Silver Moraine I only deal in absolutes

As the days changed— lightening and darkening as dictated by all things natural— so did the mind of Phoenix. He roved endlessly, aimlessly. Unable to settle; unable to decide. However, the more time he spent alone, the less at ease he felt. He didn't become use to the quiet or the emptiness. He didn't revel in the time to himself or the sheer volume of his thoughts now that he had been left alone with them. He couldn't find himself able to commit to anything, torn between new possibilities and a desire simply to return to the pike.

The smooth, grey desolation before him didn't help with his heartache. He passed over snow and stone listlessly, barely paying any attention to his surroundings as he wondered how many options he truly had, and what would be his best choice going forward.

@Grayday/Easy -- I would love either <3

The fastest way to get from the woods to the plains was crossing through the moraine - it wasn't something Easy liked to do, but it was better than the extra hours it took to get around to one of the easier crossing points.

Still, it was with great consernation that she picked her way through to rocky around, gravel digging between her paw pads and skittering rocks causing her to stumble. At leas the ice had melted - the last time she'd passed through this way, it had been entirely impossible to navigate. "Damn it!" she huffed, fighting back tears as her paw slipped painfully between two rocks. Her momentum carried her anyway, and before her paw came loose, white-hot pain rocketed up past her elbow. "Ow - shit," she yelped, finally extracting her paw and hunkering down as she bit back against the pain.

With a huff of unhappiness, she remained still and weighed her options. It seemed silly to call for someone - she was not far from either territory, she could make it... but it would hurt, and she might mess up her paw further. Finally, the girl swallowed her pride and tipped back her head to give a small, querying howl. Come help me? it asked.

A requesting lyric feathered at Phoenix' lagging spirits. He picked up his head, curious at the sound, as he debated facing yet another distraction. But since he couldn't decide on anything else, this seemed to be a choice of little consequence; and he was glad just to make his mind up about something. He headed for the source of the call on high alert, his red ears pressed forward, and his nose and tongue tasting the chilled air. It didn't take him long to find the dark she-wolf, nursing a tender forepaw.

Phoenix kept his distance, boofing to her gently as he gave the injured brunet a respectful girth. "Can I help?" he asked kindly, sniffing with interest in her direction.

It was not anyone she recognized that answered the call, but Easy was taken with the stranger at once. Perhaps it was his passing likeness to her handsome brother-in-law, or the way he carried himself, or the simple fact that - like the heros in all of Daddy's stories - he'd come to rescue a maiden fair (her!). Whatever the case, she at once deemed him trustworthy.

"I hurt my paw," she said sheepishly, offering a shy wag of her tail. Not her usual behavior around strangers, but she felt suddenly bashful around this boy. "I live real close - I just don't know if I can make it out of the ravine on my own," the girl explained, holding her breath as another twinge of pain shot up her injured limb.

While he tried to discern what was wrong with her for himself, for a moment his gaze was taken by the smatterings of silver freckling the girl's ebony hide. He didn't think he'd ever seen a coat like hers, and for what it was worth, he realized in that moment that he was partial to enigmatic nature of a darker fur-type. His tail wagged as she didn't rebuff him, a complete stranger, and he felt his chest swell a little at the prospect of being any help at all to the robust young wolf. He couldn't help but think that if she wasn't in current distress, she would've been fun to hunt or spar with.

"I'll help you home then," he agreed without preamble. Phoenix padded forward, pausing in the last few steps—as if to accommodate for a change of her mind, or a hidden plot to lure him closer—before meeting her up-close and gently. She smelled of fields and woodforests, two things he didn't often scent together, and of a pack more expansive than any he'd come across yet. Faintly, he thought he recognized a part of her scent, but unless told, he would never make the connection between this wolf and her sister he'd met some days prior. He sniffed daintily at her favored paw, instinctively giving it a muted lick.

Straightening up, he smiled at her and angled himself so that he could support her injured side with his boxy frame as they went. "We'll take it nice and easy. I'm Phoenix, by the way."

Was this a dream? He'd come out of nowhere to help her in her hour of need! Her heart soared when he seemed to bow, kissing her paw as though she was a princess instead of just some girl he found in the wilderness. "Thank you," she said with a tentative wag of her tail, not wanting to seem too eager or anything. Aditya had rebuffed her when she'd showed him her feelings - but then again, he was also mated to Dawn. 

She nearly swallowed her tongue when he introduced himself, hurrying as she did to stop the words that wanted to come out of her mouth. Easy was not the name of a wolf that this one would want to rescue. "I'm Ishara," she replied, wobbling a little as she got used to the feel of his body beside hers. For a moment, she tried not to touch him at all (because he was a boy and not even one of her brothers), but that was quickly abandoned when she tried to step on her aching paw.

Ishara. Phoenix swallowed thickly and steadied himself as the curvesome dark lady pressed her body to his. He could feel how athletic she was beneath her fur, and it was instinct that charged him with the task of impressing her. He didn't know it yet, but Ishara was the kind of she-wolf that males should compete for: solid, capable, and spirited. Slim, delicate features were all aesthetics to him; not his type. This one was his kind of beautiful—without a dainty angle to speak of—and he was naturally, instantly, irrevocably attracted.

Like a wall at her side, the red-earred boy tried to make sense of the electricity coursing through him that made his legs feel a little stiffer as he walked. What was this? His breaths came out thoughtfully—evened out to a tempo so slow and steady it couldn't be natural. Phoenix could be as brave and honest as the best of them, but he didn't know what this was, what he was experiencing, so he chose instead to ignore it entirely. "Tell me something about yourself," he said after noticing one or two of her winces—"or you can ask me stuff, y'know, instead."—trying to fill the silence; trying to take her mind off the pain.

In pain as she was, Easy forgot to be feminine and demure. She might even have forgotten how handsome Phoenix was, except he felt so warm and solid beside her. "We can take turns," she suggested, thinking this was a good compromise. "I'll go first though - " because she was a lady.

But what should she say? Something kind of braggy so he would know how cool she was? Something about her family? Something humble? Okay, obviously not that one. "I'm a scout and a hunter, and I also help guide my dad around cos he doesn't have eyes anymore," she told the boy, deciding to start with something simple. Duties were simple, right? "What do you do in your pack?"

She was smart and compromising? Phoenix didn't know how lucky he was, but he could feel it in the way a smile parted his jaws in response to her offer. Nodding, he pressed his ears forward as she told him the basics—a good start—before proceeding to ask him about his own non-existent pack. As high as she could make him feel, she could certainly bring on the lows too; just like a good wife. He swallowed thickly as he felt the shame of packlessness more intensely than he ever had before. Even when regretting his decision to disperse, he'd never felt so useless, but in this moment Ishara made him feel worthless as a lone wolf. And much like she hadn't felt Easy was a good enough title to give him, Phoenix hesitated to revel to her his unmaking.

"I'm, kinda in-between packs at the moment..." he admitted at great length, with a small cough tacked on to distract. "But I used to be the best scout back home," he went on quickly. "Also not bad in a fight. My dad lost one of his eyes too, so I had to step up on the defensive front as soon as I could." He almost went on to explain that sparring so much had left him a little sore in the hunter's department, but before he could continue his word-vomit, he decided that admitting too many weaknesses in the same breath would be a detriment to his image.

I know you're already in another pack (that Easy is now also joining, because I ship it) but there's no way she wouldn't ask xD

"You should comcome live with me," said Easy, wagging her tail in unfeighned eagerness. Sylvas was their only real fighter, and despite her father's hatred of the scouting trade, there did seem to be an awful lot of them at Morningside. He'd be in good company!

"It's cool how both our dads have missing eyes," she noted, sucking in a harsh breath as she stumbled over a rock, sending another jolt of pain up to her shoulder. Her eyes watered, but she pressed a bit closer to Phoenix and held back her tears. "Daddy still had one left, but he can't see out of it for some reason. He runs into trees a lot, so we moved here to the plains."

She nodded to the wide, open arena set over the next slope. If they got a little further up, they'd be able to see Lavender Hill in this distance.

I had anticipated that and prepared lmao <3 Sorry for the wait!

Phoenix felt his pulse quicken as Ishara readily offered him a home. He knew it was something he wanted, but now he felt like he was standing in a hallway with many, many doors. He smiled at the offer, yet couldn't find the words to accept or refuse it. She was offering him one (if not several) of the countless things he wanted for himself— it made sense to accept.

Adding to this, his company was unselfish. She filled the silence with a comment about their shared parallels, and a deeper dive of her past; an understanding of the kinds of wolves she and her family were. It made him want to be with her, with them, more. "We should start a gang. Kids with missing-eyed fathers," he chuckled faintly, then took a deep breath, pressing into her side sympathetically. "I can't accept your offer, though. The plains aren't for me." A forest wolf, born and bred, he couldn't see himself living in such vast emptiness. With such little reprieve from the sun, he couldn't imagine the dark-furred Ishara would much enjoy the summers here either.

If he'd known her longer than half an hour, it would've been impossible to refuse.