He had been dutiful with his days, but sullen, and had withdrawn from much of the activities of the pack. The loss of Lasher had been a turning point of sorts, and Renoir had hidden himself away from the attentions of others - not for lack of desire, because he did grow quite lonely without the company of his family - but because of a deeply rooted fear. He had shared something with the passed Alpha and then promptly lost him, which indicated to the boy's young mind that he should be more careful, more guarded.
Thus he had become that way.
Renoir spoke little when he encountered others, and went about his daily tasks in his own time, in his own way, and often during the very early or the very late hours, so as not to disturb others with his presence. All the while, Renoir thought of Deirdre and the promise she had made to him. Perhaps enough time had passed by now? Perhaps they could sneak away for a night or two, and things could return to the way they once were. At the very least, he would experience happiness again. He would bask in her beauty and her love, and all would be right - he would be right, healed by her very presence.
It was only recently that Osprey felt - the world was going too fast for her. Yes, she was still able to run with the pace of the events, catch up rather quickly, should she happen to lag behind, but... more and more often it was so that she was losing her breath and felt that she needed a break. A moment, when things would just stand still and not change, would be enough.
But time does not slow or stop for those that get tired along the way and therefore, realizing that every day was of value, stepping down and leaving the leadership to the younger generation had seemed the right thing to do. She had her family to take care of and, who knew, how much time you had got left.
It was a sunny evening and Osprey was watching over her three children sleeping soundly in the moss. Though they had their differences in the waking hours, they were all put aside, when they slept, cuddled closely to each other. A sound of someone walking nearby caught her attention and the elder carefully got to her feet and listened.
He remained oblivious to the presence of the new mother, if only because his thoughts were so overwhelmingly focused upon Deirdre. She was all he thought of these days - her face imagined in his mind, her silhouette, her smell, her voice. When he was not wallowing in his sadness, of course. Renoir was often sad these days. He was waiting so patiently for her, but in his heart he doubted even Deirdre now.
Renoir lingered for a moment over a patch of fresh flowers; they were so new that many of the buds had yet to open, and they spread out beneath him as tiny dots of white upon the thick blanket of green. He dipped his head and looked at them, studied them, and tried to investigate their smell, but could only detect the aroma of dirt. Even the flowers had lost their beauty to him! Oh, it was a worrisome moment indeed, and briefly the boy frowned down at the flowers, as if they were at fault for his depression.
Renoir might have noticed Osprey, but she caught the sight of him the moment he moved to examine, what looked like a bush of flowers. With one last glance at the sleeping cubs, just to make sure that it would be alright to leave them for a moment, she approached the male quietly. Her demeanour friendly and a little concerned too. For it had not gone unnoticed to her that this handsome man had been, what one would call a sad potato a week or two earlier, when they had done the scavenger hunt. The fact that he did not seem to have improved, worried her. No one should be unhappy for very long.
"Can I help you?" she asked, when she had come within hearing distance, and smile encouragingly at the man.
Her voice surprised him, and so he lifted his head with a jolt, hearing something in his neck pop from the exertion. He looked at her briefly instead of the flowers, witnessing the glow of motherhood upon her for the briefest of moments, before his eyes dropped back to the patch of buds at his feet.
Renoir had meant to speak. To say something, anything, that might ease her worries or dissuade her from pressing him further about his thoughts, but the boy discovered he had very little motivation to do so. Thus, he shrugged his shoulders, thought for a moment or two, and mustered the best non-commital response he could think of: Non, I am fine. Da flowers... I am happy to see 'dem back.
But they had been back for weeks now, unlike himself.
It was clear from the very beginning that Renoir was not going to pour his heart out to Osprey and she did not blame him - she was almost a stranger to him. Yet the lame excuse about the beauty of the flowers made her arch her eyebrows and look at the fellow quizzically. Really?
She weighed out her options then - she could press further and eventually find out the true reason, talk about flowers or her own problems or... she could try to make a joke out of it. Since the first two were not interesting and the third subject was empty at the moment, she went at the fourth. "Were you hit by the moonlight? People say that it is one of the strongest magic - makes even reasonable people do foolish things."
The moonlight? That was something he had never heard of before; it piqued his interest, and pulled him briefly out of his sorrowful thoughts. The boy's head lifted slightly, and his eyes deviated from the flowers as he glanced towards Osprey, but then they lifted further - to the sky - and briefly the boy watched the gaps of light and color between the tree branches above.
Lalin limyè — I 'ave not.. ehm,
It was difficult for him to speak the common tongue now, perhaps more difficult than when he first arrived, simply because he had been so sullen and quiet these last weeks; to speak anything other than his native tongue felt so strange, so foreign. But after a moment of thought, of consideration for Osprey and what little he knew of her, or her abilities, he tried again: D'ere is majeek in da moon?
He looked down from the sky then to catch her eye, and tilted his head thoughtfully. It made some sense; the forest seemed imbibed with an otherworldly force, and surely Deirdre and her kin were a part of something grand, so why not the moon as well?
"I can't say for myself," Osprey said in a tone that suggested she had done foolish things in her life even without the help of moonlight, "BUT - people, who have experienced this... madness - all agree that there is something particular about that hour of the day. Something... that does not make it wise to make decisions around that time."
"This probably explains, why all magical deals are done in full-moon at midnight. Have you heard those tales?" she asked. She went on then, telling about all of the innocent fools, who had done incredibly stupid things while under the magic of moonlight.