Dragoncrest Cliffs if you're not here to win get the hell out of kuwait

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It had taken every ounce of energy she had to return to Drageda. Never once had she considered leaving, reuniting with what is left of her family, until now. Furi only entertained the idea, thinking about how her life might have turned out differently if she’d managed to get back home. Maybe her mother would still be alive because she wouldn’t have been searching for her, she wouldn’t have broken her heart even more, but she can hardly remember being that girl at all.
 
Furi spends the night on her own, curled up in Rose’s old den. It doesn’t smell like her anymore. Nothing has moved since she’d poked around for any clues and it’s off the radar enough that no one would think to find her here.
 
She does not get much sleep but when she wakes from a ragged slumber the next morning, her heart heavy with sadness and loss, all she wants is to curl back up and drift off once more. Exhaustion settles into her bones but her mind speeds up, preventing her from attempting to sleep again, and she shuffles around in the fallen tree until she’s comfortable. For now, pale green eyes stare across the floor and she inhales a deep breath, sighing with what little bit of energy she has left.

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despite the continued threat of the sound so close things have finally settled and blixen feels good. she's making moves for what she wants, her family's together, she has an equal and beloved in furi and friends in rose and seri and dalia. they'll track down the traitor and tear him limb from limb in good time, she's sure of it, but all and all? pretty good life for the gona going on.

but when furi doesn't come to bed with everyone else blixen feels a familiar prick of worry and jealousy. the latter she dismisses immediately -- she doesn't think furi's sleeping with rose anymore, anyway. and then furi doesn't appear for morning patrol and blixen knows something is up. their routine may not be as unshakeable as it was before their fight but by now the redhead has cottoned on to at least some of her friend's anxiety issues and the prolonged absence is enough to make her go looking.

she doesn't go to rose's den immediately, feeling weird about it, but eventually gives in to the impulse. there's no rose to be found (phew) -- furi, on the other hand.. 

"hei," she says, poking her head in without much regard for personal space. "where've you been?"

It goes without saying she’s eventually found. Blixen doesn’t give up and sometimes it’s charming. Sometimes it’s annoying. Furi doesn’t know what it is right now.
 
Furi doesn’t move much when Blixen pops her head into the trunk. Her eyes remained focused to a point on the interior wall. A few, long seconds tick by and she slowly moves, stretching her limbs. At first, she thinks she’s going to get back up but a lack of energy holds her down and she barely has enough left to try and look at her friend.
 
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she decides, likely to be the wrong answer.

it's not the answer she wants but she isn't surprised by it either. something is clearly wrong and the impulse to pick at it immediately makes her tense up. nomi'd said to try and understand and see things from furi's point of view, right?

the redhead huffs a sigh and shoves herself inside the den all of the way, curling up around furi's side as best she can if the other girl will let her. "okay," she says, clearly straining with the effort to let it go for now, "we don't have to talk about it now." obviously she has no intention of leaving furi alone to be miserable but hey, it's a start.

Blixen’s huff is enough indication she doesn’t like the answer and Furi closes her eyes, expecting some rebuttal about talking. They’ve already established they both kinda suck at expressing feelings to one another. How is she going to express this one? Oh yeah, I really do remember my parents and well, that’s a whole thing.
 
She snorts a little but when she’s jostled around a bit, she peers up to see the fiery girl shoving herself into the den. As she blocks out some of the light, it could be Rose fitting inside, but Blixen settles up close and accepts that she doesn’t want to talk. The first few minutes are quiet, Furi shifting a bit to better fit in the space they’re given. She buries her face into Blixen, releasing a shaky, sobbing breath into her fur.

she feels awkward and out of place, snuggled up close to her girl in someone else's den. the pair settle into the silence, blixen uneasy. she's on the verge of saying something, anything, to break the tension when furi suddenly buries against her and -- is that a sob? "hey," the girl says, unsettled, and nudges her gently with her nose, before pressing close as she can in a wolfy approximation of a hug. "what's going on..?" she asks softly, not really angling for an answer if furi still doesn't wanna say anything.

Blixen’s voice gets her attention and she tries to smooth out her breathing, clinging to the sob that wants to release from her throat. She scrunches her eyes together and works on steadily breathing. Furi tightens to better settle in close, starved for proper comfort that she still won’t allow herself to have. She can’t tell Blixen. One family is already destroyed, why try to tear something down she’s built here? Even if she could piece her old life back together, compromising the one good thing she has isn’t going to solve anything.
 
For now, she buries her family as deep as she can.
 
“Sometimes I think I’m still at Blackfeather,” she tells her. Well. Once. Sort of. Anxiety still follows her but the she’s been too distracted lately to focus on what’s bothering her. She didn’t’ even see any of the fighting, only what remained of their kru when they retreated from the forest. “And I don’t…” she pauses, shifting a little to get comfortable and get one of Blixen’s feet from jabbing her. “I think Rose is gone too.”

blixen's fairly guileless -- she takes furi's answer at face value, not suspecting anything deeper the girl might be hiding from her. after all, they're both pretty open with each other, even if furi is the quiet type. "did something happen at blackfeather?" she asks, completely prepared to go re-fight those fuckers if they touched a hair on her head (although come to think of it, furi'd been guarding with artaax, hadn't she?) 

rose, though. the gona makes a face, something between concern and a tiny pang of jealousy that rose's presence could affect furi this much. oh, that isn't fair. "have you seen her at all since we got back? i haven't," she says, realising furi is probably right. "do you think we should look for her?" blix asks, wondering if she's gone and fucked up and let someone else get hurt in her absence. every time!

Seri has attempted something similar, to figure out the strong flashback. If it continues to happened, maybe she could go to Portia, but what if it’s all in her head and nothing’s really wrong? ”No, not really,” not short of embarrassing herself to Artaax. ”We didn’t really do anything but being out there, knowing they’re fighting. I should have been there too,” she says, quiet and tired. Her voice droops and she does her best to keep on task, afraid to show too much. But at least it moves on and Blixen isn’t mad she’s worried about her friend. ”I don’t really know where to look. I looked where we first met and I’ve checked everywhere,” and surely Rose would have come to greet her? Had something happened that would have driven her off. ”What if she’s like Arrille?”

relieved to hear nothing happened, but still concerned, blixen whines softly and nuzzles into her neck. "i feel the same," she admits. she doesn't blame furi and artaax for their uninvolvement, but once mother left... blix should've marched right into that forest alongside her pack. instead she'd sulked and played with the puppies. 

but this isn't about her (for once) and furi's concerns about rose seem more pressing. she presses her lips in a thin line. "i don't think she is," the gona says, recalling the time she'd spent with the other redhead. from the start arrille had been somewhat self obsessed, or at least pretty naive, with the way he'd mucked up his joining pitch -- and the condition they'd found him in originally didn't speak much to his survival skills, either. rose, on the other hand, had been totally ready to call blixen out for being a bitch within seconds of meeting her, and had been ready to commit to the pack when asked. maybe it's just blixen not wanting to think badly of someone she liked, but, "i dont think so," she repeats more firmly, "did she ever talk to you about wanting to go somewhere else or anything?" the two had spent more time together than blixen had with rose, so, who knows, maybe the girl had harbored some secret dream of adventuring or something. or had family somewhere she'd been reunited with.. or something else that prevents blix from assuming the worst.

Furi shifts a little to get a better look at her friend when she admits she doesn’t think Rose would have done the same thing. It still comes as a surprise to her that Arrille turned his back on them but her anger has faded into disappointed—which may or may not change if she ever sees him again—and she worries the same fate will become of her friend. Or worse. What if she’s hurt somewhere, or someone has taken her? Maybe she should have stayed home from the war and made sure everything was fine. Clearly everything falls apart when she leaves.
 
“No,” she says softly, inhaling a slow, shaky breath. It’s comforting to know Blixen doesn’t think Rose turned her back on them, too. Maybe they should look for her, more than she already has but she can’t not at least try harder. “She didn’t even tell me where she was from,” Furi admits and closes her eyes, sinking back into fiery red fur.

blixen hums, not sure what she can say to soothe her girlfriend. she's not good at being comforting and she doesn't know how furi feels, still, about rose and about everything, though she has more of an idea now at least. but she wants to try, and so she hooks a paw over the girl's silvery side and huffs a sigh into her fur. "does it matter?" she asks, shaking her head a little. "uh, i mean like -- where she was from, that sort of stuff -- isn't as important as what she was doing now. or at least that's how i feel about stuff." that her friends had lives before drageda is something she objectively knows, but something she cares very little about. whether or not thats the best way to feel about something is, well, time will tell.

Furi tenses only a little when Blixen moves, touching her in a way that is different but… not entirely unwelcome. Trying to brush it off as surprise, she shifts a little to make herself comfortable and groans when she does speak up. “What if that’s where she went? Or what if they know where she might go,” she says, staring at the ground. If she left Drageda, the first thing she would have done is try and find Teaghlaigh. She’s an adult, capable of feeding and defending herself. Some traveling, asking around, but she’s quickly ripped back to reality, remember that no, Teaghlaigh is no more. Her mother is no more, and by the sound of it, her father too. But she has Eirlys, now. And maybe Ceallach. Furi closes her eyes, fighting back the swell of tears.

unsure how to respond to furi's questions, she stays quiet for a minute. her impulse is: in that case, forget her, because she can't fathom anyone ditching drageda for something else, can't fathom there might be more important things. but something tells her furi might not like that answer and for once she listens, trying to think carefully about what to say instead of running her mouth. "then," blix says, "i mean.. we can't do much about it, right?" the redhead nudges at furi's cheek with her nose, concerned by the sudden appearance of more tears. "if she wanted to go... look for something, i guess, or return to something, that's... her decision, huh? and i guess we can't really hold it against her even if it sucks."

Blixen hesitates her answer, she can feel the shift in her body when she makes an attempt but holds back. She remains still in the few seconds of silence the fiery girl takes and she wonders what makes it so hard. The jealousy? Or maybe because she thinks Rose betrayed them like Arrille? None of it helps with a good answer without the other party so she sinks back into the ground and listens to her defense. 

But Rose is her friend, in a different way than Arrille, and she can’t handle the fact someone else has done this to her. Fool me once. 

Furi tightens her jaws and shakes her head a little. ”I’m going to look for her,” she decides, regardless of Blixen wants to help of not. She knows their surroundings well enough that any disruption should be easy to spot, but the hope she’ll find anything at all doesn’t linger too long.

her answer doesn't make furi angry but it doesn't soothe her either. it seems like their opinions on this stuff may be irreconcilable. at least they aren't fighting about it, she decides, and sighs softly into furi's neck. there's no war, no pressing other thing to take priority over looking for rose, so she says, "okay," not exactly enthused but ... well, maybe furi's right. "i'll help," she adds, because rose is also her friend thank-you-much and she does hope the girl hasn't gotten herself into trouble while they're gone.

Even with the declaration, Furi doesn’t move. Right now, she isn’t sure she can. Disguising her grief as strife over her lost friends will only last so long before she lets herself go and can’t hold back. She closes her eyes tight and shifts around in the den so that the girl can’t see her expression. Squeezing her lips together, she lifts a paw to drape over her face and she fights back a sob that ends briefly in a tremble, resting quietly until she feels like she can move again.