The Sunspire So this is your home

@Wraen backdated before the thread @ Morningside

Sebastian was trying to make his way down the mountain. It was not the easiest with an unstable shoulder. Luckily the wound was closed and infections were off. He doubted that there would ever be fur and that it would always be a large scar. The male could only accept to live with it. As he traveled further he started noticing some scents. The male decided to inspect it further.

As he carefully stepped closer, the male recognized the scent. He had scented this before. The male frowned and stepped closer, it reminded him of... Wraen! Sebastian's docked tail wagged. It was a long time he hadn't seen her. The male howled for his friend, wondering if she was home. He could prolong his travel for a bit.

Wraen had last met Sebastian many months ago and, since the man at that time had not been certain about his future, she had not hoped to see him ever again. Which was a pity, because she had fancied him a little (there was a certain allure to the man, despite the fact - as he himself had claimed - that he could be her father) and would have enjoyed to spend more time with him.

Therefore it was a pleasant surprise indeed (and a lucky occasion as well - because Wraen was hardly ever at Sunspire these days), when she heard him calling her so near to Sunspire's borders. Running fast to intercept him before anyone else from the pack would, she arrived to the place little out of breath. "Hey!" she greeted him. "Came for another lunch?"

Sebastian glanced up at the mountain. He remembered when he lived on Thorn Ledge, and later the Caldera. Both were mountainous territories but the male realized that he had been the happiest in Broken Antler Fen, a wet area. Still, he could admire this pack living on the mountain. It wasn't the easiest existence. Sebastian glanced up as he heard someone approach already. When he noticed it was the female he knew it made Sebastian wag his docked tail.

Unknowingly he lifted his head a bit and puffed out his chest. He was doing better which his leg after all. It wasn't completely healed but at least there wasn't a wound that was leaking puss. "Hey Wraen!" He wanted to step closer but then remembered the borders and instead stepped back out of respect. "Well, I wouldn't object. But I actually came to say hello to you, if you aren't too busy?," He questioned. Sebastian had been walking past the borders to find out that this was her home. He might as well wish her a good day before he continued on this travels.

There was no underlying meaning to Sebastian's words, but for some reason the implied "I came to see you" made Wraen beam even more. She was giddy, there was all the ups and elation, and joy of a young school-girl, who has got in the company of her object of admiration. It was not for the first time she had stepped in the territory of really, really liking someone and even the bad experience in the past did not deter her from taking the same path again. After all - the beginnings always were amazing and it had been very long, since she had allowed herself the pleasure of something selfish.

"I have always time for a hello," she replied, smiling and her tail wagging excitedly. She wondered, whether this was the only thing that had led Sebastian here, but she would not ask this directly. "How did you find me? Last time I saw you - we weren't even close to this place."

Sebastian smiled at the fact that she had time for him. He was still a bit clueless about the female and her feelings. He mostly saw her as a friend, perhaps a silly friend. "Well, I was actually looking for my sister,' he admitted. "I've split from my pack to keep my promise to her. She on the other side of this mountain. I was traveling to her when this border scented familiar," he explained. "Hence why I howled to see if you were home," he spoke. Perhaps it wasn't the answer she wanted to hear but Sebastian didn't even think about that.

"How is life on the mountain? Can you tell me more about your pack? I'm curious who you live with." Sebastian was genuinely curious because if Wraen was nice then her pack members must be nice as well. Perhaps it was a good place to settle if he wasn't accepted in his sister's pack.

Well, at this moment being even a "silly friend" to Sebastian would do for Wraen. Maybe it was not wise to let her good heart override her rational mind, but she did not doubt the man's words for a second. Maybe it was him being older than her and his gentleman like manners that made her trust him so readily. 

"Where exactly on the other side your sister lives in?" Wraen asked, recounting the packs she knew that lived in the Rising Sun valley. Bearclaws, Easthollowers and Morningsiders, though there was a rumour of being some othe few up North as well. "It's different from, what I am used to," she replied to his questions, once she had heard the answer to hers.

"Plains, meadows and forests are more to my liking, but mountains have their good sides too," though apart from the great views and the possibility of instilling caches beyond the reach of common crooks, she could not vouch for much more. Come to think of it, she spent most if not all of her time away. 

"My brother is a leader here, and a pair of very good friends of mine as well," though due to her fall-outs with Terance recently she felt that Rannoch and Liffey was more her siblings than the moody young ma. "And a couple of people we recruited along the way - nice and hard-working people," more or less.

"So, did your pack disband or move?" she asked.

Sebastian scanned the mountains. "She is at Morningside though only an Eagle could tell me that it was some plains on the other side of the mountain," he admitted. "The last time I saw her, her pack was still at the plateau," he stated. Hence why looking was really the right term at the moment. He still wasn't sure of his sister's location.

"Ha! That is a funny pun," he chuckled, rather charmingly. Mountains have their good sides. He thought that was funny, then again, he could appreciate a good pun. "But I do agree with you. Mountains do have something special," he spoke. Sebastian felt that wolves really started to behave like their territory if that made sense. Usually, the packs on a mountain were more fierce or rough around the edges like their territory. While he lived at Broken Antler Fen most of the wolves were easier going. But maybe that was just his observation.

"Sounds like a cool bunch. I will remember this place if my sister's pack is full or they won't accept me because of my limp or something like that," Sebastian spoke. He wasn't harboring the greatest confidence in himself. Luckily he still had a trade he could perform, being a medic. "Caldera moved. I knew I would only drag them down with my traveling speed. Plus, I had the promise to my sister I needed to keep," he stated with a quick nod.

"Morningside? I have a friend that lives there," in Wraen's mind the pack's name equaled Sunny, even though she had met some other members of the group. But - well - no one had become more of an acquaintance than the young hunter. 

"Please, do," she replied, though the joining process was not entirely on her shoulders and therefore she had no way of guaranteeing that Sebastian would be accepted in this group, if he wanted to join. 

"I heard about them moving," who had it mentioned first - Terance, Rannoch? - the rumour had spread through the pack quickly and at the time she had made a mental note of visiting the place to see, if there was anything good and useful about it. 

"Speaking of moving - if you still have not located Morningside - I could lead you there. There is a shortcut within our territory - you will reach the place faster that way," she volunteered to be his guide and, as long as they did not come upon any of the very defensive and sensitive parent wolves, they should have no problems.

Sebastian's mind goggled. She had a friend there? How convenient! "Yes, they moved because I knew their old location but they weren't there," he confirmed to the female. Now he had been looking for his sister with no way of knowing for certain where Morningside was until he met with a bird that told him. Luckily he could confirm that info with Alarian also staying at Tindome at the time. Now it was only a matter of crossing the mountains. And now he had another friend helping him.

'Really?," he asked, sounding amazed. "I would greatly appreciate a shortcut with my shoulder. But only if you won't get in trouble with your pack," he stated, almost a bit strictly. Sebastian was sort of excited about the prospect. He could see a bit of where Wraen lived. Hopefully it wouldn't cause her trouble.

"Do not worry about me getting in trouble," Wraen replied with a crooked grin and cast a glance over her shoulder, as if there were invisible eyes watching and invisible ears listening to them. "If you don't behave, prepare to run and very fast," the joke was not a very good one, but implied that the danger was quite real.

"Let's not waste any time then - come on," she chose a well-trodden path and led her companion confidently ahead. What she did not tell him and what he had no way of knowing, was that she was not taking the straightest route to the passage. For safety reasons she chose a slightly longer and more curved path, where landmarks were harder to recognize and looked more or less the same.

"How big is your family - your father and sister aside - does anyone else live in the wilds?" she continued the conversation to pass the time.

Sebastian offered her a skeptical but fond glance. He would try not to get her in trouble but he had the feeling he would once he followed her. Either way, this shortcut and her presence seemed enough for the male to be a rulebreaker and follow her. Sebastian chuckled. "Well I can't run fast at the moment but I guess I will be your pack's lunch then," he joked. Although he hoped that wouldn't be the case.

He trotted after her with a limp in his step. Luckily the steps weren't hurting him anymore. It was just his dysfunctional shoulder that he had to live with. "Um. Well, my brother lives here. At Tindome," he spoke, Sebastian was unaware that after he left the pack disbanded. "Oh and well my four children. Mato and Nova, also at Tindome, and Ivy and Ben. Those last two should be somewhere in Teekon," he explained. Thinking about his children, it made him think of Pearl and how she never returned to him. He had to accept that he would never know what happened to her. "How about you? I know your brother lives here."

"Can't say that my folk prefer wolf meat, but your pelt is really pretty," Wraen returned, but - naturally - did not wish Sebastian to get hurt, eaten or used as a mat for children to sleep and play on. She would take him safely through the passage. However, to be sure that after the long and curveous path she was taking at the moment she would get back, the girl stopped here and there to leave some marks. 

"Ivy? I think I met some Ivy in winter, while I was stuck in a half-frozen bog. Though I can't say that this was not another person, nor can I vouch that it was her real name," she mused. Being one of the people, who at times gave her self-invented nick-names instead of her given name and surname, she believed that others engaged in the same thing as well. "Brother and a sister - she found us recently and the life in a very positive way has never been the same," she replied, smiling and thinking about Maia fondly. Where the two older siblings were very serious, the younger one was like a breath of fresh air. Reckless, funny, prone to getting in trouble, but with a never-ending optimism and love for life in general. 

"I deduce that your children must be grown up and old, if you are on your own now?"

Sebastian flushed lightly. He could feel his cheeks heat up, however his 'pretty pelt' covered it up nicely for him. The wolf rather would not want to be a rug for this pack. He was pretty sure that that wasn't going to happen. He smiled at Wraen's joke, at least, he assumed it was a joke.

"That could have been my daughter. I would have raised her to help others. Grey coat, lighter than mine and with green eyes?," he asked. As he stated this he noticed that Wraen also had green eyes. "Perhaps it was not, though it would be a coincidence if you would have met her," he spoke in return.

He followed her steps down the passage she was leading him into. Sebastian could agree with the female's words. "I recently found my brother and it was just like that," he spoke in return to her. Sebastian was glad that his brother was here, and that he seemed to be thriving as well, taking on a mate and such.

Sebastian looked up when Wraen asked that question. "Um, yes, all grown up. My mate... She left me. Or well, She vanished and never returned. I think something might have happened. I will never know for sure," he spoke and looked a bit saddened. "I raised the pups myself from that moment on. They were a few months old, I'd say. Not extremely fun times."

Now that he told her - yeah - the girl she had met in winter could fit the description, but Wraen did not want to get his hopes up too high. After all - what help could this information be to him. It had happened a very long time ago and the girl she had met briefly could be anywhere and not even alive anymore. After all very few lone wolves could survive winter on their own. 

"Maybe - but I am not sure. I have met a lot of people in the meanwhile - I might be mistaken," this statement was very high up on the probability list. Wraen felt sorry for him losing his mate - but for his sake only. The other half, the one that had a tint of romantic and played with imagination often, was teeny tiny bit glad that Sebastian was a free man. "I helped my parents raise my younger siblings too. They are a lot of work no matter, how many adults are present," she could relate to this. Puppies went from being little loaves of fur and flesh that did not cost you any work to little teethed and clawed monsters that you had to herd around and teach for the next several months. It had been difficult enough for Wraen to not want her children in any time soon.

"Tell me more about yourself - your life story? How did you came here?" she asked.

Sebastian slowly nodded. They would never be sure if it was his daughter. Maybe it was just someone that fit her description. Surprisingly, Sebastian felt rather detached. He hadn't seen all four of his children in a long time, except Mato. He assumed they were doing well but if they didn't, then he didn't want to know about it. He already worried too much about Andalusia.

"Exactly," he agreed with her. Sebastian glanced at her in surprised when she wanted to know his life story. "It is a long one," he stated to her. Did he feel up to tell his whole story to the female? Perhaps so. He really needed to think long and hard to get everything in the right order. "I think I came to these lands when I was around two. I was looking for my father after he abandoned us. I wanted to know why he decided to leave," he explained. It was kind of the truth. He had been very angry and kind of was out to hurt his own father at the time.

"Then I located him, but joined the Caldera instead to have a pack in case things went south," he added. "Eventually we had our confrontation. Not pretty. We will never agree on the same thing. I've accepted it by now. I can't really fight him anyhow."

As an avid story-teller and listener, Wraen was a little disappointed, when instead of a long and detailed biography, she heard a very rough summary of Sebastian's adventures. Either there really was not much to - how many? - 3 - 4 years of his life, or he simply did not think that details were important. Or - quite likely - acquaintances that had met only two times in their life weren't entitled to know the whole personal history. 

Oh well, you live and you learn.

"Unless he is a grumpy ghost that haunts you," she wanted to give a bit of a humorous edge to the otherwise serious story. "Speaking of which - are you familiar with the Wailing ghosts of the mountains?" she asked him a typically annoying know-it-all question, where the invitation for him to ask to tell more, was not so discreetly hidden.

Sebastian didn't want to dwell too much on the past and what he did then. He realized that these things never worked. His grudge against Burke wasn't something that he was proud of, and he had been so focused on getting things changed while in fact nothing really changed. He realized that now. Hence why he wanted to focus on the past. Seb scrunched up his face adorably. "I hope not,' he chuckled and if he did then he couldn't hear his father.

Sebastian then tipped his head. "Nope. Never heard of it," Sebastian stated and then looked around. "Are they in these mountains?," he questioned suspiciously. He didn't really believe in ghosts but what if they were real after all?

"I have not seen them either," Wraen replied and elaborated on the subject, "but the thing about them is that you hear them. That's, where the "wailing" comes from." The idea of these loud spirits had come to her mind one night during a storm. It had howled and sung in many voices and had she not been more afraid from the tree, under which she was hiding, breaking and falling on her, she would have been fascinated. But the memory - though not entirely pleasant - had stuck with her. 

"You can hear them on windy evenings and especially, when walking through this passage," she told him. "Sometimes they sound like far off cries and mournful howls, at other times they chime and sing beautifully. On stormy nights there are loud wails and screams, and now and then there are echoes of merry laughter. I like to think of them belonging to the ghosts of the first wolf-tribes that came to live in these mountains."

Sebastian looked up at the peaks as the other explained to him about these ghosts. He wondered how much of it was true. However, it was a wonderful story. He always liked such stories with possible mysteries. "Do you think something bad happened to them since they are wailing?," he asked curiously while continuing to walk on and look slightly up. Perhaps he was naive enough to think that he might see something.

"So it changes from singing beautifully to mournfully. Hmm. Curious," he stated but his eyes glinted with excitement. It had been a long time since he heard such a story. The male quirked up his lips. He wondered what Andalusia would think of this. "You make them sound that they are----" In that moment a gust of wind went through the passage making a howling like sound. Sebastian's guard hairs instantly raised. "Wowww," he spoke stiffening into his spot.

"Well - I have not met anyone, who has lived here before us and who could tell the actual story," Wraen replied after listening to the passage of the wind through the corridor. It could be frightening, if you weren't used to them, but after a while one's mind was quick to block these out and you had to really focus to hear them again.

"But just because they sound so mournful, does not mean that there should be a sad story behind it," she went on. "It is quite possible that this is, how their language goes and we simply fail to understand, what they are telling to us."

"That makes sense," he returned. He was quite curious as well but if there wasn't anyone who lived here before then they would never find out what happened to these wolves or why they were howling the way they did. Maybe they were happy howls and the living just interpreted it differently. "Maybe not. But now it does sound like that," he stated. It didn't see that Wraen was so startled by it. She was probably used to it, by now.

"I am sure Andalusia would have loved this," he thought out loud. She would have theorized this probably as much as Wraen was doing now. He missed Andalusia. The uncertainty if she was dead was killing him. Another great mystery. He wondered if she would vanish from his life just like Pearl had. Why was life so unfair. Perhaps he would become a wailing ghost as well with all the misery he had to endure.

"Who is Andalusia?" Wraen asked, sure that she had never heard the name of the person herself (or Sebastian might have mentioned in during their first encounter and she simply did not remember it). By this time they had reached the narrowest part in their road, where only one wolf at a time could go through, therefore with a gaily "Don't get stuck!" she went ahead of him and squeeze through on the other side. 

There was a spacious ledge, which overlooked the whole Rising Sun valley. In an hour or so they would be down there.

Sebastian was a bit in shock that Wraen didn't know who Andalusia was. Hadn't he talked about her before? "She is very special," he started and then glanced at the small pathway ahead. Would his large body even fit? Sebastian looked at it with a troubled expression. He watched Wraen slip through. Sebastian followed but felt the rock tighten around him. The male huffed as it grazed his shoulder. He watched the rock and then wormed his way through. "Hopefully this is the smallest it gets?" he questioned but then was amazed by the view. His pale eyes scanned over the valley. Had he ever been there? It looked beautiful.

"Anyway. Andalusia. She saved me when I was injured badly, the story of my life. She brought me back to my pack and made sure I was alright. After that, I didn't see her for a long time. Is started my own pack and she joined. We became better friends, she even followed me back to the caldera. Then the war broke out and I lost her. I don't know if she is alive or dead," he sighed. Maybe she had become one of those wailing ghosts? He hoped not. "I saw her after my injuries but it turns out it wasn't real I imagined it. The infection did that to me," he explained to her. "Sometimes I still hear her howl. What do you think? Would she still be alive?"

"Ummm..." Wraen procured a guilty look and shifted her feet a little. "Kind of - there is a bit of an underground tunnel that's tighter than this, but you will be fine," she said smiling. "I hope the last guy, who got there, is doing well. Got stuck and all, but I entertained him for a week by telling tasty stories until he slimmed down enough to pass through," she was indirectly quoting Winnie-the-Pooh, who she had never read, but would have, if she had been a human. And would have loved it dearly as well.

"Just messing with you," she added after a pause and beckoned to the path that snaked it's way down to the valley below. "This is, where we leave rocks and boulders behind."

She listened to Sebastian's story about his dear friend with keen interest and sympathy for his loss, feeling sorry that she was not able to help in any more useful way than just finding the right words for consolation. "I can't say," she shrugged, "that is the issue with people, who disappear, you never know and you always wonder, what if..." A moment of silence later she added: "But I think that you should not stop living just because she is gone. Life has still a lot to offer to you and, if fate will want it, your paths will cross again. If not in this lifetime, then the next."

Sebastian stopped in shock when she said that the path was getting smaller. He was a large fella and with his shoulder, he couldn't really be as mobile as he liked to be. He was also afraid that he would hurt it more. The female then said she was joking but was it about the guy that had to slim down, or was it about the passage. "So we have to go through a small cave?," he questioned, looking a bit hesitant. He rather liked the open air, what if he did get stuck.

Wraen was very honest with him. He liked that about her. She also didn't know and couldn't tell him what happened to Andalusia. The female did comment that his life wasn't over. He nodded. He did try and pick up his life by finding his sister and trying to see if he could live with her pack. 'I'm old. I wonder how much life has to offer me," he admitted to the younger female. "You believe in reincarnation?," he then commented in surprise.