Firestone Hot Springs I got what I got all despite you

OOC: All welcome but it'd be fun if a BDPer could pop up! This is set after Jinx is (I think) accepted into SC, but if she isn't accepted it shouldn't affect this thread much.

IC: No matter the weather, be it unbearably cold or heavily snowing, be it torrential downpour or even the hottest summer day, steam hung like a curtain over the hot springs. Their heat was stifling in summer, but in the clutches of winter, the muggy air was a welcome sanctuary from the bitter cold claws of the mountain valley. The coast was warmer than inland, but it was still cold enough to make a wolf wish for a warm subterranean hideaway. Because Jinx was a wolf who did not subscribe to denning underground like an expectant mother, and because she no longer called the temperate coast her home, she sought the comfort of the springs when the temperature dropped in the afternoon and ushered in a light haze of rain.

It was atypical for the Mambo to seek hot water and not bring an assortment of plants and stones to boil into infusions, but there was a marked scarcity of these materials in winter. She had moved on from her pack for what seemed to be the third time, now, and left behind what stores she'd had... But those few stores had mostly been put into her gifts for Pied and Kisu, and the rest were poisons. As she strode across the packed dirt devoid of snow in the springs' vicinity, she was reminded of her designs to cause Pied misery in her eventual pregnancy with the power of the catnip on her totem, and wondered if the dappled wolf still kept the amulet nearby.

She had learned once before that sinking into the springs was a good way to ask for hypothermia or pneumonia, and so she halted her prowl at the edge of one of the misting pools. She drank in the scent of sulphurous water and felt the steam condensing on her cool tongue with every breath she took through her slack mouth, and was comforted; it reminded her somewhat of Shearwater Bay in the summer, when the small lakes grew warm with the sun's persistent stare. This water was much warmer, of course... But the reminiscing brought her peace.

She laid herself sphinx-like at the water's edge, peering into its bubbling depths as though hoping to see the future in its confused currents, but there was nothing to be seen.

Since no one will play with me in my other Firestone thread I'LL JUST FORCE MYSELF ON YOU =D

He had taken to this territory with an unusual fondness though the inspirations for his liking were not altogether mysterious. He rather loathed the chilling nip of winter and had grown tired of the wastelands grown barren by the cold; it was here, within the steaming tide pools, that he found his hope for spring renewed. But his frequent visits were problematic in that his constant overexposure to the wetted atmosphere left a lingering impression in his breast when he'd finally return home...the likes of which had settled in his lungs a persistent - though annoying - cough.

He'd been resting in the nook of a rock when the rustling of a stranger lured him from his nap. His reasons for perpetual fatigue were not yet blamed on the sickness curdling in his body (but it was a likely culprit). He lifted his head and peered down at the blanched beauty laying contentedly on the bank side and was temporarily undecided as to whether or not he should disturb her.

Finally, with a softness in his voice to prevent coughing, he hailed her with, "I like it here too. It reminds me of home."

set by Emy

Perhaps, if Jinx had brought something charged with her— a stone, or something dear to her—the pools would have shown her the way. It was clear in these recent days that Jinx had been down on her luck since Bon Dye's dissolution. Her Gods had not acknowledged her efforts to appease Them and call out to Them. Their silence had at first been acceptable, but now it was unnerving. She knew nothing of the doubts Lethe harboured as a result of her foolhardy claim that the Gods had abandoned her—if They had abandoned anybody, it surely was Jinx—but had she known, she might've found kinship there.

So focused was she on the bubbling pool that she didn't notice Ariston nearby. The steam was intrusive in her nose, dulling her sense of smell and simultaneously stuffing it up... But she took abrupt notice of him when he spoke. Ears panned out to the sides of her face as her head lifted and she caught him in the cold stare of her eyes... Eyes which softened marginally when she realized he wasn't descending upon her to take advantage of her vulnerability.

She moved to shuffle onto her side, but felt strange and uncomfortable when she did, so she readjusted herself to maintain her previous position whilst turned somewhat to regard him; he was simple, cream-furred and unremarkable, and yet there was something about him that made him comforting to look upon. As of yet, his affiliation was unknown. It reminded him of home, he said, with the assumption that she too liked it... An assumption Jinx would not refute. "It is warm as Brightfish Cove in the summer," she agreed, unaware he might not know where that place was. She missed it, dearly, when he brought up home... But she could never go back. She could never return to those wolves and say the Gods had led her astray for their own amusement.

I absolutely love reading how everyone's characters interact with SoS differently!

The momentary blossom of savagery upon her face was a lapse that did not occur unexpectedly to the blanched male. He had after all popped up as suddenly as a springtime daisy and spoken to her without proper protocol; the minor flit of his ears as they fell backward conveyed his apologies for having temporarily startled her. Jinx's mild floundering placed curiosity in the arch of one brow but he did not interrogate her on it...so long as she did not project physical distress he was content to permit her any means necessary to find a comfortable spot.

"A cove?" he asked with a slight cant of his cheek. "Like the ones by the ocean? I've never seen one up close." A shame, he presumed, but a truth that he wouldn't try bullshitting around on the off-chance his knowledge of beach terrain might impress her.

set by Emy

Her eyes flickered over his features, taking in the faltering of ears and slight tilt of jaw. It was a wonder that Jinx did not mimic Ariston's signs of apology, so earnest were his. The blanched dog confessed an ignorance of coasts that the Kesuk woman found quite unsurprising. Due to circumstance, she had been born in the Great Bear Rainforest, which comprised a chunk of the Pacific coastline. She had never wondered what coasts were like, because she had grown up on one. This presented the problem of describing it to him, a task she found daunting as a result of her own extensive coastal background.

"It was my home," she revealed, with brows drawn down as the imagery of her beach home crept into her mind. She remembered in fondness the Lockers opening up onto the strand, the cavern mouth ringed with jagged stones. "The sea is wondrous and dangerous, but it is one of Atka's many domains, and Her children populate it as they do the blessed land." If asked what the blessed land was, she would reply in reverence Brightfish Cove as though all had begun on its grey strand... For her, that was the case.

But where the first wolves had set foot the Nereides reputed to be the white sands of Sirensong Cove, if what they said was the whole truth. Jinx had an inherent distrust of the sirens, after having learned her brother was nothing but the currency of an alliance. Whether she believed their cove to be the origin or not was something she had never considered. It was clear, regardless of her beliefs, that she had some opinion of the origin of wolves and animals differing from the norm. Jinx's eyes, alight with curiosity, never left Ariston as she awaited any questions.

Jinx would not tell much of the Gods, that was true... But of Their children, the animals of the world and most sacred to them the wolves, she would speak long accounts.

The sculpting of her brows evoked in him a familiar sense of longing...the likes of which made his own expression mirror with similar traces of yearning. "You miss home," he concluded aloud; he did not pause to think that such declarations of obviousness would serve to only make a heart's sorrow grow even deeper. "I have seen the sea before...but it didn't occur to me that perhaps it had as many facets as the forests that I grew up in." He was sorry for this inadequacy of knowledge and bowed his head in atonement.

"I miss my home too," he chimed lest the blanched creature beneath him suspect he was teasing her for some obscure weakness. "I suppose the place where a child's eyes explore the most is what becomes most nostalgic later in life."

set by Emy

"Yes," she offered, imagining an inkling of curiousity in his tone. "It is at once tranquil and summons with gentle whispers, yet it would strangle as quick as it would soothe. It is home to beasts more powerful than you or I, but their faces are masks that seem tame and friendly." There was a lot to say, the Kesuk imagined, for a shark's kittenish grin. For a whale's dumpy body, which seemed incapable of anything more than rolling through the waves. She could not shake from her mind the image she had created of the rotund blackfish rearing up to crush Pied beneath its rolls. Jinx did not underestimate these beasts of the sea, and often warned others against doing so themselves. Though Atka and Sos had blessed the wolves of land, the wolves were neither the strongest nor the swiftest terrestrial animals. In the sea and even on the shores, they were helpless as babes.

Ariston offered a nugget of wisdom, which Jinx seized upon with an uncharacteristic fervor. Whether it was that Ariston was the first wolf in a long time who hadn't seen fit to judge her based on one incident, or whether it was his encouraging words, she couldn't say.

(It never occurred to her that Ariston knew nothing of that one incident.)

"What reminds you most of home?" she wondered, licking her lips as though to taste his coming description. "For me, it is the crash of waves against the cliffs. The breaking wake... It was my lullaby as a babe." And as an adult, as an Alpha, and the high priestess of the Gods. Never had there been a day when she hadn't closed her eyes to better focus her ears on the waves; it wasn't only in childhood she took comfort in them. Their sound awoke something in her that no turbulent lake or rushing river could rouse. If she missed anything about Horizon Ridge—nevermind the Alpha she had deemed incompetent there—it was the familiar sound of home.