Morningside Cuesta and i'll love you forever if i ever love at all
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It is late in the morning when Adeline finds a particular super soft looking patch of grass. It's far too lush and pillowy for her to pass up. The blades are tall and narrow, a lighter, more yellow of a green and it feels just as soft as she plops her body right down and makes herself comfortable. The warmth from the sun begins to heat her red-tinged fur from the heated grass and the rays now bearing down upon her. She'd woken up early that morning, as she has been more and more, and found comfort if the same place each day. Her heart isn't a warning one and the permanence the cuesta has given her and her little band is enough to settle the aimlessness that has grown in her chest.
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After his run-in with Adrastos, an itch he hadn't felt since leaving Easthollow began to radiate through Grayday's body. They had to mark the borders, so that something like this wouldn't happen again. They had to. But he knew that, once he put his mark down on this land, he would not be able to return to Easthollow. He'd been growing apart from it for these weeks they'd been gone, and this - it would be the final nail in the coffin.

Before he told anyone, he'd tell Adeline. He sought her out with this intent, but when he saw her lying in the grass, bathed in sunlight and something like peace, he decided the conversation could wait for another time.

"You look happy," he said as he approached, settling himself nearby, but not on top of her patch of soft grass.
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You look happy.

Her tail thumps on the ground at the sound of his voice. The sound of his paws alerted her and the scent filled her nose, so she did not move right away. When she hears his body thud against the ground, her wagging slows to a stop and she slowly picks herself up and sits sternal. Her bright, green eyes find his form easily and she smiles.

“The weather has been so nice,” she says quietly. The days are getting warmer and the morning chill is often less with each new day. Her head lowers and settles upon her paws, looking out the short distance between them. Most of the time, she wonders what her father and Valette are doing, how the newest puppy is doing with Kyrpton, and if Phiipa is keeping everyone safe and healthy. The pain that she is not there to help, to feel the things they feel, begin to disconnect as she wonders more and more where Grayday and his children are with the same fondness.

Adeline chuffs softly, shifting her position to crawl a few more inches closer but the edge of her soft patch turns into the harsh, prickly deep green grass. She rolls over onto her side and taps her nose on the ground with a quirk of a brow in invitation.
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Day heart thump-thumped uncomfortable when she offered him a place beside her. His limbs did not want to cooperate at first, but he was soon padding over and dropping down beside the smaller wolf. He stretched out beside her, clawing the grass as he let out a long, nervous yawn. When it was over, he felt much more at home, and turned his dulling eyes on Adeline to regard her with a sappy grin.

"It has been," he agreed, giving a wistful swish of his tail. "Do you remember the spring at all? Or the summer?" he wondered, thinking about how hot it'd been even up their mountain. There'd been a terrible famine, around then, but Grayday hoped that they'd shielded Adeline from the worst of it.
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Adeline watches each movement as he closes the distance between them, plopping down nearby and making himself comfortable. She stifles back a yawn when he enticed her, struggling to keep her teeth together. Once the urge has passed, she slowly picks up her head and turns to him. She hums quietly to herself in contemplation. The spring is no where to be found in her memory but some of the summer. It is near the end and beginning of fall that her memories are more and more intact.

"I kinda remember the summer," she days but nothing else is added. The beginning of her memories aren't something she likes to dwell on, shuffling them away for happier alternatives. "But I don't think I like the cold very much."
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Grayday hummed to acknowledge her response, but his mind was deep in his memories. He could remember his own first summer, back at Sameth-by-the-River. It'd been a golden time full of innocent play and fat, full bellies. By the next summer, he was already out on his own. This past summer with Adeline up on Silvertip Mountain had been the best since leaving home.

"You know, the first time I met you," he said, a grin growing across his maw, "you were a tiny little thing. I'd brought a raccoon by the den, and you came out and set right into it without even looking at me."

He had to roll onto his back to allow for his chortling as he recalled the rest of the encounter. "And then - and then you said you wanted to hunt bugs," he went on, laughing breathlessly, "and you went and found yourself a worm and threw it in the air, and it landed on your back. You couldn't get it off, so you just kept dancin' around, tryin'a shake it loose. One of the best things I've ever seen."
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Adeline finds herself focused more on his laughter than his words and even though he’s telling her something she may otherwise been embarrassed over, she has a wide smile on her face. Deep, bellowing laughter that can only come from the bottom of his chest warms her ears but eventually she wrinkles her nose as he continues. The recall of memory is hazing, colors filling in as he speaks but the edges are fuzzy and she isn’t sure she can think of anything else without holding his hand along the way.

Memories of him are frequent, even if they are vague. A presence that simply has always been there, like Steady or the distant feeling of her parents, that she can’t put a pinpoint in the beginning. This gives her that advantage but a sinking feeling that he hasn’t always been there surfaces for a moment. He had a whole life before coming to the mountain that she has never inquired about before (I don’t think?) and he’s only given her tidbits here and there. But it is now that they exist, that they are friends and whatever happened before isn’t something she’s sure she needs.

Fondly, she inches closer so that she can nip at a flailing leg from his laughter.
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#8
As much as he was enjoying the recounting of this memory, it appeared his youthful audience did not share the same view. Adeline soon dropped all pretenses of paying attention and began trying to bite him. "Cut that out," he scolded, bopping her lightly on the muzzle as she tried to nip at one of his paws. "I'm trying to tell a story, here!" But he wiggled his paw teasingly in her face, clearly meaning to goad her into trying again.

"What I wouldn't give to see that dance again," he sighed, pretending that he wasn't paying attention to what her jaws were doing anymore. His tail, also, flipped and twitched in a goading manner, just in case she thought his paw was not an exciting enough target.
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Her tail thumps on the ground as he fights back and her green eyes close as he boops her gently. A paw is waved in her face and her nose wrinkles up, trying to nip at the appendage and eventually she finds her teeth gently against him. His wistfulness is not lost on her and she rolls a little to her side, pawing up and nudging his shoulder with a little more force than she intends. “Why don’t you show me how it goes?” she dares, thumping her tail on the ground a few times in hopes it’ll give her a one-man show.
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#10
He knew that he shouldn't, because obviously, Adeline would not be repeating the show for him. But he loved to see her smile, and he'd found that he would do just about anything to see her happy.

Grayday rolled to his belly and popped up onto his paws. "This better be worth it," he warned, knowing already that it would be, even if all it did was make her laugh.

After a moment of recollection, Grayday began hopping around, bucking his hindquarters and kicking his back legs up into the air. He looked back at his tail, attempting to affect a horrified look and probably failing miserably. He was a bit ashamed of himself for giving into this, but mostly, he was having the time of his life. "Get it off, get it off," he demanded, hopping in circles and shaking out his fur.
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When he gets up, she reaches to nip one more time just before he’s out of reach. She then pancakes to the ground while sternal and prepares herself for what is about to play out. She can’t even begin to fathom what treat he’ll give her but soon he moves and flops around and her laughter starts out low, lips pressed into a thin line. If she can hold out for a while, she can prove to him how informative the dance was. It is when he starts shaking out his fur and shrieking his demands in mid-air that ends up with her on her side again, laughing so hard she can’t suck in enough air.
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#12
Her laughed drew him. How could he focus on a dance he hardly remembered with that beautiful sound tickling his ears? Even if it was the very reason for her laughter. Grayday abandoned the show - she was laughing too hard to see it properly anyhow - and belly-crawled toward the sweet girl, tail lashing.

The male covered her face and maw with excited licks and nips, intesely grateful that she could still make such a sound, after all that had passed. Even more that it was he that could elicit laughter from a perviously solemn young shewolf.
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#13
He misses the stop of the show with eyes scrunched shut and her laughter filling her own ears. It isn’t until he crawls over to her, letting loose his tongue across her face. She tries to fight through the belly aching bellow coming from her and avoid his touch at the same time, but she struggles to do both. Instead, she tries to lower and roll out of his reach so she can focus on getting her breath back.

Stop! she whines, swatting at him with one of her paws as she takes a few staggering breaths, slowly returning to normal.
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#14
Day fell back on her command, always quick to obey her when he could. The male flattened himself into a breathing wolf-rug and gazed adoringly at the silly girl in front of him. There were times when his heart felt too full to even look at her, but he could not turn away. When will you stop gettin' prettier? he thought at her, and the answer came to him at once: As soon as he was completely blind.

But even then, it wouldn't matter. She'd still be Adeline, and he would know.

"Your turn," he said when she'd caught her breath.
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There’s an absence around her that leaves an ache in her chest when he pulls away and drops to the ground. Her face relaxes and she takes a few deep breaths before she turns to find him. Her tail thump, thump, thumps on the ground when she sees him, staring up at her with look on his face that sends a flutter to her chest. Adeline isn’t entirely sure what to make of it and she doesn’t have time to address it when he suggests that it is her turn. One brow lifts and she wrinkles her nose, dropping her own face to come nose to nose with him.

“I don’t think I can outperform that,” she tells him with a happy smile.
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His tongue darted out to wet both their lips, but aside from that, Day remained stationary, his thumping tail the only part that remained moving. This close, he could see her as perfectly as he ever could, and she was breathtaking. Her eyes - apple green - were clear and bright. Her muzzle - finely tappered - was graceful and smooth. Day's eyes dragged across her face, up and over it to the tips of her pointed, red-tinged ears.

Day's heart thudded unevenly. He let his eyes flicker shut.

"You could try," he suggested half-hearted, his mind finally catching up to his ears.
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When the moment settles, Adeline forgets she isn’t home in Easthollow. Her father and Valette aren’t just a call’s reach away. They don’t seem to exist outside their little world on the cuesta and she’s comfortable, even in their softening laughter. He tries a second time to get her to dance and her chuckles lift the air again and she rolls over, swatting at his face with her feet before she groans and slowly picks herself up to her feet.

“All right old man,” she says with a sly grin on her face. Her rump wags back and forth, counteracting her tail, and as she lifts her front feet to try the dance again, she gives him one final wink. Then, with everything she has, runs away from him.
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Eyes, red-brown, blinked open as Adeline rose. Day had dutifully endured her battery (more thump-thumps of his tail were his unsolicited I forgive you) and now peered at her misty form to see the fruit of all his suffering. There was a doubtful cast to his face, but he seemed amused all the same when she tried a few stunted movements. The doleful look on his face soon slipped away, and his eyes tracked the arc of her slim hindquarters as she wiggled -

And then, almost to fast for words, she was racing away. Day scrambled to his paws without thinking and stared after her, his ears still flickering as he mulled over her parting words. A second passed, and then another, and then a riotous laugh came barking out of Grayday's chest.

"Get back here, little girl!" he growled, darting after her. With the head start she'd gotten, it didn't seem very likely that he'd catch her.
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It is several seconds before she hears the thunderous paws coming up behind her. When he shouts after it, followed by his bellowing steps to close the distance, she gives her legs a little encouragement to speed herself up. Through the open plain below the hilly ground, she takes a wide girth off to the right until she circles around to find her friend. By this point, she expected him to tackle her but she’s still standing on all four limbs but each passing second puts her at risk.

“I think you’re getting older by the second!” she shouts as she bounds off. This time she gives her hips a little more wiggle and throws her head back, a tease of the dance he performed earlier, but she launches off like against the hills in the complete opposite direction.
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#20
Grayday did not stop or slow his pursuit, even when she paused for a long moment a few hundred yards away. Even then, he streaked toward her, hauling himself across the hilly landscapes in harsh, jagged movements that could not be described as graceful, but possessed a sort of leonine agility that was more force than poise. I could put more words in here, waxing poetic about Day's galumphing elephant-steps, but we should really move on.

I think you're getting older by the second!

His pace faltered for a moment, but then sped up in the next. Part of him wondered whether she was trying to hurt him, but he couldn't imagine her doing something like that for no reason. His confusion quickly slipped away, not resolved, but still surrendered as he finally drew near enough to lunge. But with another silly jig, she'd loped off once more. Grayday tried to change direction, but ended up spinning out like a race car driven by a two-year-old.

"You get younger every day," he panted as he tried to pick himself up. Nothing was broken, but his lungs burned and his legs ached, and he thought that a little sympathy wouldn't go amiss right then. With a huff of release, the silver male let himself fall back into the heap he'd landed in.
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#21
She does not hear the thump of feet against the ground and she turns her head around to investigate and, at the same time, her legs slow down and she spins back around. The sight of Grayday on the ground grows concern within her breast and she begins to trot back with a frown on her face. When he tries to stand again, only to stumble back to the ground, her speed picks back up and she’s at his side within seconds and her nose near him to smell for blood or anything obvious of injury.

“Are you okay?” Her jaw tightens when she asks, waiting for an answer, but there is an obvious release in her expression when she does not note blood in the air.
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#22
He opened his eyes a crack when he heard her turning back, and watched until she grew close enough to pounce on. His muscles tensed in anticipation, and then a heartbeat later, he leapt to his paws and lunged toward her, intending to tackle the quicker but smaller wolf.

"I am, now," he teased, nipping at the base of her ear. The male pressed his weight against her, waiting for her to cry 'uncle' or else begin to fight back.
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#23
His pitiful act tricks her into closeness and she doesn’t realize what’s happening until she’s on the ground and he’s holding her to the ground. She squirms with no real strength but she violently giggles in reaction to the tongue behind her ear. She playfully groans, twisting her head this way and that, but manages to bite her tongue. If she doesn’t say anything, she still wins.
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#24
He gave an irritable huff when she still didn't concede. Stubborn girl, he thought affectionately, huffing another breath directly into her ear before an idea came to him.

"Comfy then, huh?" he asked, giving a poor immitation of a yawn. "Me too. I think I'll just take a nap..."

He settled himself over her and let his body go slack, hoping that his sheer mass could get her to name him the victor of their game.
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#25
Can I stay in this thread forever?

She squirms only a little more, trying to keep her face out of his reach but his warm breath is oddly comforting. Her nose wrinkles as he settles across her, lounging his heavier weight across her thin frame. His dead weight across her grows more and more uncomfortable and her squirming is restricted, unable to weasel her way out of this one. “You’re cheating!” she declares instead, using all her legs to try and push against what they can reach.
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