Moonspear i need coffee in an IV

At the borders! Piper is pack-hopping in search of her brother.

After having left Stigmata behind, the girl did not feel quite as confident in her travel plan. She wanted to rejoin him and help him conquer whatever slice of land he had set his eye on. She wanted to remain close to the gargoyle of a man until she had grown old enough that she was capable of admitting how she... felt? God, no... that was bullshit. Feelings fucking sucked and she would swallow them until she had turned into a crusty old witch. Piper was convinced that she was far too young for any of that garbage anyway, right? She wasn't even an adult yet.

But the wilds had aged her considerably, and losing her brother had put lines in her young face. The firefly was no longer a spirited young firecracker – she had faded away to something far more bitter and resentful. It was that spite that she used to push her away from where she had last seen Stigmata and into the unknown. She trekked for miles upon miles until she passed along the scent of an unfamiliar pack.

The fiery girl lifted her crown to the mountain and squinted her gaze at it. Stars glittered over her head and showered the stone in an eerie blue light. After a few moments, she swallowed the uncertainty and called out for anyone who might meet her at the borders.

without revui, arcturus was a rudderless ship. he drifted, listing here or wallowing there -- his sad and mournful eyes tracing old haunts they had once scaled together. an old pain -- far older than him -- seeped his bones; nostalgia -- the bitter ghost that transcended generations. 

he had taken to tracing old game routes, as the routine soothed him and kept his mind off of revui's disappearance. he knew, guiltily too, that maybe his brother's departure had a little too much to do with him. it was a bitter pill to swallow, and one arcturus doggedly and super-maturely tried to avoid by drowning out his culpability by simply avoiding it.

he half hoped the howl that sounded over the cold range was his brother's, but he knew right away it was not. plopping from stone to stone in an ungainly manner, the boy caught sight of the wolf that uttered it: a slim, young thing likely his age -- and doused in resolute fire.

his eyes widened, for the crisp ember hue of her frame was foreign to him -- moonspear was a sea of grey or black or white wolves, and her presence on his doorstep set a light blazing into moonspear's monotonous and stern courtyard. he did not come too close, though he regarded her curiously from a flat rocky slab above.

It took a short while before the dark shadow of a young man appeared on a large cut of stone. The girl would have missed him if she had not been actively scouring the mountainside for any approaching figure. Even still, he seemed to blend into the grim background – even his eyes took the appearance of twinkling and distant stars set against the endless sea of ink. She did what she could to prevent herself from staring at him openly, lowering her skull a ways to offer him the appropriate respect and all that garbage...

God, she really would have rather wolves didn't depend so heavily on their formal body language and skills. She would have just as soon shouted up to him to get his gangly ass down there so she could ask her questions and move on. Instead, when she returned her sights to him, she afforded the young man a smile of sorts. It really didn't suit her, but Piper was doing whatever she could to get answers about her missing sibling.

“Hey there, you got a minute to spare?” the firefly called into the dark with a canting of her skull.

he hung on the rock as if intending to stay there, perching in the manner of a raven eyeballing carrion below. only, what was in his sights was far from dead matter -- she looked livelier than anything to have stepped into moonspear in a long time, and arcturus could not pull his gaze away from her.

even as she extended a humble bend of her body, arcturus' gaze bore into her. his eyes were wide not with challenge, but wonder -- and a little bit of trepidation.

and then she spoke, and the tentative curiosity the boy had was shattered. his shoulders sagged and a glum expression stole across his features. if piper had disdain for the immutable uses of body language, arcturus had disdain for verbal language in of itself. he was shamed by his poor mastery of it, and looked away in frustration before reluctantly parting from the stone dias and approaching her.

The longer she stood there and stared at him, the more she had started to believe that he might have been a little bit witless. He seemed to peer at her like an owl waiting for the opportune moment to strike. She didn't move from her place, though, and peered back at him with a questioning expression.

It was not until she saw the flash and change of his features that she actually felt the burning sensation of pride that extended through her limbs. She reared her head back and squinted her eyes into a face that could only have been described as the perfect, 'excuse me?!' look. At the very least, the moody boy was on his way down to meet her, but she had already started to second guess her calling out to him. When he closed a bit of the space that had separated them, she clenched her jaw and fixed him with a fiery glint in her eye.

“Listen up, bucko, I'm looking for my brother. I don't need to dance with you in the moonlight, or have you stare at me until your eyes fall out of your head. I just need to know if he passed through here,” Piper chirped to him and exhaled sharply through her nostrils.

arcturus felt the heated glare of piper's gaze fall upon him, not unlike the fiery cant of intolerable sunlight on a region long accustomed to darkness. he did not quail from her gaze, though through gritted teeth he was secretly in awe of her natural command; she was a firebrand through and through, and he could see her making most wolves her doormat in her lifetime.

she mentioned a brother -- having had his own disappear quite recently (a blow that still stung his heart any time he thought of it) he softened enough that he no longer appeared hostile of his home. after a few laborious grunts, he shrugged and rolled his shoulders -- for no new wolf had passed through here.

Mkay, well… he was definitely missing a few screws. The firefly peered at him expectantly before he offered her a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders and a shake of his head. The young Redleaf gritted her teeth together and tried her best to just let it pass – she really didn’t need to blow her lid at this guy, right? He was obviously stupid and not the best person to be asking questions to. She didn’t imagine that she was going to get anyone better if this was the guy that they sent to guard the borders.
 
Piper breathed a heavy sigh and shook her head. “Well, this has been… weird and not helpful at all,” she said to him with a faux-cheery smile. Then, the fire-furred girl turned her head toward the wilderness that stretched beyond the oddball’s mountain. She wasn’t looking forward to trekking further. She had been praying that she would have happened across someone who would have offered her a place to stay for the night. It seemed she was well out of luck.
 
“Thanks, I guess,” she added with a shrug. Thanks for nothing…

piper didn't need to be verbal for her assessment of him to be understood. arcturus could see it lurking in her kiln-fired gaze -- that pitying flash of contempt, the smugness of content superiority -- she looked at him the way a hawk might look at a mouse from a thousand feet away, engulfed in another, higher world.

his face darkened, for like most budding boys and young men, arcturus felt insecure in the face of a female that was decidedly not a doormat. he had never felt this way before; hydra inspired terror in him, lyra inspired worship -- and both of them, he firmly knew were his superiors.. so why did suddenly feeling inadequate in the face of this strange she-wolf have his legs all  a-jitter and his mind racing?

he didn't like this new feeling; he felt compelled to prove her wrong and to fight anything for her respect; he felt like pushing a mountain uphill so that she might validate him, and felt a wild hair stir along his back in rakish confusion.. and for all of these swirling emotions, he simply said nothing -- for he was stung into wounded adoration by her cruel tongue, as if he were a supplicant turned away by the very god he worshiped.

Piper was pretty sure that if there was a way to describe the phrase, ‘the lights are on but nobody’s home,’ then this guy’s face would have been etched, scribed, or molded out of clay next to it. Truthfully, it was the only reason she was taking such risks in how she spoke to him. If he was a mute, odds are he wasn’t going to be able to say that she verbally harassed him on the edges of his own land, right? Right…
 
With that settled, the Redleaf girl turned to leave him there when she felt something halt her. So close to venturing off, and yet –
 
She whirled back around and fixed him with another wildfire stare. Her mouth was pursed in a tight-lipped line. “Are you retarded?” she asked him point-blank. That was kind of the selling point, if she was concerned. If she was actually messing with a guy who didn’t have all his marbles, she was probably booking herself a first-class ticket to hell. She just wanted to make sure before she trotted off feeling good about herself.

arcturus felt relieved to see piper begin to turn around; it meant he wouldn't have to chase her -- she was too pretty, too strong for arcturus to want to exercise any sort of cruelty against her. he was sorry, in that same vein, to see her depart -- she was bewildering, but he somehow enjoyed being in the fiery reach of her shadow.

when she froze in second thought, the boy's gaze brightened -- perhaps she was turning around to say goodbye?

but no -- she asked if he was retarded.

arcturus practically hiccuped in shock, a strangled cry only half-escaping his throat. retarded? he blinked and stepped back, entirely taken aback by her cutting question. children could be cruel, but it seemed no child was cruel as a girl; feeling as if he had been steamrolled by a rock above, arcturus vehemently tried to fire off a retort, anything to prove he was not fucking retarded, thank you bitch.

he was so riled up, so taken aback, so hurt, so shocked, that of course, no response came -- but his mouth was working with a twitching fury, and instead he resigned to staring hatefully at the back of piper's head as she walked away.

He was definitely retarded, she told herself.

You fucked with a simple kid, Piper! You trotted right in there and shit on his parade. Fuck, she knew she was on a slippery slope at that point. More than this, she wondered why on earth a pack would allow their dimwit youth to approach people on the borders in his condition. It inspired a moment of wonder inside of her; perhaps, they were all like he was. She'd found herself on the edge of an entire pack that was full of imbeciles. Just her luck, but she knew she needed to scoot out of there before she caused any more trauma.

Tightening her lips into a thin line, she bobbed her head in understanding to the dark male. “Alright, buster,” she began with a soft sigh that seemed to sink her shoulders a few inches. Then, she looked at him directly in the eyes and leaned forward just a little bit to draw herself closer. “You. Don't. Have. To. Feel. Bad,” she spoke each word slowly and loudly, as though that would help his feeble mind grasp what she was saying.

“You're. A. Good. Boy.”

Then, she cast him a wide smile that was full of condescension, and turned to leave the mountain pack. Her tail bobbed as she trotted away. Piper definitely felt better about herself after picking up the pieces to the world's worst interaction with a stranger.

never had arcturus' features taken on so furious and hurt an expression. as piper condescendingly apprised him and then almost mockingly, spoke to him as if he was indeed lacking any sort of brain function, the boy felt a fury rise to his throat. he wanted to scream into her face -- to rip her stupid ears off -- but she was just a girl -- a dumb, cruel girl -- and not at all worth raising his fangs against.

and if he had to explain to his father how he had possibly lost a fight on the borders to a girl, or even, if he had to explain to his father that she thought him retarded, to what end would that serve besides heaping more humiliation on his already wounded pride?

you're. a. good. boy. arcturus' gaze lit with resentment as piper enunciated each word slowly, the punctuation of each a new wave of insult to his ears. he loosened a deep growl, surprising himself even by its ardency.

he would not stand here at his home and be insulted, but as hotheaded as he felt, he could not bring himself to attack her. instead he watched with a helpless, hapless fury as she turned around, her tail bouncing jovially behind her.

stupid bitch, he thought -- staring sulkily in her direction long after she had disappeared.