Wapun Meadow and the wish that the world would spiral into the sun

AW

entrusting merrick's care to @Mona, indra slipped from bearclaw feeling the break from her never ending maternal duties (and babysitting duties) was sorely needed. while most days she felt well rested, between the constant attention the puppies needed and the daily task of reinforcing their borders, indra was simply running ragged.

it felt different stepping into wapun now; the meadow hadn't changed, but she had. as she walked between tall spires of summer-grass, she lifted her muzzle and drank in the air that smelled of late summer grapes and dry earth -- a soft summer squall warmly came from the south, bearing with it a gentle scent of sun-cured fescue and pine.

It wasn't hard to find the source of the wolf smell, but breaking in was harder. The brothers had paced around the outside at the southern edge, noting the high walls all around. Both he and Euron were daring enough to try stunts other wolves would shy from, but neither of them was bold enough to try to scale slopes that steep. Frustration laced Ramsay's steps as they headed west, deviating away from the cliffs as they tried to think of the best way to infiltrate a natural fortress.

Perhaps it wasn't worth it. The logical voice in his head suggested this. "Another place?" the dwarf rumbled to his brother, curious for Euron's take. He thought the effort might be too great but he appreciated a challenge, too, and wasn't sold on searching for another group to bedevil. There was a perfectly good one here, but was it worth the greater risk?

Whatever Euron decided would need to wait. Ramsay had seen someone, and his short ears scooped forward with interest as he watched the she-wolf cast her nose into the wind. He hadn't noticed before when it changed directions, but froze suddenly when a gust swept past his bladed nape and carried toward the woman in the meadow. His dark eyes lingered on her fiery figure while the muscles in his shoulders and back tensed, prepared for a poor reaction to their presence, and all the while he was struck with the niggling feeling that he had seen her before. That memory was just out of reach.

He had learned to temper his desire for thrill and danger with sense. It still aroused him and excited him to be near to death and so feel all the more alive for it... but he was more patient now. He looked and waited for the right opportunities to indulge rather than being reckless. In this way he exercised his mind and his skills more and thus found the reward to be sweeter for it. Method had come to his madness, and so, Euron was in agreement that scaling the rock walls and blundering head first into claimed pack lands was not a good idea.

"I —" He cut himself off as he too noticed the red furred female. Euron drew silently beside his brother. He could sense Ramsay's tension but he himself was eerily calm, nonchalant, as was his way. He scrutinized her carefully, reading what he could from her body as the breeze betrayed them to her and deprived his own nose of much information. He would have hid himself, but the bright open meadow did not afford many places to hide. So he remained as he was, awaiting her reaction to their presence.

she rested there, in fields far removed from bearclaw's hearth. the wind was a coursing fiend, carrying with it the scent of bluegrass and clover, pine straw, and wolves.

wolves.

indra had already been still, but she felt herself stiffen. her heart quickened its glutted pounding, and slowly she looked suspiciously about her with ears strained atop her thin forehead.

it was an extraordinary stroke of luck, or perhaps kismet, that the fickle wind had favored indra that day -- she was neither a master scout nor an adept tracker, and likely would have missed the presence of the two lurking brothers entirely. even then, in the flattened terrain, their forms were not all-together blatant to find -- it was as if, for some reason, they walked alongside the earth instead of atop it, and indra, sure as she was that she saw two wolves that day, was struck with the notion that if they wanted to, they could simply disappear before disbelieving eyes.

she was too far from bearclaw's mouth to feel defensive of interlopers close to her territory -- all the same, she felt unease snake into her stomach and settle there fat as some sleeping serpent. she found herself studying both of them cautiously; one a black shadow with his form truncated into unsettling aberration, and the other a piebald grey with a pointed face that appeared more vulpine than wolf.

it had been a long time since indra had thought of ramsay, and recognition was slow to creep across her features. but recognition was not enough to drive her to hail him; the lurking presence of his thin brother unnerved her. she curbed her tongue, ears pulled back in clear discomfiture.

she was outnumbered, and worried of what risk their presence might present to her. many questions burned to leave her tongue, but her innate wariness of male strangers limited her interest in engagement. feigning a shaky nonchalance her hammering heart certainly did not feel, indra's gaze swept past them as she lifted her muzzle once more, drinking in the rest of the scents as if to say their presence was neither welcomed nor unwelcome, but simply there, and therefore accepted as something she could not change or hide from.

He kept his position for a moment, cupping an ear in Euron's direction as his brother's voice sputtered and died on a single note while his gaze held on Indra. His short tail twitched as she took notice of them, and he watched with spreading lips the nervousness, brushed with a sort of nonchalance, that came to shroud her. He had been unsure at first but now he knew she was more unsure of them, and that empowered the both of them. The flutter of her ears broke the spell for him and he pressed forward with even, sweeping strides that seemed unnatural given the bob of hunched shoulders.

They hadn't exchanged names last time, or he might have remembered it to ask if it was hers. His gaze was hooded as he closed the distance, doing nothing that might reveal whatever his intentions could be as he slowed and drawled a quiet, "hello." He glanced to his brother to mark the slimmer wolf's reaction, a strange rocking of his body to the side and back, so that his gaze returned to Indra. Now that he could make out the red-brown of her eyes, he was struck with her similarity to a wolf he'd met in his youth. That wolf had had a tail, though, and this one did not. Maybe she had lost it somewhere along the way; maybe Euron could find it nearby. He so loved collecting tails.

Another wolf had asked him once about a red woman without a tail. Maybe this was his woman, to whom he could deliver the message. But what had that wolf said her name was, again...?

Light and graceful on his feet, Euron padded forward too, keeping abreast of his brother.

"Oh, I sees he causes you being scared," Euron observed, smiling warmly, after Ramsay greeted the girl. Her discomfort had not gone unnoticed (and he was not so simple as to think it was merely Ramsay's stunningly handsome looks that had caused it). He enjoyed that she was unsettled, though that was not apparent on his face, which held a perfectly soft and friendly expression as his tail swept side to side to further sell his amiability. "It is okay. You do not have to being scared. He is strangeness for to look at but he is good, mmm-hmm... I am too. I am Euron." The young wolf tipped his head to the side. "What is the name you were given?"

it took great composure to remain rooted as she heard the rustle of grass; out of the corner of her eyes she caught the advancement of that rough beast. deciding then she could feign no longer (for the wind carried so few scents anyway) she exhaled long and slow, and gave the approaching male her full attention.

there were very little wolves in the world cut of ramsay's disfigured shape - as he drew closer indra recalled to mind their first and only meeting, and darkly, hoped that she should be served the same kindness after death if that was what came of this encounter.

indra rose to her full height stiffly; a height that was neither becoming nor threatening. her skin crawled and she felt her fur blade as euron spoke. there was something masterful about the way he held his sharp face; it spoke of softness, and amicability -- indra's gaze narrowed in mistrust.

there was not a whit of malice in either eye, be it amethyst or crystalline -- she found herself feeling guilty for her hardened instinct, and doubtful of her interpretation of their motives.

she decided then to humor them, though she was wary; "indra. it is not his strangeness i am scared of."

Euron did the talking that Ramsay could not as he chewed on his thoughts and tried to locate the name the man had told him in his memories. He didn't know the man's name, either. Some messenger. His lips tugged up at the corners as Euron assured Indra that he was good; he shot his brother an appreciative look, although anyone could tell otherwise. He was neither good nor bad, but somewhere in between, where the self-serving lived.

"Then what?" he wondered, fixing Indra in his sights once more. She wasn't the same kindly wolf who had protested against his treatment of the skulls on Blackfeather's outskirts. He wasn't the same curious pup either. As though he had never even asked the question, a mere second later, he cryptically said, "Indra. A man was looking for you. He had a scourge on his throat." There was no other detail he could spare about the man but that. "Did he find you?"

She did not trust him. He could see it in her — it was writ in her body, in her eyes, in the fur on her nape. But he held his guise effortlessly, with remarkable ease and comfort born of its familiarity to him, and continued to show no indication that he saw her unrest.

Before he could ask her what it was that scared her, Ramsay posed the question first, followed by a comment that someone had been looking for her. Euron glanced sidelong at Ramsay, surprised to learn that he knew this Indra, but his friendly and casual expression was unchanged. His tail swayed gently as he looked back to the red female to hear her answer.

careful was the redleaf's expression, as her eyes flit between the two. she remained alert, attentive - perhaps even slightly defensive of their presence. long ago she had learned the folly in trusting strangers. long ago had she learned her lesson, and never again committed idle trust in strangers.

the directness in which all of them spoke, was at least for the most part reassuring - indra hated guile more than anything, and despite her hardened wisdom (if it could even be called that), was masterfully foiled by euron's impenetrable guise. she looked between the two again; which was the speaker, the leader? which should she defer her entire attention to? neither looked any less, or more capable, than the other -- and indra suspected each had their own dark design that could work against her if they so willed it.

"i'm afraid of your intentions." she answered transparently, a trenched wrinkle appearing across her brow at the mention of absalom; a wolf indra had not dared think of again, lest her thoughts conjure him into waking memory -- in the past she had thought it possible that he was some faint geist of her own rampant imagination. her throat bobbed - she did not like to think of him.

"he didn't." it was apparent then, that absalom was neither contrived of her own imagination, nor a ghost - a pity then, for it meant he was very real, and could harm her. "are you a friend of his?" she cut them both an accusing look - if they kept company with such a wolf, she wanted even less to do with them.

While Euron weaved his illusive personality, no doubt draping webs meant to gather information, Ramsay remained steadfast in his straightforwardness. His tongue could never spill tall tales as easily as his brother's, but he didn't need or revel in them. He found other ways to unnerve his audience into telling more than they might want, often with nothing more than an overly formal tone and the cool, unwavering gaze of rich eyes. His figure alone was enough to unseat many.

He didn't speak for a long while following Indra's admission; he watched her face instead, impassive with thoughts unreadable as he observed the change in expression. He yielded the floor to Euron for the time being, that his brother might work his charms while he ruminated. She asked if Absalom was a friend of theirs, and his answer was as succinct as it was immediate: "no." The man was simply a man. No one Ramsay thought about, save for this chance encounter.

When he did speak, it was to cryptically state, "when you look for ghouls in every shadow, you find them." Blinking once, the dwarf swung his stunted body and asked, "ready?" of his brother. There was nothing here for them. She had been kind to him in his youth, so he wouldn't pilfer from her pack; an eye for an eye. Though, he mentally remarked, she was but a shell of the good-natured wolf she'd been then, and he wondered while thumbing a fang with his tongue what had happened to change her so.

"I'm afraid of your intentions."

"Oh," he answered, the softness of voice gentle on the silence his brother had settled into. His ears and his expression drooped, and he passed her a half smile and a weak wag of his tail. "I am understanding. There are bad wolves out there and you are not knowing we are not them. It is okay." He nodded, punctuating his last words.

Euron had nothing else to say, and Ramsay spoke then to answer her question and advise her onthe nature of ghouls. Inwardly, he smiled at his brother in approval. "Ready?" Ramsay asked, turning to him, and Euron perked up. He wagged his tail and bobbed his head. "Mm-hmm. Yup." Like his brother, Euron had determined that there was nothing to gain here. Indra was too suspicious and distant; an alder-snared creek that was difficult to fish from. Euron had the patience of a spider in its web but only when he believed his web was in the right place. Tangled up in the branches of her thick wall was not. He did not know her, and could fathom no reason that she had harbored any information worth the effort to catch.

"I do not hold against you any grudgement," he said to Indra with a smile as he made to leave. "Our meeting the you can leads to friendship another time I am thinking."

she had held in her chest a tensed breath, that was released once ramsay had divulged their company had not been friends with absalom. at first it had been a welcome answer, but indra grew doubtful - many times had she been deceived, and experience snared its insecure claws into her, and told her to pick her paths carefully.

ramsay's words, cryptic to some, were met with a furrowed brow: would that she could summon into words the manner in which the world had bruised her with its sharp edges -- perhaps he would understand. perhaps not -- not all wolves had sympathetic ears, not even indra.

she would not hide her relief to see them go. had either been solitary her affectation might have been very different, but she did not regret her decision to be unwelcoming or to be suspicious of their resolves. graceful in light of her judgment euron had been, a shade far more humble than she -- who had learned long ago ghouls in the shapes of mortals walked among the living, and shadows abounded.

"another time, maybe." she intoned smoothly, without much regret to her voice. she would watch them go, if they did -- overcome with the feeling now that she did not want to leave bearclaw after all. once she was certain the two had slunk off to some outer reach, she would hastily return home with a feeling of unease deep in her heart.

Ramsay turned away as Euron answered her, having nothing more to say for himself. He had liked Indra in his youth and was pleasantly surprised to have found her again, but she was unsure of him, and he didn't care to change that opinion. He headed off with slow strides to allow Euron to catch up when he was finished. He might have liked to tell her that he, too, held only disdain for disrespecting the dead the way the wolves of his homeland did by using them as warning signs because they wanted to be frightening, but had not the skills themselves. He might have liked to thank her for teaching him that.

Alas, it wasn't meant to be, and he supposed they would never see one another again to have that talk. A pity, but not something he planned to dwell on past this moment. His thoughts were already shifting on to the next pack they might come across, and how they might use it to their advantage.