Wolf RPG - gade zetwal yo

@Maleah <3

her days since the death of her mothers had been marked by her children. in another month they would be ready for the corsair beach, where she had been taken to rendezvous in her youth. the idea of their small steps planted there over the years-old marks of her own feet — it pleased her down to the blood that belonged in all to sapphique.
but some days were easier than others, and today was not one of them.
spine pressed to a tall blackpine, mireille embraced herself and sobbed into the teeth of a storm which bobbed the branches above her and sent rain scudding sideways.

!!!!

She hadn't been far when she heard it.
Rain-slicked and flecked with mud, the greatpine had become the marble's chosen respite. Drowning beneath the coverage of sap-oozing trees as large fallen droplets smack the back of her skull and send shudders into her spine, she could have sworn she'd heard a voice. And she had, as she discovered; spindly figure hugging the side of a trunk. Mireille!
But her joy was shortlived. Mireille, a bundle of sharp shoulders and crimson fur, weeping alone; her chest tightened.
Hey, Maleah instinctively lowers herself, ears pressed down flat, slinking movements as though not to alarm. are you okay? and that was a dumb question, and she knew it, but what else was she to say?

mireille was not ashamed of her grief, only frustrated with herself that it seemed she could not grow beyond it. chacal's first children had known their grandmothers, but the four babes born to the obsidian never would, and nor would her future little ones.
maleah was a storm-shadow; she arrived with concern and mireille raised tearstained eyes with a small touch of affection upon her mouth.
"i be trying to commune wid dem today," she admitted in a sniffle and a self-deprecating laugh. "i wanted sobo to meet my children."

Sobo.
Maleah knew little about spirits, where they went; but what she did know was death, in all its macabre beauty. A fascination with it since she was but a child with soft eyes and downy fur, examining the marrow of bones and where cartilage once held joints.
And she knew what it did to those who knew it, who witnessed it, who lived in its shadow. She saw it in little Sobeille just recently, and the thought of it gave a tar-black feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She comes to settle beside the obsidian in a huddle beneath the pine branches. Her tail wraps neatly around the outside of her thigh as a quiet heave comes from deep in her lungs. I don't know if this would be any comfort to you, puffy evergreen eyes are found and held with the warmth of Maleah's own. but I like to think that when we die, our energy is still floating around. Everywhere we look, there's pieces of them.
She could have spewed the dogma of they're watching over you and they're never really gone; could have exited the conversation with nothing but a lazy shrug, but no one deserved that. Mireille didn't deserve that.
There was no bullshitting death.
Do you see him in your children?

"i named sobeille for him," mireille murmured. maleah's words reminded her of the doctrines and beliefs bestowed by erzulie. perhaps she had only never known them until this time, this time of triplicate loss and lump-in-throat eye watering.
to know she had to go on when there were others who never would. to know three new graves in sapphique and only the vibrant memories of that trio to take to her own grave one day.
"i t'ink dey be aroun', too. i only wish i could speak a last time wid dem. tell dem de little ones' names." mouth tremulous; she turned sharply away as tears struck her freckled red cheeks once more.

Sobeille took her uncle's name, and Maleah thought that perhaps one day the little girl would take pride in it. Even if it were for no reason other than the twinkle of Mireille's eyes when she spoke of him; the fondness, the affection.
You still can, and some found solace within that, some did not; but Maleah offers it anyway with a grasp of a slender paw to Mireille's own, if she were to accept it. you can talk to them. Somewhere, I think they're listening. Souls, and stuff, our consciousness; it doesn't just disappear, even if our bodies do.
And there were the bodies, too, to visit; what remained of physical forms, encapsulated in dirt or charred to ash, whatever one wished to do with them. But to some, they were just that — just bodies, skeletons, rotten down to the same core that belonged to everyone else. They were not loved ones anymore.
Maleah herself had grown cynical — she would not suggest it.
Rain continues to spatter the soil around them, an oilslick dew that drenches the two bodies. Maleah tips her muzzle upward and the spikes of pine release a droplet that runs between her eyes. Do you believe in a god, Mireille?

maleah assured; maleah spoke and mireille found herself holding to each word, to the notion that sobeille could carry forward in this way. she twined her grasp with that of the other and took slow breaths of salt air, willing the tears to only fall in quiet, for she remained proud even in this.
for a long moment the obsidian did not speak, and then when she discovered her voice once more, it came in a slow gentle sound; "not in de way ot'ers might believe," mireille answered, watching the droplet trace its way like a jewel upon the satined forehead. "in spirits. in listenin' elements. but de gods, ah. de sea be my god, maleah."
it took. it gave. bounty upon the shores, a young one swept out to currents in the next moment.
"she be harsh an' loving. fierce an' soft." the red chin tilted. "perhaps she be to what all women should aspire."
meeting the eyes of maleah in that same vying, illustrative expression.

The sea as god.
Mireille's silence is followed by a brief one of the healer's own. She be harsh an' loving, fierce an' soft; and maybe that is what drew Maleah to these waves. The beautiful faces that kneel before it, the souls it clutches in its grasp. The mighty roar, the calm trill.
It gives life. It takes it back.
She's a beautiful thing, something inside of Maleah burns and melts, something that wished she could offer more to this young woman. The grasp eases and gingerly tightens again. she's been here long before us, and will be here long after we're gone. I get it.
She wishes she could have met the mothers of Sapphique; the brother, too, all now only known by beetles and vines and spoken word. She hopes that wherever they are, they are smiling. What's your favorite memory of them? Any of them. Name one.

moments of silence passed.
"last spring," mireille began, "sobo an' i spoke of spirit t'ings. he was," a great, deep exhale, "someone who believed in dat which i did not understand. maman erzulie an' sobo had dis in common."
a faraway look now glimmered in her eyes; she looked down at maleah's paw. "but dat day, i had never seen him like dat. comin' into himself." the boy, shedding youth to become a man without a father, as they all were.
the droplet was gone now, nestled somewhere in the darknight fur. mireille found a smile. "it be good to talk about dem, maleah. t'ank you."

A spiritualist. She listens, the vivid picture of the unknown Sobo clarifying within her mind. Maybe he could've taught me a thing or two, she returns the gentle grin, crystalline. he sounds like a good guy.
It burned to watch the distance fill the jade green gaze, the soft white vulnerability of reminiscing and wishing for times that were no longer. He was lucky to have you, Mireille. I'm sure he knows you miss him.
A soft sigh before her head dips to touch her temple to the warm cinnamon shoulder. I'm happy to hear about them, she muses quietly. I'm glad I can be here.

it hurt so very much to hear that mireille only nodded, quickly, fiercely. he had been wonderful, he had been all a brother of these shores could be. and now he was gone, and he had never seen her children — !
"i be so tired of cryin', you know," mireille said in hushed voice, tears trickling once more. "it be good to only talk, dis time. to remember." and for this, gratitude in the depths of her malachite eyes.

It's okay to cry, Maleah assures softly, a touch of honey to her voice. but it's also okay not to. One day you won't cry as much-- or, um, as often, and it won't be because you don't miss them. The way you miss them and remember them will just be different.
Did Maleah herself miss anyone? Did any of them miss her?
Your pain will transform, y'know? It'll get easier. It'll never stop hurting, but the hurt will change. Think of it as, like, if it went from a really really sharp pain to a dull constant. Some days will be better than others, and it'll still come back really sharp sometimes, but it'll become manageable. You'll learn to cope with it.
She reaches to awkwardly swipe the tears from Mireille's reddened cheeks with the tip of a paw. It's good that you're talking about them too. It's a good start.

maleah was right, of course. every word was crafted for mireille to embrace, to understand. maybe, one day, to internalize. but for now she was only thinking of erzulie and rosalyn, how they would have wept alone! or perhaps only with their daughters and sisters and lovers.
that last brought thoughts of val. was he her lover? was she allowed to think of him in that way? who could stop her, mireille mused, but herself?
and so the question became: should she?
maleah's touch to her face brought mireille back to the present and the pain; unthinkingly, she reached up to cover the paw with her own, and for a moment they existed only in this way, and the backdrop of feminine beauty and its desires, always the backdrop of the obsidian's life, rose full and blossomed inside her.
maleah cared; she cared as if she had always been among them, and the redhead's throat was dry with it, the tears at last slowing their siege.

The verbal exchange lulls and in its place comes the roar of the storm and — warmth. Body heat, touch, and while it had existed between them in the moments prior, Maleah feels a stir of something foreign she cannot quite put a name to. It is tender. She feels acutely the worn pads against the tendons in her paw.
What was this?
The healer says nothing else for a while; Mireille's pain has at last thawed, at last released it's grip if only for this moment, and Maleah decides to sit in this lapse with her, to ride it out with her as if it too were her own.
She felt as if in some way it was. Was that not her job, her calling? To carry the weight and the pain of others? This was her job, as it had always been.
But there was true care in this, true sorrow, true mourning as a woman of Sapphique. And, just as well, some part of Maleah, some deeply buried part of her, reaches out in earnest for Mireille, and she allows it.