The Tangle hips that could bear you a buffalo

@Furi ♥

Panicked and utterly out of breath, Eirlys Dagny Fearghal threw herself into the nearest thickly-wooded area with a desperate cry. Her lungs burned and her body quaked. A thin laceration marred the velveteen of her cheek, but her fur was so dark it bore little consequence. She was close to a pack territory — two of them, in fact! — but beyond that, she had no idea where she was. She knew only that she needed to get back to Ceallach, Reed, Droman, and Hemlock as soon as possible, to warn them about the roaring birds of prey that loomed overhead. Speaking of which…

Cocoa dusted ears swiveled and fluttered nervously; she flinched at every small sound as she peered out of the underbrush. Fortunately, the blood droplets she’d left behind in her mad dash were better than a breadcrumb trail. She began to retrace her terrified steps, mindful of the nearby claimed lands and giving them a wide berth. Her pleochroic eyes were on the ground as she progressed out of the wood in a heavy-legged shuffle, but she kept half her attention skyward.

They aren’t to do too much when it comes to their neighbors. She is diligent on border patrol, she spars when she can. If another war is on the brink, Furi is going to be ready. She’s already shown the boys what she can do, and likely they’re doing the same to prepare. It made sense, at least. But now realizing their numbers in Drageda has dropped a few—Eljay never returned with them and Rose is nowhere to be found and, well, you don’t want to get her started on Arrille.
 
She searches for signs of Rose, wondering if she betrayed them in the same way Arrille had. Furi doesn’t want to believe it, certain that her friend hadn’t stabbed her in the back, she’s got to be somewhere. She remembered the first night they spent together, talking about where they saw themselves. She’d searched the coast where they’d first met with no signs, turning south and finding herself once more tangled in… the tangle.  She’s distracted for a moment until blood fills her nose and she nearly stumbles upon a frantic wolf with a strange pattern of fur. If the brown were black, and frame slighter, then she’d be looking at a mirror image of herself.
 
Furi’s ears fall back against her head and turn to see where the trail of blood leads. The girl chuffs quietly so that she doesn’t startle any more than necessary, and waits to see if the frantic girl will stick around.

Eirlys had the survival skills of an overweight house cat with narcolepsy, so when she turned to face Furi it was with no real sense of urgency. She’d been deep in thought about the giant birds and where she, Hemlock, Reed, Droman, and Ceallach might even go at this point. If only papa was here, he’d know what to do. Eirlys still associated Arturo with a sense of authority, admittedly more so than the Kali woman and even more than Lotte. She’d seen the way äiti looked at him, after all.

Eirlys stopped in her tracks to look the other girl over, but recognition didn’t immediately leap into her pleochroic eyes. Mallaidh’s coloring had still been very, very dark when she’d been kidnapped and separated from the rest of the family. Still, the girl looked so much like a perfect combination of Lotte and Arturo that the snowdrop’s heart began to quicken and her mouth went immediately dry. Mindless of her bleeding face, “What’s your name? What’re your parents’ names?” she asked in the common tongue, entering the situation with all the grace of a three-legged caribou trying to riverdance.

She doesn’t get the reaction she expects. She can’t see the wound on the girl’s face but the blood is strong and even wafts in her direction when she’s spun around to face her. When she opens her mouth to speak—are you okay she is urged to asked—the stranger’s words fill her mind instead. Ears swivel forward curiously but they eventually droop back, something not quite feeling right. She thinks of Roarke and the last time she thought she’d once seen him and it stifles her from speaking for a moment, staring at the stranger’s dark face.
 
“My name is Furi,” she says carefully, thinking about what Étoille once told her, something she still hasn’t managed to properly sort. She’d easily shifted from Mallaidh to Furi long ago and it isn’t for the same reason the brute had changed from himself to Argent, but it is in this moment she feels it’s too obvious she is lying. “I don’t remember them,” she decides to say, licking her lips. Maybe if she’d spent more time with her family before she’d been separated, she’d properly recognize the family resemblance, but tattered memories strewn across her mind only gives her bits and pieces to remember.

“Oh,” Eirlys replied sadly, her mouth remaining open as she tried to think of what she could say to back out of this. She didn’t know any “Fury” — but she couldn’t help but think there was something weird going on here. This wolf — Fury, not Mallaidh! — looked so much like her mother! She was leggier and more svelte, but that wasn’t honestly a hard thing to achieve. Idiot girl, she thought to herself, unconsciously emulating her mother’s habitual internal dialogue. Look at the way she’s looking at you. She thinks you’re just as dumb as you look — and close your mouth!

Eirlys closed her mouth.

Lotte hadn’t lived long enough for all of her stories and songs to stick. Eirlys knew Ceallach’s middle name solely because of Hemlock’s continued presence in her life, and she knew her own because Dagfinn had been Lotte’s favorite topic of conversation — when she wasn’t talking about Arturo and Hemlock, that is. The family had stopped talking about Chusi, Roarke, and Mallaidh over time; even now, it was still in that “nope, too painful to deal with” stage. Especially after Arturo had — well, changed — it was smarter just to focus on the ones who remained. And with the birth of Reed and Droman came more responsibility to stay cheerful and upbeat.

“I’m sorry,” Eirlys remembered to say at last, shuffling her paws. “We look — I mean — okay.” She pumped the lingual brakes, realizing that, “We look the same,” might actually be pretty insulting if Fury didn’t like how she looked. Anyway, Fury was very pretty — the ideal of what Eirlys wanted to look like, just like Drogon. Idiot girl, she thought again. She really had to stop looking for her family in every wolf she saw. Maybe the wolves in these wilds just all had colorpoint markings.

Stranger things had happened.

She frowns when the other responds with sadness. Furi doesn’t know what to make of it but knowing something isn’t right and figuring out what it is is never on the same level. Something makes this sad, pretty girl and in this moment it is her. She can’t be who she wants her to be and her ears remain drooped against her head. She does take a step forward, struggling through the thick brush—she doesn’t know what she comes here other than to torture herself—but stops short.
 
“What is your name?” she asks. It isn’t the question she wants to ask but for fear of making the sadness worse, she keeps her own mouth shut.

“Eirlys,” the snowdrop replied glumly. She was still childish in many ways, and didn’t consider that she was being a downer on the conversation; she was simply too self-absorbed and crestfallen to care. It was curiosity and not any sort of probing or deliberate attempt to change the subject that caused her to inquire, “Do you live nearby?” Fury smelled like a pack, which Eirlys could only assume was her family unit. “You have to watch out — there are giant birds made of…rocks, or something, and they’re really loud and really scary,” she said with feeling, hoping that the apple-eyed girl and her family would take care. “One of them chased me, but it flew away.”

Eirlys.

Furi swallows thickly, looking away and staring at something sedimentary. She doesn’t exactly see it but she uses it to focus on what she can remember and she tries desperately to focus the memories. Her sister’s name is Eirlys, she knows that, but what does she remember? Not a lot. She’d been small and sick a lot when she’d been home but their family fell apart when Roarke went missing and she can scarcely remember any memories from then.

“Eirlys?” she questions, despite the fact the girl moved on. Furi blinks a few times to try and clear her mind, shaking her head. “Birds made out of rocks?” she adds, just as confused. Part of her wants to believe it, but she doesn’t—that seems outrageous, is this how Blixen feels about the stars?—but her only focus is trying to keep her world from flipping upside down. "You're bleeding," she then blurts, noticing the slight change in brown to red swelling in the girl's fur.

“Oh,” Eirlys said, realizing that she was rambling again, just as she had the first day she’d met Sif. “Sometimes I talk too much…” she mumbled. She didn’t realize that Fury didn’t believe her about the rockbirds — she wasn’t too intuitive when it came to social interaction — but even if she’d caught on to the girl’s disbelief she wouldn’t have taken offense. Eirlys might not have believed it if it hadn’t happened to her directly. Backtracking, “Yeah, Eirlys,” she affirmed, figuring the other girl was just making sure she’d heard right. “It’s, um — it’s a flower. A little white one.”

She didn’t comment on the bleeding, instead sticking out her tongue to try to pinpoint where exactly the wound was. When she found it, she grimaced. “I was running,” the chubby adolescent recollected, “through there. To get away from the rockbird.” She looked toward the tangle of undergrowth she’d erupted from with a slightly embarrassed air.

“It’s okay,” she mumbles, more to herself than anything. She’s never minded too much. Blixen talks a lot. So does her mother. Artaax doesn’t and she’s more uncomfortable around him than anything (she’ll never admit to Wildfire how intimidating she is). “Is it bad?” she asks, watching the spot that causes her to wince. There doesn’t seem to be any other wounds to note but the one is significant enough to leave a trail.

“You’re not white,” she blurts, her eyes widened surprised by her own impulses. It’s been a moment since the girl mentioned the meaning but it lingers on her mind. Did her name mean anything? One ear swivels in thought, looking away as her cheek fills in hot.

The snowdrop’s tail whisked behind her genially, but its metronomic rhythm, like Eirlys herself, was slow and steady instead of spontaneous and energetic. “It’s not too bad,” she said thoughtfully, poking it again with an accompanying grimace. “I forget it’s there until I poke it, but now that I know it’s there, I keep wanting to poke it — to…make sure if it’s still there…I guess.” Why had she said that? [Author’s Note: WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS] “Probably I’ll have my mama look at it,” she said slowly, hoping Ceallach wouldn’t worry too much when they were reunited. She had no way of knowing that her littermate was already on the search for her.

Thankfully, Fury moved on to another topic, looping back to the origin of the Fearghal’s name. This manner of conversing suited Eirlys, who often felt like she was left behind when it came to the whole talking thing. “Well,” she said, looking at the other girl a little shyly, trying to make a joke, “you’re not angry, either.” She certainly didn’t look like a creature whose name warranted such a fiery meaning. “Mama says I used to be white. I just changed colors later, like my — ”

Say it fast and it’ll hurt less.

“ — like my äiti.” Eirlys’ mouth hardened as she pressed her lips together.

Eirlys assures her that it’s not that bad. It’s there and she’s aware of it and honestly, Furi would do the same thing. She’d pestered at the wound she gained the first time she was here, picking at the scab until it bled and finally left an ugly scar, fur unable to grow back. It’s minor and not many wolves look at your feet, anyway.

“Why would I be angry?” she asks, briefly forgetting about the wound, though, now that she doesn’t have to concern herself with it. If she didn’t already feel weird about the whole interaction, she might have overlooked it, but differentiating between mama and a word she holds dear, that she has not spoken in so long. Her mouth turns dry and she licks at her lips, trying to give her a little reprieve, but it turns up short.

She opens her mouth to start again, finding it easier to click them shut and wait. “Eiri,” she breathes after a beat. She’s faked it for long enough, buried as much of the memory as she possibly managed, but standing in front of the possibility that might be able to find her family crumbles the messy wall she’s built around herself. “Äiti?” she repeats, spoken on a familiar tongue in a language she hasn’t practiced since the strange wolf outside the borders one day. “Sisko?”

Just like that, it all came crashing down.

After a few failed attempts, the name squeaked out like a rusted wheel in need of oiling. “Mallaidh?” Perhaps if Eirlys had led with her littermate’s name, the whole interaction could have been different — but she didn’t regret it in the slightest. Whatever she’d said, it’d led her to this point — and this was right where she wanted to be. “I thought you forgot all about me,” she managed to eke out through the lump in her throat. Now that she knew for sure it was her sister, she pressed forward without thinking, and if Mallaidh didn’t step back Eirlys would push into her personal space and seek to rub her unsullied cheek against her sister’s. She was already crying — there was no holding closed the floodgates now. There was so much Mallaidh didn’t know!

And there was nobody but Eirlys to tell it.

“Mallaidh — I mean, Furi — ” she said, her memory jogged by their mother’s lilting tongue. “Äiti — she…she…” Hiccupping, she tried to follow her rule from earlier — to just say it fast, so it’d hurt less — but her tongue was tripping over itself, knocking against her teeth, utterly out of control. She very nearly lied, saying something like, “She’ll be so happy to see you!” Anything to not have to be the one to make Furi sadder than she already must have been, being separated from her real family for such a long time. And she didn’t know about Chusi leaving or papa changing, either.

Fuck.

Eirlys is not the sick little girl she remembers because, just like Furi, she grew up too. And she’s exploring (we’ll call it that) and she’s alone and yeah, most definitely rock birds are a thing because Eiri says they are. Everything about Furi’s posture softens and when her sister takes a step forward, she closes the distance. Immediately, she sweeps the other girl up and takes a deep breath, matching it to a memory she thought she’d lost long ago. Green eyes close and she waits, trying to listen to what she has to say but she can’t focus on them.
 
Furi blinks a few times, snaking herself free and search her face. “What?” she manages to say, putting her nose to the girl’s tear soaked cheek.

Everything was unravelling, and it was all happening at breakneck speed. When Furi drew back to regard her sobbing littermate, Eirlys attempted to turn away and hide her tears — but they were blatantly obvious, and Mallaidh was already leaning forward to comfort her. The snowderp hiccupped, breath hitching as she regained control. She had to be strong for Mallaidh now, the way Mallaidh had always been strong enough for the both of them back when Eirlys was constantly trying to die. “A lot of bad things have happened,” she said thickly. “Furi,” she used the girl’s new name, speaking very softly as though speaking loudly would knock her flat, “Äiti died.”

Seeing her sister’s face, Furi knows she doesn’t want to hear the news she has to say. A lot of bad things happened. Pain pricks at the back of her eyes and she blinks a few times, trying to fight the swell in her chest that makes it hard to breathe. “No?” she decides. It’s not true. It can’t be true. “What? No,” she says again, clearing her throat and putting a step between them. She moves once to the right, as if she’s going to leave but decides against it. She does the same to the left.
 
Silence lingers as she tries to sort it all very quickly, frantically looking between her sister and the rest of the world for an out. After a moment, her eyes widened with the perfect plan. Eirlys doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “Where’s papa? Ceallach?” she asks. They’ll know. They’ll tell her she’s fine. Where’s mama? she wants to urge, her last breath strangling in her throat.

Eirlys didn’t try to correct her sister or make her believe what she’d said; she and Ceallach had thrown a similar response at Hemlock and Arturo’s initial bearing of the news. Mallaidh must’ve known that none of the Hemlotturos would ever make jokes about something so dire, so Eirlys just stepped forward and attempted to hold her eldest littermate as best she could. She couldn’t stop the inevitable storm, but she could at least try to help Mallaidh weather it.

“After äiti — after it happened, papa and mama — Hemlock — were never the same,” she admitted in a low undertone. “See, after we lost you and Roarke, äiti was really sad, and Hemlock always took care of her and papa. Over time, äiti and papa fell in love with her. She taught them both to be happy again, but they never stopped missing you and loving you and Roarke.” Eirlys had been raised in this unorthodox way and didn’t see anything odd about it, so she pressed onward, her voice still hitching with the sobs she was struggling to fight back: “Ceallach and I started calling her ‘mama,’ because that’s what she became.”

Eirlys sniffled but pressed on. “That’s what äiti wanted — she and Hemlock were wives and papa was the husband.” Now that she’d brought Mallaidh up to speed about why she differentiated between “mama” and “äiti” she furrowed her brow, trying to think about what else the other girl had missed. “We lived across the sea on an island for awhile. We had to move.”

“Papa…he was out patrolling with Ceallach, and they found Chusi’s scent nearby. She’d come back to the Hinterlands where we were born, but she didn’t come home. After that…I don’t know how to explain it, but papa — he changed. He said his name was Witchdoctor and he was — creepy. One day he didn’t come home anymore. I keep looking for him, but I — ” She simply shook her head. “Hemlock had two babies with papa. She was pregnant with them when äiti — anyway, we have a little sister named Reed and a little brother named Droman now,” was the last thing she figured was most important to add.

Furi rapidly searches Eirlys’ face as she steps closer, trying to find an answer, but her only reaction is to take a step back and leave space between them. The pursuit isn’t long-lived as her sister manages to work her way in and wrap around, offering something that should have been comfort. She stares at some point in the distance, taking a deep breath and absorbing the way she smells and sounds and…
 
She blinks a few times, shaking her head as she pieces the information together. It’s hard to focus when she’s overcome with every emotion possible; she’s made herself believe she’d never see her family again and she’s torn halfway between right and wrong and doesn’t know how much tension she can handle. Ears twitch as she hears her lost brother’s name on her tongue, closing her eyes and shifting uncomfortably. When she opens her mouth to speak, Eirlys’ keeps going and Furi lifts her gaze, staring at her.
 
A lot of bad things happened.
 
It is one bad thing after another as her sister moves on to explain. Their mother dies and they leave the territory—if she’d wanted to try and find them one day, would she have been able to?—and they’d moved on to an island at sea. She knows next to nothing about the islands, but was she so close to her family all this time? News of their father being different doesn’t settle well ether, combating every bit of information she’s already gotten. Their lives have been turned upside down like one domino crashing into another and she thought she had such a hard time in Drageda.
 
Furi’s mouth opens but words do not fall from the helm. A sob starts in her chest and chokes outward, leaning into her sister. Her eyes close tight and she buries everything she can. Every nerve in her body lurches forward, wracking her body with cries.

For a long moment, Eirlys simply held on to her sister — Ceallach had made himself believe Mallaidh and Roarke were dead, but the snowdrop couldn’t bring herself to do the same. She knew what death looked like. How it felt to stand beside it. The shaking of Furi’s shoulders and the tears streaming like fire from her eyes into Eirlys’ fur was blessedly alive. Hooking a paw around her littermate’s shoulders and drawing her in, Eirlys did her utmost to protect Mallaidh from falling apart — but the damage was already done, and by the snowdrop’s own hand.

“Olen niin pahoillani, sisko,” she said wretchedly. Though she didn’t wish to take it back — she believed that Mallaidh needed to know these things, and she also believed [somewhat naively] that she would have wanted to hear them if she were in the other girl’s place — she wished she could somehow assuage the inevitable hurt Furi felt. “She loved you so much, Mallaidh,” she breathed brokenly. “You remember the song she gave you, right? ‘Never and never, my girl riding far and near…’ She stopped singing it after…after awhile, but I sing it for Reed and Droman sometimes so they — so they’d know you.” She was talking to fill the silence, talking to cover the wracking sobs, talking to keep herself from doing the same. She had questions of her own, but felt they could wait — and so she stowed them, swallowing them like the lump in her throat.

Eirlys doesn’t speak for a time. Instead, she holds her close and Furi sifts through emotions, feeling the world weigh upon her shoulders. It isn’t until the soothing words of her mother’s tongue touches her ears and she deflates, leaning hard against the chocolate girl. The familiar exhaustion of a mental marathon settles into her bones and she slowly lowers her rump the ground, not so certain she can hold herself up at all anymore.
 
The song enters her ears in Lotte’s voice and she shakes again, fighting back another cry. It’s been so long since she’s heard the song that she’s forgotten in, but the words come flashing back. “I’m so sorry,” she says, voice soft and buried in her sister’s fur.

“No, no,” Eirlys said, trying to forestall the inevitable waves of guilt even as they broke upon Mallaidh’s bowed head. “What do you have to be sorry for? Well, I’ll tell you — nothing.” It was what Lotte would have said, and in a similar cadence. The snowdrop had adopted her father’s accent more than her mother’s because of her closeness with him, but she could easily switch between the two. “Ceallach won’t believe this,” she breathed, holding Furi close and marveling still at the very real, very solid warmth of her. “He thought — thinks — that you and Roarke died.” It was one of the few things they disagreed on. Eirlys stubbornly maintained that if Roarke had died, she would have felt it immediately, banking on the virtual ESP Lotte purported to share with Dagfinn. Ceallach was more skeptical, but they’d stopped discussing it over time.

This, though — this was going to be the best “Told you so!” ever.

Obtusely, Eirlys believed that Mallaidh would immediately want to come back with her to be reunited with the remaining members of her family — and to meet the new additions. She didn’t even need to ask. Instead, she added, “Papa, äiti, and mama would say that you’re an Ansbjørn and a Fearghal — strong blood and good genes on both sides. They would be so proud to see how tall and beautiful you got.” She laughed through her tears. “I’m fat like äiti, but you have papa’s long legs.” Lotte had never once impressed upon her children that being fat was a bad thing, so Eirlys said it as a descriptor and nothing more, with no particular connotation.

Eirlys offers comfort to her in a way no one else can. Blixen has given her comfort, in some instances. Seri and Rose, too. Étoille has his own way and Eske, on occasion, has soothed her troubled mind. But Eirlys? Eiryls is home. They may not have Teaghlaigh, their mother, and plenty of time between one another, but they are still family, and if she remembers only one thing, it’s that.
 
“I… I have missed you guys so much. I didn’t know how to get back… I thought about you so much,” she cries, pressing harder into her sister. If she could disappear into the thick fur of her younger sister, she would. It wouldn’t take much, especially since so much of Mallaidh has disappeared and Furi is hardly more than a hallow shell, just trying to get by without being caught.
 
But what now?
 
“I wish… I could go back. Before I left—got lost—maybe… maybe…” maybe their mother would still be alive.

“I missed you and thought about you, too. All the time,” Eirlys murmured brokenly. She wasn’t sure if Ceallach had continued to think about Mallaidh and Roarke as much as she did — their lost siblings were a subject that didn’t bring anything but pain, and so they didn’t speak of them except on rare occasions. She comforted herself with Furi’s nearness and realized at once that there was a bright side to all this. Nuzzling her sister and drawing back to meet her eyes, Eirlys offered a genuine smile that trembled at the edges with emotion.

Her own eyes were alight with excitement as she suggested, “But you’re here now!” and immediately started in on a rollercoaster of words. “I’m not a good tracker like papa or äiti but I know I can lead you back the right way. We could go right now! We could go back and be a family again.” She didn’t stop to think that Malliadh had set down roots wherever she was; what she knew now and saw now painted her memory of their meeting. Yeah, yeah. Now that she thought of it, Mallaidh had looked so sad and lonely, wandering through the woods. She was probably thinking about the family she’d lost. Well, now Eirlys was going to fix everything!

“Come on, Mallaidh!” she urged, swiping at her tears with a dirty forepaw and leaving streaks of mud on her visage. “Mama — Hemlock will be so happy to see you again, and Ceallach — well, he might be a little shocked and quiet at first, because he thought you were gone forever, but I know he’ll be happy once he realizes it’s you.” She bounded forward a pace or two, then circled back to her shell-shocked sibling with a teary smile. “Let’s go!”

Her sister admits to thinking about her often and she closes her eyes again. Furi had forced herself to stop thinking about them so much lately, so much that they’d started to fade from her memories. She doesn’t spend as much time on each one she recalls but she had to start moving forward. But Eirlys never did and what kind of sister does that make her? Her throat seizes up and she sucks in a breath, shaking her head.
 
She talks about finding the others, Hemlock and Ceallach, but Furi doesn’t move. The space between her and her sister grows and she tightens her jaws, watching her bound forward with excitement. To her, the family is coming together, but to Furi? She feels further apart than she’d ever imagined.
 
“I can’t,” she decides reluctantly. “I have a pack now. They saved me… they’re,” she pauses and chokes on the word she wants to use. “I want to see them but I can’t just leave,” she adds. Leave Blixen? Eske? Étoille? The very few wolves she did have in place of her missing family had taken up so much space within her and she can’t take them out of her life now, even with the thought of reuniting with those she’d left behind.

“I can’t.”

Eirlys swung around, for she’d already begun to trundle off in the wake of her galvanizing cry, to peer at her littermate with a glaze of dumb confusion misting her glacial gaze. “O-Oh,” she eked out idiotically, “yeah, of course.” She should’ve known that! She should’ve scented the wolfscent that tangled thickly within Mallaidh’s pelt. Stupid.

“Of course,” she repeated, panic attacking her way through the rest of her, “Oh, yeah, I knew that, I was just seeing if you knew that! That’s the only reason why I said it. Not because I actually wanted you to drop everything and follow me blindly.” She pushed herself back at her sister clumsily, trying to rewind what she’d done, and nosed comfortingly at the girl’s cheek. “Well,” she said inanely, “I could bring Ceallach here, or you could come visit after you tell them — you don’t have to stay or anything, you could just come visit and.” She swallowed thickly. “Even if — we’re still a family, so…even if we live separately for awhile that would be okay as long as we don’t lose each other again.”

That sounded fair, right? Eirlys bulldozed onward, wheezing asthmatically. “I know you’re not alone anyway, but you’re not alone anymore, Mallaidh,” she said. “I have to go back to Ceallach — and Hemlock. He — they — worry if I don’t come home.” She hesitated, knowing that she was rushing through the end of their meeting, but nobody had ever taught Eirlys how to end conversations gracefully. “Can I bring him back here?” she asked. “Can we come and visit you?” She wanted to be a part of Mallaidh’s new life the same way she’d been a fixture in her childhood; she just didn’t know how to go about it.