned out quite as peachy as Sahalie and Alastor had probably envisioned when they had formed Quaking Vale, but he was also not surprised that they had given it all up to help another in need.

And now they needed something from him. There was desperation in Sahalie's voice, and he could easily imagine how confused she must have been to find the remnants of the Vale's borders slowly fading into nothing. Taking a deep breath, he tried to get his thoughts in order, deciding in that moment that he would do what he could to help, even though he hadn't decided where Sahalie stood with him.

"I went looking for you," he told them truthfully. "So you can imagine my surprise today...it wasn't that long ago, maybe a month, perhaps a bit longer. You weren't there, but I met Morganna Archer who had taken up leadership there along with her brother Niles. I didn't get a chance to meet him, but from what I gathered he had been leading for a while. Morganna hadn't been there long and as you discovered, didn't have plans to say very long either. She and Niles took the pack west, back over the mountains. Not sure where they settled, but she seemed intent on returning somewhere close to Willow Ridge." It wasn't much, but it would hopefully set their minds at ease at least a little.

A young deer has been separated from the rest of its herd. Hunt Opportunity

If I ever leave I could learn to miss you

He watched as Hal seemed to gather herself, wondering what words would pour out of her mouth this time. Whatever it was, it was likely going to be better than what would ever come out of his. That much had always proven to be true, so he remained to his normal role as a silent figure next to her. She started with the pack, admitting their founding and then their failure and his pride cringed within him. To admit to another their faults, it hurt him. He wanted to be someone who could provide for Hal, but the situation seemed like he was able to do just the opposite. When she asked if he knew what had happened he turned his attention back toward the pale man, hoping with everything in his might that he did.

He was surprised to hear that Serach had gone looking for them. Well, not them he supposed. Her. The sunspot woman who stood next to him. It was even more of a surprise to learn that it had dissipated only perhaps a little over a month before. Everything that came out of the male’s mouth had Kino trying to pick his jaw up from off the ground. He almost laughed when the patriarch said Morganna had taken up the leadership. But, it also left him wondering what had happened to the Monadnock. Had it disbanded, or had Morganna jumped ship? His shoulders sagged in relief as, finally, they were given the key piece of information. They had gone over the mountain. Kino didn’t know where Willows Ridge was, though he knew that Sven lived there so he assumed by default that Hal would know.

The information that had been given to them was anything but little. It was monumental, spectacular, exactly what they were looking for. It didn’t answer what had happened that had led to them completely falling apart, but it did tell them where they could go to find out. “Thank you,” he offered genuinely.

With sentimental boy as my nom de plume

@Serach

From her brief run in with Aponi right before Quaking Vale's founding, she gathered that Serach would have had a rough idea where they had situated themselves. The delta they had staked their claim to had only been a day or so south of Oak Tree Bend, it wasn't like they were difficult to find. If Serach knew about them, no doubt he would have gone at some point. Her lip moved in and out between her lip as the girl wished that he had just made the trip a little sooner, and that they had all been able to talk and repair their relationship. Rather than it being like this... an awkward reconnaissance mission.

What he said next, however, nearly caused her eyeballs to pop clean out of her head. Morganna Archer was probably the last wolf she would have imagined to be in the southeast reaches of Relic Lore. They had last left her way up in the lonely, northern moor of stone and tension. She had a healthy, huge pack at the Monadnock. If Serach had been any less of a homebody she might have thought that he was making all this up, and yet there was no other reason for the Bend-bound leader to know that name. Sahalie had no other choice but to swallow a confusingly hard pill: Morganna had just showed up and shipped out with all of her wolves. Why, she had to wonder, since none of it made any sense. The girl and the Monadnock leader had parted on amicable terms. Morganna would not have just marched south and taken Quaking Vale for hers out of any sense of entitlement...

Right?

Perhaps Morganna had fallen on hard times, but that didn't exactly explain why they left the Vale. If Morganna wanted to be closer to Willow Ridge she could just go to Willow Ridge, her home pack. But at least that was an answer, in a way—another clue. It had been so long since Sahalie had been to the drooping trees, but she knew how to get there. They'd know more there.

Alastor thanked him for the sordid explanation and Sahalie bobbed her head along with him. "That literally doesn't make any sense to me, but it's certainly better than nothing," she sighed. "Morganna had her own pack up north." It was worth filling Serach in on some details, since he didn't get out much—not that anyone in the north could have much of an impact on Oak Tree Bend. "But I guess it's good to know there wasn't...idunno, something bad..."

Her mouth formed a hard, sad line. "I wish we could stay. I've missed you.... but I also have the feeling that things are very different than when I left them..."

The expressions of surprise were clear on the faces of his audience as Serach spoke. He wasn't entirely sure how useful the information he was providing actually was, but he genuinely hoped he could give them at least something. He shrugged his pale shoulders at Sahalie's response - he had given them all of the context that he could remember. Morganna had been kind enough at their meeting, but she had certainly not given him a full history lesson of the Vale or how she had come to be there. "Yeah, she told me that you had ended up at Whitestone, along with Spieden. Not entirely sure how she ended up down south, except that she was there to support her brother Niles," he reiterated, confirming Sahalie's statement that indeed, nothing bad had befallen Alastor and Sahalie's former pack.

The same was not entirely sure for another former pack of theirs. Serach's face mirrored Sahalie's, his smile fading away to a grim frown. Was it that obvious that things were not going well? He'd grown used to smelling only a handful of scents along the borders, he supposed it would be a shock to Sahalie and Alastor, who had last crossed them when it had been marked with the scents of nearly twenty wolves. His ears flattened against his head and he averted his eyes for a moment, unsure entirely of how to respond. He had missed her too, but he had not offered them a place in the Bend now. And there was something about her assumption that struck a chord in his heart that made the acknowledgement that the Bend had lost much of its former strength even harder to bear. Because if they had asked? He would not have turned them away despite any of his unresolved feelings.

"They are," he finally said, turning his gaze back to them. "We never really recovered...after everything that happened. At least not in terms of numbers; it's hard to rebuild after something like that. But the Bend has always been about family, and that is still true. We're just a more immediate one. So long as my children are happy and healthy, then I consider the pack to be too, even if that means they grow up surrounded by less wolves than we did." He wondered if they would be able to empathize with him now that they too had been leaders and parents, at least in their own way. "I take it you'll head west, to Willow Ridge? Your father is that way too, not sure if you knew. He created a pack near the old Swift River lands."