Wolf RPG

Emori isn’t going to get by on a little food, water, and sleep. She needs refuge, she needs time to heal, medicines; she needs her people.

She sighs heavily and she knows it is punishment to occupy her mind with these things. It doesn’t stop her. It’s what she deserves, she supposes, when no one else is around to enact justice and she isn’t able to do it herself.

Coward.

The wolf cringes as it echoes through her mind, taking up space she did not have room for. Emori is unable to shake free; to occupy her mind with something trivial seems useless for a debt unpaid by a lopar, deserter. Bile splashes the back of her throat and she struggles through a gag, stumbling over the embankment and halfway into the water. She laps quickly to wash the taste back but it promises a return and she knows she can’t fight it.

When her belly feels swollen from water, she shakily stands to all four limbs and backs out of the muddy water. She doesn’t shake her coat out while there’s a feeling in the pit of her stomach, a threat; her own body rebels against her.

"Odon, lopar," she whispers and the cycle threatens to start all over again.

She broke across the uneven terrain of the foothills like a vermin bent on hiding its piece of cheese. But instead of a piece of cheese, Echelon had nothing to carry. She scouted ahead blindly, crisscrossing over terrain that she recognized from before. Working her way after Tonravik, or to her, she hadn't decided if she was truly coming or going. Forgotten was the glacier behind her now and the disappointment that had budded there. It hadn't been worth holding onto and now the dark pair had many things to consider before them.

As such, they had parted, but their partings were brief. This time around, Tonravik had decided that she would not leave Echelon behind. And this time, Echelon did not stray as far away from her aokkatti as before. She could not and would not, whether it was the antagonizing notion at the back of her mind reminding her of their original separation or a misunderstood fear was unknown.

Skirting low beneath the heavy boughs of an evergreen left askew, she spied someone. A wolf as pitch as her aokkatti, but it was not Tonravik. For a moment, Echelon eyed the path ahead with interest, wondering if she could sneak past without raising alarm. But the unsteadiness of the other intrigued her and she observed from her partial hiding spot, wondering what the backtracking female would do next.

“Emori kom wingedakru odon,” she says, the words as acidic as before. She doesn’t fight it this time as it licks the back of her throat. Grey eyes closes and she takes several deep breaths, wondering how many of these plaguing thoughts she can take before it’s too much. Which thought would be the one to do her in?

It lingers heavily, weighing down her shoulders. Once proud, able to hold her chin up, now slumps, defeated, waiting for the next move. Emori feels her spirit missing, a wise presence through the generations, and it managed to have picked her and she had not been able to live up the expectations, with death on her paws she wasn’t able to count.

Nearly a minute passes before Emori notices the scent of another; it happens quickly and she turns, scanning her immediate area.

“Chon yu bilaik?” she calls out in her native tongue instead and takes a few steps back.

She listened in as a string of foreign words hit the open air around her. If a bird could have observed her, there may have been a momentary flash of seriously? written about her face. To Echelon, the world was not full of languages. There was the tongue of Tartok and then there was some fickle common tongue. Whatever this creature spoke she equated to gibberish. And as it were, she continued to watch and wonder — perhaps this one was ill. Mentally, physically, it did not matter. But she was intriguing if for nothing more than to toy with, as a byproduct of the failures Echelon had dealt with in recent history.

So when she was spotted at least, she sprang out from the cover of her evergreen, inquisitive and pointed in her actions. "You don't know how to talk right?" she queried the female, though not in any distinguishable common tongue. She spoke in Inupiaq purposefully, following her words with a tilt of her head. Forced curiosity when beneath it, it was probably safe to say that Echelon mocked her. "Did the cold eat your tongue?" she went on to ask, gesturing with her muzzle towards the other as though that would get it across. No, no, that wouldn't do — she stuck out her tongue and furrowed her brow.

That surely was mockery, but she gracefully tacked on a look of you know what I mean? to it.

She does not wait long before another wolf appears and it is not what she is used to. Neutral. The wolf did not fear her, would not obey a command; no one would now anyway.

Her lip starts to curl but she hesitates, listening to the dark wolf speak a language she does not understand. Her ears twitch and she frowns at the backfire. Emori’s teeth click together in thought and none of the words translate enough for her to decipher. It was not the common tongue and nor was it her own and she wonders exactly what type of area she’s gotten herself into.

The wolf she met before had spoken the common tongue, had been careful at approach, but now she faces a wolf not much different in size but clearly with the advantage of health. Emori sighs and glances past the dark wolf, searching for others.

“No gonplei,” she says, “no jus.”

Emori waits a few seconds before she tries again, “no blood.”

Her anticipation in that momentary flash of teeth did not surprise her, nor did it deter her from wanting to draw closer. Yet Echelon withheld for the same reasons that Emori did; her eyes scanned the background behind her. They were alone, it seemed. Better that way, because even in light of her restoring health, Echelon knew her smaller size was usually at a disadvantage when more than one wolf was involved. Without knowing where Tonravik was, she wouldn't press an angry claim outside of antagonizing it more.

She ignored the next stretch of psychobabble out of the female, finally focusing back in on her when she spat out the pieces of something Echelon did understand. "Oh," she said, this time in a tongue they shared. A look of disappointment crossed her features, but dissipated into the air like the plume of breath chasing her statement. With her own rough features including the scabbing of wounds healed, the flighty Phase huffed indifferently.

"I thought you were talking about how the water was yours," she hastily explained as though that would right everything. Nothing had been wronged as far as she knew. "I wanted to prove you wrong." She spoke in pure jest, though her tone was flat as a horizon at sea.

Her present company slips into the common tongue and Emori stares at her for a long moment, replying them in her head. The common tongue may not be her first, but she’d trained well enough to be able to speak the language as well as anyone. She needed to be. Even with the training, she was left in the dark. She heard the words and she knew them individually but they didn’t quite seem to fit together.

Emori scrunches up her face and she looks at the lake. Her paws were still wet and muddy, the rest of her still dripping, and she enjoys it compared to the flames that took everything from her.

“Ai no co—” she trails off, tongue sliding over her muzzle. “I do not understand,” she begins, the transition to common words a little rough.

“Water is not mine.”

Oh brother, of all the wolves she could have come across, she came across the one who didn't really speak much of a tongue that they could have shared. Echelon felt the bottom of her patience smack the ground, though in reality it did nothing of the sort. She bridled a building sigh and let it out quietly. Her progress was stalled abruptly and became an aeroplane about to roll over and throw itself towards terra firma — how was she supposed to handle this? This hadn't been covered anywhere that she recalled and frankly, not even Tonravik probably could have helped her.

But wait, maybe she could, and in a rare turn of face she thought of what her aokkatti would have done. Thoughtfully she held her silence for longer than she would have otherwise, coming to a conclusion proving to be more difficult than the actual task of what she had originally planned on doing. She should have just sneaked away into the day and let it go at that.

"Where are you from?" she decided to ask, even though Tonravik probably would not have asked that.

Emori considers the question for longer than she intends. She had not sufficiently prepared herself to shed who she was and she fought the answers running through her mind.

She traveled far enough to not expect anyone here to know her tongue, to know of the wingedakru, of their failed heda. She is not that anymore. She is nothing to anyone. She is just Emori. Emori the lopar. She couldn’t even grant herself the title of vagabond.

“Sur,” she answers but a few seconds later she corrects herself, “south.”

There's a lull she lets linger, not quite finished.

“There was fire,” she breathes, her voice still with hints of remnant trauma. “In wi—winter. It destroyed my home.”

Before Echelon could hotly tell her to go home, her dark counterpart stammered out some sob story that she could have tried to care about. When it came down to it, Echelon couldn't have said that she knew of the destructive properties that fire held. She had seen it before, perhaps even felt its warmth, but had never been burned by the flame. An ear turned with some disinterest, but the story wasn't enough to sway her to leave.

"So you're homeless then?" The question, though rhetorical, had an edge to it that she wanted it answered anyway. Echelon knew the answer of course, but it was merely button pushing at that point.

She stares at the wolf and can’t help but wonder if there is more to the question.  When there seems to be nothing more, Emori just gives him a singular nod before she looks past her.  She has no scouts with her now but she does not know these lands, does not know these wolves.  The wind is not in her favor and her eyes are slow to focus.

“Others with you?” she asks, before pulling her gaze to the dark wolf.  “You have a pack here?”

Emori takes a step back and wavers on her rear legs but she manages to hold steady.  It wouldn’t take much to knock her down.  A large gust of wind, perhaps, but for now she manages.  

“I’m Emori.”

Her nod was enough to affirm that she was in fact homeless but Echelon sensed that she would have more to say.  And on the heels of a strong gust of wind, those words came.  Easy questions to answer but she was left to consider them briefly.  She did not see Tartok as a charity case, or even at the very least running a halfway house for the banged up and retired wayfarers.  But at the same time, she felt that it was not entirely her decision to make.  Tonravik did the recruiting, Echelon stayed firmly out of it.


Still, she could not help but give the dark-haired foreigner a decent once-over.  It was an open study, one that followed the swift raise of her head.  "We may, perhaps," she said stilted-like.  "Are you capable of fighting?  Of not wavering?"  She was no recruiter, yet the questions came to her steadily.  She had seen Tonravik do it time and time again, just as she had seen Siku do it before her in her youth.  A youth that for the most part, Echelon had yet to let go even in light of her coming into maturity.

There was potential yet in what she saw in Emori, something that could have been built up and tempered to their will.  She placed the female under her consideration all the same, though the urge to drive her away lingered like a caged beast in the darkness of her gaze.

Emori’s eyes narrow when she doesn’t get a straight forward answer.  She holds back a barking demand but she clenches her jaw and instead she listens to the rest of the questions.  They are probing for more information and she cannot help but wonder their purpose.  She can only bite her tongue for so long.

“Does it change your answer?” she asks, her eyebrow quirking upwards.  “If I am a warrior, are there more with you?” 

She is, and unfortunately visibly, in no condition to fight.  Her bones are weary and her muscles ache, screaming with fire should she continue, but she knows her potential.  As a warrior, she thrives, but as heda, she cannot help but question the spirit that chose her—if it had at all—but she does not speak these concerns.  

She does not answer the questions.  

The spark of something, whether it was annoyance or anger or simply frustration that she was falling prey to some woe is me! line intrigued Echelon.  She smirked and visibly so, delighted on some interior level that she had served as nothing more than a swift barb under Emori's skin.


So crisply, deliberately, Echelon answered her swiftly: "Yes."

It changed the answer greatly, it always would.  Tartok had long been composed of warriors and guardians, but not just in body.  They also excelled in that of mind and it was that sort of banter that Echelon enjoyed.  She was not an adviser, wasn't even much of a warrior, yet she served all of those roles equally in that present.

The answer does not surprise her but she is again left without information she is searching for.  It is a lie the other wolf speaks and Emori narrows her eyes.  If her answer so willingly changes on what she says, she knows she stands at an impasse.  She has no reason to trust the wolf; she didn’t even have her name.  


She takes a long breath and glances to the water at her left.  She longs for another drink but she holds back the urge, bile flicking the back of her throat.  It burns, but she suffers instead.  The other wolf’s posture changes in the last few exchanges and it takes a greater effort not to build herself up.  Her head lowers only a few notches but she keeps herself withdrawn and cautious.  

“I am a warrior,” she admits, swinging her grey eyes back around, “but I am not a threat.”

Echelon would have never really guessed that the wolf before her was in fact, a warrior of sorts. If she truly was, then she was but a shell of what she had been. Never minding that Emori had survived a fire, of course, she couldn't help but wonder if she was just saying that to save some sort of face. The flighty Tartok wolf scrutinized her when she stated that she wasn't a threat -- that much had been obvious to Echelon.

"Would you like to be one again?" she asked, licking at her chops. It was not a challenge to fight her or otherwise engage, but a genuine inquiry laced with prime interest. "Do you want a home?" This question came more forward, much like Echelon always was. Direct, blunt, all the same.

Emori’s jaws open to speak but she snaps her teeth together, realizing she didn’t have an answer.  The second question follows and it takes her by surprise.  To be a warrior again, to have a home, had not been in her plans.  Heda Emori kom Wingedakru in self exile, exile she controls.  To take shelter elsewhere and she loses it all; she loses her people.  

It is all she deserves.

She swallows the lump lingering in her throat.

“Yes,” she tells the wolf and she feels apart of her die and break away.  She hardens, jaw clenching, but she lifts it a notch to show she means her words.  She cannot repair the damage she left behind and she cannot continue to carry the wingedakru name behind her any longer.  Emori severs the tie.

The reply is earnest, but Echelon is aware that it always comes with a price. It is not in her decision to determine whether or not Emori was suitable for Tartok and rightfully so, she began to cast away the idea that she could decide such things. She knows that she must bring her to Tonravik and to do so required a certain trust from the other that she is uncertain she can obtain. And so, Echelon takes control of the situation by stepping in closer to her, wondering.

"You will come with me," she states with nothing more to offer. "Tonravik must decide." Perhaps stating that the decision is out of her hands is best, a modicum of courtesy that pinpoints that she is not able to make that final call on her own. Echelon started off from where they were, moving past the dark-haired foreigner to the downward slope of the terrain, and hopefully, towards Tonravik. Echelon does not know how much ground her aokkatti has covered, but knows that once they clear the higher climes of the mountain it would be much easier to track the untraceable superior.

She knew what to look for in her search.

Suffering for her people does not end when she says yes, nor does it end when she meets the leader, and it does not if she is taken in.  If anything, it increases.  The spirit of the commander is gone and she is, in fact, a shell of a wolf.  The idea causes another rise in her throat and she closes her eyes, tongue running across her teeth.  


The wolf takes lead and Emori remains close, keeping up as she’s directed. 

They headed off and the pace was no doubt a difficult one to keep.  Echelon found that she would wait for Emori at times and other times, she did not.  If the dark-haired female could not keep up, it may have been that her offer would be squandered.  But as it were, she did keep up.

And when the opportunity presented itself, Echelon raised her voice sharply and suddenly, calling out for @Tonravik.  She did not know if they would be in range for her aokkatti to hear her, but she felt that she would be.  For whatever reason, the pair had a sense of each other even when the terrain tore them apart.  Ears at attention, she settled down in the sagebrush easily to lie in wait.  A careful glance about only revealed Emori to her and for all purposes, this was a good thing.

After a short time, the duo became a trio and they headed off to somewhere more suitable.