Dragoncrest Cliffs intricate cities built from the slag of a bulldozed anatomy

@Portia @Eske @Kendra maybe?

With the break of the weather, Thuringwethil has made work to work on their borders once more. The other guardians and those aspiring are doing the same and she hopes any disturbances noted will be reported. Thankfully, she hasn’t found anything of note but she supposes others were just as cooped up as they had been. The snow within the forest is still as the spaces between the redwoods offer enough exposure but near the bases have been dusted with less.

Near the southern side of the forest, however, a few trees have been taken down by the snowstorm. The weight of the snow didn’t help as a few trees weakened, taking a few down with them. Snow covers most of them now but Thuringwethil finds herself interest as she begins to climb through the fallen giants to see the extent of the damage.

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Eske is glad to be free of the cavern. Though she is grateful for it for it had undoubtedly provided shelter from the harsher aspects of the snowstorm that had plagued the Wilds it had become a stone prisoner. Eske does not enjoy being cooped up; just as she hadn’t as a small mewling babe. She juggles her duties as Gona as she always had but practices her Hunting skills in between offering Kendra hunting lessons. She is eager to spend time with the newest Kru and though she could admittedly care less about the pallid male she appeared with Eske is quite smitten with Kendra. She did not think it would ever happen to her: that she might develop a crush: that it would steal ahold of her and refuse to let go. In this area she is inexperienced: she does not know how to tell if Kendra feels or could feel the same way and neither is she quite sure what to do with the knowledge of her self. She had once scoffed at Freyja for her crush on the outsider and now …now she too has tumbled head over heels for one not born of their tribe. Yet, Eske is quick to make the lines of difference known to herself not wanting to retreat on her happiness. Kendra is apart of Drageda and she (Eske) is not choosing Kendra over Drakru. Gyda was an outsider too, once.

She walks without paying too much attention and averts her path with a suddenness as she catches the scent of the Commander. It has been a long time since she has spoken one on one with Head. Too long, perhaps, but both of them are quite occupied as it stands. “Heda,” Eske greets her with a submissive bow of her body as her sea blue-green gaze touches upon Heda’s familiar form before it flickers to the fallen trees with a soft frown.

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Thuringwethil hasn’t gotten very far in her climb when Eske pops up on her trail. She turns her head to see the girl as she calls out and she adjusts her spot on a fallen redwood to one with a more even, wider plataeu for her to stand. Once her she feels steady, her attention returns and remains on the girl.

“Eske,” she greets with a swish of her tail and a hunt of a smile. It fades just as quickly as it came before she beckons the girl with her nose. If the other felt comfortable enough to climb the fallen redwoods, she is more than welcome, but Thuringwethil is rather interested to see the damage down from up high. One tree had been struck down by lightning during the storm sometime—certain she hadn’t seen this in her scouting and securing her land—and taken down four others nearby. She turns and begins her climb until she is on the highest trunk of the pile to see the splintered tree on the other side.

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Eske peers up at Heda where she stands raised above on a fallen redwood. They are massive trees, Eske realized with a small catch in her throat, and cannot help but think that someone could have easily been crushed by them as they fell and that it was lucky that no one was. She does not realize how big they are …or at least she hadn’t. Seeing them fallen before her it puts things into perspective that she had never paid much mind to before. Her ears cup forward as she hears Heda call her name and when she is beckoned Eske does not hesitate to scale up the fallen redwoods despite her apprehension at it. They seem stable enough and she has a fearless reputation to keep, after all. She does not climb them carelessly, however, instead testing her and their balance before she places her entire body weight upon them. She joins Heda on the highest trunk, her body tense as if it is going to help her keep her balance on the rounded trunks. Heights didn’t bother her — she is a dragon, after all — but she is not sure how much trust she puts in the pile of fallen trunks not to tumble and spill onto the earth and it is that thought that makes her the most nervous. “Are you inspecting the damages?” It seemed like a bit of a stupid question but talking distracted her from the scenarios running through her head and Eske is desperate to distract herself from them.

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Thuringwethil turns away when Eske begins to climb her way up the trees. They are wedged enough between the standing giants to prevent them from rolling one way or the other too much, combined with being neatly placed on one another for refuge. Either way, there isn’t much that moves beneath her feet as she makes her way to the heart of the damage. Heda nods to Eske’s question without looking back of her shoulder but she does chuff for her attention, pointing with her nose.
 
“I think it hit that one,” she says, pointing to where the bark and shards of wood have splintered off in different directions. Bits and pieces of the tree remain on the ground nearby, some covered in snow, some now. “And I guess it took these down with it.”  The observation isn’t much but just in case the girl can’t see it yet, or figure it out. Instead of lingering, she works on a decline to the other side o she can get a better look. “I’m glad everyone was in the cavern,” she says idly, thankful everyone survived the worst of the storms.

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The logs feel stable beneath her weight, and Heda does not appear to be having trouble and though Eske attempts her best to hide it lingering makes her uneasy even as her gaze follows Heda’s as the commander points out the likely cause of the log pile. Eske nods tersely and eagerly follows Thuringwethil back down to the other side, a soft sigh of relief leaving her lips as her paws touch solid ground once more. Eske had despised being cooped up in the cavern and she cast a thoughtful look at the pile of logs over her shoulder as she contemplated that if she hadn’t been she could have ended up crushed under the weight of one of those logs. Walls will always remind Eske of a prison, as if she will never be free to patrol or hunt again but she is grateful for them …she supposes. “I suppose being alive was worth the torture of being trapped in it.” She thinks out loud. She had ventured out very sparsely to bring food in but she never lingered outside long for the fear of freezing to death. “I’ve been going over the borders to freshen our claim.” She informs Heda, in case the Commander didn’t know. Eske does not spend a lot of time with her, instead splitting it between Kendra, hunting (hunting with Kendra, off), and patrolling. It kept Eske busy but she didn’t mind. She’d never been good at staying still, anyway.

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Thuringwethil can’t help the worry that something happened to Emaleth during her trip south to her sister’s pack. She doesn’t want to think the girl abandoned Drageda when she’d been ready for a new leaf and way to start but she supposes that is just as likely. Having kept everyone in one place, for the most part, had been the best way to secure they all made it. They still had the chance to leave when they wanted but they knew the danger and the cold had been much too harsh to stay out for long.

“That’s good. I think the others have, too. I doubt there’d been much activity out there with the weather as bad as it had been,” she says, still scanning how the lightning destroyed the tree. A shiver runs down her spine as the trunk is more or less severed in half. The few strands of wood holding it together can easily be torn apart to tear the beast in half and her nose losers to breath the fresh wooden smell. If she could move them where she wanted, she would, but she knows not even the whole pack could get them to budge.

She steps back from ground zero and glances to Eske but she does not stay still for long. Thuringwethil backpedals to go around and look at it from the other side. Something keeps her intrigued, unable to truly focus on what the girl is talking about.

“Can you imagine what this would do to a wolf?” she says, peering over the top to see the gona. “A Seageda wolf, many generations before me, had been struck,” she explains, feeling her chest tighten at the thought and what it might do. There have been stories past down over the generations (it turned him entirely inside out, all his legs were blown off, there was nothing left) but they all seem too farfetched from anything they’ve seen but if it can destroy a beast as solid as this, what chance do they have against the force to brings down?

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Eske offers Heda a nod: she has seen others tending to the borders. She only brings it up because she does not want Thuringwethil to think she has been idle. She is Gona and she takes her duties seriously. At first change she’d clawed her way out of the den as if she was a blind woman seeing light for the first time and hadn’t stepped so much as a toe back in since. She prefers to sleep out in the open unless unfavorable weather drives her to seek shelter. Eske turns her sea-glass colored gaze to the splintered trunk, studying the jagged and sharp splinters that stick up from the what part of the trunk remains in the ground. She thinks that if one were to fall on one of those deadly splinters that they would be impaled like a deer’s antler through the flesh but her attention is drawn from that to Heda as she older woman asks her if she could imagine what a fallen tree could do to a wolf. Indeed, Eske can. “Crush them to death. If they’re lucky they would die instantly…if they’re not I imagine it would be a slow, extremely painful death.” Eske observes with a terse tug of her lips. Thuringwethil told her of a Seageda wolf that had been struck and a small shiver runs down Eske’s spine. “What happened to them?” Eske cannot help but ask, though she suspects that either way Heda intends to tell her.

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While Eske muses on how the death would be if someone had been crushed to death, Thuringwethil feels a tingle down her spine. Just thinking about the story she has in mind is enough to give her chills, but the physical pain from one of these beasts makes everything feel worse. It takes a little effort to get rid of the thoughts and feel comfortable again. She shakes out her fur and circles back around until she’s facing Eske once more, asked about the wolf that had been struck.

“He’d become Heda by surviving the Sadgeda. Spent his whole life training as a fos goufa, as I did. Longer than I did, actually,” she muses. She’d been young when she’d taken the throne. About Eske’s age. Her ears twitch thoughtfully on her head. “He isn’t Heda long when he’s struck by lightning. Most wolves will tell you that he died instantly but there are a few that think he survived for a few hours after, until he threw himself off one of the cliffs to the ocean because it drove him mad.” A brow perks upon her features as she does not shy away from the details of the few. “The counsellors did a little digging for information because they knew who his family was and they discovered he had not been a fos goufa at all. They’d lied to the council that he’d been their only child when there had been a stillborn among the litter,” she explains with a twist of her lips. “We think the former commanders had summoned the shy to do their bidding that day.”

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Heda speaks that the wolf that had been struck had been Heda before her. Whether he is directly before her or not is unclear and Eske does not ask for the specification. It doesn’t really matter. There is a point to Thuringwethil’s story and Eske is eager to hear it even though it is a story of the Commanders punishing him for his treachery, for his lie and a shudder runs down her spine. But Eske does not feel sorry for him. He and his family knows their way. Only single children can become Fos Goufa. That is the way it is and apparently, it is the command of the previous Commanders as well. No false Commander can rule them. “He got what he deserved.” Eske concludes with a fierce scowl upon her lips. “Heda, what happens if Drageda never has a Fos Goufa?” Without someone to take the Commander’s place what becomes of them? She does not think Thuringwethil is going to die any time soon but she will not live forever — no one does — and Eske asks only out of curiosity. Eske knows her mother meant for her and her estanged siblings to be the future of Sleeping Dragon but Gyda’s influence is long gone and though Eske's goals are focused more on the present, specifically and devotedly set upon Wanlida she cannot help but think of what her future, as unclear as it is to her, might hold.

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Eske does not flinch much to the story and states he got what he deserves. Thuringwethil frowns at the comment as she recollects the story to herself. “Well, since Fos Goufas are taken from their parents at a young age, he did not know. It was his parents that had lied to the council—his father was dead at the time and his mother was exiled to the north,” she explains. At least, from what she’s been told to be true by the council, by the former Hedas she sees in her dreams. “It has not happened often, but they wait for one to be born and when they are ready, they will take the throne. The Hedonakru rule things without a Heda together until one comes along,” she explains. She knows they do not have one, since they do not know where Seregrýn is now, but she hopes the time will come sooner rather than later and they can begin their preparations.

plot twist: eske gives birth to a fos goufa one day. lol actually that isn't a bad idea...

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As Heda explains to her, Eske sees the sense in the Hedonakru leading things until the Commanders choose a Fos Goufa to become Heda. Right now, they have no Fos Goufa and have not for quite some time. Seregryn hadn’t been in Drageda long before she left, and Eske wonders if a fickle For Goufa is the sort of Heda in the making they need; but what if they never have a Fos Goufa? What if Drageda would never see another Heda? Would they just keep going, deferring to the Hedonakru for the rest of it’s existence? Eske does not know much about pup litters but she thinks the chances of only having one is probably very slim. Eske’s lips pull into a terse line as she ponders it. If anything were to happen to Heda: the Hedonkru is made up of Dio and Wildfire both who are not Drageda by blood. Outsiders. Was it wise for the whole Hedonkru to be made up of outsiders, then? How did anyone know they would lead Drageda the way The Commanders want without Heda to guide them? Eske does not give voice to these concerns only for the sake of not wishing to insult her Commander on her choices of Hedonakru. She gives a soft grunt and rolls her shoulders, but she remains quiet.

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do it

As she goes silent, Eske does not have anything else to add. Thuringwethil tosses her a look from where she stands as if questions run across her face verbatim but she does not press for them. She doesn’t involve herself with the girl working through the information. It she doesn’t have anything to ask, she’s sorted it out herself or she prefers to leave it unanswered for now. After a moment, satisfied with her own findings, she brushes off her words. Her slate eyes narrow but she relaxes a beat later. She continues on her inspection with Eske nearby and she leaves their time together in silence until they both return later to Hougeda.