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The weather had slowed his progress, or so he blamed it. The rains came sporadic and fast with the heat of the day, leaving him damp and the long blades of windswept grass weighed. More clouds blotted the horizon here, foretelling what the ocean would offer in due time. Dirge had come across the distant fields a day or two ago, pulled in by the allure of sea salt to push through to the bluffs, and had since kept away from their crumbling, tempting edge.

It was here that the mountains to his south began to ring familiar and his thoughts turned to a few weeks ago when snow had been dotted the landscape rather than stormy clouds. So he had gone in a circle of sorts, provided all he laid witness to wasn't just his imagination; it was hard not to follow the sea though, at least where mountains and questionable arrangements didn't direct him elsewhere.

Lazily in the warm haze left in the wake of a long passed thunderstorm, his maw split in two as he yawned. He was no stranger to warmth, but he had not missed the humidity. He also knew better than to complain, for summer was oft whisked away by ever changing seasons and gone too soon. Compared to the previous locales, he soaked up the solitude he found here and let the crash of not so distant waves lull him. It made travel go leisurely and his movement reflected it.

He may not have needed a care in the world.

@Nyx where r u
She didn't know where she was meant to go, and supposed it didn't matter.

Nyx had camped out near Grimnismal's borders for a number of days since the frenzy that drove her to kill her brood, but she did not dare cross through the sequoias that had once been her home. Despite months of longing to leave the coast behind, the golden Ostrega found herself rooted once more - though this time for a very different reason.

The boy who lived was hers but not hers, and she held the vivid image of his tiny, blood-spattered pale form in the eye of her fragile mind. She knew it was wrong to want him, that a large part of her didn't, but it felt wrong to abandon him completely. The entire scenario was upside-down and inside-out, her muddled feelings rendering her stupefied as she foolishly hung around, unwanted, on Caiaphas' doorstep.

Finally, when the realisation that the coywolf would have her head if she found her skulking just beyond her shore, Nyx resisted the pull to mother her son. Heart heavy with the weight of her enormous guilt, she let herself acknowledged the pain of never seeing her baby grow, the pride that would surely brighten Lycaon's eyes. She'd killed the others, but fate had spared the puppy whose name she'd likely never know.

A sight for sore eyes, the rugged Ostrega did what she knew best: she wandered with no intention of turning back. She would trail far from the coast, far from the life of her child that would be a million times better without her. Lost in self-pity, with her lead and tail low, Nyx noted from the corner of a dull yellow eye the figure of another. Eager to continue along her own way, she made no move to engage him or even make eye contact; instead she pressed on, keen to escape his judgement.
It was not judgment that laid in his gaze on her, but rather the bud of interest. When he had first laid eyes on her and that downcast frame, she had been nothing more than a fleck of gold in vivid, verdant windswept grasses; he was pulled towards her without even meaning to. A distance kept, his interest bloomed to curiosity as he deemed himself a pure nuisance, a shark deep in an otherwise stormy sea. And just how stormy that sea was, well, he may as well have been caught in the undertow thinking it was freedom.

Some distance out, he began to wonder about her when she seemed to push ahead, aware of his gaze lingering now and just as able to beat a hasty retreat to wherever. Dirge let her go, content to alter his course to mettle in the wake of hers and follow it. The sway of the tall grasses swallowed her whole just as steadily and as he tested the teasing air of the path she blazed, he wondered again.

Is it you?

Emboldened, his pursuit was less stealthy than before. It would have been easier to call out after her but he had his moments where doing things the easy way was simply not an option. He wanted to be certain, better safe than sorry, when the near breadth of a year spanned between them. He split the next wave of seaside prairies to clear a rise of jutting stone to look for her, and found nothing.

Ghosts, then.
She felt his eyes bore into her, and her own squeezed shut in a desperate attempt to pretend that no one was there. Nyx was alone in these fields, among these rocks, beneath these grim rain clouds, free from the weight of her woes and the judgement of others. Briefly, she blinked over a peppered shoulder to see the stranger's pace quicken and, eager to avoid having to acknowledge him, the agouti loner hurried ahead among the long grass.

To the side of a large, jutting rock she pressed her thinning frame firmly. She was safer there, she knew, hidden away rather than vulnerable in the open, and she pricked a raven-tipped ear in the direction of padding paws. Nyx held her breath, listening to the rogue's approach until his footfalls fell silent nearby. She didn't doubt that he could find her if he really wanted to, so arched her neck to peek curiously around to catch a glimpse of the one who'd followed her.

The last thing she expected to see was a ghost.

Dirge.

Her heart thrummed at the sight of her wayward brother, and from her maw came a strained whine as she struggled to figure out how she was supposed to respond. Nyx moved tentatively on trembling limbs from her hiding place to better look upon him, the very tip of her tail twitching anxiously as she dared to reach out gingerly with her muzzle and confirm that he could not possibly be real.
A sigh left him as he took stock of what lied ahead of him. From on high the varied paths worn in stood out, the options to take across an unfamiliar strand as numerous as they were obvious. That ghastly glimpse of ghost remained just that, lost to the salty wind and absent to the wander of his critical gaze. He was a skilled tracker if nothing else, but when things simply dematerialized to nothing, was there really any one thing to track?

He had been testing the air in hopes to pick up her trail again when another part of the jutting spar mewled. So preoccupied that his quarry was beating a retreat he had not considered that they would hide, and he pulled his gaze away from the sway of the terrain to find a rather jarring visage peering back at him.

Recognition was something reminiscent of a lightning strike; it struck hard and fast and never quite in the same place twice. He blinked, the passing of momentary stupidfication replaced by the slick vack of ears to the crown of his head as limbs absently guided him down from the stones.

"It is you," he said, hushed and soft. A proper fleet of questions rose as he tentatively reached out for her with his muzzle—the reaction not at all unlike the one she offered to him—but they were lost to the eager swing of his tail and buried somewhere in the smile that came to.
When he spoke to her, Nyx felt as though her limbs might give way. Her head spun and her heartrate accelerated, yellow eyes wide as she struggled to figure out what she was supposed to feel. She exhaled another breathy whine, his voice as clear to her as when last she saw him a year ago, and thrust her ears forward to drink deep the sound of it - as though she might never hear it again.

He moved closer and she inhaled deeply, the familiarity of his scent causing her shoulders to sag. Her muscles began to slacken as her mind fully registered that this was no ghost, that this wolf was safe, that he was her brother. Nyx had never been a believer of fate, but she felt more than certain that Dirge had come for her at just the right time. Gaze glassy, the fragile Ostrega made that final stride more confidently as she made to close what distance was left between them, thrusting her head beneath his own to bury her muzzle among the paler tresses of his throat.

"Don't-," Nyx' words cracked as she tried to keep from breaking down, and she squeezed her eyes shut in attempt to prevent the tears that stung them. "Don't lose me." Not again.
Relief—if it could have been called just that—flooded her instaneously, a breakdown of some proverbial dam shimmered lively as emotion in her eyes and movements. He had braced himself as she pressed into him; he gently came to rest his muzzle atop her head in a wolfish embrace and caught her words over the coastal din. They were like tempered glass, those cracks spidering out did not leave much wonder in what strength remained, nor did they belie their ability to be cutting.

All this time and he never once considered that he lost her. But she had disappeared, hadn't she? Or perhaps it were more complicated than that altogether. It hardly mattered to him now as he began to preen at her fur, as though the very action was the remedy to soothe all, the perfect tincture for things that were far worse than a scrape.

"Oh I doubt I'd be able to get far," he said with every good natured intent. "You always found me before. Maybe it was time I found you." Evidentally it had been a necessity this time—he was not blind to the fact something had happened, but wise enough to know not to pry. The blanks would fill themselves in soon enough if they did not already; beneath the sea salt so potent on her coat, she still carried a story along her peppered coat.
Grimnismal had changed her. The series of unfortunate events that lead to the end of her time among their hierarchy left her wounded. From the heat that drove her into Lycaon's embrace to the needless slaughter of her litter at her own fangs, Nyx had gradually deteriorated along with each poor decision she made unil there was nothing left to hold her up. Never before would the golden Ostrega have leaned on another to weep but even after all this time and the distance between them, her trust in Dirge had failed to dissipate.

He soothed her, a temporary remedy that shooed her many woes from the forefront of her mind, and grotted her teeth against the kindness of his words. Fleetingly, she thought sadly of her fondness for Ingram, who'd never failed to cheer her up with his dark sense of humour - he'd always reminded her fondly of Dirge. "I always hoped you would," came her trembling response as she withdrew, backing up carefully to lift her slim muzzle and look up at the warmth that lit up his features.

She smiled right back at him, though the gesture was quick to melt away. It felt criminal to even think about being happy when she'd killed her own pups the weeks prior, and so she averted her stare to look guiltily down at her paws. "I tried to look for you and Saor, but Winter came and I..." she swallowed. "I don't deserve this, Dirge. I don't deserve you."
Saor. He missed her too, another link of their family chain separated somewhere along the way. The details of how and where and when evaded him now, but he too had almost followed her away. But the unravelling tapestry of what lied in the varied valleys and plains had intrigued him and so he had stayed. The discoveries therein had been enough to sate his wonder of part of their lineage.

As her gaze downcast itself once again, he looked over her and found few answers to his many questions. Winter had been more than good to her, at least he presumed, thought the events that had drawn her out were decidedly not so good. His gaze did not linger long over her, but shifted to the rolling sea as an errant bug buzzed nosily past his ear.

"It doesn't matter what you deserve," he went on to say in response, "I'm afraid you'll be stuck with me." It didn't seem right for a mother to stray too far from her young—theirs hadn't for obvious reasons, though she could have—and given the duress she was under, it went out question he would postpone his leisure adventure along the shore.

His gaze fell back to her sunken pose.

"Where have you been staying?"
She sniffed, a weak attempt at holding back the tears that still pricked her gaze, and sought a distraction by following Dirge's bright eyes to look out over the sea's rolling waves. Breathing deep the tang of salt in the air, Nyx took in the sight before her in silence. A heavy sigh left her lungs to accompany the hope that this would be the last time she would see the vast water up close - that she could move on from the trauma there that had infected her once carefree life.

Nyx knew that no matter where her travels took her, she would think of her babies with each passing day. She would live with the consequences of her blind fury that had ended their lives, her shoulders significantly heavier beneath the weight of this immeasurable guilt. She would regret leaving behind the one who lived, loathe Caiaphas as much as appreciate her for making him her own. He would be with her always, the memory of him sure to torment her for the rest of her days.

She thought of @Lycaon, the crumpled heap of him on the cold floor of the grotto, and thrust her ears back. Nyx hated what she did to him most; once vibrant with youth, the slaughter of his pups and having to parent their remaining son had surely forced him to grow up too quickly. He could have loved her, perhaps, if the timing had been right and life hadn't come crashing down around them, but she doubted her wanderer's heart would let her settle.

"A pack called Grimnismal," the agouti Ostrega answered, still looking solemnly out over the sea, "we claimed the strand beneath the cliffs and the surrounding sequoia." A pregnant pause, and she finally turned her sad yellow eyes to seek Dirge's. "I bore a litter there." She blinked, her brow furrowing. "And I killed them."

Her revelation left him silent. This was one thing he could not fathom, nor did he entirely wish to. Such a predicament explained far more in the way of answers that his questions folded under the weight of such a statement. He always liked to think he had the answers, if not immediately then by processes of cobbling together whatever worked. But he did not have one exact answer to suit himself for what she had done; there were plenty of reasons leading up to whys and hows, and some of them were better left unanswered. His head bowed then, away from her gaze with a calmness he wasn't so surprised to have.

"Seems we're doing quite the job of living up to our names," and which ones he didn't say. His head lifted to catch her gaze again. "I'm sure it was for the best, not that it changes anything." Even a blind man could have felt how deeply it unsettled her; it unsettled her enough to carry regret, to have presumbly fled, and of course there were all those little piercing pieces of what if or wonder why and the emotions therein. He thought it all a messy affair, far too keen on letting it go as best he could.

"What do you intend to do now, hm? The time's right to leave all this disaster behind where it belongs." He knew he would come to terms with it all another time, but already he sought to keep them moving, to keep them busy. They had enough of a handle on history to know what dwelling did on broken down souls and that remained ever a constant in his memory.
Nyx didn't know why she spoke so openly of her litter's murder, was unaware of how she managed to speak those words with a voice that did not waver. She looked her brother straight in the eye, finding herself thirsty to see even just a sliver of distaste for her. Instead, however, an uncomfortable silence fell between the siblings and not ever a flicker of disgust passed Dirge's features.

He glanced away, and the she-wolf furrowed her brow with uncertainty. Torn between yearning for acceptance and feeling as though she deserved a rejection similar to that of Caiaphas, Nyx remained quietly ashamed. She decided then to speak no more of her slaughtered babes, nor would she admit to the one she knew to have survived.

The subject was promptly switched, and to Dirge's enquiry came the lazy rise and fall of a shoulder in the form of a shrug. "No idea," was her response, "but I never want to see the ocean again, for as long as I live."
For the moments he spared to consider her plight, he could not and would not fathom how she felt. What was done was done and he did not think her position uncommon to have been in—their very own mother had once been placed in such an impossible place and could have done the same. For her sake, and perhaps his own, he did not pass judgement for what had been wrought; it seemed hardly his place to do so when she had so very clearly gone above and beyond the task herself.

So when she took his subject change in stride, he tried to bolster her spirits with a wan smile.

"That can be arranged," though he admitted only to himself that he disliked leaving the sand and surf so soon. "We can head inland if you're up for it, find somewhere to rest for a bit." He thought food couldn't have hurt either, assuming she was willing to stomach more than guilt and malicious mental medicine. Reaching out to her, he bumped his nose against the underside of her chin as though to reassure her. Things may have been agreeably bleak now, but she had not lost everything.
She nodded once, a silent agreement. Dirge spoke of moving inland, further assurance to Nyx' fragile mind that he would not leave her to process her grief on her own, and the thought of rest was inviting. Having not realised how utterly exhausted she was, the tawny wolfess reminded herself that she'd whelped only days before and had not found the opportunity to begin the long road to recovery.

With nothing more to say and a sudden urgency to seek shelter where the tang of sea salt could no longer haunt her, Nyx responded to her sibling's affection by emitting a soft whine and flicking her tongue to the ivory of her chin. Pressing on, she encouraged Dirge to her with a whine as she picked up her stride and began their long journey from the shore that she was desperate to leave behind.