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+--- Thread: Nova Peak None of this is real enough, to take me from you. (/showthread.php?tid=43184)
None of this is real enough, to take me from you. - Stag - August 07, 2020
set a bit in the future, if that is ok? @Phaedra <3
They'd been here several days now, and Stag had been scarce.
He had gone and scoured the tree line at the bottom of the foothills. He had gone and scoured the scree. A few times he had gone up and down a babbling brook, coming to rest finally at a place that had that indescribable aura to it;
A place of rest and peace.
Dwarfing almost all its cousins as it rose up along a pallisade of firs was an ancient column of supalpine larch, whose long arms reached out and offered a lengthy sprawl of sundappled shade. At the base of this tree was a broad swatch of flatness, limned in a rich carpet of pine needles.
Stag knew what had to be done, and so, set to work.
He brought out the stone he had carried all the way from home. The stone -- a little pebble collected by Phaedra that first day they had built their garden -- had been tucked in his cheek the entire trip. He placed it down on the dirt, frowned, and nosed it several feet. Frowned again, and pushed it another several feet.
Then he was gone, returning, gone again -- until at last a perimeter was built around the base of this enormous tree. Crude and patchwork this little wall may be, it set the foundation for the future plot of Phaedra's garden, and Stag remained hard at work from sun up until sun down, perfecting every little minutia.
By the second day the wall had been completed. By the third, much of the dirt inexpertly sown. In small rows were goldenrod and sunkissed black-eyed susans; at one point Stag had paused over a mountain lily, admiring its bells -- but finding them rather ugly, he carried on.
At last, the wall and the first few additions to the garden were complete. Stag thumbed at the little rockshard he had carried from home to here, and after deliberation placed its bright surface leaning against the entry way.
Smiling, Stag threw back his head and howled for Phaedra.
RE: None of this is real enough, to take me from you. - Phaedra - August 13, 2020
stag was never made to wait long when he sent up his summons for the pearl of sagtannet.
today, he was made to wait a little longer, though, as her paws had yet to learn the purlieu's trails verbatim, and she relied on her other senses to track him down. it was a task good for her intuition and perception of her surroundings.
when phaedra came upon his grand achievement, she was stealthing on her whisper-feet, determined to curdle his blood with her abrupt presence. crouched like a panther bowed in its course of quarry, she wore an impish smile that was promptly buried under the weight of reverence when she saw the extent of his gruntwork; a complete stratified ashlar wall, wreathing the homeric larch amidst it. phaedra quietly rocked back into her haunches, gazing in awe from from top to bottom.
he had begun the process of cultivating the rockery, strewing colour amongst the soil. it was beautiful.
and her eye caught, at the threshold, the precious shard of boulder opal—she had not thought of it with much value before, but there on its mantle it looked just perfect. and he had brought it this whole way? how had she not noticed? a halo of enchantment warmed her features.
his icefloe back was turned away from her, so phaedra cleared her throat with restrained enthuse. "i prefer that tree over there," she remarked, pointing towards a sapling several plots away. "think you can move id?" a teasing smile crept into the corners of her mouth.
RE: None of this is real enough, to take me from you. - Stag - August 17, 2020
omg that stone
Stag was not a wolf who ever had masterful grip on his affections: be it his emotions or his intentions, he always wore them plainly on his stiff white-furred sleeves. He was rippling with excitement by the time Phaedra was upon him, but his gaze was trained southward, and he missed her arrival until the abrupt clearing of her throat. He startled instinctively, plodding around on his clown feet until he was facing Phaedra with a grin-- only to have that grin fall away as his gaze swept the tree she indicated.
Wait, for reals? His jaws were slightly slack as he considered the enormity of starting all over -- his brows arched even in pleading emotion, only to realize she was joking by the light smile that teased the corners of her mouth.. "Sure, get started." Stag fired back, his tail waving as he stepped back for her to see the full splendor of his ramshackle fencework. His expression shifted to one of gravity, for he earnestly meant what he spoke next: "I know moving was hard.. I wish we could have brought your garden with you." His voice was somber, broken here and there with inflections of genuine sorrow that they had been required to move. Even if it was right, it sure wasn't easy -- as hard as it was on him, he thought it was harder on the kids. "It's not the same, but hopefully this one can be just as good. I didn't know what kind of flowers you wanted, but there's some goldenrod in there. What's your first order, o' Master Gardener Mauschen?"
RE: None of this is real enough, to take me from you. - Phaedra - September 22, 2020
"achually, there is good" she redecided with her courtliest of smiles.
her eyes must have given away her eagerness to see his handiwork, as he sidestepped just as her gaze shifted to look past him. "wooooow, you made id all? for me?" she loped up to the stonework, unheeding his change in expression as she regarded everything in detail with awe. her tail flagged high, waving with approval. "my other garden was magic, mhm," she murmured, knowing it was the truth in her heart, but despite her loss of it there was no trace of self-pity in her voice.
"you made me all this though, so, i love id even more. i wish my brother was here to play in this one with me. i wouldn' even be mad he did," though her expression was obscured by the tree which she encircled to surveil stag's fine masonry girding it, her tongue carried her words like the most precious gemstones.
she pranced up to plant a clumsy kiss on stag's cheek to show her appreciation, "i really love idt. thanks papaaa—" she caught herself too late and felt her entire face go brightly rouge, ears flushing against her headpiece as they burned whitehot. she rolled her lips and sucked her cheeks in an expression of alarm and flusteredness.
quickly she looked away, to the garden, widening her stare at the geode he'd shuttled all the way to their new home. "even beddar than jus as good, yep," phaedra confirmed with a stiff nod, feeling like live coals were stuck in her throat and smoking out through her ears.
she would have said dandelions, of course, when asked what to plant, but caintigern had informed her one day that dandelions were in fact weeds, not flowers one bit. she thought it was a dubious claim, but his insistence had nonetheless soured her and it was safe to say she had already embarrassed herself enough for one day.
"i like gardenias," phaedra chewed on her lip. "wha's your favoride color?" she suddenly asked.
RE: None of this is real enough, to take me from you. - Stag - September 26, 2020
i had a nice post and lost it, so enjoy this trash heap
Of course he'd made it all for her. If Stag had his way, he'd have done anything to see her smile, to see happiness flit in and out of the galaxy of lilac and yellow in her gaze. He'd move mountains, build gardens, maybe even kill if it came to it -- though he never gave that much thought.
He wished Thade was here too. He wished, in fact, they had never moved at all. That their lives had never been broken, that they had never moved and that Phaedra had never known the early sting of life's indifference so soon. But that was not life.
Not their life, anyway.
Stag's ears airplaned as he caught, in Phaedra's soft murmur, a word he had not expected. Papa? He surveyed her quietly, realizing she was mortified -- moreso than he was. Rather than draw an audience to the innocuous word slip, Stag elected for a careful smile, returning his gaze back to the garden while Phaedra regathered her confidence.
Even beddar was better than nothing at all. Stag kept the smile while Phaedra chewed her lips, his gaze trailing from the geode to the empty rows just waiting for Phaedra's care. "What's a gardenia?" And then, realizing he had not answered her question, Stag looked up to the sky and then back to Phaedra with consideration. "Hmm. I like blue. The color the sky is on a cold winter day. That blue. I don't see many blue flowers, though. What's your favorite color?"
RE: None of this is real enough, to take me from you. - Phaedra - September 26, 2020
grateful that he did or said nothing to spur the abashed gallop of her heart into a froth, phaedra filled her lungs full of breath and released it slowly. regardless, the hot climes behind her ears that tingled and burned her cheeks and gorge lingered a while yet.
fool, fool, fool, the cruel ironsmith of her conscious grafted away at her dignity, angering her. phaedra pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and stared harder at the opal, though she did not regard it so much as gaze while imagining ripping the tongue from her own maw to render herself unable to say stupid things.
gardenias. "they look like swirly clouds, and smell ..." her lips twisted. how best to explain the scent of a gardenia? sweet but not cloyingly so, strong yet delicate— a doting breath that reminded her of mama's embraces, but also, "when i smell a gardenia id makes me think of how papa looks ad my mama when she's noh looking. or ... how he did when we were all dogether, i'unno. i only found em in the high foreses of home, so." she worried at the dirt with her blunt claw, finding now that her focus had fixed itself the ground rather than the stone.
while he considered his favorite color, she stole a glance at his face, but blushed and looked away again when his eyes strayed from the skies. winter blue, she was thoughtful for half a heartbeat. that wasn't a color she'd experienced, yet, but now she yearned to see it so that she may enjoy it much as he did.
she'd been lost in her wish and also realized late that her question had been volleyed back. phaedra loved all the colors, but there was no hesitation when it came to her favorite. "the color my mama's eyes." she said, deliberately avoiding the simple answer of yellow to be very specific about the shade.
were it not for wylla's twin sunflowers, she might have blurted rainbow! for the lack of an ability to choose a favorite.
"i never seen winner blue. or winner. wha's it like? wind— win-ter," she tried to master the word with the laborous flexture of her tongue, scrunching her nose afterwards with aggravation.
then, "bluebells!" phaedra piped up suddenly, but just as quickly realized her folly: "oh, hm. those are pourple. well i think bluebells is a sdupid name for those then," she huffed.
RE: None of this is real enough, to take me from you. - Stag - October 11, 2020
Swirly clouds. Stag looked overhead, bemused. He couldn't imagine flowers in the sky, but for a moment he closed his eyes and tried anyway: thinking of little gardenias and bluebells and sunflowers as they frolicked across an endless expanse of blue..
Utter poppycock, but it brought a smile to his face all the same. That smile faded when Phaedra confided of how their smell made her feel. Had Sagtannet truly fractured so thoroughly?
Onto favorite colors.. Stag thought of Wylla and closed his eyes again, thinking of that cheerless and shrewd yellow. He knew the color well, and for a moment, a fluttering stirred to life in his heart that confused and shamed him at once. His eyes opened and the feeling was gone.
"That's a good color. I like it too." Stag admitted, though he hoped his tone appeared platonic enough. "Winter blue.. it's a hard color. You'll know it when you're in the height of the coldest day you've ever lived, and you look up and the sky is bare and not a wisp of cloud to be seen.. and the snow is so white and cold against your toes -- a blue so bright and cold it makes you feel small and stings your eyes." Stag was made for the cold, and he lived for winter -- but he also knew winter came at a brutal cost. Often, their survival was even less guaranteed in the winter than it was in the other months. He hoped, for Phaedra, she might never know the cold bite of cruel winter -- and would instead, only know the good things. The open skies, the soft snow, the thrill of hunting elk -- all of these a wolf's rite of passage, just as dying in the cold was. "Maybe bluebells are that color when they're young? I don't know what a bluebell looks like."
The pair continued chatting until close to dusk; Stag's eyes were heavy but his heart was light as he escorted Phaedra back to the den. Taking it upon himself to sleep somewhere nearby, Stag was off in a dreamless sleep no sooner than his head hit the ground.