Redhawk Caldera Fighting a giant goldfish at the South Pole

Backdated to the day after the eclipse.

He slept well through the day, waking only when dusk began to rise. By then, the sun had returned to its usual rotundness, but in the fleeting moment between sleep and wakefulness, Nightjar could still see the crescent sliver on the back of his eyelids. His eyes still felt grainy, so he rose with a loud yawn and smacked his lips, prepared to take a trip to the lake. But when he opened his eyes, all plans for the day fled.

To say his vision was completely gone would be inaccurate, for he could still see in his peripherals. The center of his field of vision, however, was nothing but a whirl of black smudges. They seemed to shift in and out of focus like static, telling him that there was still something there, but the shadows perfectly obscured everything directly in front of him. As a young cub he had glanced at the sun briefly and had a temporary dimming of his vision, but the pain of staring at it had ensured no permanent damage was done.

The crescent sun hadn't hurt his eyes, though, but the damage was as certain as if he had been staring at the full sun for several minutes. His eyes were unaffected from outward appearances but the blankness of his vision would give him away, if not his sudden change in behaviour. He rocked back on his haunches and stared up at the sky, seeing nothing but the waving of tree branches in his periphery. So unclear was it that he couldn't even identify the individual leaves. They were just green smears. It was no vision to work with.

When ten minutes later his sight hadn't improved at all, Nightjar skimmed back his lips, shrunk to the ground in a frightful ball, and snarled loudly, as if somehow he could scare away his affliction, but he knew it was far more serious than that. This wasn't something he could frighten away, no matter how much he fluffed up his hackles. Nevertheless, he coiled in on himself, prepared to strike at whatever came before him... though if anything was in front of him, he could not see it to strike at it.

Sneaking away to have her heart-to-heart with Towhee had been a wonderful, liberating thing. As much as Finley loved to be with her latest brood, her prior freedom had lead her to the decision to make more time for a repeat occurence. Things felt as though they were looking up, albeit slightly. Their pack had thinned with Burke's and Malice's departure, which meant less competition for the little food they did have. She'd also been seeing less of OG Birk (as she called him in her mind), which was less desireable, but ultimately for the best if she had to weigh her enjoyment of his company against the lives of her family. So, overall, Fin was in a pretty good mood as she stepped out for her hour or so of freedom for the day.

She'd not seen much of Nightjar since giving birth, which was instinctively more comfortable for the new mother. She hadn't anticipated coming across a fresh scent trail of his now, but wasn't unhappy to do so. At least, not until he came within view and she found herself remembering the numerous times she had approached a coiled cobra, rattling its tail threateningly at her. Fin slowed her happy trot to a stop a few yards from him, her face contorted into a frown of confusion and curiosity. Her legs stiffened as she shifted them to a defensive posture, her own hackles lifting though the growl in her throat remained hitched and silent.

"Ninja...?" Fin said slowly, lowering her head to try to meet his level. Something seemed to be distressing him - there was too much tension etched in the tightness of his shoulders. As much as her instincts demanded her to be wary, she couldn't just leave her kid like this.

The only thing Nightjar ever really had going for him was his reckless brand of fearlessness. As a cub, he had challenged anyone and everyone to a spar, regardless if they were family, friend, or perfect stranger. He had charged them with gusto, confidently convinced that he would beat them. He rarely did, but it never broke his spirit. As a lone wolf, he hadn't once hesitated to come up against an opponent, whether it be for food or for land. He wore the many scars from those encounters beneath his fur, but because he lacked inherent fear in the heat of battle, Nightjar often won his scuffles with sheer willpower.

But now he was afraid. He pressed his ears flat against his scalp as he shrank in on himself, and when an unseen presence startled him, he snapped his jaws rapidly together, producing a sharp clapping sound that he hoped would keep them away from him. His tail was stiff and puffed out behind him and his hackles were the fullest they had ever been, prickled into a fierce mantle that spiked over his tightened shoulders in an impressive display of canine aggression. He cast about wildly for the source of the voice, and spotted the silvery blur in his periphery when he turned his head to the far left. But he made no hostile move, even though he wanted to fight against this, and when Finley whispered his childhood nickname to him, Nightjar whined pleadingly.

"Aunt Flea," he whispered in a voice strained with horror and loss, "I can't see you. I can't see you." His breath came in sharp gasps as he turned his head again and squinted, willing to greyish smear into clarity, but his peripheral vision was poor at best and didn't make up for the sudden darkness of his central vision.

Fin's muscles tensed when Nightjar reacted to her presence. Her ears flattened as her hackles raised, but she didn't move otherwise. It wasn't like him to respond so violently to her, but in his aggression, she saw panic and fear. She was still as he thrashed, searching for her. Everything about the encounter was wrong to her, and it became even more so when suddenly his vicious demeanor switched to sad little whimpers.

He explained promptly once he realized it was her, but her mind was slow to comprehend. "What do you mean you can't see me?" Fin asked, too surprised and dumbfounded to help herself. It took a few seconds, but she came to accept quickly enough that there really wasn't any question about how to interpret his words. She was not a deep-minded wolf. Metaphors were often lost upon her. If he said he couldn't see, there was only one translation for her to make - the literal one. Still, she was too startled for concern to take her. "What happened?" she said after a few seconds, her head tilting as she gazed at him in confusion.

He wanted to be brave. For almost all of his life, Nightjar had been brave, challenging everyone as a pup and feeling almost no fear even when he lost. But he wasn't brave now. His forepaws pressed against the earth, shoving his shoulders back as far as they would go, and he hunched over himself protectively as though he feared an attack at any moment. This was Redhawk Caldera, ruled by the soft-hearted Blackthorns, and Nightjar had no reason to be afraid that any wolf here would attack him. They had let Towhee live and they would help him, too. But that wasn't the reality that he believed in, and from there stemmed his fear.

His reality was simpler: Towhee being allowed to live had been a fluke. In any other pack or any other circumstance, she would not have been given the chance to develop into a useful wolf in spite of her handicap, to the point where it hardly hindered her at all. Nightjar, on the other hand, had been with his sight for three years and didn't have the slightest clue how to live without it, nor was he as amenable to having to re-learn how to live with a handicap he had never had before. The solution was simpler still, but he didn't think about it now.


Nightjar whimpered instead, and when Finley quietly asked what happened, he shook his head. "I don't know, my eyes were itchy yesterday before I went to sleep and I woke up like this!" He didn't connect it with how the sun looked yesterday. He wasn't smart enough or knowledgeable enough to do so. As far as Nightjar knew, he went to sleep, woke up, and only had his peripheral vision left.

Fin stared at her godson as he whimpered on the ground. She'd never seen him like this. Even when he was an infant, he had been quiet and bold. Hell, Peregrine had cried more (in her mind she still saw him as a loveable, foul-mouthed wuss - ironic considering how Nightjar secretly saw her and her family). It was upsetting to see him like this, but more upsetting that she couldn't understand how this was even possible in the first place. She'd never heard of someone being randomly stricken blind, and like Nightjar, hadn't the faintest idea that looking at the sun could have possibly caused it.

"Just.. just calm down," Fin tried to encourage him, though her own heart was racing, "Maybe it's nothing. I'll call Raven. She probably has some weed or something you can eat that'll clear this right up." She sounded more confident than she felt in that moment, but she was hopeful. If anyone could fix it, it was Raven.

It was only in reading back that Stevie realized how it sounded for Fin to say Raven had some weed. She didn't mean it that way, but will be laughing for eternity over it.

Of course! Nightjar knew absolutely nothing about medicine, but Raven knew almost everything there was to know on the subject. If Finley thought that his littermate might know what to do about his blindness, then the dark Redhawk trusted her judgment. He hadn't so much as seen Raven since returning to the pack but he knew she was present, and he knew she wouldn't turn him away. They had never been close, but they were still littermates.

"Okay," he shakily agreed with a nod that left him feeling oddly dizzy in spite of his diminished vision. He felt truly sick in the depths of his stomach and while he hoped that Raven would have a solution, a part of him was already sinking into despair.

Nightjar agreed, and so Finley lifted her muzzle and sent out a quick call for @Raven to attend them. She wasn't at all confident that the healer would be able to do anything about this, but they had to do something, and she was definitely her nephew's best hope.

"So.. what did you do yesterday?" Fin asked, wanting to keep him talking instead of leaving them both to sit in silence with their minds reeling about how terrible it would be if Raven could not in fact fix this, "Did you like.. hit your face on a tree? Stick your head in something?"

Finley's attempt at keeping Nightjar occupied was at least partially successful. It kept him from hyperventilating or letting his mind wander to the bleaker implications of his new condition. When he had time to himself he would wander down the darkest corridors of his brain and come to a number of unhappy conclusions, but for now, his godmother was doing an excellent job keeping him from those thoughts.

"No," he answered unhelpfully. He wished it were that simple. As far as Nightjar knew, he hadn't done anything out of the ordinary. "I went on patrol," deep breath in, "checked the caches, went on patrol again, got back when the sun got all weird, watched that for a bit, then went for a long nap." None of these things correlated to his eyesight as far as he was aware.

UGH I TOTALLY FORGOT TO COME REPLY TO THIS SORRY GUYS

Raven was, as usual, plying her craft.

She had some ideas for better plant combinations to help treat wounds and prevent infections, so she was out gathering up some fresh stems and leaves to experiment with when Aunt Flea's silvery, bell-like howl soared across the caldera. She quickly packed up her stuff and stowed it in the cramped little badger den that had become her medicinal stockroom, then went in search of her alpha and godmother to see what she needed. She didn't like the sound of some of the notes she'd heard on that howl, but she tried to reserve judgement until she found out exactly what was up.

When she found Finley, she noticed with some surprise that Nightjar was with her. A mixture of emotions filled her at the sight of her brother, but the dominant one among them was warmth. They'd never been all that close -- they'd simply been too different as children, and Raven had spent too much time off by herself to cultivate much of a relationship with her brother -- but still, he was her brother and she cared for him. She felt a pang of regret that she still hadn't made time to come see him since his return to the pack, but her work left so little time for social visits...

"Hey, what's up?" she asked as she approached them, slightly breathless from the speedy pace she'd kept up on the way here. Her eyes filled with concern as she looked from Aunt Flea to Nightjar, hoping something wasn't wrong with either of them.

Nightjar explained what had happened to him, and nothing clicked for the alpha. She thought of how the sun had disappeared and for a moment considered that this was the cause. But she had seen the phenomenon as well without any damaging aftermath. Towhee had as well. Based on the facts, Fin dismissed the notion. It's good that she never actually pursued that medic trade.

Speaking of which. Fin was saved from responding by Raven's arrival. She breathed a sigh of relief and smiled - a look that was quick to switch from joy to anxiety as she glanced again at Nightjar. She bit her lip for a moment before looking back at her niece. "Your brother.. he seems to have lost his eyesight somehow," she explained, trying to keep her nerves from altering her tone, "We don't know how, or why. But he can't see anything and... Well, can you help him?" She looked hopefully at Raven, knowing that if the medic couldn't fix this then nothing could. She didn't want that horrible fate for her Ninja. So uh, no pressure, Raven.

Although his neck was still pulled back awkwardly to keep his muzzle rested as close to his throat as possible, as if to ward off invisible attackers, he began to relax just a little in Finley's presence. His ears slammed forward expectantly, and when she didn't reply, his tail began to wriggle pleadingly, but it was the sound of footsteps that stirred him to further motion: he tucked his paws in close to his body and bowed his head, even though his nose told him it was only Raven. He couldn't see her, just as he couldn't see Finley but for the faintest ring in his periphery, and fixed his mostly blind stare on somewhere to her left.

Something about being seen in such a vulnerable state, especially by his litter mate, filled Nightjar with anxiety. He had always been the strong one, physically and emotionally (so he told himself, anyway). It felt wrong in every way to not be strong. He parted his jaws and panted heavily, exhausting as much of his panic as he could with each breath to keep it from mounting in his chest and turning into something ugly. It was a saving grace that both of his family members kept his mind from wandering in that moment, else he might have lost it completely.

Nightjar didn't realize it when his panting breath began to come out in soft whines, even as he stretched his neck in Raven's general direction and wriggled his nose at her in a wordless plea: help me, please!

Finley had been around Raven long enough to know what each and every one of her goddaughter's expressions meant. A look passed across her dark face that caused Fin's heart to drop into her stomach. It was almost a blessing in that moment that Nightjar couldn't see the look of hopeless anxiety on Raven's face as she took in the news, and she hoped that her nephew was too distressed to realize what the moment of hesitation before his sister responded meant.

Raven moved to assist her brother, and Fin stepped back to watch her go. She frowned sadly as Nightjar was tended to, the ramifications of his condition streaming into her mind. She knew from Towhee that wolves with disabilities could manage survival with the help of their pack, but she knew also that Towhee had had her entire life to learn how to cope with being deaf. Nightjar was older, and unequipped for life without his sight. She couldn't imagine having to learn how to survive like this so late in life, but as Raven continued to inspect her brother and the crease in her brow grew deeper and deeper, Fin suspected that Nightjar would have no choice but to adapt to what looked to be a permanent condition.

Finley sat quietly and began to consider how to help her nephew get through this new development.