Stavanger Bay we are graveyards reaching, with haunted bones

weather: early morning about 7 am 52°F / 11°C clear

The early morning was chilly; made even more so by the beach as he prowls it’s white sand, stepping away from the tide as it stretches out to him like greedy, grasping fingers. He holds no doubt that the salt water is cold and he has not yet reached the point in the day where he would enjoy the cool-off; though he suspects it might not be a bad idea to bathe in the salty water ( once the day warmed up a bit more, of course ). This what he becomes, he thinks as his lips form a terse line and umbra dusted ears flutter back to rest loosely against the crown of his skull. A nomad. A vagrant. No, he thinks, a mercenary for hire that masks his natural and pleasant scent of amber, vanilla, woodsy musk with the sharp tang of pine or the salty brine of the sea. The freedom is liberating and Drogon enjoys being his own leader but there is another part of him that craves the stability that a pack can offer, and the socialization. Not that he’s very good at socializing: his tongue is as wicked and sharp as a newly forged blade and he is just as merciless and cruel.

He veers up the beach, picking up his pace when sand shifts to solid earth beneath his paws, shrugging into the copse of ash trees that dominate the bay. He searches for a clean water source to linger around until the world around him heats up and he deigns to return to the beach to cool off when he is apprehended by the pungent and metallic scent of blood and pitiful, tiny bleating: calls for a mother that Drogon knows is not coming back for it. It’s too injured to keep up with it and the mother and sibling’s scent is a few hours stale. Saliva pools in his mouth as he adjusts his course, shrugging through the underbrush, crouching in the shadows for a moment to assess. The fawn is injured and it’s sheer luck that it wasn’t already made into a meal by another predator.

Even if the soturi cared enough to feel pity for it ( he did not ) killing it was a kindness ( besides filling his belly ). He surges forward and though the fawn — it’s back leg twisted unnaturally and bleeding — attempted stubbornly to rise and run away from him was rendered immobile. It let out a single, weak bleat as Drogon seized it by the neck and bit down through flesh, clamping his jaws shut until it’s life siphoned from it’s body. Warm blood dribbled down his chin and his salmon pink tongue drew across his jowls to collect it as he released the fawn and circled his meal once before he sank his teeth into it’s soft belly and began to dine upon it. Thinking that this carcass could last him a few days if he rationed it carefully. He could hunt well enough to feed himself ( obviously )— at five months he was no longer helpless and as he neared his adult size was a gangly titan with broadening shoulders and last vestiges of baby pudge that melted away into hard muscle honed by his warrior training and long legs ( but his feet and head were still a little too big yet, tell-tale that he wasn't an adult as first, quick glimpse might give impression of ) — but it was rare he got so lucky as to have a meal of venison.

Sunspot had been attracted by the same sounds as Drogon. She wasn't particularly hungry, but after her recent fall from grace, the woman was looking for ways she might redeem herself. Bringing home a fresh meal for her brother's children seemed like just the thing.

But when she arrived on the scene, it was to see that kid chowing down already. Part of her wanted to rush out and shout at him. You again? she thought, eyes flashing with remembered irritation. But even as young as the boy was, Sunspot knew better to interrupt the meal. She sank down into the brush and watched the boy eat through half-slit eyes, wondering if it would be worth it to sneak in and steal the remains after Drogon finished eating. She didn't need it, but it would feel kind of nice to spite the kid, wouldn't it?

After a few moments of thought, Sunspot decided that it probably wouldn't. She began to feel a bit guilty the way she'd treated the boy, though she still maintained that he'd been the one to start it.

thanks for joining! ♥

Drogon was definitely going to ration it, he tells himself, try to make it last for as long as he possibly can. But the meat is succulent and decadent and it is a test of his self control not to just devour it all now, or eat what he can until his belly bulges with food. Rationing the meat will ensure he’ll have a meal for later and maybe the following morning and would be smarter than giving into instantaneous gratification. As a lone wolf, Drogon had learned very quickly, every scrap of meat counted and could make the difference between starving and living. Between an empty stomach and a grumbling, but not empty stomach; and that becoming a scavenger wasn’t pitiful: it was smart. He eats his fill of the fawn, satisfied that there is enough left over and works on cleaning his muzzle of the blood and bits of flesh that stick to it, savoring the morsels.

Now the crux was finding a place to stash his kill where he would remember it and where it would not be disturbed by other hungry carnivores. It was as he searches the immediate clearing for a spot to dig a make-shift cache that he realizes he’s not alone. He does not see her, but he smells her and he recognizes the scent near immediately. It’s her, the woman that had known Cascada. The one he’d chased off and lets out a low huff at his luck; but he continues on with his search for a cache as if he hasn’t caught her scent wondering which one of them would be the first one to make the breach.

When the boy finished eating, Sunspot waited only long enough to finish picking a thorn from her paw before sitting up and making her presence known. She wasn't quite sure why she'd remained, and she didn't have anything in particular to say to the boy - it seemed like things had ended conclusively enough at the last meeting.

But she remained, head tilted to the side, sinking deeper and deeper into thought as the second ticked by.

"I think I'm gonna leave my brother's pack, Drogon," she said suddenly, the words bubbling up without her permission. And there was no reason for her to tell him about it, but there was no reason for her to tell anyone. There was no reason for her to leave. But feelings of discontentment had been welling up within her for some time, now, and if she didn't tell Drogon, who was she going to tell?

Drogon looks up from the corpse and swipes his salmon pink tongue across his jowls as she makes her presence known to him, unable to help the surprise he feels that she’s bothering to approach him at all …and that she waited for him to finish his meal first. He’d appreciative of the latter because he cringes at the idea of spoiling a perfectly good meal with an argument. He continues to clean off his muzzle, acknowledging her presence with the steady persistence of his glacial gaze upon her. He doesn’t really expect her to talk to him — admittedly the tundrian was a total ass to her last time they’d spoken. There’d been no need for it, aside from the fact that Drogon is generally an ass to everyone he meets; and his apathetic and unapologetic disregard for the feelings of others only serves to add insult to injury. He realizes that he could stand to be …kinder but holds that flawed belief that the world never apologized for making him into what he is so then why should he apologize for what he became in return?

He noses the carcass in search of anything left he can steal from it, cracking off a long rib bone to worry. The crack is loud in the otherwise still silence between them and an umbra ear flickers towards her with unbridled shock when she speaks to him; and not just speaks to him but blurts out a confession; a sacrament of penance as if he can offer her reconciliation. Or perhaps, nothing like that at all. Perhaps she just needed to confess and he’s the easier one to confess too because they have no ties to one another and he doesn’t really know her from Eve. His jaw tightens around the rib bone for a second before he sets it at his paws as he turns to face her once more.

“Why’s that?” He inquires, figuring that if he can offer her nothing else at the very least he can let her talk about it to him, if she desires to get it off her chest as he picks the bone back up and begins to worry it, suckling the marrow from within after he chews, stretching out into a sphinx-like position so he can hold the bone beneath a large paw and better chew upon it.

Sunspot blinked at the boy, surprised at the civil tone and inquiring words. It was unexpected, and for a moment, the huntress simply sat there, on a narrow ledge between rest and flight. In the end, rest won out, and the cream-colored femme laid down in the tall grasses once more, so that she had somewhere to hide her face. Words, she could share with the boy. But she did not feel comfortable with her expression bared.

"We were pups, the last time he really knew me. He still sees me in that body, though I've been grown as long as he has," she explained. It was that, and it was more. It was less. Sunspot didn't know exactly why his leadership grated on her so much, but the fact remained that it did. "He's not the boss of me. After everything I've been through - not him."

Not because he left, exactly, but because he hadn't been there. She'd earned her leadership back at Sameth - had won the title of alpha, had won the subservience of her brothers and sisters. She was the head of the family, the matriarch -

And Grayday just wasn't part of that. Not anymore.

Drogon continues to worry his bone as she speaks, his glacial gaze focused upon his prize as he sharpens his teeth and works on strengthening his jaw muscles. He appears inattentive all but for the pivot and cup of his ears to signify that he is, indeed ( and perhaps despite the odds stacked against him ) paying attention to her. He does pause, however as she divulges that she is annoyed that he sees her as a child though she is definitely far from such a thing and reinforces that he is not the boss of her. At these words, the tundrian’s bone is briefly abandoned as his glacial gaze flickers up to her, taking in her expression with careful consideration. He is slightly baffled because he understands and cannot help but wonder if they are so truly different as first impressions caused him to believe. Left ear twitches, pivoting to the side as he lifts his chin ever-so-slightly.

“I don’t blame you.” Drogon tells her. He doesn’t want to be seen as a child either …though unfortunately for him he was still a child. Not mentally, no he’d far since grown up mentally but physically was a whole other story, His body was slower than his mind and still progressed at it’s natural course. “but why leave? Why let him continue to have what he does not deserve? If you don’t think he’s a worthy leader why not challenge him for it?” Because it’s what Drogon would do. At least that exhausted all possible options for leaving to be the only one left. Then again, Drogon forgets that he is a very physical, dominance oriented beast and that not all packs and wolves operated the same way as him. Nor did all admire brute strength ( though Drogon isn’t sure why that’s the case, he wouldn’t want some scrawny thing incapable of protecting the pack as his leader, smart or not ).

It was a relief to hear that someone didn't blame her, even if it was an upstart kid that she still felt a certain amount of animostiy for. His next words, however, blew that relief away. When he was finished, she had to giggle - just a tiny bit! - at the boyishness of this point of view. It was just such a typical mannish way to approach the situation, and Sunspot couldn't help the exasperated look she sent his way.

"It's not about worthiness," she sighed, ears slicking back at the thought. Would Grayday think that she thougth him unworthy? Did she think him unworthy, undeserving? "Grayday's a fine leader, and he does right enough by his family. It's just that - well, I'm not part of it, anymore. Not really," she tried to explain. "I guess I feel like I'm on the outside looking in, when I'm so used to being right in the middle - being in charge. But he wasn't part of that, and he doesn't see me as the leader I became. Just the girl he remembers."

And, she supposed, there was how she still saw him. Not as a father, or a leader, or as a heartbroken man, but as a boy not much older than Drogon, and with a bullheadedness to match.

"You remind me a bit of him," she said, then, head cocking to the side. "Of when we were younger. More sure of ourselves." Her head went back down onto her paws, and she observed the young male through hooded eyes.

Sunspot giggles at him and sends him an exasperated look at his questions, at his logic of deduction. It causes the fur of his mane to puff slightly with indignation and a furrow to crease his brows as he contemplates what he could have possible said to cause such reactions from her ( plus is unsure if she’s mocking him ). Drogon’s line of thought makes the most sense to him because he’s never had the chance to experience diplomacy or how it works. He’s been so absorbed in the physical aspects of life: fighting and physical dominance that …he knows nothing else. He knows that the strongest survive and thus believes that only the strongest should rule; but the vagabond doesn’t really understand how pack politics work either. It’s not anything he’d truly been exposed to. Ironically, he is just like the gladiator he’d always considered himself as a ( younger ) child. Not the mastermind of the Dominus or even Doctore but the man that they have whipped and trained and turned into a killing machine. Where, in the arena only the strongest survive — of body, certainty but also a bit of mind: there had to be that observation, that sharpness of mind to be able to outwit one’s opponent especially when they held a distinct advantage. Gladiators had no need of politics. They answered to the most base calling of their blood, after all.

Sunspot’s explanation left Drogon thinking that she was just upset because he doesn’t consider her a leader, or does not, evidently, appear to think that she’s worthy of sharing the title with him. Drogon makes a noise of contemplation in his throat but continues to worry at his bone, pieces of it splintering and cracking beneath the force of his jaw as his teeth scrape and sink into it. His head lifts as she confesses that he reminds her of her brother and slowly Drogon’s salmon pink tongue swipes across his jowls as he contemplates whether that is a compliment or not. “I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not.” Drogon admits honestly after a few seconds.

Sunspot offered the boy an apologetic shrug. "It's more of a neutral thing, I suppose. Grayday is a good wolf, even if I don't want to live with him," she replied, her words gaining strength as quickly as they came to her. She stood and shook off her pelt, suddenly full of energy.

"What are you doing all the way out here?" she wondered, nostrils flaring. "You smell like you've got some new friends. Are you in a pack, now? Can I join?"

Drogon lets out a contemplative hum as Sunspot tells him how it is: her brother is a good wolf but she no longer wishes to live with him. Fair enough. He can’t begrudge her anything, in truth, but especially not that honesty. Sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t and it was healthy ( as far as Drogon is concerned ) to take care of yourself first as opposed to suffer for the happiness/desire of someone else. He watches as she rises, gives her coat a hearty shake as if struck by a sudden bought of energy. His ears pivot atop his skull as she asks him what he’s doing all the way out here. It’s a perplexing question to the tundrian because he knows that he does a lot of wandering but it takes him a second to realize that she doesn’t know that. He has to keep moving. Drogon has to keep running but the question remained: was he running from something or to something? It’s answer evades even him.

The ash trees around them creak in the wind that rolls off of the ocean just down the slope of beach. “Mapping the terrain,” He wonders how many more territories he needs to visit before he’s been to them all — unclaimed of course. Mapping the terrain sounds a hell of a lot better than ‘wandering’ and thus it is the answer that the [i]soturi goes with despite that he has no actual interest in becoming a ranger ( at least, not yet ). There is, however, tactical advantage to knowing shortcuts and the length of trips so he does make use of his time as a nomad. One day, this information might be useful. For a moment, Drogon isn’t sure that he’s heard her right. She wanted to join the same pack as him? Him. He can’t help the incredulous furrow of his brows and lowering of his ears for a few seconds before they wash away in a charming grin. Perhaps hearts can change, after all. “Kind of. They’re still trying to form and…” I’m not sure I’m staying. It’s not like he makes a difference either way, in the end.

He doesn’t have much of a reason as to why. There’s nothing personal to drive him to depart. Aside from that he’s gotten used to his freedoms and he’s not ready to cash them in for a life subjugation yet. Not when prey is still plentiful and winter does not breathe down his back like the loom of the reaper. “I don’t weigh their ranks either way as I will still be in the child tier for a few months yet,” Even he forgets at times how young he truly is because he doesn’t feel it. “I will take you to them, if you wish, but as I spend more time out here to my own devices than I do with them I think I may be parting ways relatively soon.” As he’s contributed nothing then he does not deserve to call himself one of them, anyway. “If you wish to travel with me instead, you may.” Drogon offers her because he doesn’t want her to misunderstand his speak of leaving. It has nothing to do with her: so he makes her the offer. If it’s a pack she seeks he will take her to Constantine and if she ( for some reason ) wants his company she can choose to travel with him.

Sunspot's face fell. Even though what Drogon said made perfect sense, it still felt like being let down easy. He even offered to let her come along with him on his travels, but Sunspot didn't want to travel - she wanted to be part of a pack. One that hadn't known her as a babe.

"That's okay, Dro," she sighed. "I'm looking for something more permenant, though."

Energy sapped once more, she sat down on her haunches, wondering if leaving the Morningsiders had been a good idea after all. She'd never found out if there was anything to do with the strong and silent Sylvas, and Grayday's pups had just lost their mother... but she didn't have any desire to take that place, and Sylvas has a son to worry about as well.

"I normally hate kids," she said to Drogon, "but you don't seem very much like a kid. This time." She couldn't help but add a little snark to the otherwise fond words, remembering what a jerk he'd been the first time they'd met. He hadn't been the only one, though. "I'm sorry I snapped at you, for what it's worth."

As Drogon watched her face fall he actually felt a legitimate twist of guilt in his chest. Would he had been an apologetic sort, one might’ve slipped from betwixt his lips. “Well, there are plenty of packs around, maybe I can escort you to one. Make sure you get there ok.” Not that she couldn’t take care of herself, of course, it was just …he didn’t like that feeling that twisted and writhed around in his chest like it was a living creature trapped in there and he wanted to soothe it and hence was not sure what to do with it, how to cope with it. Drogon Ansbjørn didn’t feel guilt. Except, evidently, when he did. Blue-black ears perked as she mentioned that she normally hated kids and he can’t help the deadpan look that follows in a ‘well thanks for that’ manner. In truth: he gets it. If he’s judging by his own behavior: kids are assholes. Self-righteous, rebellious assholes that thinks the world owes them and that they have it all figured out when in reality their blundering idiots that have no idea what they’re doing and aren’t owed a single lick of anything. Or …maybe that’s just him.

“Is…is that a compliment?” Drogon gasps over-dramatically, teasing her because he can. He doesn’t do it to be an asshole this time: it’s meant in good natured fun. “but…thanks Sunspot. That means a lot coming from you.” He speaks sincerely. The truth is Drogon revels in the praise ( especially praise so rare! ). “It’s not like I didn’t deserve it.” He admits, acknowledging but ultimately brushing away her apology: because she had nothing to apologize for. He’d picked and instigated and he’d deserved everything she’d given him that day. “I’m sorry for being such an ass that day.” Since, if he was going to do character development: he might as well do it right. Perhaps he’s not such a lost cause after all.

Another giggle escaped her. "Thank you for your concern, but I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself," she assured him. Her eyes flew wide in surprise at the young wolf's teasing tones. She hadn't known he was capable of mirth - but it was a nice discovery, she supposed. It was better than their first meeting, at any rate.

"We all have our days," the woman said generously, similarly letting the young male off the hook for his atrocious manners that day. She'd already written it off as a freak encounter in her head. Sometimes, there was just no explanation for the way they acted. That was that.

"I think I'll check out the pack at the forest," she decided. "Or maybe I'll take a trip. I understand I have a nephew out here somewhere, going by the name of Sunny."

She offered Drogon one last smile. "See you around, tough guy."

Drogon's ears swivel and slick back to rest at half mast atop his skull as Sunspot turns down his offer to escort her to a pack territory after a giggle, telling him that she’s a big girl and he almost opens his mouth to assure her that he hadn’t been trying to insinuate that she couldn’t take care of herself but holds his tongue. He’d been trying to be chivalrous — or, at the very least, as chivalrous as the soturi is capable of being — but he doesn’t push. He accepts her rejection with a lofty shrug of his broadening shoulders. His ears swivel atop his skull in contemplation as she lets him off the hook for his behavior that day, brushing it off, excusing it as “one of those days”. It hadn’t been: Drogon’s an ass to everyone pretty much all the time but if she isn’t willing to hold the grudge then he sees no need to keep picking at a healed wound. “See you around.” He echoes back at her with a partial smirk before he turns and heads in the opposite direction, idly wondering if their paths were destined to cross again.