Dragoncrest Cliffs my bed (worth 10 years' war)
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#1
All Welcome 
post-war

the morning is foggy and chilly. even more so the closer to the cliffs she ventures. she does not venture too close often though occasionally she likes to view the sea and let the unyielding crash of the waves against the rock face below soothe her. the sea has a fury that cannot be tamed, cannot be matched. that is what blodreina likes the best about it. it is raw and unfettered power that can birth land and steal it away to it's crushing depths just as quickly.

she'd been out of territory tracking herd movements when the war had gone down and she is disappointed to have missed the fight but she doubles her patrol on the borders that the sound touches all the same. she does not trust them ( even from before the battle ) and she believes that they have brought this discord upon themselves. this is what happens when you park beside drakru — though the details of the battle are unknown to her. she does not know who or how or where it all started. it hardly matters. she will always stand behind drakru whether right or wrong.

she lets out a low disgruntled huff, peeling her lips back from her teeth as she swings her head in the direction of the sound before she calms herself with a deep breath of chilled salty brine and a roll of her shoulders to relieve the tension that has coiled there.
roangeda · green-lit

trigedasleng
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Like all mornings since the fighting broke out, Ephraim woke suddenly from a nightmare of blood and salt. And like all mornings that began this way, he compartmentalized his fear and anger into a neat pack at the back of his mind. Later, he told himself. He would confront all of that later. There was a lot to unpack and it was easier for him to just push it away and not dwell on it for now. It wasn't working as well as he liked to believe. He looked more haggard under his eyes than he ever had from losing sleep and it was beginning to wear on his concentration. Oh well. Today was another day and he would play the part of fearless soldier, even though he felt nothing but dread for what would come next.

He tried to stretch and winced when his nape burned where Eurycrates' teeth had sliced his flesh. Other wounds pulled and ached as he rose and woke himself with a ginger shake, ones that made themselves known in every twist and move he made. He emerged into the foggy morning and shivered at the damp cold that wound down into his bones. Gritting his teeth to keep them from chattering, the young coywolf jogged out toward the cliffs.

The forest bordering it was quiet and there was no one around until he found Blodreina, whom he remembered vaguely from Trigeda. They'd spent no appreciable time together and he didn't even remember her name; then, she had been Eske. Hei, he greeted, casting the cliffs a dark look. Eurycrates had died near here. He relived it every night, with that bloodcurdling scream ever present in his ears between the claps of thunder from the storm. He shuddered and moved away, closer to the dark-haired woman.
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blodreina becomes aware of footfalls drawing nearer and it is only when she is able to pinpoint that they come from within drageda's territory that she relaxes the tension that had begun to pull taunt in her shoulders. she keeps moving though — a few shuffles further along the border line, head bowed to draw in the scents. they are fresh, of course. she does not expect the borders on this side to be lacking on drakru scents but it is still ingrained in her to check all the same.

hei. the sound of his voice gives pause to blodreina's steps and her head rises to take in the young man before her as he makes his appearance. she recognizes him vaguely. she remembers seeing him before she left with heda but they never met on any official level and his name — if she's ever known it at all — unfortunately escapes her. ❝hello,❞ blodreina returns the greeting in trigedasleng, studying him for a moment longer, pondering how fluent he is in it. i don't think we've ever officially met, blodreina gives voice to her previous rumination, turning most of her attention to him. her ears still rise; alert. i'm blodreina, she introduces and then pauses and offers with a soft smile and a sound of partial amusement. well, i went by eske when you first joined us. she explains, just in case he had heard her name in passing.
roangeda · green-lit

trigedasleng
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I don't think we've ever officially met. Ephraim gave her a puzzled look and reminded her, we went to Trigeda together. Though it kind of stung, he couldn't really blame her for not remembering his being there. He'd been a scrawny little kid at the time who always stuck close to Heda, taking in everything she could teach him on their march to war. He'd spent almost no time in the company of the others who travelled with them, hence not remembering her name, which she thankfully reminded him of in the next breath.

Red queen, he repeated, arching a brow subtly. What had happened in the time between Heda's small envoy leaving and Blodreina returning that had caused her to change her name? And because a part of him was a bit brazen of late, and because the sting of his injuries and sleepless nights kept him in a temper, and because part of him just wanted an excuse to be put in place so someone else could carry his burden for a moment, he asked, isn't that kind of an arrogant name to give yourself? What was wrong with Eske?
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right, blodreina replies with an awkward breath that she holds for a few beats as she contemplates apologizing to him. they had went to trigeda together ...and it is something she should've remembered. easily, she could write it off as being excited to see her parents again after so long — and despite the impending anticipation of battle her parents had been at the forefront of her mind the whole way and upon their arrival. she'd only really paid attention to heda during their journey and all others melted away in the background.

she'd always been a bit single minded, truth be told. it's why she'd never been able to pursue a secondary trade — she focused too heavily on one thing and struggled with the ability to balance and multi-task. his question prickles at her — out of all of gyda and gavriel's first litter blodreina's always been the easiest to antagonize. her temper was an issue as a child ...and every once in a while as an adult she'd forget all of her training in control and the flames would spread out of control. like accidentally adding too much lighter fluid to a flame. yeah, it is, she snaps in common. but i didn't give it to myself. my little sister called me it as a joke and i liked it. so i kept it. she tells him in a tone that insinuates what she leaves unsaid 'got a problem with that'?

eske is a name that belongs to my mother's culture. not mine. and try as she might gyda ragnarsdottir would never be a true kru, too unwilling to let go of her beloved father's culture even for the sake of her husband and children.
roangeda · green-lit

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Ephraim would have been stupid to think his words wouldn't have incited something, but he wasn't prepared for the sharp crack of Blodreina's tone as she responded. His tall ears snatched back toward his scalp and his eyes narrowed marginally, not in judgment—though he had plenty of that, and the co-mingled rage and fear threatening to consume his sensibilities even now threatened to let it be know—but in quiet supplication.

Aren't you proud of your heritage? he wondered, for that was perhaps the crux of his issue with changing names. He imagined somewhere out there, his family was proud of him and what he was growing into. They might not know all that he had accomplished in his time with Drageda, or how much potential he still possessed for growth. They might not even remember his face, as he had forgotten all of theirs. But he fantasized that they were still proud of their son. If he thought about it, he imagined he was proud of whatever his siblings had become, even if it was only pride for what he thought they might be, and not who they were, because he simply had no idea.

And so for that reason he couldn't fathom abandoning a name over something like a difference in culture because it felt a little bit like turning away from one's family. Eske was a strong and proud name as far as he could tell, or maybe he was just biased because like his it started with an E.
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i am proud to be drakru. which as far as she was concerned was the only heritage she was entitled to. i was born drakru. i was raised drakru. i am not a northwoman. not like my mother. i do not believe in her gods or her culture, blodreina explains with a borrowed patience. why should i call myself eske when the name belongs to her kru? blodreina inquires, not really expecting a response. the truth was her mind was already made up. she is blodreina and she had no intentions of ever going back to eske — unless by some unlikely twist of circumstance she happened to start sharing gyda's beliefs.

for a moment blodreina falls silent and makes no moves to abridge it before she draws in a breath. it's not that i don't love my mother, if that is what you think of me. perhaps, blodreina frets for the briefest of moments, that is how it might sound. like she's spitting on her mother's beliefs and culture. she isn't. or, at least, she isn't trying to. i do love her. i love and admire her endlessly. but she will never be true kru. she helped found this pack and even during her co-reign beside heda she could never entirely forsake her beliefs and culture. she didn't even make an effort. she may be one of the fiercest women in my life but that doesn't mean she isn't an outsider. blodreina's always had a very strong, very black and white view on what made an outsider and what made wolves kru. even if it conflicted with what everyone else thought ( which often times it seemed to ).

even she went by a different name for a time. sometimes, it's necessary. sometimes we outgrow names like we outgrow titles. kind of like how a goufa doesn't stay a goufa forever. she offers a half-shrug; despite that nothing about her has ever, even slightly changed. except maybe she'd became more of a bitch than she'd been before ( but that's debatable ).
roangeda · green-lit

trigedasleng
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She had a lot to say on the subject. Ephraim was silent throughout, keeping his opinions to himself. It was best he did, for she suggested a lot of things that went directly against not only what he thought, but his place in the pack. He hadn't been questioning her love for her parent and he hadn't been prepared for the way she dismissed all wolves that held different beliefs or didn't fit her narrow definition of what it was to be kru.

It made his stomach feel heavy and his lips almost writhed back to show his affront. Instead, he stayed quiet and listened to the rest of her warped logic with a closed off expression. He disagreed with almost every single thing she said, down to treating names like titles. Especially that bit about being kru. Her mother had helped found Drageda and she was considered an outsider? Blodreina reduced the dedication and devotion of wolves down to nothing, suggesting the only way to be true kru was to be born there. He interpreted it as a barb against those like himself, and grew cold.

In the end he only said a very chilly, okay then, before turning to leave.