Dated for the afternoon of February 5, 2017.
At the base of the glacier, Lotte dropped her shoulder and rolled. Made feverish by her condition — something she had never experienced and could not fully understand — she snaked her body hard through the snow with unceremonious zeal and a soft thump. The telltale spice of her scent was lost to her as she burrowed through the frost, rooting about with renewed energy. Her moonbright eyes were glassy and watchful and her skin prickled with inexplicable wariness; small, rounded ears swiveled alertly as she warred between eagerly seeking out company and actively trying to avoid notice. She wanted Arturo — perhaps “needed” was a more apt description — but she fought the need as fervently as she fought the fire in her blood. Still, no matter how hard she tried to deny her pull to Ceannasach, her healed paws moved inexorably in his direction. He was fully within his rights to punish her for her unusual flightiness, and again the sensation of conflict filled her wayward heart. She feared his ire — and yet, she was drawn to the idea of the gangster taking her to task. “I like when you are not a gentleman,” she’d told him once, and she relished the thought of his sharply-etched features drawn into hard, implacable lines. What is wrong with me?
With heightened vigor she pushed her body into the snow, paws kneading like a pleased feline’s as she scraped her spine against a shelf of ice and stone. Needing the contact rather desperately, she flipped fully onto her back and began writhing back and forth while undulating growls rippled from her grimacing lips.
Though he tried to stay close to the Golden Glade, Dagfinn's wanderings brought him - often - to the further reaches of the wilds. He knew that his sister was out there, that she was alive and possible in need of some brotherly intervention. It was impossible to still his paws with this knowledge in his heart.
When he caught her scent, it was with a sinking feeling in his gut, and an uncomfortable tug at his loins.
"Lotte!" he called, reluctant to track her down after what'd happened the last time he'd encountered a woman in heat. But this was his sister, and he needed to see her alive after everything that had passed. With a put-upon sigh, Dagfinn tried his best to ignore how enticing she smelled and simply focused on trying to find her. And luckily (or unluckily), she hadn't gone far. Dag soon spotted the silver-pelted dunce rooting around in the snow as though she'd forgotten how to properly use her legs.
"Hey snow-butt!" he called, his heart suddenly light. He set off toward his kaksonen without another thought, imagining a reunion much like their previous ones.
“Hey, snow-butt!”
Lotte’s limbs windmilled furiously at the sound of Dagfinn’s voice and when she bounded to her paws at last it was with wide, wild eyes and defensively pinned ears. “Mitä!? Mitä!? she squeaked, bouncing lightly on her paws as she shook the snow from her nose with a started snort and readied herself for some kind of violent attack. It wasn’t long before Dagfinn crossed the distance that separated him, and Lotte sped away, jerking her hips in a skittering swivel to stand perpendicular to her kaksonen. “Nothing!” she blurted in the tongue of their beloved home, just in case he thought she was, like…doing…something.
It was so good to see him! Lotte’s hackles spiked like porcupine quills along her spine as she bounded toward him sideways, then bounced away. “I have a fever,” she whined, “or something, so — ”
Dagfinn really was a handsome wolf. It was no wonder that Amber —
…what?
Lotte blinked as her thoughts took a bizarre turn, drifting absurdly to her twin’s appearance — he was tall and strong and his voice was sonorous and sweet, but she’d always known these things. Every man she’d met had been judged by Dagfinn’s impressive standards, and although she’d always shown more of a propensity for flirting than her twin, she was sure that nobody could compare to Dag — “I have a fever,” she warned him off desperately, trying to sound rational as she began to dig a hole in the snow, “and I am probably contagious.” When she judged the hole was deep enough, she stuck her face directly into it, her long, sinuous spine curled into an exaggerated tilde. “Run, Dagfinn. Save yourself,” she moaned dramatically, mentally berating herself for the hot churn of her gut that had only worsened upon seeing her weirdly attractive littermate. It didn’t occur to her that he’d probably seen or heard of the fire, and that he’d been worried. She was threadbare in spots, her plush fur patchy where the flames had licked at her flesh, and her pelt was a bit ragged due to the weight she’d lost, but this malady was something different entirely.
And she ran! "Lotte!" Dagfinn sputtered, making a few abortive bounds toward her before he caught on to her cries. He wasn't sure whether she was really unaware of her condition or perhaps just shy about it, but either way, he decided to cut to the chase. "You're not sick, you're in heat!" he snapped, trudging toward her once more. Her scent was causing a sharp, almost painful twisting sensation in his gut, but it wasn't the same as it'd been with Amber. He didn't feel any need to fall at her paws and beg. Dagfinn assumed it was because she was his sister, but the simple truth was that Amber had made him wary toward women, and disinclined to show favor toward a woman in heat.
"Come over here - I'm your brother," he called, exasperated. What did she think he was going to do? "Are you hurt? I was so afraid when I saw the smoke - by the time I reached the forest, you were gone."
“You’re not sick, you’re in heat!”
Lotte froze. “A’rrmm?” she asked the snowdrift that she was presently drowning herself in. She jerked backward to free herself, popping out of the hole with snow capping her head and the bridge of her muzzle. “I am?” she repeated, this time to her exasperated twin. The knowledge was sobering and put a temporary damper on the billowing flutter in her loins. Comprehension melted the frantic fear from the tautness of her carriage and the ice of her argent eyes; she loped easily over the snow toward her littermate and then paused, trying not to notice how attractive he now seemed to her. Fortunately, mention of the fire stilled the fluttering entirely. In its place was a weight that pressed so heavily upon the singed songbird that she sank roughly to the snow and curled her body around her brother — whatever part of him she could readily reach.
There was a huskiness to her lilting alto as she admitted in a small voice, “It was terrible,” closing her eyes tightly in a physical manifestation of her desire to banish the memory of the flames from her mind’s eye. “The screaming — and I never found Deirdre. I was lucky to make it to Teaghlaigh.”
She spared Dagfinn the gorier details, glossing over the past few weeks with a simple: “I was hurt, but I am not now. The fire died first.” She meant to sound triumphant, but her flippant tone fell flat at the end and her smile quivered feebly at the corners. “I am so happy to see you,” she said fiercely.
She saved him from the gorier details, but even this, he did not want to hear. "Come here," he said sharply, commandingly. (Perhaps the scent of her affected him more than he knew.) Though she was already as near as she could be, Dagfinn tried his best to gather her more to him, bringing her into the protective circle of his body. Everything in him rebelled against the thought of his kaksonen in such mortal danger, and even now, he could hear something thin and rough in her voice. She was out of danger, but he still felt the echoes of her fear and pain.
"I am glad to see you as well," he said thickly, the weight of his worries making him more curt than he would normally be with her. And, alive - the word haunted the end of his statement, and though he did not speak it, he was certain she could hear the melodramatacisim weighting his words. "Even though you stink."
The words fell a little flat, because she didn't stink, she smelled like heaven - but that didn't bear saying, either. Dagfinn shut his mouth and tried to take shallower breaths, forcing himself to think of how they used to wrestle with Laerke to help center himself. "Duskvale has fallen, so don't look for me there. Saena is gone - and they all left, after her. But I found a new pack, and we're doing well for ourselves," he explained. "Although, I might not go back, knowing I might soon have little nephews on the way."
There was a familiar teasing note to his tone, but a question, also. What will you do? he wondered, knowing now that she was staying with Ar-tur-o - but that she was absent from him, in her fertile days. Too, he thought of Reek and Jhala, and of Laurel, strangely. And he knew that he would go back, but that it would be a short check-in before he returned to Lotte's side. She needs me, he thought. But maybe he needed her.
Lotte seemed to fold in on herself, craning her neck at an exaggerated angle to press her crown into her brother’s breast. “I was so afraid!” she nearly wailed — it was on the tip of her tongue now that she didn’t need to be strong and capable — but she ground her back molars together to keep it locked down. Swallowing painfully around the thick lump in her throat, she said nothing for a prolonged moment. Then, thinking of the child who had accosted her in the vale, “So I have been told,” she muttered dryly in response to the comment about her odor, but a smile curved the corners of her lips nonetheless.
“I am sorry about Saena,” the soot-stockinged rogue murmured sincerely, preening lovingly at the little cream star that adorned her kaksonen’s broad chest, “but happy to hear about your new pack.” She paused at his closing statement, drawing back to look up at him with hope glittering quite clearly in her argent eyes. “Truly?” Selfishly, she wanted her littermate within pummeling range pretty much all the time — but she knew that their lives had taken them in different directions and that it was good for them both. Still, her need for Dagfinn had grown since the fire and would only continue to grow with her inevitably ballooning abdomen. “I do,” she answered his unspoken thought. I need you. She couldn’t steal him away from his new pack in good conscience, though, and tacked on, “Only if they can spare you, talvi sininen.”
Dagfinn merely held her more tightly when she seemed to lose her breath. His whole body ached at her sorrow, and for a moment, he too shook with the force of it, his mind swirling with a thousand thoughts as his heart tried to hold in his emotions. You really do stink, he thought fervently, glad that his sister couldn't really read his mind. He needed her, but he also needed her away from him.
"I will find out, kaksonen," he vowed, nibbling behind her ears and then pulling abruptly away, deciding that this reunion would have to be cut short. "Hurry home and make little nephews for me," he teased, not bothering to ask which direction she was going in. He'd be able to track her, this time. So would every other male that came across her path.
“Insolent whelp, bane of my existence,” Lotte murmured fondly in Enokian, as eager to be home with Arturo as Dagfinn was to be away from his twin. “I will do as you say — but I want daughters and sons.” Playfully she poked her tongue out at her wintry-eyed littermate. “I have an adopted daughter,” she remembered, looking at Dagfinn somewhat triumphantly, “and I promised her I would take her mountain climbing. You will come and meet her, yes?” Her tail lashed eagerly, unknowingly spreading more of her telltale scent as she got to her paws. “I am for home,” she sang out blithely. “If I do not see you soon, I will not name any of my babes after you.” That was a lie, made evident by the mischievous sparkle in her eyes as she turned and headed swiftly for home. She had made up her mind to name at least one child from her first litter after Dagfinn, if not every single one of them in some way.