Wolf RPG

Elwood and Finley were enjoying their retirement. And by that I mean they were able to focus their attention wholly on their four little bundles of joy while the world imploded around them. They were devastated about Wildfire's death, but Colt had stepped up into the Sovereign role, which left Finwood to their own devices. They had no idea that Towhee and Tegan had been at each other's throats (well, mostly Tegan at Towhee's) or that Rannoch and Liffey were uprooting their family and upsetting the rest of their pack. This news would all reach their ears at some point -- probably sooner than later -- but for now they were blissfully unaware.

At present, they had stolen some alone time. They weren't really alone; they were only about 100 feet from the den, where @Eljay was inside with all of the babies. He hated to admit it, but Elwood didn't want to leave Eljay by himself for any substantial length of time. He just didn't know if the boy's heart could take it. So this "date night" would most likely be relatively short lived, but he was still glad to be with Finley without the puppies clamoring for their attention.

Sprawled on the grass under a dusky sky, Elwood stretched out on his back. He turned his grizzled face to look at the few stars that were beginning to twinkle overhead. He then shifted just slightly to bring Finley into his line of vision, and smiled. "I love you," he said simply.

Fin laid sphinx-like at her mate's side, staring ahead of her at the dark spaces between the trunks of the trees. While the stars were twinkling above, the fireflies were just beginning to do the same for them a bit closer to home. She watched for their little lights, frowning at the way they kept going out. They stayed lit for such a short amount of time. Too short. And it was reminding her far too much of other things, other lights that had gone out far too soon.

Elwood's voice pulled her back to the present. She looked over at him and smiled, her tail giving a couple of soft beats on the ground. "It's about damn time you admitted that," she quipped, a wee bit half-heartedly. Fin didn't fully let herself feel the anguish Wildfire's death was causing her in her mate's presence, but she did feel free to stop fighting it quite so hard. She refused to be a sobbing mess even with him, but she also knew she didn't have to pretend so determinedly that she was okay.

Finley replied in typical Fin-fashion, matching Elwood's expression of love with a playful quip. But there was a hollowness to her words that wasn't always there, and Elwood's smile faded slightly. He turned onto his side, then propped himself up on an elbow, grunting with the effort. It was no secret that Wildfire's death would hang over their heads for a long time, and he suspected that even after months had passed, they would still feel the sting of her absence.

"You okay?" he asked, his tone more serious this time. He nudged her cheek with his snout, knowing that the answer to his question was "no" but wondering what, exactly, she would say.

Fin gave her mate a long glance as he asked that question. She didn't speak, didn't nod or shake or head or even shrug. She just looked at him for a bit, then looked away. It didn't really need to be said that she wasn't alright. Of course she wasn't. He wasn't either. These were things they knew, things that couldn't be rectified by the simple act of speaking the words out loud.

"What can we do for Eljay?" Fin asked after another moment, her gaze trailing back towards the den, "What about Liffey's guy? Isn't he a counselor or something? Or is this... a medic thing that Raven could help with?" She didn't feel hopeful that either of those options would yield any results. The best healer was time, but Eljay had always been so slow to grow and move past things. She wanted to find a way to speed up the process and get him through his suffering faster. She wanted him to be okay again.

There was a long silence after Elwood's question, leaving the words hanging in the air. That in itself was an answer; there wasn't anything that either one of them could say to explain just now not okay they were. Elwood simply sighed, and gave a gentle nod of his head as the quiet stretched between them for a few seconds longer.

Finley did speak up eventually, wondering aloud what they could do for their eldest son. He wasn't sure there was anything specific that would help Eljay; sadly, he suspected that Raven did not have any herbs that could heal a broken heart. But maybe she was onto something with her suggestion to have him talk to Rannoch. Fin was a counselor herself, but perhaps it would be more beneficial if Eljay talked to someone that wasn't his mom or dad.

"That might be a good idea, letting him talk through things with Rannoch. I don't know that it will fix things, but it certainly couldn't hurt," he mused.

Elwood agreed, but in spite of that, Fin was already onto the next option. She didn't realize at that very moment, her daughter and son-in-law were plotting to move their family across the map to join the Redhawks, so she didn't realize Rannoch actually was a real option yet. Which meant, she needed another. Unfortunately, she had already run circles in her head around what they could do to help their son get through this and had come up with basically nothing. There just was no quick and easy fix for this. Worse, Finley feared there was no fix for this at all.

"What do you think, send Elfie to go get him?" Fin asked with a sigh, settling her head down onto her paws. It felt like everyone in the pack was too preoccupied to do it. Plus, it all seemed hopeless anyway, so it was back to humor and trying to push it as far away from her as possible so she could keep on keepin' on.

Her response was meant as a joke, although it was spoken with a sigh of defeat that brought the humor of the statement into question. Elwood's lips almost twitched into a smile, but not quite; even so, he still answered by saying, "Nah, not Elfie. I think Pox or Avery should go."

He cast a quick glance over his shoulder back in the direction of the den, where he knew Eljay was. "Maybe he just needs time," he said, although he knew as the words passed his lips that there was more to the story. This couldn't have happened to a less deserving wolf; it was so unfair that Eljay's happiness had been torn away from him only moments after he found it. He already felt emotions so deeply, and it was this fact that made Elwood doubt his own suggestion. Sure, the passage of time would help -- but he feared it might not fully heal.

Fin cracked a small smile at the idea of sending one of the even younger pups to fetch Rannoch. She knew Pox would for sure be down with the journey--the boy had outgrown being confined to their den at about three weeks. His personality alone barely fit the whole of the Copse. He was far too much like her, and also way way way way way too much like Colt.

Speaking of which. "What do you think of Colt leading alone?" Fin asked, nonchalantly stepping away from the former topic. She was pleased (and amused) to hear that her brother had volunteered to assume the mantle of leadership after Wildfire's death, but she was quite positive he didn't have a clue what he was doing. She hadn't either when she'd become beta, and even less when she'd been thrust into Alpha. But she'd had Elwood then. Colt was standing alone.

Eventually, the subject of Eljay was dropped, though Elwood knew it would be returned to again and again in the days and weeks to come. After a brief pause, Finley mused aloud about her brother's role as Sovereign. Elwood couldn't see any reason why Colt wouldn't be successful; he had a history of being flighty, but then again, so did Finley. And she had managed to establish herself as a leader and a matriarch.

"I think he'll do fine," he replied, then added, "He might be the only official leader, but he's not alone. He's got us." This was delivered with a faint smirk, but he really meant it -- Fin would give her brother a hard time, but he knew that if push came to shove, she would be there for him. He shrugged. "He's not any more clueless than we were, and if he's anything like you, he'll rise to the challenge."

Fin nodded her agreement. Colt did have plenty of back up if he started making a mess of things. And he had grown up plenty from when they'd been young and stupid and dangerously irresponsible. Still, she did wonder if he might be reaching his maximum capacity for adulting. He was already a mate and father--now add alpha on top of that? The guy might implode.

"I'm way better than him," Fin corrected immediately, "But yeah, he'll probably have his moments." She smirked a little, then added a new thought. "I wonder if Niamh will step up beside him once the kids are old enough," she commented thoughtfully with a small frown. She wasn't sure how she'd feel about that. Not that she didn't like her sister-in-law, but she did have her concerns for the woman's stability. Like Colt, she was new to motherhood, and parenthood. Would she handle leadership on top of that well?

She was also way too pretty, but Fin was learning not to hold that against her.

"Oh, of course, my mistake," was Elwood's quick, playful response to Finley's correction. He then hummed thoughtfully as Finley wondered about Niamh's future in leadership. It made sense for her to step up alongside her mate, but Elwood honestly didn't know her well enough to be able to make a judgment call as to whether she would want to or not. She could be completely content to raise her children and let Colt remain in charge of the pack, or the opposite might be true.

In the end, he shrugged. "Maybe," he replied, having kind of forgotten about Niamh's flightiness in his considerations. He stretched, reaching his forelegs further out in front of him and spreading his toes. This was accompanied by a yawn, then he said, "I'm glad it's not us, though. I kind of like retirement."

Elwood admitted that it was possible that Niamh might indeed step up. It was her rightful place as the alpha's mate, after all, at least in Finley's traditional sort of mind. Still, Niamh as alpha. Beta was one thing, alpha though... Ehhhhhhh.

"Retirement is pretty nice," Fin said with a soft smile and a nod, "If you can call perpetual babysitting retirement." Which, to be honest, she did. There was nothing she'd ever loved more in her life than raising her kids. And grandkids. And her best friends' kids. And any child she could get her hands on, really. She'd happily take them all.

He laughed and nodded. "Perpetual babysitting" was a pretty accurate way to describe their duties these days, and, like Finley, Elwood didn't mind it at all. Back in the day, he had never imagined having such an expansive, loving family here in the Teekon Wilds, and he considered himself lucky to be surrounded by his children and grandchildren, as well as the rest of his family that wasn't technically related to him by blood.

"Did you ever think you would trade bear fighting for babysitting?" he asked with a chuckle. Those days were long gone, though he was able to look back on them with fondness.

The question Elwood posed made her laugh. She considered it for a moment though before responding. Had she ever seen herself playing the family role? Definitely not. She had always considered ending up like her mother—the baby factory—to be an unbearable notion. Fin had never wanted kids, had never wanted to settle down. She had never wanted to be anything like she was.

Had she really wanted to be a bear fighter forever though. “I don’t think I ever thought much one way or the other,” Fin admitted with a shrug. She had always just sort of lived without trying to guide herself one way or the other. There had been things she’d avoided being when she was younger, but obviously that hadn’t worked out seeing where she was now.

To some, Finley's answer might not have seemed like much of an answer at all. But to Elwood, it made perfect sense, and it summed her up in a sentence. Once upon a time, she had been a reckless, flighty young she-wolf who preferred to do things on her own terms. She still had those traits, but they had been recalibrated in order to allow her to become an excellent mother. In Elwood's mind, she hadn't had to give it much thought because she was meant to do both.

He hummed softly in response, a thoughtfully agreeable sound. He then gathered his feet beneath him and pushed himself up into a standing position, taking a moment to stretch his legs before glancing down at Finley. "Should we head back and check on everyone?" he asked. This had been a nice little respite from reality, but he honestly wouldn't mind going back to their children and grandchildren.

Elwood didn’t press the question further, so Fin let the conversation drop. She liked the quiet moments between them, especially now when they were so few and far between what with the horde of children that now inhabited their home. She snuggled a little closer to him as he asked if they ought to head back. ”Nah. I want a nap first,” she crooned as she laid her head down on Elwood’s paws and shut her eyes, her tail wagging faintly.

"Good idea," he replied. They needed to take advantage of any time they could get away from the hustle and bustle of the crowd that was their family. So when Finley placed her chin on his paws, he lowered himself back to the ground, lying on his stomach and resting his own chin on top of her head. He gave a soft sigh and closed his eyes, happy to steal a few more moments of peace and quiet with his love.