Bearclaw Valley Completely Zoned Out

Patrolling, marking the borders - takes place present day (Aug 3) AW!

Skoll didn't have much on his mind, even after the stranger was murdered in front of everyone. There was a distinct lack of a single wolf, but he didn't pay any mind to it, or try to look for the one that he presumed missing. He didn't leave, Skoll wasn't weak willed. He might not have stayed within the meeting to watch the children have their first encounter with a death that was so fake but still shook their bones. The dark man wondered how long it was going to be until Merrick trained those kids to murder their own kind. Murder their own packmates. 

He supposed he should have saw that coming, when he joined that chase, killed those ducks with the man. Everything about him screamed violent, with the way his scars lined his body, the mannerisms he had when he spoke and moved. And yet Skoll still didn't leave. He was doing a patrol he did every day, around the borders near the meadow. Markings things as he went through as he was made to do, only to leave and hit up the meadow later as Merrick told him. For now though, he would mark the borders just before it.

skoll and ico had turned away from the meeting. the latter had not returned, and merrick cursed his weakness, but did not track the boy. he needed stronger wolves than that, if he was to weather the storm that threatened the valley.
already the river had jerked over its banks, spilling in a direct surge of danger toward the young therein. not his, he supposed; they could run and climb. but the others, the ones kept interred in the deepest part of bearclaw by the woman his rook had wounded.
he found skoll upon the borders; silently merrick fell into step, following as he too began to renew the scentmarks. but the boy's desolated pride would not allow him to be silent; in time he turned his wet face toward skoll. "are you leaving us, also?"

Skoll had noticed Merrick's form approaching, but did nothing to slow his own descent closer to the other man. The shorter coyowolf was oddly easy to approach despite his aggressive demeanor, and maybe that was why Skoll seemed to like him so much despite the things going on within the pack. 

His moving pace stopped when the man asked if he was going to leave. Because he left the meeting from before? Skoll was weak-willed but he wasn't so weak that he would abandon the pack from a simple meeting.  

"No. I won't leave. It was never the plan." he replied to the question. He wasn't going to become a traitor.

skoll stopped his machinations; merrick saw them as mechanic. no matter what the dark man did; he had made his own mind upon the sensation he was prepared to project. "what is your plan?" he inquired petulantly, trudging closer to stare balefully toward the guard-captain.
"you left, the other day. why?" merrick did not wish to ask, for he did not want the answer.
not truly, but have it all the same he must. and so he waited, hurt and confusion warring in the open field of his single eye.

Skoll couldn't help but stare back into the smaller wolf's eye when he was being stared at. What was his plan? Skoll didn't even know that himself. When he joined the pack it was because he was so curious about Merrick, and his curiosity still stood there, looming at him as if he'd not already known too much. "To stay until I'm no longer wanted." he decided. Was he even wanted in the first place? It was something to think about. 

Skoll liked to call himself a master at hiding emotion, even in the most bare of situations. But this time he allowed a frown to come to his maw. "I wasn't needed." He wasn't, right?

"i suppose," merrick muttered. skoll was always so very literal. "but in a grand sense, yes, you were. you're a part of ursus. you're all needed." there could be no reality without the wolves who followed him. "but — enough about that." he sighed, rolled his shoulders. "ico never came back."

Merrick was right, Skoll knew. That he was needed in the meeting in the long run, but he didn't feel the need to be there. Maybe it was selfish, but he didn't feel the need to take part in a meeting like that one. 

The comment about Ico wasn't surprising, Skoll had seen that wolf leave the meeting before, but he didn't follow when he himself left that meeting. 

"Maybe he got scared away." Skoll replied in a blunt tone. It looked like that was the case anyway.

"what was so scary?" merrick breathed; he was staring at skoll now, lungs hanging on a thread of air. he had done it he would pin his warrior now, demand to know skoll's true thoughts. if he criticized ursus and its practices, merrick would edge his toes into that cracked door and beg to know more.
but the man was distant, cool; merrick was not sure his veneer would crack.

Merrick was a wolf Skoll didn't understand. And that made him curious - maybe too curious for his own good. Everything about the bears, how Merrick himself was a bear. Somehow Skoll didn't even question that fact. 

The words that Merrick spoke at him made Skoll stop for a moment. He did have issues with how things were done, but it wasn't his choice to make. That wolf from before had been stealing too, and a punishment had been in order. It wasn't scary to the tall dark man, though. 

"That wolf and I do not have the same mind. It seems I was not afraid of whatever he was." Skoll decided to say. "Some may find what happened in the meeting unsettling, but that wolf deserved what it got"

a grin poured itself onto the boy's scarred features; he was enamoured of the fact that skoll was on his side about such things. "that's right!" he crowed, banner flagging at his hips with delight. "you're right." the single eye scanned the soldier's face; merrick felt the happiness settle to a warm ember in his chest. "he can even come back. i've decided. ico can return if he wants to." scared or not, the prince saw no reason to kill the little white wolf.
"unless, of course, he goes next door to easthollow." a light chuckle, one that was not at all pleasant.

The sudden spike of happiness in Merrick's words and form startled Skoll, to the point of him just standing there awkwardly. He had no idea what he was supposed to do in that situation, but it stopped as soon as it started. Except, well, he was technically being praised for being right and that also was weird. Skoll didn't expect that kind of emotion to come from the man - Merrick seemed to keep surprising him every time they spoke. 

His eyes went shifty at the mention of easthollow. There really was some history there then. 

"I suppose that is true. May I ask what the distaste for Easthollow is about?" He was genuinely curious.

no need to match lol

"oh, i'll tell you all about it," merrick declared with the air of a man slinging his arm around the shoulders of a colleague. "i was born in this valley. my mother took me from this valley to this jade grove or whatever. actually, it isn't far from us or from easthollow," the madman remarked, settling in for the tale.
"anyway she left me there. had to go on some incredible journey to find my stupid cousins. my fuckin' aunt made her leave. they up and took off, and never came back." merrick did not mention tadec nor nunataq, for they had left only single, shallow impression of them both in his mind: one of cowardice.
"so i left. i met the woman i love, and we eventually came back to this place. i found her first, though. mom. mommy. indra," he cackled, though the sound faded immediately and the single eye glazed in a momentary surprise and horror that he had blurted her name aloud.
stare cut to skoll.
the guardian's throat if it was ever uttered.
a blink, and merrick was restored, moving along in his retelling as before. "she had just ... circled back and gone to easthollow. never came home. never looked for me. my aunt lives there now. i asked her, as well. my mother doesn't live there, however. i made sure she wouldn't ever get back."
a pause. a swallow, his throat bobbing as he stared off toward the outcropping of stone walls encircling bearclaw.
"my aunt lives there. these old fucks live there, and their son came here to mouth off to me. i imagine he's dead now, but they have only every ignored me. we are blood-related, for fuck's sake, me and probably half the brats there if my bitch aunt had more bastards."

Merrick said he would tell Skoll about it, and Skoll was there to listen. The dark man wasn't going to ask for a story and not listen when he got it. He assumed it would be a somewhat long story, with the history he thought Merrick had with that place. Every time the coyowolf mentioned Easthollow, it looked like the name left a bad taste on his tongue, and Skoll wanted to know why. To see if he shared that same hostility. Being born in the valley wasn't an unusual thing, he assumed most wolves that he'd met were. Skoll just. Traveled there. He traveled for a long time before coming across this place and meeting Merrick. It all was a haze that his head tried to make sense and just didn't want to. 

Merrick's mother left him behind, alone. Skoll wondered how alone the smaller man felt after that. Being told your mother and aunt were leaving to find some other family member you had never met. He must have felt betrayal. Skoll wasn't the most emotional man, nor did he really understand emotions. But he did know what it felt like to be broken down. He wondered if some of this was why Merrick was so aggressive with some, and mostly strangers. Skoll had seen him have and use too many emotions to call him solely aggressive. The man had other feelings inside that head of his. 

It sounded like Merrick had known the raven women for a long time, it seemed like it, too. With how the two seemed to gravitate to one another even when they pick fights. Was that love? It sounded like it. The uttering of a name and the trailing off made Skoll pause and look over to Merrick, to catch his stare. Something about it felt like a warning, as if he wasn't supposed to learn that name for as long as he lived. Skoll was good at keeping secrets, and he didn't anticipate telling anyone in the future. 

The story went on and Skoll's face went to a frown. His mother really had abandoned him without another trace. He understood, why Merrick was so angry with that place. Maybe things would have been different for him if the pack didn't accept Indra within it, or if she had never left Merrick there in the first place. Or brought her with him. Anything that a parent should do. He was sure the other man had thought of that before - was that why he was so angry? 

"It sounds like none of them cared." Skoll said. "You have Ursus now. The pack is like a one large family isn't it? You can trust all of us to be there." 

"in the end, the only one who cares about you is yourself, skoll," merrick uttered lightly. but the storytelling had exhausted him, plucked out the good humour and strong faith from his words.
in its wake, bitterness, sorrow; he turned a half-muzzy gleam back to the warrior. "that is the story of easthollow, and that is why being part of ursus means being bound to how i feel for them. they are in direct opposition to us. they are enemy."
a flagrantly devilish thought: sending his grown children to fetch that stone-circle crown for themselves, to swell the blood of ursus until it was a devouring torrent.

He understood, but something in his head rang through. A previous conversation he and Evien had in the dead of night - musing about the possibility of what to do if a pack came marching to them demanding war. It was a sudden question Skoll had mused up out of nowhere, at the other man who seemed startled at the time. 

'But don't you think that it might be best to at least attempt to make some kind of peace before​?' 

The conversation had come from one thinking of violence, and now he wondered if Evien was right. Was there a better way to do things? Why couldn't Merrick refuse to forgive them but not actively hunt them down? He got revenge, it seemed, when he mentioned his mother before. 

'I suppose it could work. If Merrick would allow such a thing.' 

His own voice true to himself. No. There was no way to fix that peacefully. Skoll had come to realize that Merrick's emotions were strong within his form - that his body seemed to run on emotion rather than robotic want. He was upset with Easthollow for a right reason. He wanted his revenge on the entire pack not just one wolf. His eyes met Merrick's one for a moment. 

"I understand." 

And he did, Skoll did understand. Something like that couldn't be solved with one talk, or any at all. They would claim it was not their fault - and Skoll didn't know if it was or not. Merrick was just a child at the time wasn't he? The leader could have refused to allow his mother to leave until he was older, even then, he wasn't sure it would change the fate the woman had when she chose to leave him forever. Skoll's family was never something like that. He left them behind. He left his own family behind because he wasn't okay with their growing numbers - and then his sister went along with him. He always was the weak one, until he couldn't be anymore when the two got split up. It was nothing like what Merrick had to live through. 

"Whatever happens with Easthollow, I will always stand beside Ursus." And he hoped the others would too. He decided now, that it was no longer a promise to be broken later, and instead a commitment he had to stay by.

the confirmation of loyalty that merrick was granted in the seconds to tick beyond soothed a frail part of him. skoll's haunting eyes matched the direct firmness of his words. the coywolf had once thought the soldier unsure of his place within ursus' beliefs, but he saw now that the man was the guardian of such. 
"thank you, skoll." his voice cracked; he swallowed, blinked toward the wet sky. "ursus is lucky to have you. i am lucky to have you."
he was not sure he had ever felt such a vow made to the land he loved, the roots of which bound his blood. despite his best efforts, a single sob leaked from a clenched throat and he drew a shaking, grateful breath, slowly closing his eyes with a relieved sigh.

Skoll really... Didn't understand what he was pledging his life to. But he knew he wasn't going to break it. He had promised to stay, and he was going to stay. The dark man wasn't good at making decisions for himself, despite being well off at planning things for others to do, honestly, when he was a pup he had let his sister decide everything. It was better that way. Until the two of them got separated in travel and Skoll had to make those choices for himself. He had to pick where to go and when, how he was going to live his life. 

If it meant digging himself deep into conflict, he made his choice and he was going to stick with it. 

The sudden voice crack from Merrick surprised Skoll, it gave him some kind of pang he didn't understand. The tall wolf was never good with emotions, especially ones that lingered that weren't all negative. But was that emotion negative? The next comment made his brain short circuit for a single moment before he turned his head away. No, that had to be some kind of bad emotion. He didn't know what to do with the emotions the man was feeling next to him, either. 

Skoll didn't know how to comfort anyone. Let alone someone so surprising as Merrick. He vaguely moved closer, only the slightest shift in position. 

"It will end out okay." He said.

my man rlly dunno how to comfort anyone

i love that he tries <3

merrick had not expected skoll to shift closer. the single eye with its seeking beam reached out, played upon the impassive features of the handsome creature. for a moment, the bear-prince wondered why he had never sought out a kinder soul in the way he chose to slake his lust.
but he knew, even as the though trailed to nothingness — love was poor mortar for the stones of lust. and merrick had none to give to any but his blackbird, even if skoll wished — foolish, foolish.
he turned his head away, thought of ulysses. "it will."
it must be. ursus' choice was war. it had always been so, and he would not allow his wolves to shirk now. nor would they stand down. he knew the way he and the raven rallied them. and skoll here now, with his firm pledge and the warm brush of his pelt against merrick's. honey.