Moonspear Always With The Stars

While her sisters had gone after the one seen to be at fault for Galaxy's death, Korei with a heavy heart had decided to stay at Moonspear. She had never felt such hatred for anyone. She sat on one of the mountains many edges, her paws ankle deep into snow. She was looking up to the stars. "You see...you see the Big Dipper?" she asked. To no one, but in her mind she was asking Galaxy. "It's like the shape....the shape of a...of a tail." 

She could not stop herself from crying a bit. There were so many things she wished. She wished she could have told Galaxy why they were white. She wished she could have told Galaxy what a dipper is. She wished...she wished Galaxy was here. 

@Drogon

Tagged the wrong person, my bad

Drogon is about to bunk down for the night, searching for the mouth of his favorite shelter. It’s a crepuscular cave that would fit several wolves comfortably if Drogon were the kind of man that shared his den ( he’s not ). It took many months to grow accustomed to the den, even despite his modest decorations of worried bones riddled with teeth marks, and a deer hide and a few antlers there are still times when it makes him feel uncomfortable and claustrophobic. He had, for quite some time, lived by the law that dens were death traps: backing yourself into a corner. There are some nights where he chooses to sleep outside it still, unable to entirely shake off his creepy anxieties about them. Tonight, he looks forward to returning to it. He tucked away a nice cut of meat for dinner and took a few new bones.

It’s on his path back to his den that he heard the voice. He tilts his head up and backs away from the towering spear so he might look upon her. He recognizes her as one of Hydra’s sisters but as he’s only seen her in passing her name escapes him. “Who’re you talking to?” He asks her curiously.

Korei felt her face fur getting wet from tears, and that was until someone arrived. She raised a paw to wipe at her tears quickly, but kept her gaze from whoever had arrived to her. She didn't want to be seen crying. "N-No one" she answered, sitting up straight. She turned her head with a smile, trying to put a mask on to hide the sadness.

"Who are you? I don't th-think I've met you before" she asked. "I'm K-Korei, Korei Julia." She turned her head back to face the stars above. "Do you like the stars as well?"

Drogon’s ears flutter back to rest at half mast atop his skull as she stutters out ‘no one’ and he gives a flick of his tail in contemplation but offers her no words. She puts on a smile but he can’t help but feel like it’s false. He’s heard about Galaxy’s death and he remembers his first and only meeting with her: they discussed stars and made plans to have rendezvous that would never happen. Drogon feels sorrowful about the loss of her life: the sky looks a little bit dimmer as he spares it a quick glance. “I’m Drogon,” He offers her his name as he accepts hers with a nod. Korei …that was her name. She asks if he is interested in the stars and he cannot help the small snort that leaves him. “It’s not really my thing, no.” No matter how hard he tries he looks up at the clear, night sky and sees dots, lacking the imagination to push the dots into fantastical shapes.

Drogon. She kept that name in mind. But she kept her eyes to the stars, missing another tear dripping down to the ground by her paws, and it splashed on the ground. Korei didn't mind that stars weren't his thing. It was all that could be on her mind. 

"You see that one? It's the big dipper...and that is the little dipper" she said. She didn't realize, but she was trying to recreate the scene of her and Galaxy stargazing. It wasn't till Galaxy's question about their fur color came to mind did she feel more tears. "I miss...I miss Galaxy." She felt so much pain around her heart. "It's hurting me...so much to...to think about her."

He looks up to the sky, more so for the sake of being kind than anything else and tries but ultimately fails to find the Big Dipper and Little Dipper speaks of. He makes a hum in his throat but gives no actual verbal confirmation or rejection. He hopes that his noise suffices and that she takes it as she will. A moment of silence follows and then it all comes pouring out as she admits to missing Galaxy. Drogon’s gaze lowers slowly from the sky to Korei sharing in the sentiment but without the intensity that she does though this is not surprising. Drogon only met her once and did not know her half as well as he presumes her own siblings did. Drogon isn’t good with tears. He doesn’t know how to handle this and though he feels the inclination to attempt to offer her something that might dampen the blow of loss just a bit he wrestles with whether he actually thinks that’s a good idea or not. He sympathizes. Sort of; in the most similar way that he can. Drogon is a mercenary and he’s a ranger …not a counselor. He’s not qualified to give anyone comfort and he knows it. “Hey,” He calls up to her. “I know it hurts and it’s ok to hurt; but you should know that she’s up there, she's stardust and as long as you keep looking to the stars and keep her in your thoughts and heart then she’s not really gone. She'll always be there.” Just as his mother lives on in him ( though Drogon doesn’t know Lotte’s passed away ). He feels a bit awkward — this is very out of his depth, after all — and has no idea whether his words will help her or alternatively make her feel worse but he offers them to her in the hope that they might be able to bring her some small comfort in what must surely be dark days for the family.

Korei Julia turned her teary gaze to Drogon, with such sad eyes. She didn't know that he wasn't so good with this, but it comforted her enough to hold the tears back. She sniffled, and felt the need for some physical comfort, as she did with everyone. She leaned a bit toward Drogon, but not all the way incase he felt uncomfortable. 

"Why did she have to go? I n-never got to finish...to finish teaching her about the...the stars" she tried to say, hicupping. She knew vaguely of death, but never of why they had to go. And Galaxy had been so young.

Drogon makes it a point not to meet Korei’s gaze: having noted the deep sorrow that he understands the surface of. To meet her gaze for too long would make him feel like he’s intruding on a grieving process he’s not meant to witness and so to avoid any more awkwardness he avoids her gaze. It’s easier to avoid as he climbs up to her perch after a few seconds of deliberating. Drogon does not miss that she leans towards him though he is glad that she doesn’t strive to make physical contact. He’s so not qualified for this. At Korei’s questioning Drogon shifts his weight and scrounges for an answer that he doesn’t really have. Because life is cruel and unfair is what Drogon wants to say but in lieu of not sounding like an insensitive boar says “I don’t know.” instead.

Korei's lip quivered a bit. She wanted to know why. She leaned away from Drogon, upset again. "I don't want her gone...I want her here." She may have sounded like a child chucking a tantrum, but she was quite angry, and upset. At everything. "I want to keep teaching her..."

She is grieving, Drogon tells himself. He tells himself it like a mantra, biting on his tongue to keep himself from snapping at her as she throws a tantrum like a small child. Telling her that Galaxy is gone and never coming back no matter how big of a childish fit she throws sounds cruel, even in Drogon's head. He’s reminded instantly of Vela, and is trying to retain as much sympathy to her situation as he can as he discreetly rolls his eyes. Was she another one like Vela who thought just because she opened her mouth and demanded that the universe should just stop and give her what she wants? He moves away from her then and back down the small incline to stand in the ground so he is peering back up at her. “The world rarely gives us what we want. I learned that a long time ago. It’s not fair, but life is never fair. In spite of it’s injustices you gotta keep your chin up and keep soldiering on.” He has no patience for demanding princesses and done, surprisingly, fairly well with Vela but he was quickly finding that his tolerance for ‘give it to me, I want it’ was running dangerously thin and low. It must be nice to believe that if you demand loud enough you’ll get what you want — but that’s not the kind of life Drogon has lived. He’s had to fight for everything and cannot sympathize. He thinks of his nightingale mother and how crying out for her and yelling at the world to bring her back to him ( when they were only separated by distance and not the veil between life and death ) hadn’t worked. She was still gone from him but that does not mean she has left him. That took Drogon a long time to figure out — but he sees her in his reflection, he hears her in the Tundrian when he speaks it. She is not truly gone from him because she has left pieces of herself with him.

“Galaxy is only gone in corporeal world, but she’s still here. She’s in the stars, she’s in your love of the stars. She’s still with you. You just gotta find her.” And that’s the best advice that Drogon has for her, lingering but not feeling very inclined to remain if she’s going to continue demanding impossible things of the universe like he imagines Vela would. Vela is enough of a spoiled princess for Drogon and he’s not feel very welcoming to a second spoiled princess ( especially one that is older and should know better, he believes ).

Korei didn't want to hear that. That the world wasn't fair. Yet now, she knew all of that. She stopped herself from sulking as Drogon went on about having to find Galaxy, and unlike most times, she did not take it literally. "I'll look at the stars every night...and I will find her." She looked up at Drogon, smiling lightly with still teary eyes. It seemed almost every male she'd met had been kind to her, and her sisters were becoming more kind. Besides Galaxy's death, things were looking up in life. She was feeling compassion from others for what felt like the first time, and she needed it. "Thank you, Dro...thank you."

wrapping up & archiving with my post! :-)

There is something in Drogon that tells him he should attempt to be more gentle when he speaks because she is grieving and cannot help that. It’s a natural reaction …but he is not a gentle beast. Whether she believes him or not he doesn’t know but he accepts her promise to look up to the stars and find her — which is good. He’s run out of extended patience for ‘give me now because I want it’ princesses and it was not Korei’s fault. Dro, she calls him. He has many names, many masks that he adopts to the situation but this is the first time besides wintersbane that it is a nickname given to him by another. It makes him miss his mother with a fierce ache in his chest that will never heal he’s beginning to believe …but it’s like he just told Korei: gotta lift your chin and keep going. Can’t preach something he’s not willing to practice himself. He accepts her thanks with a stiff nod, not really feeling like he deserves it. He was cruel …in his thoughts at least … but she is the only one that can deduce whether his words ( regardless of how blunt and insensitive they could seem ) helped her or not; and who was he to question it? “See you around, Korei.” He offers with a dip of his head in departure as he continues on to his den to sate his hunger and get some rest.