Blackfeather Woods Breached her sanctuary

Within mere days of first making the top of the slope, Ramsay had become incredibly proficient at scaling it in both directions. Despite his stunted figure and how his balance differed from the average wolf's, he could now lope up and down the steep hill with ease and only a couple of hiccups. Euron was able to do so as well. But there was still a member of their trio who was seemingly confined to the glen, and Ramsay, ever embracing the mantle of steward if only in his own eyes, sought to remedy that.

His bright blue eyes scanned the dark glen as he padded around the perimeter at a strange lope that was just unnatural enough to seem otherworldly. His ash-marked sibling wasn't in immediate sight, so the boy tipped back his muzzle and loosed a high pitched call for @Maegi. They were breaking her out of here.

She knew that Ramsay and Euron often went places on their own; she saw them leave, hoisting themselves up and away. But Maegi quite liked the glen--it was calm and quiet, and there was still plenty to do and see here. And without Potema here, she didn't feel as if she constantly had a malevolent pair of eyes watching her every move, looking for a moment to strike.

The little white-furred girl was curled up, dozing, in a dark corner of the clearing when she heard Ramsay's summons from fairly close by. Pricking her ears aloft, she rose a little unsteadily to her feet, hobbling over to where she had heard her dark brother's voice.

He stood waiting, and Maegi ambled toward him with a quizzical look. "What?" she asked shortly, a little irritated that he had disturbed her nap. Nevertheless, the boy's eyes sparkled with some sort of plan, and she waited, impatient, for him to tell her what it was.

Barging in say hi to your granduncle

The man had not seen his grand...niblings? Was that the term for them? His grandnephews and grandniece. He had been the one providing for them — hunting the food that was then transported to their Glen. But he had yet to lay eyes on them, other than brief glances from the top of the Glen.

He knew about their deformities; had expected it. The Meloniis were notorious for their inbreeding. It was this that ultimately led Meldresi to finally depart from their home and create her own sect, with new blood to fuel them. She had been successful for at least two generations. But their progress had been halted right in its tracks with the birth of these three; the blood of Melonii siblings had mixed once more.

But children were children. No matter how twisted they might be in mind or body. And they deserved to know all of their relations in proximity. He ventured to the Glen, with no edible gift in maw, hoping that a new presence would be enough to garner their interest.

As he approached he heard a puppy's yipping howl. It was not in distress, so his pace did not increase, sliding down the Glen's slope with ease. Hello? He called out, seeing none of the pups there.

He swung his whole body around so he could face Maegi as her voice cut sharply across the glen. Automatically, his eyes darted to her mutant paw—the most wonderful part of her, the freak of freaks would insist—and he gave his tail a couple of pensive shakes before meeting her gaze once more. His gums curled into a grin full of intent as he turned with several choppy steps back toward the shallowest hill and, snapping his ears forward, he adventurously proclaimed, "c'mon, le's go!"

She'd been in the glen long enough. Whether she liked it or not, Ramsay was determined to take her up there. True, it wasn't much different up there than down here, but it was new and exciting all the same, and that was enough for an odd little homunculus like him. Eagerly licking his lips, the boy made several short strides toward the glen's edge, but stopped in his tracks when an unfamiliar dark-furred wolf descended down it right in front of him.

Ramsay knew many of his relatives, if not very intimately, and he knew also that only pack wolves would be permitted to get this close to their home. Nevertheless, the unfamiliarity of Miraak made him bristle a little and he sidestepped to block Maegi from the elder man's path, ever protective of the only two stable pillars in his life. When their unrecognizable visitor called out, Ramsay called back: "Who you?"

Ramsay called her to adventure, and adventure she supposed she would have. Wagging her tail excitedly, she began to follow him, but not too long after that did an unfamiliar wolf enter the clearing.

Light on his feet despite his deformities, Ramsay blocked her, with a defensive query toward the man. Flicking her ear in annoyance--she was the same size as her brother, she didn't need protection--Maegi shuffled around him, staring up quizzically at the stranger.

He was big and dark--and old. Heavy gray marked his muzzle and streaked through his black pelt, and his eyes looked. . .well, they looked as if they had seen a lot, that's for sure. Maegi was sure she had not seen him before; she would remember his air of quiet menace.

"Yeah, who're you?" she echoed Ramsay, though her tone was more curious than anything. He had pretty eyes--a very dark blue-purple, that despite their warmth had a steely edge to them.

He remained paused there, waiting for some sign of movement. And lo and behold, there it was. Two small figures towards him, intent on scaling the Glen's slopes. He had to hold in a gasp of shock, the sight catching him far more offguard than he had expected. The boy of the two had no neck. He blinked, then looked once more. No neck.

But despite this limitation, he spoke with a familiar impishness that he knew well in children. The boy seemed to be find considering, adjusting well to his deformity. He knew that Potema's children were twisted — expected it, even — but he had never seen a mutation such as the boy had. The girl's he had encountered many a time, and it could be overcome — he knew how to train for it — but he could not make any heads or tails about him.

He saw no reason not to treat them as he would any other children, and spoke as such. I am your mother's uncle. My name is Miraak, He rumbled softly, his voice neutral. What are your names?

Maegi's curiosity eased Ramsay's uncertainty, but only a little, and it swelled again when Miraak identified himself. Their mother was an unkind, unloving creature, and connecting himself first to her did nothing to elevate Miraak's status in the dwarf's eyes. The bridge of his short muzzle wrinkled perceptibly; at even this young and tender age, he didn't hear the word "mother" and feel anything but the mutual hate she had shown them since birth, and something resembling longing deep down in his chest.

"Ram," he enunciated carefully, eyes narrowed on the older man's ankles as he reached the glen's floor. "Ours," he said emphatically, twitching his wide ears unsteadily. As long as this unfamiliar stranger understood that the glen belonged to them and the few wolves who had been around since their birth, there would be no issues with his presence here. Miraak had come at a bad time in the dwarf's life; Ramsay had, by now, more or less solidified who was a stranger and who wasn't, and strangers on the pups' turf were met with more hostility than outside their turf or than any familiar wolf was.

Still, Miraak had a kindly enough voice, so Ramsay dropped his guard enough to seat himself—shoulders hardly reaching to Maegi's ribcage when he was fully on his haunches—and watched quietly for a moment before asking, "what want?"

He was Miraak, their mother's uncle. She saw Ramsay's face change for the worse at the mention of Potema and felt a similar emotion roll through her. Anyone related to their absentee parent was a potential threat. What was his angle?

"Maegi," she said, her voice quiet and guarded. "Where. . ." She looked suddenly around the clearing, head swiveling on her skinny stalk of a neck, and then back at Ramsay. "Where's Euron?" she asked her other brother, at once both curious and worried.

She wanted Euron to meet their great-uncle. She didn't want him to miss out.

She hadn't seen this man before. How did she know he wouldn't just disappear again? So many in their lives seemed to vanish into thin air, like Cassiopeia, or their sisters Kotake and Koume. Ganondorf. Damien, who had brought them food as youngsters but had not been seen for quite some time.

There was a wrinkle in both of their faces when he revealed his relation to their mother. He realized too late that it was a mistake. Potema had been entirely absent in their lives; he didn't expect them to have a good opinion on anyone directly related to her. Perhaps he should have said their grandmother's brother instead, but it was too late.

The boy sat down, looking comical in appearance, but entirely serious in his face. Miraak knew that hiding emotions was hard for children to do, especially untrained, so he took every slight twitch of their face as literal. It was clear that, while there was distrust, there was an openness to him that he was glad for. To meet you, He rumbled back. @Euron? He assumed that it was the name of the third child, absent from their presence. Is he normally absent?

"Why?" he responded immediately with another twitch of his wide, bat-like ears. He wasn't necessarily as smart as his sister when it came to memorizing the details of their religion, or as clever as Euron when it came to trickery, but Ramsay was intelligent in his own right and it showed in the burn of his eyes on their great-uncle. How he received this man hinged on the response.

There were very few wolves who had thus far made an impact on Ramsay. The likes of Ganondorf, Vaati, Damien, Koume and Astrid were all easily forgettable, for they had come by once or twice when he was little but failed to show their faces since. He would recognize them if he saw them, but shared no meaningful connection with them. There were others, like Cassiopeia, Kove and Aries who had never made an appearance with him, and he knew them only as scents without faces. For the dwarf, the only wolves who had solidified themselves as meaningful were Maegi, Euron and, oddly enough, Cicero, who was supposed to be forbidden from them.

Where would Miraak fall? He considered this as his blue eyes pinned unwavering on the older Melonii, and he only looked away when his sister asked a question that was echoed in a way by the elder. "Hiding," he answered succinctly. Euron only appeared when he wanted to, but it was always a safe bet that he was around and could hear every word.

Resisting an eye roll, Maegi flitted her gaze round the clearing, looking for some sight of Euron--at least to find his beady eyes glowing somewhere in the darkness that surrounded them. Coming up empty, she sighed, looking back at Miraak, a spark of animation coming to her face as a sudden thought occurred to her.

"You said 'mother's uncle,'" Maegi said, slowly trying to puzzle out the mess of jumbled thoughts in her mind. "Did you know Meldresi?" She cast her eyes sideways at Ramsay, adding, "Our grandmother," in a slightly haughty way--he likely knew that already, but young Maegi already had a touch of condescension when it came to Blackfeather lore, as if it belonged to her and her alone.

Meldresi! Perhaps this stocky man with eyes of indigo could tell her more about the grandmother stuck in tales, buried in the woods. Maegi thought she had seen that same color of eyes appear in her dreams. . .could Miraak have been close to the Night Mother herself?

Miraak sensed that his next words would be heavily scrutinized by the stunted boy. It was a feeling he had encountered before, but never by such a small wolf before (both in age and physically). You are my kin — my family, His gaze focused heavily on the stunted boy, but danced to the black-socked girl occasionally. I deserve to know who you are, and you me. Don't I?

Hoping that the boy would be satisfied with that answer, he turned his attention to the sister, who asked about that far off woman, deified and worshipped by the wolves of Blackfeather Woods long ago. None of these wolves would ever know her as she was — a mortal woman. Intelligent and beautiful, yes, but a mortal woman who lived and died as the rest of them would. Yes, He nodded. She was my older sister by a year, He had often cursed himself for not moving faster and being able to see Meldresi before she died. He wondered what woman she had turned into, if she had changed at all. He looked at her expectantly, predicting that she had some questions to blurt out at him.

It was as good an answer as any—possibly better, even. He didn't have very high expectations of his family outside his litter mates, given his earliest impression of family was his mother shunning he and his siblings, but even so he appreciated that sentiment enough to let his guard drop. "Yes," he decided firmly, and then rose to his feet once more to pace away toward the glen's edge, effectively giving Miraak his permission to be in their glen, like he even had a right to do such a thing.

He hovered in the vicinity though, glancing back at Maegi when she told him matter-of-factly who Meldresi was. He already knew that, of course—everyone was told of the pack's founder and leading lady—but he didn't feel the same reverence for her that Maegi did, so he paid little mind. There weren't many wolves around sufficiently knowledgeable to teach him the whole of the Dark Brotherhood's religion and, without that, it was harder to view Meldresi, a wolf whose spiritual prowess was nearly unmatched, as anything but someone who once was and now wasn't.

He dropped to the ground to roll in a patch of damp moss while Maegi and Miraak conversed on the subject of Meldresi, but kept one wide ear flared toward them to listen for anything that might interest him.

Can skip Ramsay for now! He'll only pop back in if the subject moves to something that interests him more!

His answer to Ramsay's question went right over her head as her mind fixed on his next statement. Meldresi's brother! She had so many questions. She dare not trouble him with them all. . .but oh, she had questions.

"Whoa," she said, jaw slightly agape. She shut it, wagging her tail. "She was your sister." Maegi thought for a long moment on what to say next. "What was she like?" she finally blurted, having settled on a topic of conversation.

Because she had heard Meldresi this, Meldresi that. How she was beautiful and powerful and wise. But what had she been like? Cold and hard, but with some soft spots, like Vaati? Or did she have the kindness of a wolf like Cassiopeia?

Where to begin? He sighed. Meldresi had been a marvel in youth. She was an adult when he was born, and even as a yearly she was wise beyond her years. Everyone wanted her: to be her friend, her mentor, her apprentice, her lover, but she had rejected most of them. But he couldn't tell them all that. She was very bright; intelligent and wise. And magic...magic oozed off of her. She was completely devoted to the Meloniis, even moreso than she was to Mephala and Sithis in a way. She would do anything for them, even if it meant leaving. He looked about to the forest that Meldresi had found and built into a pack. Perhaps it wasn't as active or powerful as other Dark Brotherhood sects. But she had proved something by coming out here and creating it on her own. And that is why were are here right now,

The topic at hand wasn't something that really concerned or interested Ramsay. He listened for all of two seconds before growing bored—Meldresi was no one to him, a body in the ground whose prowess was no longer relevant to the living who existed in the present, as he did—so he slunk off at length, climbing back out of the glen and forgetting all about his previous plan to bring Maegi along with him.

She listened carefully to Miraak, barely noticing her brother's retreat into the trees. Her mouth curved in the first smile she'd ever give her uncle, ears twitching in fascination. All his words--bright, intelligent, wise. . .magic--settled firmly into her head, added to her burgeoning collection of Meldresi lore.

"Cool," Maegi responded, the word wholly inadequate for what she was feeling. Had she known the words awe or riveting, she might have used those; as it was, her vocabulary was limited by her youth.

"So where have you been?" she asked, her tone not particularly accusing or hostile. She wondered if he had stayed away because everyone else had, or if he truly had been absent and was just now returning to an active life in the Woods.