Duskfire Glacier Sometimes a flower is just a flower.

Much had changed in such little time, and Wayfarer simply carried on.

She'd never been particularly close to her father, unfortunately, but felt the loss of him despite the bitterness she continued to carry. Wayfarer, weighted by her quiet grief, would linger on the edges of Duskfire territory and often disappear for days at a time - eager to be alone with her demons on those more trying weeks.

Lean and long-legged, youth remained on her side despite having been forced to grow up much too soon. Snow flurried gently from a dark evening sky on her return from one of her brief trips into the unknown and she snaked her tongue between her lips to sweep a stray flake from a whisker. She was tired and hungry, yet her focus was on locating the one wolf she knew she could rely on - @Veteran.

"Hey Wayf," Veteran spoke even before he turned around and saw her. He knew they way his sister's steps crunched in the snow. He knew the way her breath hissed from her nasal passages. And he knew the way her stomach grumbled when she returned home from a trip. 

He drifted over to her and headbutted her shoulder. "Food?" he asked with a smile, already knowing her answer. Even though he smiled, his expression was still a bit wan, as it had been since Dad died.

"C'mon! Lemme show you what I hunted the other day." He perked up as soon as he realized he would have a chance to show off the kill. 

"So where'dya go this time?" he asked as they walked.

He approached from her left flank, and the russet ear closest was swift to turn toward the sound of snow crushed beneath padding paws. Wayfarer halted smoothly and rose her chin, Amber eyes sharp as she searched the gloom for her brother's dark features - softening somewhat when her gaze found the familiar powder blue of his own.

Veteran reached for her, and she felt herself tense a little. While she adored her littermate, he who had been the only constant she could rely on, a lifetime of hurt and disappointment by those around her had hardened her more than she cared to admit. She'd never been particularly close to their late father nor the other cubs he'd sired, but there was no greater tragedy than the tumultuous relationship between Wayfarer and her mother.

Her lip twitched at her frustrated thoughts of Lane. Choosing not to let her bitter feeling dampen her reunion with Veteran, however, the russet youth rumbled affectionately as she leaned his way to mouth the peppered furs of his neck.

"Nowhere worth noting," Wayfarer responded with ease, unwilling to discuss at any greater length the places that she made for herself - not even to Veteran. No, her wanderings beyond the glacier were hers and hers alone: comfort and safety from the misery of home. She tried to de-rail the subject, "I hope you felled a great stag, because I'm starving!"

Veteran looked pointedly at Wayfarer when she dodged his question. She never said anything about the places she went, and he always told her about all of his adventures! It wasn't fair. 

He didn't want to bicker with her right now though, so he let the subject drop. 

"Oh, yeah!" he agreed quickly with her description of the "great stag." Except.. "Well, it was a caribou cow..." he admitted. Not a stag. Not even a large male. A moment's pause, and another admission emerged. "..And it wasn't very big. The Zombie Deer Disease had already got it really bad..." The pitiful thing had been practically skin and bones. 

They reached the cache, and he began to dig it open. The soil was cold but loose, as the hunters had been adding continuously to the cache in the past weeks. "Didja see much of it, where you went?" He clarified, "The Zombie Disease thing, I mean?" His gaze would sneak up to Wayfarer's face before darting back down to the task at hand. He was prying again, and they both knew it.

Ah, the zombie disease. Wayfarer curled her lip at the mention of it, her stomach churning in memory of the stench which accompanied each beast that'd succumbed to whatever sickness had come to affect the herds.

So Veteran's kill was nothing worth showing off and she was left feeling disappointed by the earlier suggestion of a fine meal, but the fire-pelted youth felt too drained to poke fun at him. Wayfarer, glad for her brother's warmth, would save her teasing for another occasion. 

"Hm," Wayfarer pawed lazily at the ground as Veteran began to dig, not at all anticipating the sourness of frozen meat that she would need to pretend to enjoy, "uh, none, actually. Didn't see a single deer, so...?"

Either they had moved on in attempt to save themselves from disease, or they were to stupid to consider it. 

Veteran finally unearthed the caribou haunch, meager and stale. It had seemed bigger in his memory... his neck had been sore for the rest of the day, after he'd dragged it here to the cache. He set the haunch down with a hopeful look at his sister, but somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he was barking up the wrong tree seeking praise from her. She didn't much like giving out praise these days. Wayfarer was more like mom than she would ever like to admit, and her sharp, judgmental looks in particular held a glaring similarity.

"Uh, you don't have to eat it," he demurred quietly. There were plenty of fresher cuts of meat that he'd unearthed, digging down to his own prize. Wayfarer could have her pick. The pack was certainly not hurting for meat. 

"Hey, do you want to watch the stars with me at our old place on the plain?" Veteran asked, seeking to change the subject. "I know all kinds of new stories now, from staying in the Moonglow camp." Wayfarer was obviously uncomfortable speaking about her own travels, and so they would need some other pasttime. It seemed fitting somehow, to curl up together like they did when they were pups, staring in wonder at the sky as the lights danced overhead. The death of the parent had a way of returning one to their childhood state of being. 

Veteran peered at the sky, looking to assess whether the stars had risen high enough to be identified. By the time they reached their favorite platform on the Plain, he thought they would be just about perfect.

"Our spot is west of here," he murmured to himself, still studying the stars. When the sun was down, clever wolves used the sky to navigate. Veteran wondered if his sister had learned this art, given her penchant for scouting. He smiled when his gaze found the north star.

She saw how Veteran's expression shifted when at last he unearthed the remains of his prize, and her russet ears tilted backward with a wave of fresh guilt. Wayfarer wondered if her brother maintained the ability to read her, to know her unspoken feelings like he could when they were little.

The red-kissed youth shifted closer to him, her step featherlight with hesitation. She leaned over the stale meat and inhaled to test its scent, which she immediately regretted. While the flesh of diseased animals didn't seem to bring garm to their kind, she refrained from consuming it purely because the stench was enough to turn her stomach.

"It's okay, Vet," she assured him with a thin, regretful smile, "here, uh... how about we share this?" From the cache she tugged a hare whose bright white furs were streaked with dried, brown blood. "Share wif me?"

Her littermate's suggestion of star-watching and story-telling really didn't sound all that bad, and she figured it'd be nice to have a warm body to doze off against for a change. Wayfarer wagged her tail softly in agreement, and prepared to follow.

"Okay," Veteran agree readily to sharing, liking much better the look of the fresh hare she selected. He sniffed at it, identifying the scent of their half-brother. This was one of the hares Ensio had hunted. While Veteran had been learning to group-hunt herd animals with the Moonglow wolves, it seemed Ensio had been teaching himself to hunt small game. 

After they picked out their meal, he pointed up to the big dipper, which had emerged above the horizon line. His paw traced the seven-star pattern, easily the most recognizable constellation in the sky. "Northerners see a caribou there," he told her. He pointed to the long stem. "There's the head, and neck.." Next the four stars that created a box. "..And that's the body. If we trace the line between the underbelly and the tail... it points us to the north star."  Veteran's paw was left pointing triumphantly at the north star, which was a wolf's best tool for navigation at night. 

He smiled at his sister before deftly turning them west, toward their special stargazing spot. They could take the rabbit to their spot to sit and eat, and to tell stories.

Veteran tried to draw her attention toward something in particular, declaring that Northerners could map a specific creature - but she took a long time in locating the constellation. "It's got no fucking legs," she told him, unable to contain a bark of laughter, "you think the sky caribou might've caught the zombie disease, too?"

They settled, and Wayfarer took it upon herself to open the hide of their meal. She helped herself, appetite returning at the metallic tang of hare's blood and the taste of it on her teeth. It reminded her how ravenous she'd become during those long days in neutral territory, and she ate almost possessively before scooting aside to make space for her brother to join her.

Veteran laughed at his sister's observation. You have to imagine the legs! he almost told her, but she interrupted with the question about the zombie disease, which was a little odd. As far as he knew, caribou didn't lose their legs with the disease... but maybe Wayfarer had seen more things than he had. She had traveled much more extensively than he, after all. 

After they arrived at their special stargazing boulder, Wayfarer dug into the meal. She ate like a wild animal, which was an uneasy reminder to Veteran that he had never experienced hunger like she had. He hopped up to the boulder (oddly, it was smaller than he remembered it being) when she scooted to make room for him, but he would wait to eat until she finished, unwilling to get in the way when she had such a possessive look about her. 

As his sister ate, Veteran's attention was drawn to the moon hanging over the treeline. It was the last night of the waxing gibbous. Tomorrow it would be full, and they would hold their father's funeral. 

"The northerners had a story about the sun and moon," he recalled. "The sun is a young woman, beautiful with but with a fiery temper, and the moon is her..." Brother, Veteran almost said, because that was how the story was supposed to go. "..her Mother," he said instead, on a whim. "The daughter thought her mother was cold and hard, but the mother was misunderstood. The mother only wanted to be close to her daughter, which made the daughter angrier and angrier. One day, she hit her mother in the face and left a burn--" Veteran pointed to the dark mark on the moon-- "And ran away. The mother has been chasing after her daughter ever since, every night across the sky, hoping to one day catch her so they can make up." Okay, Veteran's retelling had deviated drastically from the original version, but he felt his had more relevance to their lives. Especially since the original version was about an incestuous brother and sister, which was just all kinds of disgusting and nothing he would ever want to speak about to his own sister.

Going to wrap this up, since Wayfarer is inactive.

Veteran looked to Wayfarer, wondering how she would receive the story with the not-so-subtle lesson. She had finished her meal, and her eyes were closed. Her breathing was long and even. She was... asleep?! After all that effort he'd put into crafting such a perfect story? He snorted in annoyance, and he laid his chin on his paws with a huff. 

He would watch the lights in the sky for a long time, but eventually sleep would also find him.