Sun Mote Copse i told the devil to take you back

Forward dated a few days!

It takes a few more days but eventually, Mallaidh finds herself on the borders of Teaghlaigh. If she does not tell her parents about the wolves on the outside of the strath, they have no way of knowing the danger. Telling them, however, will only put her into more trouble than she already feels looming over her head. They likely know her by scent, even if their actions did not necessarily indicate they were coming this way. She never understood anything they said above her, whether it was another language like her mother speaks or she’d been in shock, she doesn’t know, but there’s a part of her that knows she has to find out. She needs to know if she put her family in danger, if they have Roarke, if they…
 
Mallaidh inhales a slow breath and holds it and she begins to follow the familiar path she’d taken several days ago. Every step is careful, calculated. There isn’t a leaf she hasn’t noticed out of place. If anyone is around, she’ll know (or so she thinks), and she passes by the river that she crossed to get to the cedar forest. A few landmarks show to be familiar but she does not necessarily remember them and she never quite finds the spot where she’d been pinned down by the monster wolf. It is only when she emerges into a clearing that she realizes she’s gone farther than she meant to and she steels a tremble that grips hold of her spine.
 
The danger that lurks outside of Teaghlaigh has graduated from scary monsters with six eyes and teeth the size of her limbs to something that resembles her. That resembles her family and every other wolf she’s ever known. The face of a monster is nothing more than another wolf and she doesn’t know how to handle that information. She’d been foolish before, naïve and young and now… she just feels older. Fear sits deep in her chest but she cannot let it rule her life.
 
Still, she has not found the wolves that had tried to take her and instead is much farther than she anticipated. The forest is sparse and bright, causing her to blink several times and an unpleasant feeling her nose causes her to sneeze several times in a row. Mallaidh wrinkles her nose and takes another steady breath to hold the reaction at bay. The glowing particles grab her attention and she remembers the stars she and Ceallach found the night of the meteor shower but they are not as big and the sky is much brighter than she’s ever seen before. Her nose flares to capture what’s in her surroundings to better try and keep aware of what or who may be nearby.

Kahl goes much further than he intends — but the stench of blood and decay that saturates the tendrils of his fur — sometimes is overbearing. Or perhaps it is the superiority of the “pack born” boy that the soturi strives to get away from. Aries stays away from him, which is a good thing as Khal can barely stand Nyx’s other ward. He plays civil by scarcely acknowledging the other boy’s presence because he does not feel he has any other choice. Would he have a choice he would have likely made attempt on the (slightly) older boy’s life by now, or at the very least aim to maul. Kahl isn’t opposed to healthy competition but there was only so much superiority complex — for no other reason than age he assumes — that he could stomach. He supposes Blackfeather Woods isn’t that bad aside from the bratketeers. The forest is bright — a drastic change from the darkness the hangs over Blackfeather Woods like an oppressive, abysmal blanket and the dust motes that float like small suns tickle his black, leathery nostrils, twining through the longer fur of his (growing) mane. A sneeze threatens to tickle it’s way in the back of his nose but as he draws in the breath it’s gone in the same instant as he hears several sneezes in a row. Soot dusted ears cup forth atop his skull and his own sneeze chased off and forgotten about he shrugs past the undergrowth to set glacial gaze upon the other.

She looks about his own age, and Kahl cannot help but wonder why there are so many kids around. “Terveisiä,” The titan greets her upon voice that has begun to deepen and turn from honey to smoke steeped whiskey. His voice cracks, though (alas the woes of coming into puberty!) to his frustration, but he deigns not to let his humility show. The young titan studies her from the distance that hangs between them inexplicably drawn in though he thinks and dismisses the lure as nothing else besides that she is of his age and of the opposite gender than himself.

Mallaidh doesn’t have a clue what to do now that she’s gotten this far. Part of her tells her to keep going but for no other reason than… just because. The rest of her tells her to turn back and return home but her feet become cement in the new forest, not taking her anywhere.
 
Her thoughts are disrupted by the sudden appearance of another. Of someone familiar. Of… “Roarke?” She feels her feet rush her forward. Jerked into motion by surprise, her stance is unsteady and she comes to a stop a few steps in front of him. He doesn’t look the same, or sound the same, but everything about him somehow just… is the same.

Roarke. She calls him by a name that is not his own, looking for someone that Khal has erased from existence. Not entirely — not to her or anyone else but for himself. Roarke Fearghal never existed. There was only the Enok Tundra, Nyx and Blackfeather Woods. Yet, the stranger rushes forward all the same to greet him and there is a curl of his lips to tell her no. No. He is not her Roarke. He is not who she seeks and she will drown in hope that she should not feel. For calling out to him, to who he was, was like trying to get someone with total amnesia to remember who they were. “I am Kahlil,” He tells her realizing that his words likely sound callous and unapologetic as they slip from betwixt his lips in a voice. “Kahl for short.” Even now there is a power to that preferred nickname and he feels it as it sends a soft shiver down his spine. “You from around here?” Kahl inquires with a small gesture of his muzzle, meaning the Hinterlands or the Wilds in general; but he doesn’t ask her what she’s doing out here on her own because that would be nothing short of hypocritical and Kahl knows he is sick of being asked that by adults that stumble upon him during his ventures.

He can hunt for himself, he can fight and he grows by the day, pudge melting away to hardened muscle that defines him as a titan of the tundra; and he revolts against the idea of an overbearing adult. He is self-resilient and tenacious. He needs a pack but he no longer requires that constant supervision and coddling that adults seem so fond of; and he suspects that this girl doesn’t either. They are of the same vein of wolf, he and her, Kahl feels; and in his cruel understanding of the world this either makes her another rival to add to his growing list of rivals or an ally. “Who’s Roarke?” The soturi asks knowing it is a question that might prove to kick him in the teeth but it seems like a prudent question especially as he was called such by her.

The boy’s teeth flash in her direction and she takes a step back, one foot hovering above the ground. There isn’t a sliver of emotion on his face that shows he recognizes her and his voice is hard and certain. Kahlil. The name means nothing to her, seemingly as she means nothing to him, and she blinks back a strain in her eyes that she doesn’t know how to handle. Her cheeks burn and her ears slick back, staring at his face as she tries to remember her little brother and plaster him across this wolf. His fur is not the same but his eyes are, though she realizes now that it doesn’t account for much.

He continues to talk to her, ask her questions that she doesn’t want to answer. She’d felt such a wave of excitement to see her brother alive only to be squashed and ground into dirt. Whatever hope she had just a moment ago that maybe her brother is alive is gone and this stranger, this... Kahlil is someone she’s never seen before. Mallaidh’s jaw tightens, her teeth grind together (causing a sickening sound with loose puppy teeth), and she forces a few steps back. “I have to go,” she says and without another word, spins on her heels and runs full speed the way she came.

What he has to say clearly isn’t what she wishes to hear. It is evident in the way she grinds her teeth and takes a step back. Khal almost snorts. The world, he’s come to learn, is full of things that they don’t want to hear and if her reaction is to run away from it — which is the course of action she takes — then she will never survive in the world. His thoughts are cruel, they sound cruel even in his head but the tundrian realizes that he doesn’t care. He does not try to call her back, does not try to stop her. He watches her turn tail and run because he is not the wolf that she wants him to be. His ears slick back against his skull and he lets out a huff before he abruptly turns and heads back the way he came having no reason to linger or travel any further.