i want to give
@Wren,
@Akavir, and
@Tauris a chance to respond/confront germ <3 so this is open ended and he can be stopped! set for 10/31
with
@Aquillius having moved off to the tuktu and
@Cornelius in akashingo, germanicus asked
@Valiria to stay behind in the lowlands for a time.
it was her choice what she would do, but he did not wish to be followed, and communicated thusly that his name, sullied in the valley, could not be her weight to bear.
it was almost three days before he arrived back in the familiar lands, between kvarsheim and riverclan. the eagle rested and then began to hunt.
for hours he hunted, eating nothing, gathering as many furred and feathered bodies as he might before he called for gunnar and tauris, not knowing that the beloved old father had passed.
this was his parting gift, an offering for every counted cache in kvarsheim. they had tended him well and healed his son. germanicus had ruined his own time in the rising sun.
moongilt fell across his shoulders as he turned for what he believed would be the final time, not intending to return.
giggling and kicking my feet excitedly >:D hope u don't mind me tossing her in here first!
Wren had not returned to the creek after her — accident.
Instead, she nursed her own wounds. She ate and drank what little she could muster on her own; weakened, now, dangerously so. She spent her days in a limbo cast in the darkglow of shadow. She did not know how long it had been since she had seen her own home, and she did not know if she wished to return.
She missed her terribly; that woman, the one who had never been hers — the one whose name she found herself terrified to speak aloud, as if that too may be stolen from her.
She hobbled the valley, anywhere unclaimed, anywhere she could stay out of sight. Anywhere she would not be a nuisance, not any longer; anywhere she hoped the summer-blossom scent might linger, and yet she never found it. And she cried more often than not.
She was south, now, farther south than she had expected to be. Kvarsheim was not far. She would not dare come close to that border; she, too, knew not what had become of the old man who had hounded her just weeks before, and she would not find out of her own volition.
And what she certainly hadn't anticipated, as if her life could not have plundered downhill any further, was to hear that voice. That voice that she had grown to loathe, a voice that held the pain she now carried as her own.
She approaches on bony, unsteady limbs.
You.
Every last cache brims with bounty that will feed seven hungry children. Relief collapses, her sigh is somewhere between an astonished laugh and a cry and she breathes what remains of the hunter in the air. When he calls it is distant; he is leaving, and the note of his song tells her it is perhaps for good. She pulls to her feet though it is not to stop him; he needs to hear gratitude from the wolves of Kvarsheim. He needs to know about Gunnar.
She finds him by the tall cast of his shadow beneath the cavernous, wind-picked sky- though he is not alone.
There’s an intensity in the hardened gazes hidden not even in the wedge of shadows. With a bristle of her ridge Tauris stalks cautiously out to the ranger and the unknown woman, ears attentive and tail lifting to half-mast.
"Germanicus."
There is a call upon the wind—a voice that, unfortunately, is familiar to the shadowborn creek wolf, and while he feels a pull of ire within his chest, his features remain intact—unmoving.
Even more unfortunately, the howl was not far—and as he was on the trek home after observing the migration of a herd—and if he were brutally honest, seeking any scent or hint of where any of his children had gone—he saw the shadowed figure in the distance.
But he did not respond. Nor did he feel the need to. Silvertongue had spoke her piece and desire of him to remain out of anything that held her personal business… the scar upon his face painted by her tooth with the demand of it. And so he would turn to reroute himself—to skirt around the nonsense, a broken antler carried heavily by his weary jaws.
But it wasn’t meant to be—not truly. For in the distance, a very familiar silver wolf was stalking toward the ill-willed man, and Akavir found his gaze narrowing—his wayward supposed to-be Beta… considerind to elevate in rank, and then having messed off.
Impassive in his nature outwardly, the Mayfair adjusted his journey—lest the wolves of Kvarsheim have more bitter words for the she-wolf who defended her hearth and home.
he would not be alone for long.
the wind played along his shoulders as he turned his silent face toward wren. there was no fight remaining in germanicus; he had seen silvertongue's supposed end and knew it would only turn to ugly, grieving fire when it came out.
but he was still now, unmoving. tauris followed next, her voice for him. and further off, akavir slowly closed upon the small group.
"i have come to leave," he told kvarsheim's leader, noting she had come alone. in the back of his mind, perhaps he knew. and yet he wished such things to be said aloud.
for wren he had no words. she was ill-knit and seemed in poor health. "tauris. i am not a good man and my name will no longer blacken your borders. i hope this hunting suffices and will be of use to you and kvarsheim. i am sorry to depart so abruptly."
where was gunnar?
Another approaches. Someone unknown to her; she knows Germanicus by name. He, in turn, addresses her as Tauris — she is of Kvarsheim.
Wren would not make the same mistake twice.
Much too frail to even consider a lunge for the dark eagle, she retains her stillness, her rigidity. Her face contorts into a horrid, distilled rage. You took her from me, Germanicus.
Did this presumably innocent, bystanding woman know? Did she care?
A ragged breath cuts from her lungs, ice cold as air turns to steam before her. You ruined it. You ruined-- you destroyed her life, and now she's gone. You made her fucking leave! She left me, she--
her cries turn guttural, shards of glass lodged in her throat. why? Why did you tell me? Why couldn't you have just given her that, that, that peace? Why couldn't you let her love me?
She pleads, and yet she doesn't even know what for.
My-- my entire fuckin' life has fallen apart, Germanicus! I mean, for fuck's sake! Kvarsheim hates me, Riverclan hates me, I'm-- I'm terrified, to go back to my own home, because they're gonna hate me too. And you just had to go and take the one fucking person I had! The one good thing!
Her knees begin to tremble.
His departure from the valley was not enough; no, not nearly so.
But she could not; would not, no, not here. Her sole opportunity to truly enact revenge had been ripped right from her hands, her sole opportunity to bring the woman she loved a final sense of peace; gone, impossible to reach. It enrages her.
Her gaze turns toward the strange woman and her ears press to the back of her skull as if she were anticipating the whirl of cold wind; teeth sunken into flesh. A glance, then, once more for Germanicus. Darkness pools in her irises. There is so much, so much still to say, so much that she could not when her reputation and livelihood had already crumbled before her. And so, after a heavy silence, she whispers: I hope I never fucking see you again.
A storm is spoken. Accusations slash the air, and when the shewolf relents by fallen form she leaves agonizing silence in their current. Tauris staggers, paws tense against the unsanctioned ground, knowing she is an accidental witness to events far darker than understood. She listens to the woman, bent now in her pain, and scents Swiftcurrent somewhere behind her, but her eyes are for Germanicus. She watches his face as the moon sweeps across it, searching for denial.
He’d told her exactly who he was- she just didn’t want to believe him.
He would not come closer—there was nothing to be spoken to the dark man, nor to the Nornir whom was dedicated to Gunnar and likely his ideals of justice and what had been and should be served.
The cool wind beckoned winter, tangling itself upon his pelt and reminding him that harder times were coming their way. It seemed almost impossible, in that moment, to realize his distrust in the other packs of the valley when they had been so intent on building trust. Instead, for now, he remained a shadow behind them, champagne eyes intent only upon Wren, acting as a witness as she continued to fall further into the darkness—bringing destruction and heartache upon herself.
Waiting for the moment it would be right for him to be at her side… to try to help her pick up the pieces. For what else could he do in that moment, but allow her this moment in an attempt to heal… and then be there for her in the spiral of it all?
germanicus realized he hated wren. not for anything she had done, but for representing the opposite of the coldness that had settled like old frost over every surface of his heart.
her desperation. her adoration. her sorrow, all for silvertongue. and her face was burnt into his mind, his foreleg healing from the circlet of her teeth.
he wanted to be cruel, to tell wren the one she loved was dead.
he wanted to rail that like crowfeather, like ruenna, like fennec, she had chosen wrong. damn himself before her.
eyes emptied of all things shifted back to the young leader of kvarsheim. "goodbye, tauris." any other time he might have added his regards for gunnar and his blessed family, but what could the poison of his well-wishes add to their happy life?
if he was not stopped, germanicus would turn, heading back in the direction of the lowlands for what he hoped would be the final time.
Was that all he had to say? Was this all there was, this anticlimactic descent?
No justice. No final fight. Only the whirr of static as Wren's world drones on even when she wished so desperately for it not to.
She lets him leave.
Slowly, her head turns to the woman Tauris, and as much as she wanted to hurl her anger at this stranger of Kvarsheim simply for having been there and for carrying that name, she could not. Her eyes soften to something apologetic as the guilt begins to clobber her all over again, the same way it had the day Gunnar demanded her retribution.
If you're gonna hurt me for what happened with your packmate, do it now,
her voice hollows, muscles twitching beneath skin. It was not as if she had anything left to lose. go ahead.
No denials came. His words in their finality ward her off.
He had been so good to them. He was cherished- he was honorable-
But her paws anchor. It is the woman who ultimately stops her, the voice that pools burdened and strained by an aching pain that begs for more of it. This is Wren, she realizes, from what Gunnar in his final delirium had recounted, who now bears the cost for some dark thing Germanicus has done.
A younger version of herself would have followed the ranger into the drylands, demanding to know why. She lets him go. Who mattered was before her, this starving wolf of the valley who needed help.
Her eyes cut to Akavir who stands a ways off, in his face she sees none of the old warmth he might have once reserved for a wolf of her kind.
She turns back to Wren, chancing a low step, though keeping wary lest the move be unwelcomed by either, “I’ve got a cache nearby. Can I bring you something to eat?”
Germanicus left—Wren’s words and passion ignored by the man—leaving only a yawning relief that he would be departing the valley. Relief, and regret.
His tongue darted across his chops—Wren’s voice now simmering, steeped in her emotion as she turned to Tauris then. Her words rankled him—the obvious sentiment that if the
Nornir dare try to attack the Gamma, he would be upon her—instead, from the distance—he could hear the offering of a cache nearby.
Perhaps, an opportunity to speak.
His presence was intrusive before, but now he lingered like a shadow in wait. With another wary glance to both women, Akavir began to back away from them—Tauris he only believed to be fair in her presentation to others, and Wren… Wren was dealing with a lot.
Instead, he would allow them to discuss—not yet willing to give his opinion or time to the stone circle wolves after everything that had transpired.
Instead… he would trail casually after
@Germanicus—never engaging. Simply taking a small amount of pleasure at watching the man finally walk away from the destruction and pain he had wrought upon the valley wolves.