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+--- Thread: Chimera Fields out there (/showthread.php?tid=65855)
out there - Kindle - April 28, 2025
The kid was quick. That was the excuse Blackbear planned on giving the family if he ever had to answer for his nephew's whereabouts. Never mind that he knew — generally — where the younger boy was heading and that, actually, they'd exchanged several howls before Katmai had turned one way and Blackbear had turned another.
He was sure they'd meet again.
Eventually.
He was also sure that there were far more interesting things afoot here. Far more interesting scents, at least. Blackbear skulked around the outermost edges of the two nearest claims, hoping no one would fault him for drawing so very near. Envoys were almost always welcome in his own homeland, but he'd been told that not all packs were so warm or inviting.
Most especially, he had been told that rovers were often unwelcome visitors, and that some packs guarded their daughters as if a dragon might carry them off mid-meal.
Blackbear had always admired dragons. Had he wings, perhaps the young women of the Teekon Wilds ought to have worried. Since he didn't, perhaps it was just their parents that ought to be concerned.
Shoulders low, the rover pressed his nose to another stranger's pawprint, taking in the foreign scents.
RE: out there - Pidge - April 28, 2025
This was the place. This had to be the place! She could absolutely positively feel it in her bones!
Or, was that just the feeling of climbing and descending another mountain in such quick procession from the last? Because she could absolutely positively feel the burn in her lungs as she recovered her breath from exploring the glacier just to the north of her now.
Ma said the land before Easthollow would look like this - forested and fielded with ice looming large over distant meadows. If she tracked south from here, she was bound to find them! Her extended family, and the stones marking the lives of those who had already moved on. It seemed like a dream. Two long and lonely months seemed nothing now compared to the few short days that would likely feel forever as she closed one chapter of her little life and opened the gaping blank pages of the next.
She had not traveled far into the fields when Pidge found the boy. Larger than her, as most tended to be, but youthful. Another yearling? His grey fur reminded her of home, for so many of them were grey, and she let her paws carry herself towards him, hazel eyes bright and welcoming.
Hey!
The scent of multitudes rose from invisible boundaries just beyond him. Or was he inside them? She didn't know the scents here well enough to distinguish which were his and which were not, and she jumped to conclusions, though pa had warned her rather uncouthly what a donkey she'd make of herself if she didn't learn to listen instead of making up answers in her excitement that seemed fitting on the fly.
Are you from Easthollow?She just couldn't help herself! Pa would be besides himself, but he wasn't here, so why bother thinking about that?
RE: out there - Kindle - April 28, 2025
There were many scents layered here; a thoroughly confusing array, in truth. Black Bear kept a weather eye on the horizon, but his focus — being mainly on what was before him, and not behind — was such that a little, Hey! sent him pinging a full six inches into the air. The young male whirled toward his assailant...
... which was a girl.
Blackbear blinked at her, caught between two warring impulses to either bristle or preen. He asked himself: Did he care that she was a girl? None of this fit into the daring narrative he'd been spinning for himself. Was a girl even a girl if she had no protective parents or siblings trying to chase him off? He might as well have married one of his cousins back at home!
And, speaking of home, her words finally caught up with him.
"Easthollow," he repeated, sounding dubious. "Easthollow that was led by Valette and Steady?"
He'd heard the stories often enough. His own sister had been named after the latter, after all.
He searched the young woman's features, suddenly on the hunt for something familiar. A quick indexing of the bloodlines back home reminded him, however, that the wolves of Easthollow had been cousins to him only in name. And they were, after all, long extinct.
Weren't they?
RE: out there - Pidge - April 29, 2025
He jumped, and she jumped, and a woof of surprise edged into an embarrassed giggle.
Oops, sorry!she quickly apologized, rubbing a paw against the bridge of her snout as though she could whisk away the sudden heat in her cheeks.
Must've lost my manners to the mountains, y'know?
Another giggle followed, a defense against the silence he offered in return. His stare made her uneasy. What thoughts moved behind those eyes of his? Pa's warnings rose from that deep burrow she tucked most of his advice into. For once, Pidge took a little step back -
- just to reverse her efforts and spring forward three when the boy met her with understanding.
That's them!and she spun once in a tight circle, tail whipping in kind. He knew! He knew! Calm down, Pigeon! pa would have barked, and she skidded smack dab in front of the boy again.
Do you know where any of them are? Ma said they're not called Easthollow anymore, but everyone whose left would know the name, and that's how I'd find them!
She gasped.
Are you related to them, too?
Maybe he looked like home for more than some coincidence! Maybe he was her cousin, or her really young uncle, or some other relative down the tangling Apataa line.
What a shame all the same, Pidge thought, he was kind of cute.
RE: out there - Kindle - April 29, 2025
The young woman sure was... bouncy — something that Blackbear pretended away any thoughts or feelings about.
"What all are they called?" he asked her, taking a tiny step back of his own, just to underline how absurd she ought to find her own behavior. A furrowed brow belied the true concern he felt for the stranger. Unless he was terribly mistaken, there was a mountain range between them and Easthollow. Did she know this?
And did she know how long it had been since that place had been called Easthollow? Or was it his own information that was out of date?
"I don't think so," he replied, without knowing just who he was talking to. "But we can recite our bloodlines, if you want. Compare."
Like any good scion of his line, Blackbear could recite his family tree for three generations, forward, backward, and sideways.
"I'm Blackbear Morningside, from Round Valley," he told her. "My mother, Easy, knew Valette. And my father was good friends with Steady. My sister is named after him. But we shared blood with neither."
Yet, he thought to himself, his head tilting a fraction to the side. The families, once (purportedly) very close, had lost track of each other. Perhaps they could change that.
"Who are you?" he asked her.