The Heartwood Pouliá

Set three days after the previous thread with @Chickadee. <3

Nothing mattered, once he had crossed the borders of the vale for the last time. Not the look on his mother’s face, not the disappointment in her voice, not the hurt that he knew she would feel. It did not matter because he could not allow it to matter. Emotion was weakness, he thought. Love was a weakness and a plague on the heart.

Across the flatland and to the woods, Antigone trekked on hurried paws. He would be slightly early for his meeting with Sorcha. He thought of the girl he had made a promise to. He considered that he did not have a plan for where they might go or if she was worthy of his trust. Though he did not want to admit it, Sorcha had won him over with her desire to leave home. He felt they were kindred.

Near the place where he had made his vow to her, Antigone slumped into the snow.

He didn’t know when the tears started falling. He only knew that they were cold.

in the end, chickadee had gone. she didn't want ceridwin with her, she didn't want anyone to come. her sister knew her as the girl she had always been. her mom needed her close. but chickadee had woken from a blackened nightmare, sticky with sweat, where she had gone back to that place and to that blood, and it had been ani there, throat torn, eyes ripped out, spine broken.
and so she had run from brecheliant, where all she loved lived, where she had never suffered. the pain was inside her. on the edge of the caldera she called to @Maia, to @Eljay, to aiden, to jay, and finally to @Ceridwin, who, somehow, she hoped would find her again. the guilt of having her sister be so protective, so affected; it created shame under her skin.
dwin had been out. dwin had traveled. she had much wisdom to impart.
but the wanderlust and the depression had a chokehold on chickadee.
i'm sorry i couldn't stay. i have to look for ani. i love you.
and on an afterthought, voice hitching, don't come after me.
she wanted to disappear.
it was sorcha who joined antigone, solemn, silent. she looked at him and kept walking in a dogged line, afraid she would cry if she stopped for one moment. he was crying, and her own came in quiet streaming. "come on."

The girl appeared without making a sound, or so he believed.

When she spoke, it was direct. The soft voice of their first meeting was not present. She seemed to be moved forward by her resolve. Antigone’s face burned with embarrassment. He did not know how he could have let himself look so pitiful to her. She would think he was pathetic. She would want to ditch him at the first lonesome beachfront they found.

The red-hooded boy pushed himself to his paws and hastened after her.

You came, he said.

Navy blue eyes had ceased their tearmaking. The young wolf’s voice was not surprised, not icy. He spoke this obvious statement out of relief. Seeing her had lifted a weight of worry from his heart. The size of the world beyond his home did not seem so daunting when he knew that he wouldn’t face it alone.

Sorcha? Antigone pulled his gaze from her face. The lump in his throat became smaller. Thank you, mumbled toward the ground.

sorcha had nothing to say; she only gave antigone a look as the pair of them melted deeper into the forest.
with each step she felt her heart break. at one point the girl was unable to stop herself from looking back alongside her grey shoulder; lot's wife.
a lump in her throat, then sorcha broke into a run, careening through the woodland, farther and farther from her homeland.
something inside her was breaking. this was wrong. she should go back. and yet each step made it seem as though she could not.
sorcha did not stop until she was winded and the caldera was far behind she and antigone. only then did her tear-blurred green eyes look for his own. what next?

Sorcha did not respond.

The red-hooded boy paced at her side. There was a burning of embarrassment. He should not have thanked her for running away from home. It had been thoughtless. Antigone wanted her to know he was grateful she had kept her word to him, nothing more. Instead, his words hung over his head like a raincloud and cast his gaze away from his companion.

In silence they trekked. The young wolf thought on the special places within Epoch where he had felt most at peace. Antigone wondered if he would feel this sense of security again.

Wanting to talk to fill the aching silence, the boy glanced toward Sorcha. The expression he was able to see did not invite words. He hung his head and trudged on. They covered good ground before the girl turned to him with spring green in her eyes.

What- Antigone paused, uncertain what he might ask. You said you had been looking for someone. When we met. Can I help you search?

she felt old and changed and too young and sick all at once. "my sister, ani. she wasn't well. and then one day she just disappeared. where could she have gone?" her voice came out in breathless raving.
sorcha stopped, shut her eyes; her stomach growled.
"how far can you go before you, you know, before we have to stop?"
maybe antigone knew. maybe he didn't, in which case she'd hope for him to just lie.

Her sister, she said.

Antigone felt a lump rise in the back of his throat.

Would his sisters search for him, too?

The best way will be to leave word with other packs. Give them a description and ask if they’ve seen her, he thought aloud. He wished to ask what she had mean by “not well,” but his courage was lost on the pace they had set. If he knew, hopelessness would creep into his thoughts.

Sorcha asked how far they would go before they needed to stop. Antigone eyed her for a moment, watching the movement of her legs and the sounds of her breathing. The red-hooded boy did not have an answer because he didn’t know how far they might travel before it was necessary.

Let’s find somewhere soon. To plan where we will go. I will hunt so that we can eat.

He couldn’t look at her face so he cast his dark eyes on the trees in the distance.

sorcha shook her head, then thought better of it. antigone would know more than her, she supposed. "let's go until it — until it rains."
maybe when she stopped smelling of brecheliant she would surrender her guilt.
and so she took a deep breath and nodded and sped on, focused until the burning of her legs forced her to stop again.

So they ran until Sorcha slowed her pace. Antigone loped beside her, winded after covering all that ground. The scent of rain was on the wind. It blew through the trees and began to sprinkle down. Thick grey clouds loomed above.

What’s Ani look like? Antigone asked. He would like to keep an eye out for the girl, share her name with passersby so that they could look and call if she was found.

"she's — really pretty. dark fur. red accents, like around," sorcha gestured helplessly. "um, yellow eyes. she — she almost drowned. or she did. but when ani came back she sort of — her head shook. it was hard for her to walk, too."
her eyes burned and the tears stung as they came again.
"we were supposed to both marry this guy from some village. stratos. he came back to visit, but — then she disappeared. haven't seen him again."
why was she telling him this? sorcha wiped her face and pushed on.

Antigone listened to Sorcha without speaking. His eyes lingered on her expression, hoping to pull insight from the changes on her face. The girl was still a stranger to him. Unable to read into how she might be feeling about her missing partner, he was forced to assume. She probably felt lost. She probably felt powerless. Reflecting on these things conjured images of Tamar, Zulema, and Zosime.

Do you know where Stratos lives? Maybe he will have answers, Antigone asked after a moment of thought.

The idea of sharing a husband was peculiar. He didn’t wish to comment on this part of what she had shared.

gonna start them a new one! <3

sorcha shook her head. "no. i only know he called it a village." the idea of seeing stratos again unnerved her. it had been so sad the last time. she wasn't sure she wanted to seek him out again, handsome as he had been.
it felt like those memories, just from the winter, were ebbing and fading.
"let's just keep going," sorcha begged in a soft weak voice, and stayed quiet for hours thereafter.