Emberwood you're a dime, plus ninety-nine

@Easy, they should probably have that talk LOL

the familiarity of the blur acted as a comfort. bhediya walked mindlessly through the territory in an effort to conserve what little joy she had left. it'd been days of draining activity — endless conversation, long-distance travel — and now that she'd returned home, bhe was feeling its effects.

so she continued on this path to nowhere, hauling her body forward with each step. it will end, she thought to herself, this will eventually end.

Although the mottled shewolf had left the territory soon after joining the pack whose name she could not pronounce, she had still been somewhat disconcerted when her dam had gone on a trip of her own. They had not reconnected in the days since reuniting, and Easy had spent a long night telling herself that was fine, and that they might never and that she must learn not only to live with this, but to embrace it. The truth, after all, was not made more bearable by doubting it.

Still, she had not gotten as far as she had in life by failing to try. So when she caught Bhediya's scent in the territory once more, the young woman hastened to attend her.

"Bhediya?" she greeted as she came upon her elder; for there was something about her dam's countenance that left her a little lost for words.

bhediya? 

it took a moment to return to reality. the voice was muffled, quiet against the rush of blood in her ears. hey, easy, she called. bhediya turned and moved to close the distance between them. i was hoping to run into you.

the words were choked, constrained in her throat by a growing sense of dread. she coughed. what've you been up to? they'd been playing tag the since easy joined, both of them decidedly not it!

The woman responded, her words and tone implying that nothing was the matter, but the weariness in her bearing and the grit in her voice giving Easy quiet pause. She ignored it for now, answering politely and succinctly,

"Hunting, mostly. I've been bringing fish when there's nothing else to catch." They ought to come together and hunt, but she wasn't the one meant to be calling for such things. For now, she would continue to skate by with small offerings. "I went to the willows where the family was last together, but there's no sign of them. I'll need to go back to leave more markings, and perhaps to Easthollow to see if any of them have returned there."

The next place to check was Round Valley, but that was a much longer trip, and also where she knew Lavender to reside. Easy mused for a moment on how Bhediya was now a grandmother by that daughter in particular, and wondered what Lavender would think about the woman, and most especially about what she'd think of her meeting said grandchildren.

"What about you? I saw that you- left." Here, her voice faltered, and some heady emotion she had not known she'd held on to tried to find purchase in her heart. She blinked at her dam, bewildered, and carried on, "But I didn't know who to ask about that." It was too familiar, she decided. But Easy was no longer in a position to be left; she was out of communion with this woman, and beginning to realize — slowly, haltingly — that it might be difficult to bridge that gap.

bhediya smiled. hunting, hm? it was a skill undoubtedly inherited from and likely fostered by her father. grayday had done their children justice, that much she knew for sure. everything counts. fish tasted just the same as everything else, so it really didn't make a difference. food is food in the winter time.

she listened intently to easy's findings. they may have been disheartening, had she not long since resigned herself to hopelessness. it was a fluke to have found easy wandering so close; the others, they were gone.i went to easthollow a while ago to do the same thing. she motioned for them to keep moving.

the strain in easy's voice was easily picked up, if only by tone. bhediya looked up at her and searched the girl's gaze for any readable sign of emotion. i was afraid to crowd you, she admitted, her own face contorting just slightly, so i went on a scouting trip to the mountains.

more time alone meant more chances to mess things up. bhe hadn't considered that avoiding this confrontation counted as an automatic loss.

I actually like fish a lot, Easy thought to say, but that sounded argumentative and that wasn't how she meant it — she just wanted Bhediya to know her, and wished that there was a way to do that without all this awkward in-between stuff. And she wanted to say, I don't want space. I want to get to know you, but she was still determined to hold off on the pressure; this wasn't supposed to be work, was it?

But she thought of her father and remembered that all worthy things took work, and that relationships were not built in a day, and that she had been knit together in this woman's womb and it'd taken many weeks, and that, once upon a time, Grayday had found her worthy of his love.

"If I ever start to feel crowded, I'll tell you," she said after a moment of quiet contemplation. "And if you start to feel crowded, you can tell me. And it might disappoint me, but that's okay. We will learn as we go." Or we will learn to go our separate ways.

Grayday had not liked talking about Bhediya. When he had, he'd called her Akuti, or Cutie when he was feeling most kind. The woman before her seemed very much like an unknown quantity, even as she drew parallels from what little she'd been able to learn from her sire. She recalled now that Grayday had rarely known what was on the woman's mind, and that sometimes he thought he was supposed to catch a different meaning from the words she said, but they had never been on the same wavelength in that regard.

It seemed too flimsy a thing to trust; a tidbit said in passing when they'd been speaking of other things. Easy was frustrated with herself for allowing Akuti to be erased like this, even as she knew that her father had brushed the woman aside in order to protect his own heart. Regardless, she was dealing now with Bhediya, who might be someone else altogether.

bhediya drew in a deep breath. where do we start? there were years of lost time between them, moments that they would never get back. thinking about it was too overwhelming but avoiding it was no longer an option. a small, selfish remnant of her past self wished that they'd never reunited so those thoughts could have stayed hidden away.

after waiting for easy's response or lack thereof, bhediya tried to list all of the things she could say to make easy leave. it grew exponentially by the second, each line filled with another sour truth. 

i'm afraid of you. 
you were supposed to be my redemption. 
it almost felt good to leave.

bhediya shook away the whispers, hoping that easy wouldn't notice.

More and more, Easy got the feeling that her dam did not feel the same about about reconnecting as she did. Part of her wanted to wilt away in light of this, and leave to lick her wounds. Part of her wanted to build better and bigger walls, and to hide behind the shiny veneer of forgiveness and righteousness.

Knowing this, the young woman did her best to humble herself, and to speak without concern for her pride.

"Well — how are you today? How was your trip?" she asked, a small, hopeful smile sparkling weakly but sincerely in her eyes. "That's how most friendships start. Just two wolves talking, and getting better and better at it."

But she could not hold back all her anxieties; she was still young, still uncertain. She had learned much and had grown into a self-sufficient and formiddable huntress — but she was not without a heart. Not without insecurities.

"Akuti — Bhediya, I mean..." Shoot. Already, she was messing up. "I am not here to make you answer for the past. I won't lie to you; there are questions that I have. But we are not the wolves we were when we last parted. I will not hold you accountable for what's happened in my past. All I want is to know you, and perhaps a little about the places and the people that've made you; they have made me too, in a way."

bhediya would never understand easy's willingness in the situation. she admired it, envied it, but knew that she would always question its validity. too good to be true, she thought to herself. 

still, a hopeful smile grew across her maw. bhediya used her shoulder to bump against easy, the first attempt at physical contact since they'd met. i don't mind you calling me akuti if that's easier. it's just a name. there were stories of home that she'd long since forgotten, stories that she thought easy might enjoy.

it means princess. which is funny to me now because i'd make a horrible queen. bhediya laughed then, hoping that easy would pick up on her humor. names mean everything in the south. that's why i made sure all of you had a southern name. that, and because she'd been much more proud of her roots back then. now, they were just another part of who she was. easy is nice, too. your dad had some good taste.

Easy smiled at the offer, but gave a faint shake of her head. "I want to call you by the name you've chosen," she assured. "It won't be too difficult to switch over." She had no practice at calling her Akuti, after all.

But princess was such a sweet name meaning; she liked it immediately. "What does Bhediya mean? And Khoe?" she asked curiously, eager for a language lesson. She wanted to learn as much as she could while she was in the woman's presence.

Her next statement, however, had Easy snickering. "You don't have to exaggerate," she told the woman, plainly quite tickled. "Do you know, I've had to learn to say my name is Easy instead of I'm easy every time I introduce myself. It didn't matter when I was tiny, but now that I'm a woman, it gives the wrong impression," she said with a wicked grin. "I'll never forgive him for that. I even went by Blackbear, and Ishara for a time, but after he died... it just felt like a good way to come home. Taking it up again."

She offered a more hesitant smile and added, "He used call you Cutie. I don't think the man knew how names worked, if they weren't words he already knew."

it was embarassing to admit that neither name had much of a meaning at all. khoe doesn't mean anything, she said, and bhediya just means wolf. there wasn't a lot of creativity that went into choosing either name. i tried not to speak the common language when you were little. do you remember any of it? there would be no disappointment if easy said no, because at this point, even bhe was beginning to forget.

she laughed at the girl's musings. even with knowing how long it'd been, it was strange realizing how much they'd aged, matured. did someone give you blackbear? bhediya asked, it fits. easy was a mammoth of a wolf, her size comparable to the northerners within the pack. she thought of pygmalion and how odd it might feel to stand between them. 

i remember the cutie days, she laughed, it was sweet, but it could be annoying. if there was one thing that bhediya was insecure about, it was surely her size. try as she might, those legs weren't growing any taller. especially back then. i wanted to be tall so bad. now, i'm an old lady, and i'm still just as short. come next winter, she imagined herself so small that her belly scraped the ground.

That was a little disappointing, but Easy took it in stride all the same; names outside their family's were like that, sometimes. Although she did find it odd to call oneself by what they were. No less strange, she allowed, than calling oneself by what they are not. Like Blackbear. She decided to give it a pass.

"I don't remember you speaking it much," said Easy, supposing that it had just been sound when she was little, same as everything else. "But there was a wolf in our pack called Aditya that I learned a little from. If it wasn't the same language, it definitely had some words in common. But it's not enough for conversation. Mostly things like... well, he called me chhoti behen."

Her heart ached as she spoke of him; even knowing what had happened at Undersea, she loved the man so dearly, and felt his absence as keenly as any other member of her family.

"Someone in my travels called me Blackbear, and it stuck," she replied, still somewhat lost in her memories. Bhediya drew her back to the present soon enough, however, and she took in stride the complaints against her late father. He could be overbearing and patronizing, at times. "Was one of your parents small?" Easy asked her, curious about her mixed pedigree. She knew her bloodline on her father's side for two generations back, and all the names of his many siblings. She even knew much of the Corten family tree, and considered them her own even if she had no taken the name, even if she had not met them, and even if she had not been Catori's daughter by blood. It was all she had, after all.

She knew absolutely nothing about her dam's family. It was a mystery that'd always intrigued her, even in the days when her young heart had rebeled against her absent mother.

knowing that they'd grown up in a healthy environment warmed bhediya's heart. she'd never doubted that grayday would do right by them, but it hadn't occured to her that they might find a second family in morningside. there was no room in that bond for her to fit, but she didn't mind. new beginnings and all of that. a term of endearment, she sighed, little sister.

pihu came to mind then. my sister, pihu, she can probably teach you a little. only if you want. bhediya didn't want to give the impression of disinterest, so she added on, i can, too, but i'm not as fluent as she is. years near the coast had left her with a mishmash of an accent that made communicating in her natal tongue somewhat difficult. not impossible, but certainly not ideal.

the question of their shared heritage brought bhediya into a moment of deep thought. my parents were a normal size. both of them had small mothers but large, hefty fathers. they were domestic women with no reason to have bred into their bloodline. she wondered how far back the intermingling went. pihu is almost as big as you, but i wasn't so fortunate. the children born of their parents certainly had a strange mix of characteristics.

the colors in your coat, they're common where we come from. chitrit mahilaen, it's called. bhediya envied the patterns in her daughter's coat. the mottled shades of grey, the canvas of black, it was a beautiful combination that she often wished she'd been given.

Easy's face pinched for a moment at this revelation (even though she was sure she had known the meaning, somewhere in the back of her mind), and she hastened to explain before Bhediya thought she was disaparaging her mother tongue: "I just always had a crush on him, but he never thought of me that way. He loved Dawn."

But the expression was more embarrassment than it was wistfulness, and she was ready to move on as soon as a sister was mentioned. "Pihu," she repeated, her tail wagging. "You have a sister here?" An aunt, she wanted to say but didn't for the sake of maintaining the newfound ease of conversation. "I'd love to meet her. I don't know when I'll have time for whole lessons, but I'm grateful for any knowledge you two can impart." She'd once entertained the idea of asking Aditya to teach her, but languages just didn't seem like a gift their bloodline possessed.

But perhaps that wasn't true, if Bhediya was also her bloodline.

"Daddy used to say you must've chased your tail too much, and that's how come we came out this way," she shared, but was equally charmed by the idea that her coat pattern had a name the same as anyone else's. That there were a people among whom she would not look very strange at all. "What does it mean? Chitrit mahilaen." She tested the words and found them entirely too strange; but that might change with time.

bhediya didn't mind the change in subject because it was obviously a sensitive topic. eventually, they would be able to confide these things in one another, but it was okay that they had to wait. she arrived a few days after you, actually, bhe explained, i'll make sure that you two get to meet. 

it was easy to imagine grayday coming up the tall-tale. he had a knack for that sort of thing. i was too big to chase anything when i was pregnant with you all. now that easy had grown to adulthood, one could get an idea of how large she must have been as a pup. 

painted woman. there's an old folktale about it. there was a folktale for everything back home, but this had always been one of her favorites.

It must be providence, she decided, that so much of their family was converging in this place. Privately, Easy hoped that it was her own blood calling, and not the blood of her mother. The wolves she most wanted to see were not of Bhediya's line, and although she would be happy to meet more of that side of the family, her priority would have to be Sunny and Minnow, and Dawn just a little behind them.

"Will you tell me the story?" she asked, hoping to distract herself from these sorrows. Except, she remembered that Bhediya had not looked quite well when she'd first arrived. "Actually — I was going to ask earlier — are you feeling alright? You seem a bit... off. Or you did, when I first caught you."

i can tell you the story some other time, bhediya laughed. there would be more moments like this, more time for them to share with one another. she was not upset by the sudden change of topic, but rather taken aback. 

was it too soon to tell easy about everything? she was afraid that by not telling her, it would be a betrayal of what little trust they were beginning to build. but if bhediya told the truth, would it scare her child away? 

she allowed herself a moment of thought before continuing. i'm okay, bhe sighed, a smile still clear on her maw, i forgot all about that stuff once we started talking. but their conversation would soon end and she would have to go back to pygmalion, go back to reality.

That sounded like a deal to Easy, who offered her dam a happy smile. They were doing it. They were figuring it out and talking and suddenly the gap didn't seem so big or scary. It was just like making friends with any other wolf, except this wolf had somethings in common with her that went a little deeper than shared interests or points of view.

"I'll let you settle in," she decided, thinking that the whole truth wasn't quite being shared with her, but not really minding it, either. She assumed that Bhediya was only reluctant to say that she was tired and end the conversation, and not that there were other things on the woman's mind. She was still young, after all, and not quite used to thinking all the way past herself.

Her tail wagged, and she turned to depart. "You can come and talk to me whenever you feel like it," she added, just in case Bhediya didn't know. But with that, she seemed ready to make her exit.