Even though Teya had seemed skeptical about Brecheliant relocating anywhere else, Dwin did not let the thought go that easily. They had recently acquired two new recruits, which was good, because they had more capable people to help run the family business. But this also meant a larger strain on the resources. For now everyone had enough, but the young hunter was not convinced that this was going to stay this way forever.
Therefore she took her duty of scouting nearby lands very seriously. She left home, whenever that was possible, and preferably before any of her younger siblings noticed her leaving. The deal with Frolic was still on and active, but despite the girl's determination to achieve greatness in the trade, Dwin did not think that she would be a useful company, when it came to assessing the situation critically and listing the strong and weak points of any particular area.
On her own she had followed the river from the lake, where salmon flourished, all the way up to a small forest, that held traces of once being grand and impressive, but lied in ruins now, hidden by numerous birch and aspen trees. Dwin stopped right at the edge of the forest to take a good look at it first and then decide, where to try and find a proper entrance to it. Fighting and pushing her way through the thick undergrowth felt like a waste of time.
Heph let herself wander further afield than she had since Samani's death, at least further from the coast. It felt dangerously like being on her own again, and yet the desire to run away, to flee it all was not even a whisper in her heartbeat. She had feared that Samani's death would break Moontide apart, fracture it down to the core, and they did mourn, but none had cast each other aside and she did not think that they would. There was a home for her to return to and that was no small thing. So she relished the feeling of the earth moving faster beneath her paws than her eyes could take it all in and let herself breath deep the crisp autumnal air with no fear for the cold.
A familiar scent a familiar face and her tail wagged, she called out. "Dwin?!" Her steps hastened from an easy long walk that could carry her to new words to a trot and a hastened step as she approached, tail wagging a smile on her face in anticipation of seeing a familiar face once more.
Dwin turned to see, who had called her name, and met a grayscale she-wolf coming her way. She looked familiar, so familiar that remembering her name should not have been a problem, but... for the second time in her life, she felt like a total idiot, who did not know, what to do next. Continue to pretend and find out the name in a nonchalant and careful manner, or state first-hand, that the other one had a fine chance of introducing their wonderful person again.
"Oh, hey!" she replied, taking some steps towards the she-wolf and greeted her in a friendly-neutral manner. She smiled for a bit, trying to find the least embarrassing way of stating the obvious and then sighed and just let her mind come up with a crazy story. "I recall meeting you and I recall us talking a great deal more than it should have been polite from a kid my age then, but your name has simply evaporated from my memory," she told her. "So, unless it is a quirk of my mind - a very likely explanation - I will take that you are of the witching sort. Probably revealed some trade secrets to me and wiped my brain folds clean, when I was not looking," she suggested grinning.
Heph laughed, stopping short and offering a jaunty smile. "Well now I'd hate to disappoint, since I'd very much like to have some supernatural powers of my own, but I'm afraid I haven't stolen any of you memories myself. My name's Heph by the way. If there were any trade secrets in our last talk I'd have forgotten them too." Her tail wagged and she observed the other wolf, she had been young but come into most of her full size when Heph had last seen her, but the months had turned her into more of an adult.
Her head tilted, she had thought that the wolf had spoken of a vast lake where she was from and yet Heph knew of no such place in the Heartwood. "What brings you this way?" Her voice was friendly and open, but tinted with curiosity.
"Heph... Heph, yeah, I do know this is not the first time I hear your name," Dwin said, nodding her head. Suddenly her face lit up, as an idea entered her mind. "What if..." her expression fell, because just as fast as that idea had appeared, it left her with an unfinished sentence and out of reach. Laughing madly somewhere in a dark corner of her mind. Curse you! She swore, reached out with her claw and after some rummaging around brought the idea kicking and screaming out in the light of her mind again.
"I do not remember much beyond that, but just think, what an interesting story it would be about a lass, who everyone met, but who no one remembered afterwards. She knew she existed, because of she was capable of thinking. But in the eyes of the others she stopped existing the moment they closed their eyes," it was such an interesting idea, with such a great story-potential, but she knew that she did not have the skill to make it grow and flourish.
"Well, I am just scouting the area, figuring out, whether there is anything worth hunting out there," she said. "Winter's coming and such. What about you? Do you have a place to call home for the harsh season?"
The ghost of a story tugged at something in her chest. "A good story yes, but not one with a happy ending." She thought about wandering, about the many flitting changing faces and yet none that lingered long in either memory. Hardly existing at all. Some wolves, she thought could stand it, could set their course to the ever changing tide and buoy ont he waves never hoping to come to shore. If one knew the waves well enough, if one came to feel that the earth responded in kind to each footstep there was peace there. But there was joy and sorrow too in the crashing upon the earth. "It'd be sad, half of existing is being known after all." Even if fleetingly. When she wandered event hen she knew there were those who remembered her and those whom she could seek out.
At the question a gentle smile on her lips. "Yes I settled with a pack to the north of here along the coast, Moontide." But when she heard Dwin was looking at the Heartwood she thought back to Dreven and Atka. It seemed like lifetimes ago and yet it was not so long past. "But this is a good place, I thought about staying here once with a pair of wolves who made it their home. There's fair hunting and large game." She offered, if only because she remembered all the pathways she trod and she remembered these as well.
"Oh, but that is just the premise. A lot could happen and who is to tell that person that no one can remember cannot have a happy ending. Say - she met another one like her? Or they became spies or something like that? Because the catch is that, while everyone forget her, she has good memory of them," Dwin sighed. Another idea that would never be developed further and told to the end.
"Moontide? There are quite a lot of packs with "moon" in their names. Moonglow - that's, where my sister Dee lives. Moonspear - a friend of my other sister lived there. Moontide - are they of the same family or this is simply a new trend out there?" she asked curiously. What would Brecheliant be called if it was not Brecheliant? Mooncheliant? Moondera? As in Moon and caldera fused together. Moonhawk caldera? Actually Moonhawks sounded kind of cool.
"Does not seem to be inhabited by anyone at the moment," she remarked, having not caught any scent of permanent residents. "So - your pack out there - what is it like? Are people decent? Not a crazy cult?"
"Hmm it seems as if she met another like her neither would ever remember meeting the other, so it would almost be like it never happened." A rather tragic friendship she thought, if it could even be counted that way at all. But already the details slipped away from her. After all who would trust the word of a strange? Even if she became a spy.
She laughed at the description of the various packs. Admitteldy when she had joined Moontide she had not known what to expect but all three of those pack shad grown strong. "Most are family, Moonglow is led by Moonwoman and Sunman, Kukutux and Aiolos. Moonwoman's daughter Sialuk formed Moonspear. Moonwoman's other daughter and her husband Rodyn formed Moontide. A new pack Moonsong is being formed by Ariadne another daughter. But like me there are a few who live among the packs and don't share blood." The relations were a bit of a tangle but she had been around Rodyn and Samani long enought o catch most of the relations.
Chittering a bit her tail wagged, but she replied earnestly enough, warm. "I'm not sure I'd admit if we were a cult, but no. They're good, we welcome all sorts of wolves and trade with other packs and I think we look out for one another. I don't think I've met Dee, but she's in Moonglow?" She inquired, after all it had been some time since she had visited Moonglow instead of them visiting her.
"Yeah, she is in Moonglow. Sorry to say that, but from what she has told me... they seem peculiar," Dwin thought that telling outright that they were weird would be rude. After all Heph was okay and she recalled her being pretty much the same person earlier too. However, if at any point she began to try to persuade Dwin leaving her home and joining the new group, she would refuse.
"She has quite a lot of ambitious daughters - that Moonwoman. I don't think that any of ours are the same way," she expressed her respect. Because Brecheliant... did not work like that. There could always be just one magical forest. A spinoff would simply not work, because... it would not be the same. Dwin could not quite put her paw on, what it was that made it that way.
"Well, they do have some odd marriage rules, however. There is a fellow there that wants to marry my sister, but instead of just asking her and getting a - yes! - he has to gain the favour of our parents and wants to pay them off with gifts?" she referred to the brideprice. "It is meant well, of course, but my sister is not an item of trade. She is a person," she had not told this concern to Dee, because she would probably not see that way.
Heph laughed, unphased. She had, and still did, think Moonglow's ways strange in some ways, but she had come to honor at least some of them as a part of her new home. Ambition was not something that she could relate to, but Moonwoman did seem to have daughters who wished to forge their own path alongside Moonglow, who wished to found their own villages. Perhaps it was not ambition at all, simply a growing, not trying to recreate, but as natural as a tree growing a new limb.
She hummed lightly, she could understand why it would be seen that way, but Rodyn's offer to set her own bridge price and the possibility that she would Phox to undertake whatever challenges he might face to acquire the price Rodyn determined had changed her perspective on it somewhat. "It it quite different. But I think it is less about seeing your sister as an item for trade, since the bride price would have been set after she had accepted him. He offers those things not in exchange for the bride, but to show that he appreciates her worth, and that he brings to the pairing the skills he will need. Either as a hunter or a wanderer or a fighter or anything else." A slight titter of laughter rose up in her voice. "Perhaps it would be more fair if there was also a groom price." She wondered who would set Phox's if that was the case? Towhee perhaps. She wondered what the wolf would ask of her.
"I am not sure that a wandering husband would be an asset to any bride," Dwin remarked on Heph's list of trades the grooms-to-be offered to their chosen girls. "It does not sound that bad then, but... well... isn't it kind of showing off as well? Say - there is a guy, how puts up monstrous effort only up until the wedding and after that - turns out that he is a slug," that could well happen. She trusted Dee's good judgement, but there was always a risk. What if that Kivaluk guy was also acting upon his mother's strict orders to pull his bearings together and act good, until he could be married off suitably and become the wife's problem to deal with?
"Besides - shouldn't it be the other way round? Shouldn't one impress with gifts and prices and only then get an approval?" she asked. "And, what if... he brings all the great things, but none of them are, what the bride and her family wants?" In short - the relationships were already hard to navigate and having marriage traditions complicated the matters unnecessarily.
Heph snickered, she supposed it was possible that wolf could hide their face or the color of their coat, but she thought it a strange way of going about finding a life partner. "Well I suppose that's possible, but it's also possible without the bride price too, and at least the wife would have whatever he brought her to begin with." She did laugh at that, a faux conspiratorial gleam in her eye.
She thought on the questions humming and considering. After all they were sensible and she was not raised within the traditions so she both felt comfortable questioning them but also did not have all the answers. "Hmmm perhaps, although it might be a bit odd if a wolf tried to court another without knowing if they'd like it or not." At the mention of disliking the gifts she was not sure at all. "I don't know, since the family or the bride often set the price themselves I guess I didn't think of that." While a wolf might set a price as something that they did not want - only wanted the groom to prove that he was capable of providing it seemed a rather underhanded way of going about it and rather unlikely to her. But then again anything was possible.
"Yeah, but most edible things tend to expire and as much fun as fancy bones and gems and other trinkets are, they won't feed you, when you grow hungry," Dwin mused, trying to imagine herself in Dee's place (that would never happen, but she enjoyed opportunities for a mental exercise). What would she ask for the man to do for her? What would she want to have in the partner, should she ever be in the position to choose? Hunting prowess? Demonstrations of strenght and wit? Storytelling? These were all things she could do herself, which meant that she did not know. The closest she got was that he had to surprise her.
"What would you ask the man, who wanted to court you, do?" she asked Heph, who had proven to be a very engaging conversation partner with interesting views and angles of life. "Or are you already courted and married off and settled?" she added. "In that case - what did the guy do to impress you?"
Heph shrugged agreeably, nodding along. "Mmm the only place to find certainty and eternity is in the next life." The words, dark as they were, were spoken brightly and honestly. After all neither things or wolves lasted forever, some lasted longer than others but the future remained a mystery.
At the question of her own bride price she laughed, ears flickering. It was not an unexpected turn and yet she found herself flustered. "Oh. Well. I have a. Sort of? There's one that I'm hoping will...." She gestured vaguely with her paw and looked to the side. After all it was a mouthful to say that there was a wolf she had known for only a small while and yet from all she had heard of him and the little she knew of him she had high hopes.
Trying to focus on the more prescient part of the question she added. "My...friend Rodyn will set his bride price. But I think if it was up to me I'd want something that he would have to travel to find, to prove that he would not mind my own ranging." She did not need furs or bones to prove that he was a hunter, she was a strong hunter in her own right. And she did not need someone to prove their silver tongue or fighting prowess.
"Or in death," Dwin managed to interject, finding it odd that one would have to wait for the next life to truly know everything, when it might as well be that you were the same clueless idiot on the second go as you had been oin the first. "Death is the only certain thing - mom says. And you kind of become eternal, when your body dies. It disintegrates and continues to live as something else. There is some debate of, where the soul goes, of course," she mused.
Heph did not sound very convinced about that Rodyn-wolf. Dwin would have expected at least a half of excitement Dee had felt for the prospect of marriage and building a family, but she got a completely different vibe from this lass. It was as if... as if... the guy wanted to get married more than she did. That she went along with it just because... heh... Why were relationships so difficult? Why were social constructs so complex? They just messed with people's lives.
"Yeah, I don't think you will get to go out and travel much around, once you get married. I speak from experience - he will not want to travel around, he will let you, but he will be very obviously unhappy about it and in the end you will give up on that to make him happy. Saw that happen to a... friend of mine," she told her mom's story. "Is this - something you really, really want or you do it because everyone your age does it or you think they have to do it?" she asked. "I just... I may have to face the same decision one day myself. Therefore it is good to know different perspectives."
Dwin had mentioned a worry that had followed Heph throughout her path of seeking someone out. That she would have to change. If she had met the wolf earlier, when she had first come to the wilds, she would have thought nothing of accepting the story resolutely and completely. For it matched with her own experiences. But since founding Moontide she had forged new friendships and bonds and was not sure, though her words were warm with empathy her own thoughts and feelings remained. "I'm sorry about your friend." But the other wolf sought understanding and seemed willing to listen making Heph more willing to speak.
Offering a bit about herself she spoke. "Before settling into Moontide I never really thought that I could have any lasting or deep friendships while also being a wanderer. But I did, and without giving up wandering where I please, even if they gave me a reason to come back." After all joining Moontide she did wander less, but it was difficult to think of it that way, she still wandered when she wanted to, she simply felt the desire more strongly to remain and more often. It was two competing wants not conflicting. She had thought it was impossible to be part of a pack, tied to it, and also live a life carousing around the wilds but it had been made possible. Why should having a mate be any different?
"I want a partner in life and in love, maybe because of ideas instilled in me by others but that doesn't make them less my desires, and that doesn't mean I'm not going to be picky. If he seems like he'll only resent me for being myself then I won't accept him as a partner." Her voice was stark, perhaps it might have seemed cold. But she remembered Rodyn's words when she had expressed worry that compared to the Redhawks her family would seem small. He had said firmly that she had more than enough to bring to any partnership if her potential husband did not value her then he could seek someone out he would treasure and would treasure him.
"Yeah, but isn't it in partnership that you have to give up a little of yourself to make it work?" Dwin asked, while not disagreeing with Heph. She was fiercely independent and valued that very much. It would really have to be someone special for her to give it all up. Or at least part of it. "All this concept about two halves of the same apple or something like that. It is about making something greater together. Two independent apples cannot make a single apple," she finished the sentence, the intonation going up as if she was not sure herself and looked for Heph to find the right way of, what she had wanted to express.
"Well, I feel sorry for my friend too, but then it seems that she is accepting the life as it is and does not complain," she added. "And it does seem that she has exchanged her wanderlust for something just as valuable and beautiful. I mean... I have never asked, but I have a strong feeling that in the end we choose our adventures. She gave up the quantity for a long-term quality one," while Dwin would never 100% agree with her mom's choices in life, she was well-aware that without them she would not be standing here talking to other people.
Heph considered, in part the metaphor made sense but in others it slipped away from her. Perhaps love was not kind to metaphors it simply was, but she did feel as if there was something in this analogy of making greater. "Hmmm I suppose I never thought of it that way. Many rivers all flow into the sea, but the ocean is all but endless - what does the river give up?" After all the river continued to flow into the sea, once it met the sea it was no longer a river but none of the water was lost, and as the tides moved they followed the flow of the river out. The river lost neither water nor direction nor force. It gained in all.
Independence and cooperation or partnership seemed odd things to juxtapose for the grey black wolf. After all if two wolves worked together but independently did not wish to it was not cooperation but coercion. If two wolves worked together and independently wished the same then it was not a loss of independence. "Working cooperatively does not mean losing independent ability. There's only a whole if there are parts after all." Her own voice canted up, not in question but in lightness. After all she was hardly the most learned wolf of the mind, unsure in her words.
At the mention of the other wolf she tilted her head giving a nod. "I'm glad. Perhaps that will be my choice, after all I want kids one day and I'll certainly have to be more stationary for that." A light chuckle dusted her words. But perhaps not. Towhee and Phox both seemed to have children and Towhee had mentioned Phox had been there for most all of them - and yet he still seemed a traveller. If her own kids wished to see her and also to make their own way in the world away from Moontide she thought that she would be able to wander to see them, use her skills to continue to nurture the bonds of family.
"A good point. I think that the river ends, when it becomes the sea and then the ocean," she said. "But people are not waterways, so I do not think that this metaphor applies to us," she pointed out. "Though one could discuss the fates of individuals, when they come together to create something big. How they lose their individual selves in the name of the greater good. That the good is more important than the individual. I could not live with that," she said.
"Have you always known you wanted kids someday or is it something that you grew aware of over time?" Dwin asked, wondering if having a change of heart in the matter was something that usually happened. Hoping to hear that Heph - like her - had been solidly against the idea before and that change of heart had come later. Because - time and time again she had wondered, whether her choice to remain unmarried and childless was simply a phase, or whether there would come a day, when something would click in her brain and she would be like - oh, I want a baby!
Heph hummed along easily, perhaps they would simply have to agree to disagree. The river was not the ocean but the substance was still there - the names changed but the substance of the wolf remained. "In large groups it is...easier for that to be the case." She offered, although this did not mean that in pairs of wolves it would be the same way, and in small packs she thought the good of the many was often the good of the individual. "But in partnerships the good of the great seems like it would be the good of the individual and likewise so more important wouldn't mean conflicting."
She blinked a bit, trying to recall. Like her elder sister Heph had gone through a period where she could not imagine having kids. But she had always imagined her future with them, not in the dutiful yet withdrawn and mournful way she imagined sticking with her ill-fitting natal pack, but something she looked forward to. When she had left she had left both the duty and the genuine desires behind. Mulling it over her voice drew over her own words carefully, trying to make them fit to her thoughts. "I always enjoyed spending time with kids, and wanted them. But I lived a wandering life for awhile and couldn't imagine settling down so I thought it wouldn't happen for me, but now I can imagine staying in one play for at least as long as they would need to den. What about you? Do you want a horde of little teeth biting you day and night?"
Huh, interesting. Maybe circumstances in life mattered as well. It seemed that Heph had toyed with the idea, but the place had not been there, nor - Dwin guessed - a proper person to have them with. Her mom's marriage to dad had always seemed as a fact of life. She knew each had had a life of their own before that as well, but she had never truly dwelled on, what their ideas about the future had been then. Had Maia wanted to ever have kids, before she had met Eljay? She decided to ask her, when they would have time to sit down for a proper conversation next.
"Oh, I had that honor this year. In some places my fur hasn't still fully regrown," she turned to show a patch on her tail, where the fur was noticably thinner. "And I can assure you that imagined kids are way more obedient, nice and law-abiding than the actual little tyrants," she told, now wondering, if Heph had had any actual experience with kids long-term. 24/7 like. "I have heard that giving birth is no fun either, so...." she grinned. "Well, I have not recovered mentally from this summer's ordeal, so I am quite happy to have an extended break from kids in general," she concluded.
"What about you? Work on thickening that pelt of yours already?" she smiled.
A good natured laugh as she did glance over Dwin's fur and raised her eyebrows. She supposed she might have avoided that with Rodyn's kids being at Moonspear for their very early days although she did not remember Carlisle and Brockeleigh being like that. Her shoulders and head shook in agreement, imagined kids often were different than the reality. But all wolves were entitled to at least themselves and dependency did not equate to a loss of agency as an agent. But she could not help a slight distance to her voice when she agreed about the difficulty of birth. "No. No, it's dangerous. But so is life I suppose." A sigh. She wondered if Samani had known...if she would have chosen differently? But it was such an impossible and unfair question she dismissed it as she thought it. Heph knew that she would put herself at risk birthing or carrying pups but she also put herself at risk every time she left the safety of Moontide's borders and called on the fringes of other packs or threw herself clear of the antlers of stags.
Light nervous laughter turned the conversation to easier waters. "Maybe, if this Phox is as wonderful as he seems and likes me as well, but it might take time for us to decide." After all it took at least two wolves and she did not know if he desired more kids let alone with her.
"Well, dealing with little kids until they have the brain capacity to be normal and reasonable adults, is a different kind of dangerous and challenging," Dwin agreed. "Super-messy and chaotic. No plotline. Nothing. No wonder the legendary story-tellers of the past choose to dwell on linear story-lines and leave the ensuing chaos after the magical "happily-ever-after"," she laughed. Now that the children had grown up and no longer needed her, she found that she was able to look at the experience as a whole and all the nasty details had begun to blur and fade. Maybe it was the nature's way of making sure that you procreated even after not so pleasant experiences.
"Didn't you say earlier that Rodyn wanted to marry you?" Dwin arched her eyebrows, because this was exactly, what she had concluded from Heph's earlier mention of the man setting her own bride price. "Or bigamy is a thing in Moon-packs?" she had heard that such thing existed. Mostly men having many wives. But it happening the other way round? Huh... oddly enough, the sworn-to-never-ever-ever-marry gal found this idea very interesting. Even worth experimenting with.
"oh. oh. oh no!" She laughed at the miscommunication, it must have seemed as if Rodyn would set a bride price for himself to pay and though she was unsure if this would have been a practice in another situation it was not what she had intended to speak. There was love there certainly, they stood by one another to help keep Moontide strong, he had taken the role of her family in the Wilds - and when she had left hers behind and had none other. "Rodyn is my friend, we're close as siblings, he is also the leader of Moontide. And because I have no family here in the wilds he offered to set the bride price as this is usually done by the pride's family."
She clarified the second question. "Polygamy and bigamy are both a thing in the moonpacks, Kukutux had a wife and a husband, Sialuk her daughter too, Chakliux has two or three wives I think. But I'm more of a one wolf kinda gal, and Rodyn his wife passed but he was too." She added, a hint of sadness though she added quickly thereafter. "Phox is...a wolf that Moonwoman said I might pair well with, he came to Moontide to help after our leader's passing and now he's off travelling I think." She was not sure where he was, or if he intended to return to Moontide. Really if she wanted to pursue something and things quieted down in Moontide she was happy to go find him, but all in time.
"So, is that Phox guy a person you think you will mesh well with?" Dwin asked, pouncing at the indication that someone else had told Heph that this would be good thing for her. Of course, she had no doubt that this weathered and experienced nomad had enough common sense to make her own decision. But this did not mean that adults would not do weird or stupid things and going into marriage with someone that was good on paper could be one of them. Older folk called it being pragmatic.
"And does he know that the Moonwoman thinks you should get together?" if he did not, boy, what a great story that would be! She could see the comedic arch play before her eyes with an ending scene of the poor bachelor running for his life with hundreds of potential wives going after him. First one to catch him - got him. "Isn't it a bit risky to settle down with someone just because someone else thinks that this should be the correct way to do it," she mused. "I could not do it. But I see the rationality behind this choice. I mean, that whirlwind romance of - they set eyes on each other and they just knew - does not happen in real life, does it? You have to settle for a very real person."