Firefly Ravine paeta

 

follow up from the Grimmy thread! Tagged if you wanna join, Chusi, otherwise no biggie :3 

 

The moment that Eirlys had broken the treeline he hadn't wasted a single though on @Chusi. Why should he? Let her finally have a repercussion for her behavior - Ceallach had Eirlys, and that was his priority. Ceallach hadn't stopped running, keeping himself between Eirlys and any followers, until they'd made it back to safer grounds. He didn't go into the ravine entirely, instead, stopping by the mouth and focusing his attentions on the river. It would give them a chance to make sure they had a water source and maybe even some food if he could catch some fish while he let Eirlys rest some. He turned his attention to his sister, giving a soft sigh at the wounds on her muzzle and haunch. "@Eirlys," He said with a frown. "I'm so telling Mama you tried dying again." 

It was mostly in jest - really he wouldn't run tattling but then again, Hemlock wouldn't need to be told. The writing was on the wall, so to say, once the duo returned to their family's camp. "You'll have a new story for pienet sisarukset." And no doubt Droman would puff himself up and want to stalk off to battle the enemies while Reed would probably just scoff. He reached out gently, pressing his muzzle against his sister tenderly before he began to clean off her snout. "You scared me, Kultaseni." He admitted after a moment. Losing Eirlys would be the last thing keeping him together. Still, the headache that had started earlier made Ceallach wince just at the thought of Eirlys being gone; she hadn't even meant it but regardless the risk was there. 


She was the last tie that he had to their mother and father. Unaware that Arturo had been near the family camp, and then was along coastline now. He knew that they had Hemlock, Tapat, and Droman and Reed but it was different. She was the only one who had been there with him. She had lost their brother and sister, mother and father, she understood him like no one else did. Ceallach turned his gaze up to meet hers, breathing out slowly. He could calm down now that the risk was gone. She was here, with him, and safe. 

Eirlys maintained her hurried pace for some time before the ache in her leg forced her to slow, gait faltering as she began limping in earnest. “Don’t, Ceallach,” she begged, a smile tugging at the pain-hardened line of her mouth as she caught his eye and saw the hint of mischief there. More spiritedly, “Maybe I’ll give you one just like it,” she threatened playfully, falling back upon the tried and true Ansbjørn method of teasing the mood back to a suitably buoyant level. “We’ll have to add something new whenever they ask us to tell it,” she joked. “Add two inches to his fangs every time.” She trembled as she crumpled weakly to the ground, tilting her head up to Ceallach and practically crossing her eyes to watch him as he cleaned the scrapes on her muzzle.

His worry for her was sweet and painful, and tears gathered in her eyes as she espied the pinch of his brow that spoke of an oncoming headache. “I’m sorry, rakas,” she said more quietly. “I’ll be more careful.” Her nickname for him would have lifted some tundran brows — it was more suitable for a mate or a boyfriend — but Eirlys didn’t have any reason to question its use. She couldn’t remember when she’d started calling him that, but it was some time after Lotte’s death — when it didn’t hurt so much to hearken back to the mysterious Enok Tundra that she’d spoken of so fondly.

Yelling in the distance caused her ears to swivel in that general direction. She heard @Chusi’s shout — something accusatory, something about a boyfriend — and then an answering call that was softer and more melancholy, and therefore harder to catch. “Chusi!” she gasped fretfully. “She should’ve been right behind me. What if she’s hurt? You don’t think they hurt her, do you, Ceallach?” She attempted to struggle to her feet, but she was literally too butthurt to rise.

Eirlys was Eirlys, always had been, always would be. She was steady even in her attempts to weave worlds and personas the way that their mother had. Ceallach's gaze grew fond, his expression relaxed a bit (although the pounding in his head still sounded like stomping) and he let her flop to the ground and chose to tend to her wounds. "And at least four more wolves each time. Although you'll get all the glory, won't you?" He asked with a laugh, at least there was that. The littles would savor the story all the same, and in Eirlys there would be that spark of Lotte growing slowly stronger. Ceallach didn't think he favored either parent, he was his own being and in a way the black sheep of the quartet. He looked nothing like his mother and most days it made him sad.


"Im not mad at you." Ceallach promised. It wasn't her fault. He had moved to her flank to begin cleaning the wound on her leg, her blood on his tongue a strange mixture of revolting and exhilarating. Ceallach turned his eyes to find Eirlys' and breathed out slowly. He'd focus only on her, almost not hearing (or more appropriately choosing to ignore the sounds of Chusi and her paramour) until Eirlys tried to shift up. Ceallach blocked her physically, stepping over her and pressing her back with a shake of his head. He was quiet for a moment after hissing for her to hush and tried to put his big ears to good use. He'd never quite shook that childish notion that his larger than-average-ears should also hear better. 

He couldn't hear them chasing anyone out, he didn't hear the scuffle and scramble of a fight. He had to trust that it was fine and he had to pretend that he even cared but he wasn't like Lotte. He didn't have a thespian bone in his body. "If they did she brought it on herself." He muttered grimly as he focused his gaze back on Eirlys. 

Assuming the Chusbus will not stop at this station, so continuing on. ;o;

“But Ceallach,” Eirlys whined, nipping affectionately at his chin as he urged her physically to stay down, “what if — ” She hushed immediately as he hissed for quiet, using his oversized ears to better hear the commotion in the distance; and although the sound of footsteps initially grew louder as Chusi moved away from the claimed territory, it died out into silence again. It became apparent to Eirlys in that moment that Chusi was not following her but instead was breaking new ground to go somewhere else, and that stung. The cocoa-dusted snowdrop had left a very obvious trail — the sour scent of fear mixed with the metallic tang of blood — and Chusi hadn’t even come to check on her. It was a childish way of thinking, that she was worthy of being checked on even though she had made a dreadful blunder by trespassing in the first place, but Eirlys was a child and Chusi was her big sister.

Was.

Eirlys disliked the grim tone of Ceallach’s voice, but more than that, she disliked the overwhelming feeling of rejection. All these months she’d made excuses for Chusi in the back of her mind when her blatant refusal to come home [despite being in a neighboring territory!] had driven papa to madness and Ceallach to rage. Now, though, she was given little choice but to see things for what they were: Chusi didn’t love her siblings anymore. Maybe she hadn’t for a long time. “I don’t know about that,” she said softly, because it wasn’t like she wanted her isosisko to be sad. “It was me; I got her in trouble when I trespassed. Do you…do you think I could make things right?” She knew she’d gotten off easy; äiti had practically dismembered the last trespasser to Teaghlaigh.

Wait a minute — why was she trying to make things right? Maybe Ceallach was right. Maybe it was time for Chusi to finally start accepting responsibility for her actions. She still didn’t even know äiti was dead — but Eirlys was beginning to believe that it didn’t matter anymore. Though she stayed where Ceallach had indicated, sucking in a hissing breath as he began to clean the weeping wound on her hind leg, “No. You’re right, Ceallach,” Eirlys said, deadly quiet. “She made her choice. She chose not to come home; she chose not to visit even when she could have thrown a fuckin’ rock into our territory from where she stood; and now, just now, just — ” she began to sputter, feeling a measure of his fury seep into her bones, “ — now she’s chosen a third time. Not like it’s hard to figure out where I am, and there she goes, because fuck Ceallach, fuck Eirlys, why bother, right?” The angrier she let herself get, the more she sounded like their father — and she tried so hard to keep her emotions from breaking free this way, but something about this felt so freeing.

“No, Ceallach,” she growl-whined with an asthmatic wheeze. “This time it’s us — this time it’s us telling her to fuck off.”

Something in Ceallach warned him of the immense threat. Eirlys could see the world through rose colored glasses and Ceallach would be happy to keep them on her. Instead of the way she felt now, he'd lie through his teeth to keep her spirits up. This, Chusi, was taking away even more of her innocence and Ceallach felt himself bristle. Something else entirely told him that he'd never seen his sister so beautiful; even as her own anger flared and threatened to catch with his and grow like a wildfire. 

His tongue traced the curve of her flank as he tended to her, a faint smile on his face at her sudden outburst. "Is this the mouth that will catch your suitors, [b]Kultaseni?"  [/b] Ceallach teased. Eirlys was something else when worked up. He saw more of Arturo then, wild and uneven, a quite anger hidden behind a smooth facade. "She is no Fearghal. She abandoned us. She isn't worthy to meet Reed and Droman." Ceallach decided bitterly. He was man of the family, right?

He let out a slow exhale and shifted above her to press his skull against hers, nuzzling tenderly. "How can I take this pain from you?"  

Eirlys continued to fume, her normally placid expression screwed into a ragged collection of crooked, discontented snarls. She was about to remind her smiling brother just how ferocious she was when his question shocked the crankiness right out of her. “Suitors?” she repeated blankly, blowing the very idea away with a strikingly unladylike snort. “If boyfriends make girls leave their families behind, then I’ll never have a suitor.”

The more she thought about it, the better she liked it. As much as she idolized Sif for having her life so tidily made up at such a young age — she had a husband already! — Eirlys herself was happy still being considered a puppy. She liked being a daughter and a sister. She wasn’t nearly as excited about being somebody’s mother or wife — in fact, the idea kind of grossed her out. “Just don’t get a girlfriend,” she quipped in a theatrical groan, though there was something wistful in her tone. “Who’s going to keep us all together if you go away, too?” Unfairly, she tended to enforce the mindset that Ceallach had already adopted: that he was the family’s keeper — the glue without which everyone would fall apart.

 

The low rumbled sound that left Ceallach was only for Eirlys, picturing her as a wife - her thick plush covered with someone else's body. He snorted and then moved to picturing her with babies suckling at her teats; that was far more agreeable. "But I will just scare them away - my 'friend' doesn't care much for company." He quipped as he teased his snout along her jawline, giving a breathy sigh. "Where you go, I go, Eirlys - I am not your Dagfinn but there will never be a time when you must question if I am there."  

Ceallach moved so that he could circle her, pressed close against her plush with his long legs stretched so she could get comfortable against him. "Someone will have to give Mama grandchildren." Ceallach teased, drawing his teeth through her scruff to settle her fur. "And your babies would be far prettier than mine." He chuckled then, at the idea of being a father, a husband, no - he was not sure he'd had the best examples of family. What they had was theirs, and they protected it, the children set far more to the job than they should have been. They had never just been able to play and be childish. 

“You’re better than Uncle Dagfinn,” Eirlys said softly. “You stayed.” She cuddled into his embrace and shuddered violently at the thought of ever having to be the one to give mama grandchildren or being in travail. The pain of childbirth scared her, the inevitability [she thought] of having to raise those children without a mother or father scared her, and the thought of loving a man so much she might lose her head over it and abandon her family scared her. Uncharacteristically, “I don’t wanna talk about it anymore, rakas,” Eirlys slurred unevenly, wracked with nervous tremors. “I don’t want things to be different,” she admitted, fat tears welling up in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. “I don’t want this — us — to change.” All the stress of the past hour or so rose up, ugly and insurmountable.

What Ceallach didn't want to - didn't dare to - say was that he wasn't her Roarke. He wasn't made of the same stardust, cut off the same cloth, they weren't bound to one another by souls. He was not her twin and he was not made to fill that spot the way that Roarke should have. Ceallach couldn't contest her logic, however, he had stayed and he would remain with her. "I'll never leave you." He said earnestly; how could he stand losing the last part of his family? surely, he would entirely be lost to whatever breast paced in the recesses of his mind. If Arturo could willingly give into Witchdoctor, Ceallach had to hold out hope that he could be stronger and he could be better. Eirlys deserved that. As Eirlys' emotions swept her into a tizzy he tucked himself around her closer, one limb shifting to pull her flush against his form. He was far too tiny to provide the warmth she probably needed but he would try. "We won't." He promised. They wouldn't talk about it anymore. "Kultaseni - I can't lose you. Ever." How could he stand in her way though? No - he would step aside when the time came but he would never leave her.

She had to satisfy herself with the knowledge that Ceallach never said things he didn’t mean. If he said he wouldn’t leave her, he wouldn’t. If he said they wouldn’t talk about that subject anymore, they wouldn’t. “Thanks, rakas,” she hiccupped, taking comfort by burrowing against him despite the difference in their sizes. Then she adopted her usual posture — it didn’t trouble her or make her feel less feminine in the least to be the big spoon! — and coiled around him, enveloping him in her superior warmth. She brought up something they’d tossed around a bit before, a kind of fantasizing about what adventures they might have in the future, with visiting the Enok Tundra chief among them. “We would have to sleep like this every night,” she mused without a clear transition from one subject to the next, “or else you’d freeze your pretty ears off.” Together the two of them laughed, and the eager chattering continued until Eirlys’ muscles went slack and easy with sleep.