Redhawk Caldera i forgot to riot

@Towhee!

There is still a few hours of daylight left in the sky when Thuringwethil moves from the densite. It had not been easy to tell their children they are going to leave without her and she hopes they do not resent her for the decision. Deep down, they have to understand. She does not depart Wildfire’s side without nuzzling her cheek and whispering something resembling she’ll be back in a few minutes. In truth, she doesn’t know exactly where she is going but she needs a few moments to clear her head. She can go to the border but leaving their campsite feels like too much of an infringement on the pack, even if they’ve been given a little freedom.

It won’t be long before they leave but she knows they are all reluctantly (mostly) to leave their pack mate behind but it is the best for her. They cannot stay here for much longer or the trip back to Drageda will be hard on all of them. Getting them back to safety before winter is her next big goal and hopefully it won’t be long before Wildfire is joining them once more.

Thuringwethil lets out a long breath and glances back to see the few scatter of wolves that linger, just as anxious to return. One more night, she tells herself, and she redirects her attention to the way she’s walking.

From her perch on the slope above, Towhee watched a large black wolf—the commander, she thought to herself—move away from the rest of the party. Her orange eyes tracked her movements for a moment before the guardian swiftly rose to all fours and began trotting downhill.

"Hey!" Towhee shouted (too loudly) as she drew up behind the she-wolf. She was large, but so was Towhee. "How much longer are you staying? Did I hear* right—you're leaving Wildfire behind?" Whatever the mercenary thought of this news, it wasn't clear for her voice was as toneless as it was clunky. "And you're—her mate?" she added, all of this information having been shared with her by @Raven.

They flanked one another now and Towhee's fiery orange eyes bored into the commander's face. She might have been a powerful Alpha where she was from, yet the guardian would not be intimidated or bowed by a total stranger, certainly not on her own lands.

* Me to Towhee: No, dear, you don't hear at all...

It does not take long before she had company again and she turns to see the younger wolf as she shouts after her. Thuringwethil slows to a stop and turns, listening to the strange way she speaks. Blixen has told her that she couldn’t hear and Heda hadn’t put much thought into it at the time. Her daughter had spoken to her though so it does not stop her from doing the same. Thuringwethil clears her throat, not changing the direction of her eyesight but she does not bore holes into the girls face as hard as Towhee tries.

”We’re leaving in the morning,” she confirms though she finds it hard to gauge how the other feels with a garbled tone. ”We are leaving my mate behind, your leader—Finley—offered to take care of her until she is well. We are leaving Hux to serve the caldera while she is here,” she explains in a flat tone, hiding the struggle and frustration she has leaving her wife behind.

”You’re Towhee, right? Blixen was talking about you the other day,” she comments before glancing back to the campsite and settling once more on the girl.

Good, Towhee thought with grim satisfaction, though her relief was incredibly short-lived. They were leaving Wildfire in their care, along with a guard. What...? she thought now, her expression curdling like spoiled milk. There were so many reasons why Towhee detested this plan, though even as her tongue wagged against her teeth, she pressed her lips closed. The Alphas had surely decreed it (the commander said as much), plus it sounded like this wolf (Hucks?) would be something of a servant to the Redhawks while he was here. Towhee struggled to shift her perspective on the situation, with questionable success.

Ignoring the commander's question, the guardian demanded, "Why can't you carry her home? There's enough of you, isn't there?"

”Sure,” she says. She doesn’t acknowledge the attempt at convention and Thuringwethil doesn’t push it. The girl isn’t here for pleasantries and she doesn’t have to offer anymore. ”It is a long journey home and none of us want to risk hurting her any more than she is,” she explains with a quirk of one brow. She wouldn’t leave her mate somewhere she doesn’t trust and she doesn’t necessarily know the caldera wolves that well, but Wildfire isn’t going to wake up to strangers (how wrong she’d actually be). The leaders seem to love her like their own, if they actually aren’t, so it hadn’t been too difficult to make the decision. ”Finley brought the idea up and it would be foolish of me compromise her health.”

They were leaving her here for her own safety. Towhee could think of several arguments to make but decided to rest her case on the subject. It had already been decided among the leaders, so she simply had to deal with it. It would be a cold day in hell when Towhee considered defying her beloved Alphas and godparents, after all.

"Okay," the deaf wolf said flatly, then abruptly asked, "How can you be mates—and have children—if you're both female?"

The information seems to satisfy her enough but her expression is just as blank as hers. It isn’t enough to stop the questions and Thuringwethil blinks slowly as it lies out before her. Towhee is the first to ask about the dynamics of their relationships—even their children hadn’t—but she takes several seconds of a stare before she answers. “We are mates because I asked her and she said yes,” she explains easily. It wasn’t as simple as that, and it isn’t how she’d explain it to her kids (grandkids, she suddenly thinks, what the fuck), “and we have children because we wanted a family.”

Towhee listened in her unique way, orange eyes squinting more than ever, now in bafflement as well as judgment. "But why? Why would two females want to be mates? How does that even—?" She paused but only for a second. "That's not physically possible," she insisted. "I'm young but I'm not stupid." She knew all about reproduction, mostly thanks to having a knowledgeable medic for an older sister.

Thuringwethil’s patience begins to run thin as Towhee continues on. Most of what she says she struggles to understand the enunciation but it is clear the girl wants to continue scratching through the surface. Through the new scrutiny she gets, her own expression remains blank and unamused. These things are not questioned in Drageda and subsequent branches. The backlash she acquired from taking Wildfire as her mate is simply because she has taken a mate, not because of her gender. That she is certain she can handle and shut down effectively. “Perhaps I am not the one to give you this lesson,” she says, then offers a dismissive quirk of her brow.

The commander failed to produce a satisfactory response, despite Towhee staring at her with impatient expectation. The youthful guardian's face scrunched, wondering why Thuringwethil wouldn't bother explaining. She felt a flare of annoyance at being treated as if she was too young to handle the facts.

"Why not?" she demanded. But then she abruptly changed tack, shaking her head. "Fine, never mind. Don't tell me." Towhee couldn't help but think of Lagan and thought, maybe, she wouldn't want to know. She felt a ripple of vague bewilderment and disgust go down her white-streaked spine.

And with that, she realized there was no more reason to linger. "I'll be back to see you off in the morning," Towhee promised, not out of kindness or ambassadorship but to be sure they really were leaving. It might have been prudent to wish Thuringwethil and her wolves safe travels or some other such sentiment, yet all the young adult offered was a last blink of her orange eyes before she abruptly departed the commander's audience.