since abandoning her homestead, our father's omen had taken up shelter beneath the broad and teeming boughs that flushed the strath in blessed shadow. it was a good place to avoid a bulk of the oppressing summer rays, and with a pelt as dark as hers she was smart to remain hidden. and yet, as wise as it would be to remain outstretched beneath the protective brambles in a swathe of brushwood, the eerie silence that precedes the appearance of another predator lured her from comfort.
she followed the signs until she was met with the sight of a husky teenager conformed to battle. she drew her red eyes across his taut, stilted frame, and she watched him loom pensively over an anomalous patch of small white flowers. omen knew a grave when she saw one.
she kept her distance, but came within the corner of the young male's view. then softly, with the tenderness of familiarity, she asked him: "how long has it been -- since they've been lost to you?"
omen inclined her head to the ice-titan's stare, respectful of his sentimental claim here and mindful to the air of somber thoughts he wore around him like a wreath -- a wolf with always more than one reason to keep her distance. "you're one of the lucky ones then," she mused in a hush, glancing away to the dirt before her as she seemed to remember something she held both with great fondness and regret. even the darkness of her features could not hide the intensity with which she reminisced.
when she returned her eyes to the male, she looked sympathetic. "still, she must have truly been something... leavin' an impression like this on you." Even after all that time he couldn't count.
As striking and undaunted as the wild stranger appeared -- as terribly deep as his eyes were; as experienced as he looked -- he betrayed his age through his insistence. She realized then that this godly figure was just like everyone else: a product of his upbringing; a lost child chasing things that could not be changed. He looked powerful enough to take on the task, though this would only serve to make him stubborn and restless, and in the end of things he would be unfulfilled.
Unless he found another soul, or a heart-stirring stretch of land, that stole his spirit and cleansed it of everything that had come before it.
Omen, with her ghost-of-a-smile, seeming wistful or teasing, wasn't at all actually glad to whisper-tell him that: "that's what all the lucky ones say." She could have guessed that this was all about his mother -- for who else could leave such lasting scars on a boy? The sable she-wolf nodded mutely, staring at the ground at his feet for a long moment before flitting her oppressive eyes to him dolefully. "Then she was beautiful," she told him, louder this time, and more firm. "Though it's rather hard to imagine a wolf like you," the sibyl admitted further, glancing away as she refused to acknowledge how he received the hooded compliment, if at all.
whoops, i wrote you a novel. :0 no need to match the length! ♥
her whisper-tell, inadvertently confirming winterbane's own contemplations that saying he'd rather spent the time with lotte than without her was easier said than done. the tundrian has the ability to be able to take a objective step back and see that even if he would have had the time with lotte that it wouldn't have ever been enough. that her untimely death would still be just as unfair as it was to him now ...if not more-so. perhaps, as she says, he is a lucky one. lucky because he'd been incredibly young and he hadn't been present for anything but the aftermath here and now.
wintersbane looks to her once more, glacial gaze assessing but more gentle than they'd been in some time as he contemplates her. she speaks as if from experience and the tundrian is undoubtedly curious. he shifts his weight and draws in a soft breath of air to inquire but catches the words last minute before they can slip from his tongue. asking her would be incredibly invasive and though the tundrian's manners are often misplaced most days he doesn't wish to pry. if she wanted to tell him, she would ...but he reminds himself that they are ultimately strangers despite this moment shared between them.
it takes wintersbane a long moment for her words to truly sink in, and when they do they are processed with a twitch of an ear and a soft furrow of his brow in quiet contemplation. if she calls his mother beautiful based off of his appearance does that mean, by proxy, she is calling him beautiful too? wintersbane has always been a vain beast — strange, he thinks in those rare moments he contemplates it at all, for a warrior whose guaranteed to bear a few scars in his lifetime — and he can't help but preen in acceptance the compliments she offers him.
pride and vanity have always been masters of the tundrian and they control him now like a puppet on a string as he steels his shoulders in an attempt to humbly accept her compliments while the slight puff of his chest gives away that he enjoys hearing them more than he's presently willing to admit ...though her eyes are averted from him ( as to which he's almost glad for ). he contemplates offerings words of gratitude for her compliments but decides that it might sound like something an a-hole might do ( not that he can't be a certified a-hole™ because he definitely can be ) so he accepts them further with a soft noise of gratitude.
on the topic of his mother, however, he offers simply: "she was a queen among men." in a quiet muse. wintersbane'd always held lotte in high regard and her death merely made her something of a patron saint to him. he will tell his children stories of her; of the legendary soturi, the queen of nightingales, matriarch of their family. in this way, she will be immortalized and with any luck she will never be forgotten ...by the children of his loins, at the very least.
whether her gaze returns to him or not, wintersbane offers her a soft smile then, appreciative of her presence. there is an unexplainable sort of kinship he feels towards her. any discomfort he might've felt at the beginning has slowly been ebbed away. of course, caution always remains, to some degree: he's a warrior, after all — and though it's been quite some time since he's brushed up on those skills he was a pretty damn good one, if he said so himself — but he doesn't feel the pin-prickle of hostility that has lingered within him for so long. "i'm called wintersbane." he offers her his name first, a rare occurrence. he had an unspoken rule of thumb that he gave his own name after the other(s) in the conversation gave theirs first ...if he gave it at all.
Involuntarily, Omen's florid eyes returned to the young ghost-chaser, her gaze drawn by the timbre of his voice— by the way it came gently— caressing and reassuring. She took a small breath as she looked at him, her slim breast constricting as she met the intense blues he had set above a long, proud muzzle. Looking at them each time was to be stricken anew by how piercing they were... as if seeing them again for the first time. They were like stars, right here on earth, and the ink-druid couldn't bring herself to not love them.
He smiled at her then, ever-so-softly, and it felt like the earth shifted under her feet.
She wanted desperately to be afraid of him— those eyes! that musculature!— for he looked capable of tearing her asunder, rendering the pitch girl to bloody ribbons. But more than her body quivered to remain wary, it quaked to know him better— to come closer, and let him have her. It had been a long time since she'd wanted to be close to anyone, so she rejected the feeling almost entirely. She was prepared to flee the scene, simply melt away as quickly as she'd come, but then he gave her his name.
Wintersbane. A title, more than a name. A subject she was intimately familiar with. "Our Father's Omen," she said, not unlike the beginning of a prayer. It was an introduction that would have sufficed back in the Draught, but she remembered that wolves elsewhere weren't typically named like her kin. She had found this out fairly quickly after dispersing. "It's the name I was given. Most wolves just call me Omen," the vainglorious creature shrugged, glancing away as if embarrassed. Her name hadn't exactly been given in kindness, after all, and she was too traditional to dispose of it of her volition.
I love how deeply your characters always think and feel -- it's a pleasure to read!
When he asked about her name, as those not born in the Draught were prone to do, Omen could only shrug. Her sheepish didn't come so much from her name but how others reacted when first introduced. It made her feel as if something was wrong with her— an unfortunately intended consequence brought on by the council of her naming ceremony. She couldn't find her voice to answer him at first. She wasn't typically inclined to explain, but for some reason she wanted him to understand; as if she thought not doing so would tarnish her to him.
Soft ears drew forward as he continued. He gave her the word Talvella and told her how important it was to him— how he wasn't yet ready to wear it— and she tucked the name away with the jealous fervor of a dragon. She, who believed in things unseen and concepts like fate, could not imagine that he had given her the translation of Wintersbane in his mother's tongue just for it to be shared with everyone else. She was too self-important, too greedy and needy, to believe that name had been meant for anyone to utter but her...
Omen swallowed thickly. "To me, it's not about what I like to be called," she answered after a while, and it was all she seemed willing to expose, with her mien crestfallen. Her gaze followed a detached greenleaf as it tumbled in light skips near the young warrior's broad paws. "My mother told me," Omen began to relent, after releasing a breath and relaxing the tense set of her shoulders, "that my name came out of spite from bigots who didn't understand the words, and that it didn't have to mean something bad if I didn't want to."
i edited in a quick wrap-up conclusion but if you'd like to continue this feel free to poke me on here or discord and i'll gladly revise the thread and take the conclusion out so it can continue. :-)
she has his rapt attention — though in truth she's had it since she first melted out from the shadows of the strath — as she explains to him the complexities of her name. and it is complex. he struggles to understand, at least in the beginning, if because he changes his so frequently and freely — though the change to wintersbane and it's tundrian variant are more or less permanent given their true significance to him. it doesn't have to mean something bad if i don't want it to, she tells him. though he doubts she meant to he inadvertently feels like a bit of an asshole for giving her his opinions on name changes and telling her that she didn't look like an 'omen'. it's the tundrian's turn to be sheepish then and there's an apology written across the lines of his face and muzzle, heavy in his eyes.
someone, somewhere would always known them by their given name. he tried to go by 'roarke' for a short period of time but the name felt like a heavy, dead weight on him. it'd been a long time since he'd been that carefree boy and it was like a snake trying to fit back into shed skin that it knows is too small for it. he could never truly go back to being 'roarke' and trying to almost felt like he was disrespecting himself and the memories of his lost and scattered family. "omen is a pretty badass name." he says then offering her a slightly mischievous and slightly lopsided grin. she was right, he decided. when it wasn't said like a curse ( and when he didn't associate the word with being a word but a name ) it could easily take on new meaning; and not a bad one.
wintersbane gives a pause and takes a few steps away from his mother's grave. he's found her again. the hemlocks would ensure that no one disturbs her eternal rest without the consequence of poisoning and thus there is no need for him to stand sentry. it was obvious that his father and teaghlaigh'd felt no need to continue on here, either. while he doesn't necessarily want anyone to settle the strath — selfishly he doesn't want to be denied visitation access to lotte's grave even though he knows the likelihood of him visiting it again isn't overly high — he knows he won't stay here. "are you heading anywhere in particular?" the tundrian asks of his companion, thinking that he might like her prolonged company if she accepted his offer to stick together, of course.
she gives an answer and he accepts it with a sage nod and a roll of his shoulders before offering her good luck on her journey and parting ways with her.