Broken Antler Fen Scarlet

To keep worries at bay Wraen kept herself busy. She continued to map out the vast territory Brecheliant had claimed, watched the herds and took notice of, where they preferred to dwell the most and their movement. She checked out the water sources other than the large lake, tested the sturdiness of the ice cap and treaded new paths in the deep snow so that she and her packmates would have easy passage and access to useful corners of their territory. 

It was a good day for her, she had managed to do a lot, but a sudden wave of weakness overcame her, that she was forced to plop down mid-path in the snow and lie down for a long time, until the heaviness in her head and limbs drifted away. "Just over exertion," she tried to calm herself, though in the back of her head this spell was far too familiar to the ones she had suffered from right after the hornet attack in autumn.

teya stared open-mouthed toward the mountain several times. thankfully there was no one to see her. bridger had gone along with ibis and lilitu; when she had shaken a little of her star-struck obsessions away, the raven put a band around brecheliant, adding her own scent and stropping bark from trees.
what would they make of one another, she wondered.
it was with delight she found wraen's dutiful trail and took it up; it was with delight fading into worry that she found her fellow blackbird curled oddly in the middle of a path. "wraen?" teya's voice sounded; she approached, filled with consternation. "you are all right?" for it did not seem that way, but perhaps the leader was only resting.

Since it was clear that she was not about to be back on her feet and moving around that soon, Wraen shifted a little so that she was more comfortable in the heap of snow she was stuck in. And to the outside world it would seem that she simply was resting. In the middle of a path, but as a leader and the oldest wolf in the pack she had the hard-earned privilege of doing what she wanted. 

She did not know, how long had it been, but someone eventually found her here - Teya, who Wraen had initially deemed to be quite shy and lacking self-confidence, materialized before her. "Hi!" she greeted the girl. "I am just tired that's all. Old age creeps up on you gradually and unexpectedly," she smiled. "How are you doing?"

teya did not think of wraen as old, not truly. older than she, perhaps. and though she was raven upon a council, it was to the woman she looked now. "i okay," she answered shyly, the tone in wraen's voice confusing her, as it was positioned against her lower posture. teya chose to lay down, folding forepaws catlike beneath her chest.
"you need, uhum, ibis?" she inquired, content to reside her with the other wolf but feeling as though she might need to do something else to ensure it was not only fatigue plaguing the apple-eyed woman.

Many did not consider Wraen old, though she was nearing her fifth year on this Earth and to have survived this long was something of an achievement. But then the number of years did not matter so much as the state of one's health. It starts with little things and inconveniences - a pulled muscle here, a healing bruise from a fall or a kick there, but then it accumulates over time colds and fevers leave scars in one's lungs and those occasionall small pangs in the region of the heart that you write off as nothing, but in reality there are tiny spots of dead fibres there. Expanding. Growing. Teeth wear down and crack, joints get worn and inflamed. There was no wonder that Old Age was the strongest god. No one could win a fight against it. 

And, while Wraen was unaware of the actual changes in her body, she could give a fairly accurate account of, how all this made her feel. Unlike in the past, where all days were a string of "I can conquer the world", now she had good days and bad days. There were times, when she could no longer keep up with the speed of the world around her. She tried, she hobbled behind the caravan, eyes still trained on that bright and beckoning horizon, but she knew that there would be a day that she would not have enough strength to go on and would have to stop. She was good at hiding that all was not well and at the same time she often felt slightly disappointed that her family and friends preferred to live in a denial. Rather than taking her "I am old" serious, they saw it as a joke. They did not realize that "old" was how she felt with all the facets it entailed and not how she looked.

"What is uhum, Teya?" she asked the girl, not yet trusting her enough to tell all that was on her mind, happy to have a distraction.

"it is —"
what was the sound?
"— it is foolish sound i make when thinking of correct word." a life of disordered hearing and her own tangled jawline. teya could speak when the mind was calm, but calm it rarely was, and the price paid for a swift head was the tripping of her tongue.
borva had spoken a different language to her. teya refused to speak that one.
she watched wraen, considering the other's age in comparison to her own. the way she had lain down in the path. she crossed her paws. there was no ache in her yet save for the brief and irregular throb of her mended bone. the girl suspected that when the sun returned the pain would fade, but it had not demanded anything of her beyond the weeks of lying still. 
wraen's eyes were enlivened as green things, to teya's gaze. "soon spring comes. i think this place will be very beautiful." 
and filled with game, she hoped, thinking of the ice-fishing she had done with lilitu and wishing to return to the warmer water for more.

"Oh, boy," Wraen began to laugh merrily, realizing her mishap. "And here I was thinking that it was something in the language of fairies. Like a pet-name or something," she told her. "Wraen Uhum... that's a nice and short family name. Mine is much longer - Redleaf-DiSarinno - and a long time ago, when I still cared to give that jumble of letters and sounds to someone, I decided half-way to rename myself - Wraen Re-Nevermind," those were the times. Eternities away. 

"Oh, I have no doubt about it. Though I worry a little about the flooding right, when the ice begins to melt away, but the territory is large and from what I have explored so far - for every lake, rivulet and marshy area, there is an island of dry land," she shared. "Would you care to tell me - are you from the faerie folk originally or is there more to the story before you joined the court?" she asked.

wraen remained in good humour despite whatever had laid her low. the sensation was dazzling, sweeping a genuine intrigue and brightening to her usually still features. redleaf-disarinno. the girl did not even dare to attempt such a name, and found that while it was very grand, wraen suited the woman in front of her. 
her mind's eye swept to what she had seen of the land, and how much more lay to be discovered. the island of land in particular caught the inner gaze and she knew at once she must go. wraen had a good conception of the fen, greater than teya's yet. perhaps she had been shirking the duty of a raven. she would mend that.
the pretty-eyed wolf asked after her time with the faeries, seeking the cold doors often kept locked when it came to speaking of her past. the girl looked down at her paws again. there was a sense of trust stirring in her; the coolwater eyes blinked and lifted. "before i come to teekon, i live with aunt and uncle. not know parents. ever." she had been told of their deaths, but because she had not known them, teya did not grieve.
redleaf-disarinno. she had surrendered a long title she could not remember. "after i come to teekon, i live in reneian empire. beautiful. silent." she could remember no bonds from that place.
"one night, i fall during rain. i end up near seelie court. lumiya gave me a home." and after that flooding, quieting, dissolution. traveling with bridget and with sundance. being forced to recover in the raven-watch; losing sundance. 
"now i am here. not silent. lovely. has life." a twitch of her muzzle. "can grow here."

Wraen took notice of the unusual way Teya spoke, but did not say anything, because the manner of speech suited her fellow Raven well, made her endearing in a way. She wondered, if her initial assumption that the girl was shy by nature had been a false one, that - perhaps - it had more to do with the fact that she was not that well-versed in the common tongue. Again - this she was not going to ask. It was not relevant the least. 

"Your way here seems as long as twisted as mine has been," she told her with a smile. "What do you want to grow into?" she asked next, because the last part of the sentence had seemed alluring.

teya thought a long and solemn moment before answering. "want to be star-watcher," she said shyly. it was not something so useful as hunting or tracking prey, and so she added, "want to know best fishing too." but truly the skies held her heart; she thought of all the times in months past she had looked at them, sighing in hopes she might be one.
a meek light flushed her features. "i do not know everything," she admitted, perhaps redundantly. "but i take this time to learn." to know what it meant to exist and to love, what it meant to be raven in brecheliant. who wraen was, who maia would be, who bridget would become. who ibis might become.
heart thrummed faster.

"My brother was a star-watcher - he could look up in the sky and see constellations and hear them talk," Wraen shared, seeing Terance before her eyes somewhere in the mountains, his eyes trained to the sky, watching, smiling meditating. "I never learned the craft, but I learned the stories about them," she explained. "And one tale that I loved was that every wolf, who has finished their walk on this Earth, there is a star in the sky," she told. "Maia has dabbled in the craft a little - you can talk to her and I know she will be glad to teach you, what she knows," she suggested. 

"Well, they say that admitting that you do not know everything is the first step towards true wisdom," she smiled. "But I can tell you already that the longer you live, the more you learn and the more it's clear that you don't know even a fraction of anything," come to think of it, she no longer strived to learn everything. She focussed on, what made her happy and content. "Do you know the story about Pollux and Castor?" she asked then. "It has to do with stars. A little." 

teya was relieved to hear that wraen would see this choice of hers as more worthy, perhaps. or maybe she only assumed, due to the part this brother had played in their tale. her own eyes lifted, following along the edge of wraen's own. the skies had been her life, but she saw now that so much of it had been an escape. "i will find maia."
castor and pollux. 
she shook her head. "not know many stories. not allowed," the girl added dryly, offering a glimpse into the strict world that borva and her aunt had built for her, a cage that now only housed her tongue. interest and warmth lifted in her eyes; she was silent, waiting to listen.

Wraen misunderstood Teya's statement as if "not being allowed to listen to stories in general". Of all the strange traditions and customs she had ever heard of, this was the weirdest. Storytelling was the most powerful tool in the world to influence the masses. Spin it right and at the most appropriate moment - you could twist and bend the minds of people along. Whichever way you wanted it. Why forbid it at all, was beyond her.

"How so?" she wanted to know more. "What did they tell you instead?" there was no such thing as an empty space. Not for long anyway.

she had been waiting for wraen to tell this story, but now the green-apple look was upon her now, the silver-chased body seeming expectant. she fumbled a moment, not having expected this, but recovering all the same.
teya found she wanted to share such things with wraen, that the woman's consistency had made her a shy subject of trust. and that since coming to brecheliant, the violet had begun to find her voice and a gentle sense of inward calm.
"that we all were sinful children. and here is the ways in which we sinned." dry again, but it was the truth. borva had not so much as told her a single creative thing, outside of ways to horrify her in childhood.
"so now i hear all the stories that i can. like water, i drink them."

"Not much fun, I guess," Wraen remarked, thinking that she might have heard something about the "original sin" crap at some point during her life, but had never assumed it to be that interesting to pursue. "That might also be a little old fashioned. Scaring kids into obedience, I mean?" she mused out loud. "In old times most folk tales had very little to do with happy endings and nice outcomes. They were downright scary and gruesome, and meant to keep people in check and prepare kids that life was going to be no fairy tale," she shared. "Which is honest - no doubt about it, but you learn it regardless later on." 

"And do you have any favourite themes in the stories?" she asked next. "Say, adventures, romance, drama, fun stuff? Horror stories?"

teya considered this question for a moment; again, it was something that had not been asked of the girl. all, she wished to say silently. the verdant green eyes of the other raven tugged a bit upon her consciousness, and teya realized quickly that if anyone were to understand the unsaid, it would be wraen.
"i not helpful," she grinned at herself. "all my favorites. all i enjoy hearing."
any tale, swallowed whole and spoken later to commit the details to memory. teya had lived long upon only scraps of creativity, and it was the repressed starveling child that spoke through her now, wondering how very many stories wraen had gathered.

"That's admirable, but makes the job for storyteller harder," Wraen laughed, when Teya declared that she wanted to hear every story there was. Which was a difficult feat, because she had no idea, how much she knew, and even that was a just a tiny fraction from the way larger unknown in the world. Philosophical tales aside, she returned to the story of Pollux and Castor she had suggested earlier. 

"Well - these fellows were twin brothers - sons of Queen Leda. One was sired by her lawful husband, the other by the god Zeus. Therefore one was human, but the other - an immortal demigod. They were inseparable as kids and remained such, as they grew into adulthood. They had many adventures together, heroic deeds too, reckless even and then, one time, the mortal brother Castor got mortally injured and Pollux was given a choice - let him die or give half of his immortality to his brother. But there are other versions, where it's said that - his brother would live, but at the cost of Pollux's demigod status and immortality. 

Either way - Pollux's love for his sibling was so great, that he could not imagine spending a single day without him on Earth. So - he opted for saving his brother's life," she told. "They later became two brightest stars in the nightsky - I am sure Maia will be able to show you, which ones exactly. They were never apart from one another on this Earth and stayed together in the Afterlife too," she finished. 

"But there is another story about them - there was a famous bard - known for his songs and tales, and poems - and he was invited to pack of royals to perform. He came and he did, what he was told, but at the end of every song, he spoke high praise to the Twin brothers. This angered the king greatly and he told - if he found the Twins so much better than the hosts, then he should leave and have a feast with them. Suddenly a messenger came and told the bard that there are two people waiting for him outside the territory," she said. "He did, what he was told, but when he left the borders no one was around. Then suddenly he heard loud rumbling and trembling of the Earth. He turned and saw that the land, where the royals had lived, had crashed and split, killing everyone that had left inside. The bard looked up in the nightsky and he saw the two bright stars looking down at him," she finished. 

Pollux and Castor - Greek/Roman heroes. As for the second story - with wolfish adaptations, it is taken from Hillary Mantel's book "Wolf Hall", where it was referenced.

teya smiled gently, settling in for the tale that wraen wove.
twins. leda. leda. she loved the name at once, putting that sound within her heart. two sons, one a mortal, one who was not. they had never become rivals from the sound of it, and there had even been a sacrifice in the name of agape: love between brothers.
teya found this most fantastical of all, that there were men who did not compete with one another.
but the story was quickly beloved all the same; she told it to herself a second time, quiet all that while. and the bard, protected from the hubris of those who had not believed. that part chilled and quickened the girl, who felt a faint sense of piety growing stronger.
and maia, able to tell the stars. she would ask this.
"i sometime wish i had a sister," the girl murmured, wishing also that she could speak plainly of the great void in her heart where she felt a sibling must certainly have been at one time.

"That is a wish that can be fulfilled," Wraen pointed out. "Sometimes you find brothers and sisters, father and mother figures in people you happen to meet in life. You do not have to be related to them to feel that connection and sense of them being a kindred spirit," she told her. "And the best part is - it can happen in all walks of life. Just keep the options open," she finished her thought. 

"What about Bridget? You seem to be very good friends," she asked.

friends. very good friends. teya's cheeks pinked beneath her greypumpkin fur, and she was thankful for even its short covering as she looked at her paws, crossed in front of her body. "bridget, ah, special," the raven swallowed. "would not be me if not her." she had known the red-masque a long time, the girl realized with a start; from seelie court to raven-home to here.
more than special, but as usual, teya did not have the words to articulate her sentiment.
"maybe you?" she suggested instead, a slight humour to her words. wraen would draw her own conclusions, but the little violet found she trusted whatever the other might make of her comments upon bridget.

"Well, I am a tad bit too old to be considered your sister," Wraen replied with a laugh, amused by the image of a sprightly young adult next to a granny that had not aged well and them being sisters. Okay... to be fair in the wolf world even this was not entirely impossible, kids born early, kids growing up fast. Yet... 

"But - I can be your fairy... no witchy godmother - does that sound good? I am a little crazy, wayward and live by my own set of rules. And I jinx people occasionally," she mused. "And if I am not going around turning people into toads and rocks, I am up for telling a story or two from my grand and adventurous life."

not a sister, but a witchy godmother. pulled straight from the stories they both seemed to share. for a moment teya was silent, and then another delight dazzled her face. "i like this," she chirruped with a laugh. "maybe i learn from you how to get toads."
a fond look, and then her eyes traveled back to the dust upon her pawpads. how nice it was simply to lie here and trade words with wraen. "what is favorite, rocks or feathers?" the girl inquired suddenly, mysteriously.

"I will teach you something even better," Wraen said with a mischievous smile and leaned closer to whisper conspirationally in Teya's ear, "I'll teach you, how to tell true princes apart from toads. Can't go around kissing every one that you come across." Quite handy, really. Based on the average yearly statistics of all the men that crossed witches and were turned into amphibians, only 1.3% of them were worth the kiss to turn them back in wolves. The rest did the society and the world in general a favour by living out the rest of their days near waters, basking in sunlight, eating insects and... getting a free pass to reincarnation into soil fertilizer, after being devoured and digested by birds.

"That's a trick question?" she asked. "To put it in a very complicated way - the choice for me is between staying put on the ground and being realistic - that's a rock, or... being as lightweight as a feather and have a chance to fly. Or become a nest material. So... staring at baby-bird bums or a landmark for guys to piss on... It's hard," she mused out loud. "Okay, I will risk saying a "feather" - because baby birds happen once or twice a year and it means that I would be able to breathe fresh air for the remainder of the time, whereas a good landmark can never cleanse it from the natural perfume of manhood."

teya listened closely as wraen whispered, and then chortled a laugh. "that would be very good. i want to avoid toad," she added, grinning.
a trick question. teya did not know this meaning, but it became clear the more that the older raven spoke. and then laughter again, humour again — she thought about the question she had asked more closely.
teya wished to bring something for wraen, that was it, but her mentor was more savvy than she had expected. yet with 'feather' finally in hand, and a roll of her eyes in agreement for the musky splashes that men left behind, she thought of what exotic thing she could find for her companion.
"come for a drink?" she urged. lying here with wraen was pleasant, but her youthful body ached to be put to another task.

"Yup - definitely. My old shell has been lying here long enough. Felt like two months, not whatever length of time we have actually been here," Wraen joked, raising to her feet, stretching stiffness away and yawning. "So - what kind of drink do you have in mind?" she asked in good humour. "I would not be against taking a sip from the Fountain of Youth, but the catch is that you have to know, how much to drink. If too much - you may end up becoming a helpless, blind and deaf blob of a puppy. Babies and water do not mix well, in my experience," she grinned, giving an impression that one of her hobbies was - in fact - experimenting with babies and substances that they mixed well with.