Dragoncrest Cliffs Tempest

Njord could barely feel his body as he ran. The father’s pupils were pinpricks in a sea of blue. Sensory overload hot-wired his brain to autopilot, muscles burning with the effort of running through the snow.

@Meerkat! @Stingray! @Swordfish! He howled. Barked. Bayed. Whatever you called the ugly sound that gurgled from his throat.

He would carry them, drag the if he had to, and find shelter far from here.

Stingray was searching for his mother when Hell broke its shackles and descended on Dragoncrest.

So much was happening lately that he didn't understand. It was bad enough his dear brother was still unable to do much; the guilt of being spared such a grisly injury when he had felt so jealous of their adventure hung over Stingray like a shroud whenever he was alone. Now his parents were being left out of meetings and ceremonies and he desperately wanted to know what was going on.

He was too far away to hear the commotion itself, though there were a number of worrying cries over the cliffs that made Ray wanted to hide himself away. Some brave big man he was! He hastened his steps, searching in earnest for Meerkat and hoping to get to the bottom of the strangeness of their home these past days.

But those worrying cries were now close, and the voice was familiar, and the urgency and nauseating fear behind it rooted Stingray to the spot. Njord would find him standing alert at the edge of Greatpine Wildwood, and when he saw his father running like flames licked at his heels, Stingray lurched into an awkward run of his own.

Da! he yelled after Njord's fast-retreating back, struggling to keep up in the snow with his own pudgy build. What's going on?!

She made it as far as Barrow Fields before guilt halted Meerkat in her tracks. How could she just run off without telling her husband and sons? She certainly didn’t mean to abandon them, especially not right now. But she wasn’t in her right mind, either. She desperately needed a friend, just to talk to for a few hours. She couldn’t stop thinking about @Sialuk and the woman’s request to drop by Moonspear.

But now she came to her senses and made an about face, loping back toward Sapphique, hoping nobody had even missed her. Of course they wouldn’t, she thought with a touch of bitterness. Njord, Ray and Fish might, yet nobody else in the pack cared for them any longer; they had made that painfully clear to the Sveijarn-Corten pair.

She swore she heard yelling as she approached the far side of the sound. Some strange instinct told her to go around, so Meerkat veered inland and followed the small, nameless river that wound into The Tangle. Before that point, she cut due north to head to the cliffs, her stomach sinking as she came nearer to Sapphique. Running away wasn’t the answer but being here wasn’t either. It was purgatory.

But Fish couldn’t move much and he needed her. Steeling herself with a few deep breaths, Meerkat headed into the territory only to hear her husband’s anguished howl rip through the air. Heart in her throat, she darted instinctively toward the roja den, certain something must be the matter with Fish.

Stingray finds his red-tailed father first. Confusion and fear swim in his young son’s glassy eyes… and this pulls the man together. Panic and fear transform into resolve and courage despite the fresh blood on his paws.

Njord slows his pace, just enough for Stingray to keep up, and keeps close to the lad. “Tha bear ‘as come,” he says with curt intonation. “We must find ye brother an’ mother an’ go.”

Then, they arrived at the Roja den just as Meerkat did. Yet it was evident, upon the first glace, that the burrow was empty.

While Njord ran full-tilt, Stingray could only focus on churning his legs through the snow to keep up, but when his father slowed down, he noticed something else. The hint of red in his father's tracks made his eyes widen. What—

But Njord's tone left no room for questions, and even if it had, Stingray's curdled in his mouth. His stomach flipped over so fast that he staggered, certain he was going to vomit. The bear, here? Now?! They had just had that meeting about how to deal with the bear, but none of them had counted on it showing up so soon. Swordfish couldn't run yet! He could hardly walk!

Stingray swallowed his tongue for the rest of the journey to the Roja den, and then it unfurled with a panicked scream of, FISH?! when they found the den empty. It was his turn for pupils to disappear into twin seas of cobalt blue as he frantically looked around for his sibling, and in his frenzy, missed the fairly obvious tracks away from the den. SWORDFISH?!?!

The instant she arrived, Meerkat knew something was very wrong. The den was empty, with signs of some enormous struggle. For a beat, she just stared uncomprehendingly into the empty space, trying to make sense of what she was seeing and smelling. Her heart pounded painfully against her breastbone, chest heaving as one question rose above everything else: Where was Swordfish?

Njord and Stingray burst onto the scene. Meerkat watched dumbly for a moment as Ray also noticed the den empty and began frantically shouting for his brother. Her eyes then turned to Njord, who was smeared with blood and looked absolutely beside himself in a way she had never seen.

“I willnae bury any of our children!” he cried at her from her recent memories and, suddenly, she realized what must’ve happened, whose blood was sticky in Njord’s fur: his son’s.

But like Stingray, Meerkat couldn’t just accept that and breathlessly demanded, Where’s Fish? Where’s our son? and stepped toward Njord, touch gently desperate as her paws fluttered over him.

Feeling the blood on him, she recoiled as if burned and abruptly turned toward Ray. If Swordfish had been hurt or killed somehow—a possibility she wanted to deny with all her heart, despite the proof right in front of her—then where was his body? She would not, could not, accept this without her baby dead in her arms.

Where’s my son? Meerkat repeated, voice rising as she moved to join Ray in his evident search.

Where’s my son? she wailed as she looked at all the signs of a commotion around the den’s entrance.

Where’s my son? she moaned to the sky, starting to follow the trail and registering no one’s scents but Swordfish’s.

WHERE’S MY SON??? Meerkat shrieked for all of Sapphique and the Teekon Wilds to hear.

When the three family members converged their brains buffered, processing the scene and the absence of the wounded boys. Stingray was the first to reboot. He grasped the situation – the implication that death was close and that his brother could not run from it alone -- and began to shout for his red-tailed sibling.

The desperate calls seemed to jumpstart his mother who, at first, connected back with Njord. She begged a question of her husband. Where was their son?

Njord’s bloodshot eyes swam in their sockets as his gaze darted around. Slack-jawed and listless. His brain felt slow. Mired by the great tragedy that flooded Sapphique. He thought of Val’s primitive battle cry. The heartsick roar of Erzulie’s grief. Sobo’s half-skull. And blood. And ocean. And Merlin. And seawater. And death.

WHERE’S MY SON???

The cry could have broken glass. Meerkat unraveled into a frenzied alarm. The sheer panic and terror of his wife and son were the only reason Njord was able to step up at that moment. Even his composure was held perilously together by the most meager of strings.

She started to leave the scene, following Swordfish’s trail in a manic state.

“Meerkat. Meerkat,” Njord came up besides her. He would have grabbed her shoulders if he could. “We’ll find him,” the father’s deep voice promised in an attempt to level his wife. “But we ‘av tae stay ta’gether. We cannae lose sight of one another.”

Njord looked over to Stingray. He was not willing to lose this boy too. “We must keep close, do ye ken?” Njord did not know if his words would land but in the next moment, his eyes looked towards the Southbound pawprints smeared in the dirt, ready to follow.

This will be my last post here but feel free to powerplay Stingray as needed for the rest of it. <3

Stingray dropped his nose to the ground and began to draw panicked circles in the snow, hunting for Swordfish's scent well away from where his brother's tracks actually led. He wasn't half the hunter Fish was even at the best of times, but with chaos erupting all around and his parents' dismay bleeding into him, Stingray could hardly think straight at all.

Meerkat's cries didn't register at first, but her final shriek drew Stingray's head up and around. His heart was pounding so hard he felt it would burst out of his chest. Njord said the bear was back. Swordfish was gone. The connection between these two was forged in an instant. He began to breathe harder and felt like he was suffocating no matter how much air he sucked in.

Njord addressed him. Through the pounding of his own heart in his ears, his father's voice sounded impossibly distant, but Stingray did hear them. He nodded his head and prepared to follow his parents, only now noticing there was a trail away from the den.

Maybe Swordfish was faster than the bear after all.

Last from me as well!

Njord said her name and Meerkat’s stricken eyes rolled toward him, trying not to see the smattering of blood in his fur. “We’ll find him,” her mate insisted and she felt something loosen in her chest. Was that not Swordfish’s blood? She should’ve wondered whose it was but Meerkat was too busy trembling in hopeful relief to think any further than, It’s not his!

Yes, she agreed faintly when her husband said they needed to stay together.

Both Njord and Ray were now looking at the trail of prints leading away from the roja den. Letting out a small cry, Meerkat began to follow them away. She glanced backward only to make sure her mate and son were right behind her, then rushed forward out of Sapphique, unaware that she would never set eyes on its shores again.