Firestone Hot Springs enthralled

He'd always considered himself a patient wolf, but when four days had passed and he'd still not seen Catori again, he set out from the plateau furtively following her scent. With the easy feeling between them, with the way they'd talked, with her laughing eyes - he'd been sure that she would stick around. A more sullen, pessemistic side of him claimed it was all in his head, but the better part of him knew that this couldn't be true.

They were friends, at the very least.

So he followed her scent, trying not to feel too weird about tracking her down. He wanted to see her again, and if she didn't want to see him, at least he'd have some closure. And, at least he'd finally gotten to visit the hotsprings again, which was part of the reason he'd come in the first place.

Presently, the male came to the first clear, steamy pool and found his attention wavering. The water looked warm and inviting, and his haunch had been aching ever since that icy dip in the river. Momentarily waylaid, Grayday waded into the water, a moan of relief escaping him as soon as his thigh was fully submerged.

Catori had taken her time for a number of reasons. She didn't want to crowd in the young family, now familiar with where Grayday had taken up his land, and where the waterways nearby might give them the best vantage point to teach the pack about some other sorts of hunting. Most found fishing more aggravating because it was infinitely harder, you had to anticipate and react to what you thought and not what you saw directly. She'd followed the river that cut around the plateau for a bit to see if it provided a decent pool for fishing but then she'd gotten a touch distracted. She'd spotted some other waterways from the plateau and was just as curious about them as anything. 

So, she'd cut her path away from the plateau and took herself down to the springs. Before she'd gotten too caught up in deciding what she'd do - call Gray, get his opinion, just see him or what - she took a couple selfish moments to explore. The springs themselves were a little amazing when she stepped down into one, giving a pleased little hum as she submerged herself and actually rolled a bit, getting herself good and soggy. A nearby sound caught her attention, a low moan of clear pleasure and while it was a sound that probably should be respectfully avoided to save someone's morals her curiosity got the better of her and she pulled herself up from the pool she'd been in. 

A smirk grew on her face when she spotted Grayday, without questioning him she sank down into the water next to him. "Well. At least this time you didn't hurt yourself." She mused with a playful grin. 

Grayday had turned to inspect the fading wound. The edges of the scar were looking angry and red today, but he supposed that could be attributed to the rapid change in temperature it'd just experienced. Perhaps he'd see if Pema knew anything, when he got back. Last time he'd tried -

"Catori!" Day greeted, straightening in surprise as her scent suddenly engulfed him. He had to glance around for a moment before he spotted her through the thick steam, her coat being as light as it was, and by the time he'd fully realized she was there, she was already sitting beside him. "I came to find you - but I got distracted," he admitted, confessing right off the bat that - yes - he was definitely stalking her. He didn't want her to have to wonder.

"Nice place, right?" he sighed, looking around at the gloomy hotsprings with a satisfied air. "This is half the reason we moved this way."

 

While she'd been scouting his area out it didn't distress her that he'd been scouting for her in turn. She smirked at the fact, even, though she wasn't pretentious enough to let it go to her head. They'd discussed meeting up again, after all, and while she'd been around for the past few days she hadn't bothered him at his claim. "You came here for these?" She asked curiously, she hadn't even known they were hot springs but that was more a happy accidental find. 

"Where were you all before?" She asked, ducking briefly beneath the waters again with a pleased croon before she reached out, absentmindedly plucking at his scruff, grooming along his guard hairs. Hers had been a people that had found their place and they had stayed. They were happy there - and from time to time, some wandered. If she went back she would be welcomed back, no doubt seeing her brother where her uncle had once proudly stood. 

"Yeah," he said, feeling a bit self-conscious. Didn't she think they were awesome? Perhaps not the boon he'd hoped they would be for his pack, but cool enough to warrent a stay nearby - especially in as rich a territory as the plateau. A moment later, though, he'd forgotten his discomfort with happy thoughts of the cuesta. "Far east from here," he replied, his eyes fluttering shut. He gave a happy sigh and leaned into her touch.

"It was beautiful, there. Rolling hills, endless skies, a winding river - but no tree cover, and no good denning places, and kind of crowded, to be honest," he explained. "I was thinking we might move back after winter, but the kids like it here, and I like it here. And you're here," he added, turning his head to boop her with his nose. His vision being what it was, her eye ended up taking the hit.

 

Catori might have been more worked up on some other day, but, she was a bit distracted. She didn't waste time as she launched into the physical comfort of touching and grooming Grayday, chuckling quietly at the near lovestruck way he described their first home. She was surprised to hear that once the season had broken they might go back but she wasn't nomadic at all. Not really. Being away from her home was such a strange thing to her and it was by pure chance that she'd found a place where Seelie was. "Me?" She asked with a chuckle, giving a near sharp bark of surprise as he booped her eye - it quickly fell into proper laughter and she reached up to push on him, hoping he'd end up at least partially submerged.

"You'll almost always find me near the water. Vagrant Island was home, and being so far inland, it's almost strange." She admitted. "We had the most magical things there, though. Bears that look a bit like me," Okay, a lot like her - and shared her Spiritwalker title to some. "And sea lions, though we didn't hunt them. Fish, crab, I grew up eating that as much as I did meat." She explained. She returned to the absent minded grooming as she thought of her home, wondering if she'd end up returning there someday. She hadn't planned on staying away, but, maybe she would see it after a longer time frame than she thought. "The kids were born in the Cruesta?" She assumed, it didn't seem like the plateau was a strongly permeated with Gray's scent as it might have been. 

"Oh - sorry," said the male, biting back a chuckle. He did feel bad for possibly hurting her, but her laughter was infectious, and her good mood, intoxicating. When she pushed him, the laughter broke free of its cage, unsteadying him enough that unpleasantly warm water went up his nose when his head dipped briefly under the surface.

He emerged sputtering, but with a wide grin on his face. "Clearly, I need to stick around for this," he replied, his voice a bit gravelly from coughing up water. He cleared his throat but quickly fell silent as she began to describe her own home. While it sounded lovely to hear about, the male felt something twist up in his chest. Free spirit, whispered a fearful voice in the back of his head. "Sounds like you miss it," he noted. There were no longer places that Grayday missed like that. Home was wherever his family was, and his natal packlands were only a distant memory.

When she asked about the cuesta, the male found himself hesitating, for some reason. "Yeah," he said after a moment. "Yeah, the younger three. My first litter was born near it, though. We were in another pack, then."

 

Catori laughed warmly as he came up sputtering, nosing against his cheek for a moment as if to apologize though her laughter proved too much and she couldn't stop that. "It's nice, isn't it?" And how good would it be in the colder months when that bitter wind chilled them to the bone? Catori gave a pleased sigh at that thought, she'd love to take advantage of the springs. His statement wasn't accusatory, it was obvious enough and she gave a nod, almost shrugging it off. "It's all I've known." She admitted. And while she was so fond and proud of where she'd come from, she didn't feel like she was limited either. She could still grow and explore and it was part of the appeal of wandering and growing on her own. 

"My brother has probably been given the leadership now - my uncle had no heirs, so it was down to one of us and Chelan is much more set for that life." He'd been far more hands on, far more involved in the ranks and pecking order than Catori had been. It wasn't to say that she couldn't blossom and grow into the same sort of stable leader that her brother no doubt was, but Catori had no ambitions presently. "They're probably enjoying the adventure." She mused with a little smile. "Although it's probably about the same as I am now - awestruck by everything." She said with a good natured laugh. No shame to be found in her on that account, not when there was so much to see in the world. 

The male's head tilted curiously to the side. "Is this your first time away from home?" he wondered, feeling suddenly very old and weathered. He'd taken Catori as an age-mate, when they met, but her spirit seemed much younger. It was somehow endearing and alienizing at the same time, though Grayday was leaning toward the former just as surely as he was leaning in to run his twitching nose along her muzzle, silently assessing her age. Not a yearling, but not withering, either. That was about where he was, wasn't it?

He lingered close to her, rubbing his forehead against her cheek. "What's a sea lion?" he asked, recalling the animal she'd mentioned earlier. He had a vague notion of a water-cat in his head, but cats didn't like water very much, did they? "And why don't you hunt them? Are they dangerous?"

 

"This far, yeah." Catori wasn't ashamed of what she'd done after all, staying around her packlands to support her family seemed the most logical to her. "I'd go scouting but mostly just around the Isle." She explained, considering if that sounded too naive. She wasn't embarrassed at all, finding that everyone had to leave after some point after all. He seemed almost suspicious of her suddenly and Catori chuckled, wondering what he was contemplating now. Really, they were only about a year apart but it was hard to tell and some people didn't even remember their ages properly. Catori had known heats and the struggle of secluding herself but she wasn't sure how that really stacked her against the rest of the world. 

Sill, Gray didn't immediately pull away and she settled at his contact, eyes closing for a moment. "Sea lions are large - they can be dangerous, but, it is even more than that." There was a shift in her tone, something almost more lyrical. "Long ago the legends said that all life came from the sea. That we crawled from the brine to claim it's shores and to reap the bounty given to us - but so too did the sea lions, and their majesty was like our own. They became like our own, living and taking from the world as we did." She explained. The storyteller in her didn't recant the tale with the same brilliant flare that Kirynnae had, but, it was a passionate offering all the same. "And some even say that we all grew from the same creatures and they are the last pieces of our evolution and growth." The Spiritwalker explained. 

"It was considered wrong to hunt them, but if one had been found deceased you were welcome to take the offering the sea gave you." And always, the sea did - it took care of its own. 

Grayday contemplated the story, wondering what his father would've thought about it. Although he'd long since stopped wondering how the world came to be, it was certainly interesting to think about, sometimes. Still, he only analyzed the tale just enough to draw a paralell between wolves and sea lions - the only things a wolf should not hunt for food. He ammended his mental picture of a sea lion to be a wolf-fish instead of a cat-fish.

"I think I'll have to see one for myself," he decided, ears flickering in something like amusement. He did not realize that he had seen sea lions before - from a safe distance - and simply hadn't known what to call them. Lions, of course, had been far from his mind.

"Where I was born, the only thing we didn't hunt was other wolves," he told her, wishing he had cool stories to tell about his homeland. It had been a largely barren area, with little to do but hunt and play, and not much in the way of legends. "But we had - pretty lights," he remembered, struggling to find the name for the phenomenon. "They were in bands across the sky, green and blue, usually. And they sang. Ma said it was the sunlight singing to the moon."

 

Although some had come before her and told the tale with much more finesse, there was still enough of her interested in not only her people's history but other histories that she never got tired of retelling the tale. "Sometimes when one dies, or, during a hunter's moon when the moon is red we can hunt them. To eat them though, we give stories and songs in their honor." Catori explained. She gave a soft sigh, stretching in the warm water as she relaxed. Although she didn't find many things to be stressful it was still a comfort to have Grayday there and listening to her and trading his own stories too. "We've seen lights like that, but, it isn't as often." She said, smiling over at him. "We always said it was the sea and the skies singing together. The waters themselves seemed to still just for the song." 

It was nice, to realize that others saw it, and that they had their own explanation for them too. "We never hunted our own kind, but - I've seen them on the island where my cousin lives. We could probably see them out sometime, especially once it gets colder and they come out to sun themselves." It sounded like they were making plans - and like she was already anticipating staying near him. It wasn't the worst option, she decided, shifting a bit closer to rest her head across his back with ease. 

"There's a song for everything, where I come from," Grayday said with a wistful smile. Part of him wished he'd been able to retain them all - but who needed to know seven different songs about digging, and twelve different songs about women, and at least nine for every season? Still, he might ask Sunspot, the next time he saw her, to sing the song of the woman who dies in childbirth.

He fell silent for a moment, thinking of Heartha. Thinking of the tiny babes she should be revelling in. Thinking of poor, broken Howl. Thinking of the curse. Thinking about how seven women, now - seven women that he knows of - had now either died or gone missing shortly after giving birth.

He tucked his nose into Catori's damp fur, glad to escape for a little while.

 

They had stories, and songs, and all the beauty in the world that they could offer. Catori would never regret that about her upbringing, no matter if she'd waited quite a bit to fly the nest. She nosed against Gray's scruff, giving a soft little hum at the near nostalgic tone to his voice. It seemed in that regard they'd almost had similar upbringings. He couldn't see her face properly, at least she didn't think he could from that angle, the way that he tucked his nose into her. 

"Think you'll ever go home?" Catori asked, her voice soft and quiet since they were so close. She didn't need to be too loud - she didn't want to be too loud either. She was happy as things were. She was happy with this even if she didn't know much more about him. He listened, and he was just as likely to open up to her too, and that was a rare quality. 

Sameth hadn't been his home for some time, now. Though he still thought fondly of the place, and sometimes even with longing, Grayday knew that he would never go back. It wouldn't be the same, and the things he longed for couldn't be found in the barren lands. Nothing could bring his father back from the dead, and he was slowly but surely reassembling his family in these lands.

"I am home," he said ruefully, moving to nibble at the bulb of her ear. And he hadn't meant her when he said it, but now that the words were out, he couldn't help but think about it. About her being part of his home. About her telling stories in the moonlight, or teaching the cubs to fish, or laughing with Moonstone, or curled up with him.

He thought about how, when they'd arrived back at the plateau on the day they met, he was sure she'd be staying.

"What about you?" he asked. "Are you going back to your island?"

 

Catori hadn't seen her place in his pack - not yet. She'd been invited to visit, to see, but she hadn't wanted to overstay her welcome after all. She closed her eyes as he teased her ear, tail swaying beneath the water as she lifted a paw to hook against his leg for a moment. She mostly wanted contact, and little more, releasing him almost as quickly. "I might go home someday. Maybe to visit, maybe to stay. It's hard to say when I've just come so far." She admitted. 

She still had a hard time imagining herself anywhere and settled; maybe she shouldn't view the nomadic ways Gray had adopted so curiously. She still had so much to see she felt, and the world had so much to offer - it was only a matter of time before she found her own way. "Not for some time anyways. You don't know how to fish, and I imagine it would take a bit to teach you." She teased warmly, nosing into his coat for a moment. 

He wasn't quite sure how to feel about her uncertain plans. Sad, of course - and oddly relieved. He knew that he was setting himself up for heartache, here, but at least he was hearing about these plans. At least he had the opportunity to ready himself. (And he wondered why he had not felt the same way when asking if Moonstone would be setting off on her own one day; a part of him didn't have to wonder at all.)

"I'm a real slow learner," he agreed, shifting slightly and - perhaps accidentally - shuffling closer. The water was relaxing, and Grayday was, admittedly, somewhat starved for this sort of contact. "You'll probably have to take care of us through the winter, at the very least."

He couldn't even feel bad about trying to tie her down for that amount of time; now was not the season to be setting off on voyages. "We're close to the water," he added. "Close enough. We could go down every few days. And your cousin could come to visit."

These were lazy words; unguarded. Perhaps if he hadn't stayed up with the kids last night, or if the warm water hadn't relaxed him so, or if the Spiritwalker's presence didn't cast such a spell... perhaps he would've thought twice about such blatant fantasies.

At least he didn't make her feel foolish for her choices - or, more appropriately, her lack of choices. While she knew that the cold bite of winter fast approached she hadn't settled herself to the concept of a pack. If she stayed, as she was inclined to do, she assumed she would have been staying with Seelie and her isle of seamutts. But her cousin didn't seem like she needed Catori there - not for reassurance or constant companionship. She seemed... Settled. "So taking me in is really about saving your butt from starvation or humiliation. Whichever came first." It was said with warmth, but, Catori couldn't imagine if he'd just stumbled on her and decided she was worth while. 

"You'd like my cousin. She's sweet as can be. Real golden heart."  No, there wasn't a malicious bone in her body to be found and Catori could never even see that side of her possible. "If I ran with your lot, I'd still want to scout and explore. I wouldn't stay gone, mind you, but I'd like to learn what I can from the area." She said plainly. It was testing the possibility, and this was the first of many moments that might shape her future alongside Grayday's wolves. 

" But I don't feel like you're the type to try and tame those wilder ones. Something tells me you've got that wild streak to you too. Maybe hidden under the guise of a kind father, but, I think it's there."  And Catori had a feeling she could lure it out from time to time, if he was willing. 

Grayday huffed at her teasing, not sure if he was pleased or annoyed that he'd found a woman who could give as well as take. The grin on his face probably answered that for him. Besides, was it really so bad, when she turned around and compared him favorably to her cousin? Perhaps not the most promising sign for his romantic intentions, but either way, she was still willing to cuddle. That was enough for Grayday.

"You don't have to decide now," he assured her, tugging on a soft, gingery ear. "Just... drop by when you're in the area. And come say goobye if you decide to go." It wasn't as though they didn't have need for a scout. Grayday thought he might mention that, but, I didn't want to convince her, or corral her, or pressure her into laying down roots. He just wanted this.

"When they're this young, I'm not much else," he explained, tail swishing idly in the water. "But when they're older - and when there's less going on - I'll be able to leave for more than a day at a time. Maybe we can explore together. I know this area pretty well - but I've never been on an island before," the male hinted.

 

Catori Corten wasn't sre what she was going to do. She hadn't planned on being away from the Island for so long - but then, she hadn't planned anything. This, like most of her life, was a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants sort of moment. She wasn't against the idea of being around Grayday more and she wasn't against the idea of a safe haven over the winter either. She gave a thoughtful hum, ear flicking against the tease of his breath along the sensitive bulb. "M'not going anywhere." She promised, nose briefly drawing a smooth line along his snout. "Besides, I've got stories and songs and tricks to share." She said warmly. 

She wasn't as good at the trade as some of her older family members but she tried, and that had to mean something. She licked her lips, tail swaying at his potential offer. "I think it might be a fun adventure once the kids are older. Could take you all across the sea - there's a sandbar, but it's a little worn so you do have to swim. It probably won't be safe enough until spring with how little the kids are and how the temperature has been." It would dip, and given how he had reacted to the bitter cold of the river, no doubt the children who weren't familiar at all would have reacted. 

"Maybe we give it a trial run. See how I fit in. If it's not a smooth fit, I can always head back and no harm, no foul. We're still close enough to visit after all." Catori didn't want to sound like she was going to force her way into his life, either, and so she wouldn't - it was an option for both their sakes, she felt. 

"Good," said Grayday, satisfied with this pronouncement. Aside from his own interests in the pretty woman he was pressed up against, the leader knew that she would be a valuable member of the pack, especially at a time like this. Though her free spirit scared him more than he was ever likely to admit, he appreciated that it might go a long was toward easing the sorrow that currently gripped his family.

So it was that, even as she called this acceptance a trial run and talked about heading back to someplace unspecified, Grayday was able to simply bob his head in acceptance, rather than attempt to argue against this point of view. He'd just have to show her that she did fit in, and that she was not only welcomed, but a necessity.

And maybe - just maybe - he would become a necessity to her as well.

"Just watch, Spiritwalker. We're all gonna be best friends," he declared, his tone light and teasing, but his words entirely heartfelt. What wasn't to like about Catori?

 

Though Catori had a feeling Grayday wouldn't try to change her she knew it was a lot to ask of someone else, too. She gave a pleased hum as she continued to comb through his fur slowly, methodically, tasting him - the water, the world, his world on him. A sample. A tease. She gave a pleased hum as she teased his earth with a careful press of her tongue along the bulb of it. "As long as they don't think you brought a heretic home." She teased. It wasn't like she'd never encountered someone who questioned her, after all, her aloof ways and her general combing of the world as a source of a story itself. She heard those questions, but, she'd grown up fiercely proud of herself too thanks to the answers provided by her family. 

There was no limits to her strength, and one way or another, she was going to prove herself not only to Grayday and his pack, but, to herself too. After a few more beats she gave a careful sigh, snout angled beneath his for a moment that seemed to linger. "Will you show me the way again so I can tell Seelie, and then, I'll come home." Home. With - or to - him.