Nova Peak I want to belong.

Anyone who wants to meet Tryphon/Larus! He isn't likely to recognize anyone that met him as a baby.

Bazi led him in to the territory, and then after a brief chat about the general area, she left him to fend for himself. As much as he'd wish for company, he didn't want to pressure the woman to linger; especially in her condition. The first thing that Tryphon did after watching her waddle off was find a little place to rest. He traced a route in to the Northwoods - pausing to watch the thin creek as it flowed through the heart - and found a nice cluster of trees to nap beneath. A pair of trees stood so close together that they were practically intertwined, with one skewed and twisted like an old man with his head bowed. There was room enough beneath their outreaching arms for Tryphon to plop himself down, and so he did, and promptly began to drowse. He didn't let himself fall asleep though - the boy had made promises, and he didn't want to waste too much time.

But the waddling madame of Nova Peak wasn't done with Tryphon just yet. His vulnerability drew her in, unearthing maternal instincts in the young mother-to-be that she would be in dire need of when her own pups exited in a wash of blood and agony. She excused herself from Tryphon's side to pee, eat, and coax a logistically awkward quickie out of her mate. Refreshed and flooded with the brand of hormone that made her insides feel warm, she sought him out for a second time.


"Sleeping on the job?" she jested upon spotting the gently dozing newcomer, shamelessly defiling Tryphon's personal space by reaching her neck across the invisible line to nip at his rump. "I have a job for you."

The rest would be good for him in the long run, but not as recuperating as he'd hoped. Tryphon had just begun to slip in to a half-cognizant dream, the kind you have when extremely tired at the beginning of the sleep cycle, where it is hard to tell what is just a casual thought in your head and what is a dream moment, when he got a swift bite to his bottom. The boy startled awake. 

He blinked and lifted his head quite abruptly, and the dreamy state slipped away. Bazi's voice rolled across his back and he turned to look at her, surprise spreading across his face. The bite hadnt been a bite at all - just part of the dream - but her words made him look as if he had indeed been wounded.

"I - sorry!" Was he in trouble? Felt like it. "Just a little tired. But," He briefly looked away from her and stared at his paws, pouting. "I will get straight to work! What did you need?"

Tryphon gave Bazi a wounded, slightly panicked look. The Alpoha quirked a brow at her jittery new recruit, slightly miffed that their interaction was making her look like a Godzilla Tyrant Bitch - picking on the new guy within hours of his entry into the pack. "Actually, you've got the right idea," she said, rolling clumsily onto her side next to Tryphon. Why not? There was nothing urgent that needed doing - not really. A few weak rays of sunshine reached the ground here, warming pleasantly where they hit her downy fur. "Let's take a load off.. and then maybe you can help me find a pool, or a spring of some kind? I need somewhere to take a bath in private, and the river's a bit shallow." 

Tryphon was wiggling to his feet, trying to wake up his body so that he could get to work, and his mind was a cloud of confusing little thoughts. Mostly questions that he didn't feel confident in asking. But when Bazi told him to stay put, his thoughts went out the window and he plopped his belly back down to the ground. The lady kept on talking, so Tryphon spun around to face her, his ears rotating opposite to the rest of him so that he didn't miss a beat.

"Alright. I mean, of course! I'm here to serve." He quickly agreed, and settled back in to his resting spot. But, not knowing what to say or do next, Tryphon grew a little restless in the growing quiet. He watched Bazi for a few minutes but, realizing he was staring at her and that it felt hella rude, he averted his gaze again. The awkwardness Tryphon felt was so heavy that it felt like a lead blanket, crushing him with an unseen weight. 

Conversation flowed between them like a river of rocks. The Bazi of old would have exacerbated the situation with her own brand of awkwardness, but she had grown up quite a lot since her first failed attempt at leadership. "You can relax, you know," she soothed, stretching a narrow paw across to touch one of Tryphon's and leaving it there, interested to see what he would do. He looked so lost, so uncomfortable in his own skin. Once upon a recent past, these shortcomings would have grated on her. Wolves like Tryphon needed to be encouraged through life and it surprised Bazi to realize that she found this trait endearing rather than infuriating. Slowly but surely, she was developing a maternal instinct.  "There's plenty of time to explore when we've had a rest," she went on with her most motherly of smiles. "So do you remember your previous Alpha? Or is everything just.. fuzzy?" A state of mind she could well relate to.

He didn't know what to say. The question wasn't a difficult one, and it brought to mind a number of things, but Tryphon was still unsure. For a moment he just watched Bazi's outstretched paw, studying it with a glazed expression, trying to remember something. 

"I remember... My mother." He started to explain, but as soon as the word left his mouth, Tryphon frowned. "Sort of. We lived by the sea, and she taught me to swim." Swim, drown, it was pretty much the same thing; the boy didn't have anything specific to go on, just that one memory of the ocean water which - as he thought about it - turned dark.

"I guess I wasn't very good at it, because.. The next thing I remember, I was waking up on a riverbank." He said this as if he were discussing the weather, but there was an underlying apprehension there as well. He just couldn't be sure about anything in his memory at this point. "And that was where a lady found me - like you, big and -" Oh. Was that rude? For a moment Tryphon's mouth hung agape as he realized what he had said, but he went on hastily, with the hope that Bazi wouldn't notice. "- and since she helped me, I helped her, and her mate, and her uh, cousin, I think? With the newborns. Maybe they were Alphas? I'm not sure though, they seemed... Young." Again, unsure, Tryphon plunked his head down upon his own paws, right next to Bazi's toes.

Big stung Bazi's ears. She was painfully aware of her size, and mortified at the prospect of having to drag a sad, flaccid belly around for the rest of her life. "Pregnant," she corrected firmly in a gap between his sentences, and continued to listen. Whether he actually meant pregnant was a different story - she had not considered that perhaps the wolf in question was just... large.


The rest of his explanation was difficult to follow. "So you're from the sea.." Bazi repeated slowly, "You washed away in the water - somehow - and ended up with another pack..?" Was that Björn or whatever his name was still active near the coast, perhaps, that guardian on the ridge? He wasn't particularly young, though. Bazi's brow furrowed. "Do you know how long you were walking before you ended up here? Why did you leave, exactly?" Or was that information lost to trauma, too?

The boy nodded as she made sense of his tale, although he felt oddly empty whrn she referred tthree sea itself; a sensation that made him pause. But when Baxillion (Java's phone keeps autocorrecting, deal with it,) asked her question, Tryphon gave a little shrug. "I wasn't trying to leave home. Im looking for home. And I left my rescuers - they're a few days north from here - to find my mother." By staying here, was he giving up? He frowned slightly at the thought, but became decidedly mute on the subject.

There was an edge of uncertainty to everything Tryphon said and did. It was as though he walked the line between dreams and reality, unsure which details belonged where. Bazi watched him struggle with his thoughts. Who 'sort of' remembers their mother? They couldn't have been separated for very long, and Tryphon was almost an adult.

"Maybe you'll tell me more about her later," she told the nervous boy, deciding to cut him some slack. With time, he might warm to her. A yawn cut her off from saying anything else - Bazi heeded its message and laid her head down to rest. "Find me that pool when you feel up to it," she requested, and closed her eyes.

Editing in a conclusion!