Moonspear Lose myself tonight
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#1
All Welcome 
@Charon - maybe?

Though it had been just as cold as it had been a day earlier, Wraen thought that she had caught scent of spring. It was a quick gust of wind passing her by, bringing warmth, smell of wet soil, leaves and melting water. It was here for a moment and then it was gone, making her wonder, whether her mind in it's thirst for sunlight and rebirth of nature had played tricks or it had happened for real.

Whatever the true answer was, she felt that this one little invent had changed her, pouring a little bit of spring in her veins, letting it spread through the vessels and seep in her system, changing every bit of tissue and waking every cell for action. Osprey had told Wraen about, what happened, when one matured, but with all her craft in imagination, had she not been able to predict to feel like this. So confident, so self-aware, so ready to open her heart for love and be loved in return.

It was snowing that day and temperatures were below zero, yet the young she-wolf, who was lying in front of her den, closed her eyes and smiled, basking in the light of her inner sun.
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The whole situation with Rannoch and Liffey was dragging on and on and Charon was beginning to think that maybe, he should just let it rest. Maybe he should just have a good heart-to-heart with either of them and then he would feel better about the situation. But would it truly get better, or was he just telling himself this because he wanted so badly to soothe the whole situation, because he liked Rannoch and Liffey — or at least at some point had liked them a lot — and he just wanted it to be like it used to be. Besides, they still owed him a debt after they had taken in Rannoch and fed him. Perhaps because he was an ally there were not the same consequences for him as for Gannet.. but it still felt like some form of debt was owed.

Thoughts plagued him and he found it hard to shake it all off. In the midst of it all was the conception of their newest litter of Moonspear pups, which perhaps was what further caused his worry, paranoia and desire to know he could trust each of his wolves. All he wanted was their loyalty.

His thoughts were cut short by Wraen appearing in the distance as he wandered through Moonspear territory. Snow flakes drifted onto her fur and she looked a lot happier than he felt despite the cold weather. He shook some snow that he had accumulated off his fur and then approached Wraen. "Looking content," he said, though he didn't sound very content himself. Still, it would be good to see a bit of Wraen now; she reminded him of Osprey still and he could sure use a part of unbridled optimism right now.
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The light had almost a magical effect on the way Wraen saw the world now. Where it previously had been draped in grayscale and cold tones, now everything was draped in a soft and golden light, smoothing the sharp edges and giving even the least pretty features a certain level of attractivness. 

"Charon - lovely to see you," the girl replied in a cheerful manner, getting up to her feet to greet the older wolf politely. In the back of her mind rang the harsh words she had aimed at the pack's leader earlier and seeing him now, brought down by the figurative weight of the world, she felt sorry for that. After all - she did not know him well, if at all. And in the current state of mind she was very eager to prove her opinion about the Moonspear's alpha wrong and see the good in him. 

"How are you doing? Haven't seen you much lately, since I am spending more time outside the pack borders."
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To emphasise her cheerful mood Wraen greeted him excitedly; well, whatever her goal was, if it was making him a bit cheerier then it was working. Charon smiled vaguely, though he still didn't feel the best. At least he looked the littlest bit cheerier than before, though. Wraen always reminded him of Osprey still, which was admittedly one of the reasons he enjoyed having her near.

"I've been patrolling a lot," said Charon, not really answering the question because it was too confronting. "Good work on that cougar. How are you doing now?" He felt a pit in his stomach as he thought of the cougar altercation and how he had once more not been there. Wraen sounded chirpy and he didn't expect that any of them had any major injuries left over from the altercation, or he would've heard.
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Wraen had not expected any praise for her and her comrade's bravery, because she was not proud of, how things had turned out. Even if they had killed the beast in the end, that had come at a cost. But, what she was surprised about, was the air faintly tainted with bitterness from other packmates, because they had not been called to help. Their ignorance, about how heated the situation had been and that there literally had been no time to stand back and call, was amazing. Charon, however, as he asked her about it, seemed to be somewhat sad.

Whether it was because of this or many, many other things that were on his place - she did not know. "Oh, I am fine - getting slapped accross the face occasionally helps to put things in perspective," she joked brushing his worries about her well-being away.
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Charon grinned as Wraen said that getting 'slapped across the face' helped put things in perspective. He supposed that was right, though replied with not much more than a nod as he thought about it. "Have you spent time with Vela lately?" he asked Wraen. He thought she would be a good influence on his children, as she was just as imaginative as Osprey and he liked to encourage that while they were still little. Though Vela was rapidly growing up now she was still his little girl. "When I first told her about Osprey and the stories she used to tell me, Vela hung out with the imaginary friends called Drake and Osprey for a while." He hadn't heard her mention them in a while so maybe she had hung them to dry and decided she was too old for that now. Charon remembered that he had decided that a few months younger than Vela was, too, when Ragnar had died and he had decided he needed to pick up on being the strong adult in the family, therefore no longer had time for childish games. Vela, however, she could enjoy being a child just a little bit longer.
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Wraen shook her head - when the kids had been younger, she had visited them quite frequently, bringing toys (bones, sticks, pieces of pelts, dried paws and other treasures) along, but now that they were adolescents and therefore almost grown-ups, she had not interacted with them much. Running into them now and then, exchaning polite greetings, but not much else. Plus, life had been hectic and busy too. 

"Mom would have liked that - being entitled as an imaginary friend," Wraen replied, chuckling and thinking that Osprey, who often joked about coming back as a ghost to haunt her descendants after her death, would really have enjoyed this joke as well. "I though you had left all this behind you?"
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It was a shame that Wraen had not managed to spend much time with Jarilo or Vela lately, though he supposed the kids were growing up and that they wanted to do their own thing now. Perhaps they were busier with figuring out who they were and what their place in all of this was and had less time for their pack mates, too.

Charon smiled as he thought of Osprey, feeling a little nostalgic suddenly and wishing that his friend could've been here, too. But then again, Dante probably would've been there, too... He was curious to find that Wraen knew he'd left behind him his imaginary friends — that's what he guessed she meant, anyway — though answered: "I have, when I grew up, but I still enjoy seeing the children letting their imagination roam wild." He knew that it was all fake and that he no longer needed it because he was all grown up now, but Charon also knew that it could help the children develop in who they were and what they did and so he thought it a good thing for them to do.
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"I always admired that my mom managed to keep that inner-child alive, because it's one thing, when you play as a kid - build worlds, impersonate people and creatures - that is just as real as the world around you," Wraen tried to put a very complex thought in very simple words. "Then you grow up and you can still play and pretend, but it is just not the same. There is a fake note to it," in that respect she could understand, why Charon had left his imaginary friends behind. She had too. 

"That is, what I admire about my mom, because she somehow managed to keep that inner-child alive, because, when she played with us, you knew the things she did and suggested... they were very real to her," she remembered fondly all the dragon-hunting expeditions, pirate missions to find hidden treasures and so many more. It felt as if Osprey had many masks in her closet of ideas and she could easily slip from one character to the other. 

"I - on the other hand - still love stories, but I can't play like I could a long time ago anymore," she concluded.
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Wraen's words rang true for Charon for sure. He loved to get his children into playing games, but it wasn't the same if he would play along, because he knew it was all fake. He was too old for that shit, so he only did it when there were little ones, to play with them, for them. Osprey indeed seemed to have always cultivated some sort of child-like wonder to herself, as if all of this didn't matter to her. Charon smiled as Wraen spoke of her mother, finding that he could only agree with her words.

As for him... It was clear that it was the same for him as it was for Wraen. Somehow this seemed like one of the first times that he truly realised that Wraen wasn't Osprey, but a mixture of his old dear friend and her more down-to-earth mate. "She was — is — a wonderful unique sort of wolf, indeed," he said with a soft smile as he thought of her, suddenly feeling a pang of nostalgia. If only she were still around these bits... "But it is nice to have her children here with me, too. She raised you and Terance well." He smiled at Wraen, suddenly feeling old speaking to the adult friends of one of his friends. Where had the time gone? It seemed so sudden that he was an old man now.
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"One of a kind, definitely," Wraen agreed, remembering fondly her mother's face, where old age and time had left their marks and the kind, but tired dusky-jade eyes. For one wild moment she wanted to leave right there and then to return and see her again, tell of all the adventures she had had, people she had met and lessons she had learned. But this was not possible, Wraen did not know, how Osprey was doing or whether she was still alive, and selfishly she wanted to remember her mom as just the same the day she had set out in the world, than see, how she had changed now.

"Do you sometimes think about your parents and siblings?" she asked, knowing well that this was a very personal question and that Charon could always opt not to answer it.
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Charon smiled as he thought of Osprey, but the smile soon fell off his face. As Wraen asked him about his parents and siblings, he looked taken aback. He'd somehow not seen the question coming at all. It'd been so long since they had been gone... He shook his head. "Sometimes. Mostly about Floki, who was my Beta here for a long time and just vanished one day. Didn't come back from a scouting trip during a blizzard. I looked everywhere for him, but..." He frowned, having long concluded that Floki must be dead now. "A similar thing happened to my brother Levi. He was just gone one day. And my brother Kevlyn... He was kidnapped. I went looking for him when I was little, but I never found him. I had a sister, too, but I barely remember her." Of course there were Jorunn and other family, but Charon decided to leave them out for now. It was a long enough story as it were.

"My parents died when I was very little. I don't even remember what they looked like, just that they saved me and my siblings from a bear and died for it. The Alphas adopted us after that, but my adopted father died when I wasn't even in the adult ranks yet. I helped my adopted mother to keep the pack afloat, and she followed us to Moonspear when we went here, but not long after she vanished, too. I don't know where she went. Didn't say goodbye." He frowned with a hardened expression on his face. Everyone just left, in his experience... Even his own mother was no different. Very few he had space for in his heart, and though she'd gone, he would always have space there for Thistle. He sometimes wondered if maybe she had grown old and needed to go, just like Osprey had, but hadn't had the heart to tell him. He liked to think that was true; that she still thought of him sometimes, too, or perhaps that she had passed on and looked down on him from the stars.

"But it's been really long since I've had siblings or parents by my side." Floki was half a lifetime ago already — only his first litter of children had known Uncle Floki. It was a weird thought, that so much had happened since then and that Floki hadn't been there to witness it all.
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Charon's life story was so very different from Wraen's and she was torn between feeling sorry for his early losses and the fact that she had never fully appreciated her luck in having both of her parents and both siblings present during her first year of life. Apart from Osprey's waxing and waning bouts of ill health and depression, there had been no other clouds in her sunny childhood. To think that there were so many more wolves like Charon, who met tragedy early in life.

"You have your family now - all or most of them here with you," she said after a pause. "If you don't mind - where was the pack you were born at located? I have hunted down the area, where my mom lived for two years - the Blacktail deer plateau - and I also think that I might have found remnants of the place, where Donnelaith formerly was."
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Charon nodded as Wraen said he had his family here. He hadn't known a large portion of his birth family that well considering he had lost them so early, so only the losses later in his life truly reflected on him these days still; Levi, Floki, most of all, but also Thistle and of course Ragnar's death had impacted him greatly.

She asked where he'd lived and he answered: "Stavanger Bay. It's near where Osprey lived, where you were born — Donnelaith?" He tasted the word on his tongue, as it was foreign to him, but he remembered it'd been in the territory bordering the Bay.
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"That's the place," Wraen nodded, feeling a little disappointed that Charon had not mentioned any precise directions or specific landmarks to identify the area, if she ever came accross it. Unbeknownst to her - she would not be able to visit the place anyway - it had recently be claimed by a band of pirates. 

"And later on you united forces with Amekaze, right? What was the name of the pack she led at that time?" she was gradually becoming a history nerd. It was one thing listening to the snippets of her mother's stories from her youth and it got even more exciting, when you could revisit those places and see them with your own eyes.
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Charon nodded as Wraen asked about him joining forces with Amekaze's pack. "The Sunspire," Charon said, and he gestured east vaguely. "Another large mountain to the east. If we would've found a mountain by the seaside, we would've lived there now." Charon smiled softly as he thought of the salty smell of the sea air. He loved living on Moonspear as it seemed a mountain fitting enough of his status, but still... some days he really missed the ocean.

"But I am happy on Moonspear. Luckily we still live close enough to the ocean to visit regularly." Charon smiled as he glanced in the direction of Stavanger Bay, even though he of course couldn't see it. His birthplace would always be in his heart.
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"Sunspire," Wraen repeated, unaware that few weeks from now she would be part of a different pack, but of the same name. At this point, however, she was reminded of the draft of story and characters she and Rannoch had come up with two or three days ago while at the fish table by the frozen lake. 

"You mentioned stories for your children... I might have something for you," she said, recalling the characters of the Land above the clouds (she had come up with the name afterwards). "When I was little, my mom came up with this character - a tail-less marauder and vagabond wolf  called Benny the Mountain - and very often we played this game, where we - the kids - had to decide, in which situation were we going to throw the character in and then she would come up with the rest," it had been a lot of fun and it was still one of her favorite story villains/heroes.

"And... the other day me and Rannoch were toying with story ideas and came up with something that... reflects Moonspear in another dimension so to say," boy, was it difficult to explain the complex idea in simple terms and she hoped that Charon had not lost interest by now.

"So... we came upon idea of The Night Queen - an all powerful witch that everyone has heard about, but have rarely met. Her three daughters - Dusk, Dawn and Eventide - possessing their own magic and being the fierce and cunning guardians of the realm. Father Moon and his herd of Starlight sheep," whether Charon saw the resemblance of his home and family in the characters or not, was up to him. "Anyway... we came up with one story-line, where a lone wolf is lured into the kingdom and in order to break free, have to fulfill three difficult tests. And the next time you play with your kids or the next generation, you can use these characters to form stories of entertainment as well as educational purposes."
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The references weren't lost on Charon, who grinned as he caught them at first. The only thing that seemed a little off to him was that a lone wolf was trapped and had to fulfil tests to get out. In his mind, being here wasn't really being trapped and if it concerned a loner who'd made his way into the midst of their territory, well, that was kind of their own problem. He decided not to comment on it though, reminding himself that it was only a game, really.

"That's a great idea," said Charon; "Thanks for sharing, I'll keep it in mind. I hope you'll be able to tell them stories like these or play games too come spring." He smiled encouragingly at Wraen then; Charon of course intended to share these things with his own children too, but it would be lovely to have some extra good influence from outside of the family.

i love your stories <3 do you want to wrap this one up soon? :)
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"That would be very nice," Wraen agreed not knowing then that few weeks from now she would leave Moonspear behind and though not directly, sever all ties with this pack. Later she would reminisce and feel a little sorry for not saying goodbyes, when there had been time to do so, and she would realize the loss of people, who were fond of her to a degree. 

But for now the pretty picture of her entertaining a bunch of little, clumsy fluff-balls with stories and actual dragon-hunting quests was the one that warmed her heart. Not a kid herself anymore, she missed seeing the world with child-eyes - full of wonder and amazement for even the smallest things and most minute details. 

Wraen's lost in thoughts now - you can draw a conclusion in your next post. Thanks!
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Charon smiled in agreement, and while Wraen faded off into thoughts so did Charon. It would be nice to know that his children would have someone like he had had in Osprey to entertain them. For a moment longer he lingered, before eventually each went their own way again.