Ceallach waits until @Eirlys is asleep and breathing steadily in those long drawn out ways. Even through her fluff he can read her, ocher red eyes peering through the dark to see that she stayed steady. Tucked between the trees and on a somewhat dry patch of earth, Ceallach takes the moments of solitude to think. He has more questions than anything, more emotions that burn him - and that headache! Still it makes him near blind sometimes, pain squeezing so acutely that it feels almost as if he will be strangled by it. Whatever it was, whatever it meant - Ceallach does not like it. It only happened when his emotions rose swiftly and usually when he was angry. It had started when he'd snuck out to look for Roarke and Mallaidh. It had happened, stronger and worse and more painful than he could remember when he and Arturo found Chusi's scent tracking past, and then again away from, Teaghlaigh in the wake of Lotte's death. Since the encounter with his parent's adopted child the headache had lingered. 

Ceallach took a few careful steps until he felt confident he wouldn't wake Eirlys. Then he took off. He didn't go too far before his fear of losing his last littermate stopped him like a proverbial ball and chain and Ceallach came to a halt. The muddy ground beneath his paws skidded a bit, disrupted by his weight and claws. The invisible wall wouldn't be breached. He wouldn't fight it. Ceallach knew that what lurked in him was perhaps even more protective of his sister than he was and he stopped trying to understand. He accepted. Long ago he had come to accept things as they were - now, at being presented with Chusi again, it became harder to not try and shift everything again. He'd reformatted his life time and time again - after losing Roarke, Mallaidh, his Aiti, and then writing Chusi out of his family.....and then Arturo. 

The boy's chest heaved as his headache reached a sharp pitch and he closed his eyes, growling to himself through gritted teeth beneath the moon's silver rays.

breathe in, breathe out, count to ten - do it in tundarian now


Ceallach was trying all of his tricks to get the headache to go away but so far it wasn't working. His eyes still closed, his focus entirely on his own pain, he didn't hear the approach of the other wolf until his name cut through the silence of the night. Soft as it was the silence had been so intense that it sounded like she screamed it; loud and piercing it broke through his focus and his ocher eyes snapped open. He drew in a breath and held still, scanning the darkness around him until he could find the source of the sound only illuminated for a moment by a pair of bright eyes. 

Not many new him. Seri was long gone, as far as he knew, and there were no other youths in Teaghlaigh and he'd met none on his travels. He was a loner only interested in his own family, he went beyond just being antisocial into a new realm of obsessiveness. Sheep dogs had nothing on the coywolf when it came to the way he monitored his family unit. "Who's there?" It was less a question, more a demand, his question ringing through the quiet - although his voice wasn't loud it was firm. He didn't want to disturb Eirlys, but, he wasn't exactly one to just sit back and play the wait and see game. 

It made him uncomfortable to have someone know who he was without knowing them. He'd long since written his other siblings off as dead -or worse as Chusi had proven with being an abandoning traitor - and so they didn't even cross his mind. 

 


Ceallach was still looking for her, trying to seek her out from the darkness. Whatever she was doing in that spot at that moment it set him off and made him uncomfortable; he was already feeling defensive though. With it just being him and Eirlys and Eirlys already chewed on by strangers for the accidental trespass (he understood their defensiveness and held no fault to the wolves of the shoreline pack) he was just on edge. What the other said though - that swept Ceallach back to the tender age of his infancy, missing his brother, and then his sister. Watching his mother lose herself to distance and looking for her children. Watching his family slowly drift apart. Watching Hemlock go after the children, bringing back Ran - her dying, Sirius leaving.....it was a domino effect. 

"You're lying," He said quickly, his voice thick with emotion. "You have to be lying." Because if she wasn't then his dead sister wasn't dead and he didn't know how to handle that. He didn't know if he should be mad or if he could be relieved or something else entirely. If she wasn't dead - if she really was his Mallaidh....then what had happened? Why hadn't she come home? Why hadn't she made it back to them somehow? Who had taken her from them - who had kept her from them? 

"We've been busy." It's a clipped response because Ceallach isn't exactly a warm man - he never had found that inherent sweetness like some did - and it only brings up other questions of what they were expected to do now. The woman before him is a stranger. His ears shift forward and he's not sure he should move forward to embrace or touch her. If it was Eirlys he already would have been there but unfortunately she wasn't. Ceallach didn't know how to comfort her and even if he had an inkling he didn't know if he would. 

"What happened?" Ceallach asked quickly, realizing that the only way he'd be capable of moving or doing was if he knew what had happened. "Who took you?" Because surely she hadn't just vanished after the turmoil their parents had gone through - that they had gone through - after losing Roarke. She wouldn't have been so foolhardy. He could feel the tension in waves through his spine and down his limbs, his neck and skull and even his tail almost pulsing with the feeling. It was like being wound tighter and tighter and Ceallach wondered how much longer before he snapped. 

Maybe he was his father's son after all.

That only made him feel more bitter and he wondered how he ended up the way he was. It was easy enough to see on paper. Siblings lost and dead (well, one then, as one was now standing before him again) and then his mother dying, losing his pack, his father leaving (but hadn't Arturo left long ago? The Witchdoctor hadn't cared for them) and their refuge dissolving. Eirlys nearly being taken from him. It was enough to make anyone bitter but Ceallach felt he was in a league all his own. There was too much in him. Too many walls in place that he was a labyrinth and he was consumed by it. 

 


It seemed so very simple to hear it. She'd gotten lost as children often do, but someone had also attacked her and that was unacceptable. It was a wonder that no one had found her and Ceallach still felt himself bristle. It was as if the slight to his family was new and it was because he'd never gotten to process it. In his head there was a croak of pain and he swallowed back the sound before he'd emitted it himself, he did not want to deal with that now. He had to keep his anger under check. This sister did not know. She did not need to know. Eirlys had seen it enough and Ceallach knew shame from it - wishing he could be only the protector and guardian he likened himself to. 

"We searched so long," He promised, his voice thick with emotion. She knew that, right? She had to have known it. Eirlys confessed to knowing that their siblings were still breathing while Ceallach had to let that dream go. He'd lost Aiti and then Arturo had left them all and Tapat needed help and Droman and Reed were so tiny - he felt his breath hitching and he tried to relax himself. He had to force it, if nothing else. 

"We didn't stop. Not until....." He swallowed roughly and his eyes shifted away from her face, he couldn't handle his own pain when it came to his mother. "When...When Aiti passed Arturo wanted to leave the Strath and then Mama gave birth it just....everything happened so quickly." He admitted. Still there was that vague hope that they would find her and Roarke along the way but it never happened. 

 

She crashes into him like a boulder into ice; it might have shattered him - maybe it did - into a million other smaller broken pieces. Ceallach has felt like fragments his entire life, it's never enough. He's always felt like he was never enough. He swallows thickly before pressing his skull into her thick pelt and for a moment it is like being home and having Aiti. It is like safety. Her scent is different thought and it is enough to remind him that she isn't Lotte. This isn't Teaghlaigh. What Teaghlaigh was meant to be had never come and was abandoned far too early in it's days. "We moved to an island, but when it seemed empty and winter got bad we came back to the mainland. We called ourselves Undersea for a time." Ceallach explained. 

He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself again. "Eirlys and I will probably go back. I don't know. We have to keep an eye out for Droman and Reed. They're getting bigger and Mama...." He sighed softly. "She never should have had to do this alone." His tone goes bitter then and he feels the truth of everything - that if Arturo had just stayed maybe they wouldn't feel like such failures. Maybe things would have been better for Droman and Reed, maybe Hemlock wouldn't be at her wits end. It was a lot to put on one person - but then they'd never had the choice either. Arturo chose to leave. 

"Have you seen Chusi?" He asked suddenly, wondering if she'd run into their other sibling out in the randomness. If not, he'd have to bear that unfortunate news to her. 

There is comfort in the fact that Mallaidh still wanted to see their family, Hemlock would have been so relieved! He can almost see the emotion on their Mama's face, having three of her older children back together. "We can take you to her -" He'd started, although it died off, he couldn't very well make that choice without Eirlys there, could he? But they were a unit and they went together, where his dusted sister lead Ceallach followed. He was about to sweep into the explanation of why she needed to watch out for Chusi when Eirlys approached and quickly Ceallach breathed out a soft breath. She was still safe after all, and she didn't seem much worse than how he'd left her. 

He kissed her cheek gently when Eirlys was close enough and allowed her to explain the dilemma they'd had. "Chusi - she'd....she'd left us in Teaghlaigh on some scouting mission and then she came back to the Hinterlands and didn't come home. She didn't get to see Aiti, she could have and she didn't." Ceallach's voice had become bitter. He would never forgive that transgression against Lotte or against their family; it was Chusi's actions that had ultimately caused Arturo to change. 

"She is no sister of mine." His voice steeled, no matter how much either sibling might protest it or plead on the strangely accented wolf's behalf, Ceallach had made up his mind - and of this, all facets of his thinking agreed.