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+--- Thread: Arrow Lake when all the things under the sky go free of time (/showthread.php?tid=31785)
when all the things under the sky go free of time - Indra - December 30, 2018
while marten and laurel slept under a brilliant canopy of star-studded navy sky, indra made her way across the flat and familiar plains. ahead arrow lake's surface was muted by a sheet of thick, cloudy ice -- what little light the moon afforded spilled between rolling clouds in pale beams of silver.
indra was missing the children she had left behind. her guilt had only eaten at her further, and while she thought time and distance might make her shame less keen, it seemed it only drove deeper.
restless, with her dreams invaded often by her own wringing subconscious, indra stared out at the frozen lake and wondered just what kind of fool's errand she had agreed to embark upon.
RE: when all the things under the sky go free of time - Stigmata - December 30, 2018
the night was bitterly cold and yet no snow fell. the wind whistled, but did not screech; the clouds thickened but did not assemble. stigmata took this time, unimpeded by storm or stray, to visit the area of his preference: the place he had once thought to claim for the sake of another's name.
he did not expect to ever find that namesake here; and as many times as he had thought he had come across indra in the past, even at this distance - from an impossible angle - he knew it was her.
her.
stigmata felt several things at once, but most prominently he felt unsure. it was a feeling so foreign to him that he couldn't have named it in himself if asked to. he had to work on compulsion alone, and what drove the ironwraith forward in a warhound's march was obligation rather than want to. if this was not to be his kingdom he might have avoided her altogether, and yet, he came slowly upon her lakeside, and breathed a heavy-aired: "indra."
RE: when all the things under the sky go free of time - Indra - January 04, 2019
her name sounded out from the shadows, startling the redleaf. as she quickly turned around to face her greeter, her ears canted with the sudden motion -- the lashing mahogany of her gaze settling on stigmata.
a feeling of anxious surprise and quiet discomfort settled in her stomach, and indra's gaze quickly turned away from the tungsten wraith.
a tension settled between them -- not crackling, but long and indivisible. she owed him her life, and was forthright with her gratitude, yet it did nothing to balm the unease that wrapped in constrictive swarms around them. "stigmata," she returned, wondering what -- and why -- he was here.
RE: when all the things under the sky go free of time - Stigmata - January 16, 2019
stigmata realized, with belated detachment, that he was glad to see the autumn-fire wolf alive. he couldn't help but feel slighted by their location - forced now to remember keenly a hurt he had spent a lot of careful time forgetting - but all of it washed away at the sound of his name in her voice. his ears pressed forward, and it took a great steeling of his resolve to keep a flicker of longing from putting a crease in his ironed expression. it struck him uncomfortably to know that he had missed something.
something as small and as a particular as a tone of voice. one he had unwittingly become accustomed to.
"why are you here?" he huffed, already tired of his whirring emotions.
RE: when all the things under the sky go free of time - Indra - January 17, 2019
had she been studying the titan, she might have caught the whirling emotions that threatened to break past the impasse of his stoic expression; as it was, indra could not hold stigmata's gaze -- anytime she glanced upon the silvered depths of his eyes, she was reminded only of her own failures.
and a memory was admission enough - it had taken indra great pains to conceal the plains of hurt that thorned her heart and seeing stigmata seemed only to undo them. he was perhaps the last wolf she wished to see, and yet, the only wolf indra somehow would have been relieved to come across.
much like the sandraudiga, indra unfurled a weary sigh. "laurel's kids are missing - all of them." she brought herself to look at his countenance then, daring with a suddenly hateful vehemence for any flicker of crowing triumph to cross his features.
RE: when all the things under the sky go free of time - Stigmata - January 17, 2019
needed to get this outta the way i guess lmao
whatever satisfaction either of them might have expected from him upon receiving such poetic justice tragic news, stigmata could only muster a furrowed, disconcerted expression. if he had not run into piper himself and known of her intentions to visit her family, then he wouldn't have been so genuinely concerned. "piper was in the mountains with me. i made sure she was alright," he said immediately. "she still had not found lucas, apparently, but i told her where to find you."
his face smoothed suddenly, and he said rather tightly: "except, here you are."
RE: when all the things under the sky go free of time - Indra - January 19, 2019
indra's gaze lifted, finding the disconcerted expression stigmata bore alarming. what followed caused her throat to hitch, and she swallowed in dry fear -- for the idea of piper returning to a home without her family caused the redleaf great distress..
but then, she remembered the firefly's guard -- tadec would steel her from returning to the wild, if she found upon returning to the hollows that her family was not there. feeling so very strained by the icy composure she had to maintain in front of stigmata, indra ventured: "and, tadec..?"
RE: when all the things under the sky go free of time - Stigmata - January 20, 2019
given their history and the things that he thought indra was at fault for, it was incredibly hard for him not to look annoyed when she asked after another wolf - a male. "she was alone," he replied glumly. it almost didn't matter that he was merrick's father, and therefore an indelible part of her life, but he had to focus on this fact in order to keep his expression from crinkling unjustly. he was aware then of a pressure that seemed to fill the space around him and the strained, tattered redleaf. they were both holding onto something tightly - this semblance of normalcy - and the strength it required to seize control of it all had them both rooted and inwardly quivering.
"indra," he started cautiously, repeating her name because it had been so long since he'd even let himself think it, let alone say it out loud. "you do not belong out here." she did not smell of merrick, nor nunataq, or anything of the hollow really. he could only smell laurel on her, and he could infer from this that the succubus - he thought responsible for the loss of her children - had dragged her sister out here on some haphazard search for grown pups that didn't want to be near her. no one wanted to be near her, except indra, and he imagined this was why bearclaw had been felled under her tutelage.
"why are you doing this when you know better?" he coldly asked and accused, unwilling to think that this was indra's way.
RE: when all the things under the sky go free of time - Indra - January 20, 2019
she was alone. indra's features fell -- tadec too, had left them.
merrick's words -- words so often repeated by her well before she had ever brought him into this world -- rose in a quivering chorus in her mind: everyone leaves.
a sigh, long held in and shakily exhaled, fled from her body -- but she stiffened as stigmata spoke her name; it brought a flicker of rage to the surface of her gaze to hear him utter it, and the question that came next seemed laced not in concern but in crocodilian contempt.
she shifted, pulling away from him - from hurt. "you don't abandon family." she replied stiffly, feeling her fur ripple as she pulled her gaze from the basilisk. no matter what, indra would always try to hold the thin cords of her family together -- and despite their unraveling ways, would never let go of that mantra.
RE: when all the things under the sky go free of time - Stigmata - January 20, 2019
she recoiled, of course, as she did whenever she or her family were put into a shaming light. she was particularly defensive of her sister's nonexistent honor, and he wondered what tragedy had befallen the two of them that had made her so irreparably attached. "and when they abandon you?" he growled, unable to help the way his voice lifted to challenge her; leaving a small part of him to wonder why it was so easy to fall into this black pit with her. when he would rather belittle god, than to speak to her with such misery.
"you would rather kill yourself trying to cling to them, rather than try to be happy on your own? or is this - this endless searching and grieving - the only thing that pleases you?" is it why i am not enough for you? he spoke his hurt, but the truth of it seemed to remain buried.
RE: when all the things under the sky go free of time - Indra - January 21, 2019
indra stiffened under stigmata's icy examination. her jaw was set in a steely grimace of disapproval as he pulled apart her logic, as he questioned her faith, her family, her decisions -- why was it, any time they came in contact with one another, the subject was always her flaws?
what remained of her tail raised stiffly. her back hunched -- and there, with no missing appendage to impede its directive, her hackles flared into long quill-like plumes. it did not matter she had detected hurt in his voice -- for he was trying to cut her down in the process. perhaps he was trying to drag her down to his level, to share with him his grief so that she might look from his perspective with newly sorrowed eyes..
but that was not how true lovers should quarrel. they should not strive to hurt the ones they loved -- even if they had somehow been hurt in the process.
she was no more right for him than he for her, and as she stonily met his damascene gaze, she felt something new bury deep into her impressions of him. it was not love. it was not tenderness. whatever emotion it was, it might have driven her to find his throat if she was not already so weakened from traveling.
so badly did she want to fire some cruelly laced riposte in return. "you do not understand it, do you?" she rose to her full height, finding no patience left in her gnawed bones to suffer his company. "you cannot control other people. what they do to you, how they behave... but you can control yourself.
and those choices you make, in response to being hurt or abandoned -- those choices define you. i can choose to stay by my family, even if they leave or desert me; but at the end of the day, i will still be there. and we all have to live with our choices. i will happily live with mine."
the tip of her wispy tail -- or really, the nub of it -- flicked with dismissal. "goodbye, stigmata." and i hope to god, i never see you again.
RE: when all the things under the sky go free of time - Stigmata - January 21, 2019
he expected her indigence - as she had always reacted so emotionally to his criticisms - but he did not understand her reasons behind it. when she had noted that he didn't understand, it was because it was true. he believed nearly the same thing, that wolves could not be controlled, but that was exactly why they needed to be let go of. that was exactly why she didn't need to be out here searching instead of being at lost creek - since she so righteously thought she was steadfast.
and he wanted to say all of this - the judge and jury, stiff-backed and cut deep - but she dismissed him with a flick of her comically short tail and all restraint in him cracked at the sight of her turning her back on him again, and again, and again... no, this wasn't love. not on her end, anyway. because indra wasn't capable of saying goodbye to the ones she loved. that much she had made abundantly clear. she still thought he was trying to control her - when the only one actually controlling her didn't care at all how she felt.
"why must you forsake me?!" he burst like fire hydrant, howling; the furious pressure expending from him quickly. "you just could never bring yourself to trust me!" he snarled, spilled, and lamented. lurching after her; his heart stuttering; his throat seizing; causing him to still, trembling and suddenly exhausted from maintaining an unaffected mask for his entire life.
feeling an abrupt need to lie down, the warhound crumbled to the ground - lying tensely on his knotted belly, and dropping his head like a stone into bottomless well between his forepaws - as his howl had diminished and he whimpered hoarsely (to himself): "i only wanted you to trust me."
he didn't know how long he lay there, but every second in her absence would feel like eternities yawning before him, and he would simply have to get used to the intensely slow feeling of freefall, now perpetually in his gut, one way or another.