Firefly Ravine Bleak

The last thing that Swordfish could remember, he had been shuffling along with the others and the young ones. His head was foggy, and his body was weak from drug and woundrest.

The bear had returned for them. He couldn’t help but think of the monster’s dark eyes. It was somewhere in their fleeing that the young redtail had lost sight of his bunk mate, his friend. The young wolf had been dismayed. He had not said a thing to the others. Swordfish’s mind was alive with fear, with worry.

It was at the ravine that he was forced to stop. The darkness had long overtaken him. The howls from the cliffs had died away. Swordfish wondered what had happened to them. His lean figure shook against the cold. His eyes pricked with tears as he squinted, hoping that @Quennell would appear before him with a smile and a glint of mischief in his gaze.

It was only the snow that met him.

the going was slow. it would take forever to get...wherever he had been headed. he did not know, only that he must go. likely far from sapphique. far from friends and family.

was it cowardly or brave?

the last thing he expected was sword to follow after him when he had split from the group. so he turned around, wide eye and almost fuming at once.

ya ain't supposed ta be out 'ere!

he seethed with concern and worry for his friend.

he debated sounding the alarm for njord and meemee at once. yet he knew not where they were by now.

Swordfish cursed beneath his breath, flattening his ears against the whipping wind and snow. He did not want to cry. He didn’t want to miss his mother. He had just done this. Hadn’t they had enough of the fear and monsters?

Ya ain’t supposed to be out ‘ere!

The redtail’s ears drew to a perk. His eyes scanned until he saw the other boy. Breathless, relieved- God, he was so relieved. Swordfish nearly fell as he padded toward the red-naped pirate. His hooded eyes were bleak with exhaustion. The lean seafarer’s nose was pressed to Quennell’s neck. You’re alive. You’re not gone.

But in his drugged mind, he could only see his mother crying over Njord, who had vanished without a word to them.

Ya just left, he whispered, voice cracking. Ya just- Swordfish clenched his jaw. He was delirious, out of his mind with the drugs and the fear.

Momma needed you. And Ray! And- And me.

But this wasn’t Njord. This was Quennell, his friend, his brother.

Swordfish shook his snout. His eyes pleaded with the other boy.

Why would ya just leave?

quen could not defend himself.

there was nothing to defend with besides his still hanging grief and cowardice. he had been willing to try but —

mama? ray? they did not —

he pulled sword a bit closer. he wondered if the bear had scrambled that brain too. if the madness of it's arrival had seeped into his brother.

i ain't whole, s'ord.

he mumbled softly against the other boy's ear.

i ain't fit fer it anymore.

for the coast. for the bear. for living in a world of grief.

Quennell wasn’t whole.

Swordfish felt like this mess with the bear had aged him. What had they done to deserve it?

When the other boy said that he wasn’t fit for it, the redtail pulled back to look at him. He didn’t wanna believe it. Quen was stronger than he was, Swordfish knew it. The other boy was everything that he had hoped he might be, everything that he wasn’t. Like Stingray, Quennell had a confident charm that could ease anyone.

It was Swordfish’s fault that they had been out there, to begin with. It had been he who had wanted to explore the prey that wasn’t closely tied to the ocean. Sapphique couldn’t lose Quennell. He was important to so many of them.

Then lemme help get ya fit. Yer not gonna make it very far if ya carry it alone.

A stormcloud had gathered over the redtail’s head. He didn’t know what to do.

oh, s'ord...

his voice mumbled softly against the fur of his brother. his eyes stung and gave to them the saltwater they had left behind.

he could only think of meemee and njord. how fitful they might be to see the injured boys gone — or if they did not know it yet, how frenzied they might become when they discovered it. quen could not bring himself to hurt them with an absent son again.

i'm goin', s'ord — an' i won' be de one ta take ya from yer family. not again.

his head shook softly.

ya call 'em, or i do.

Quennell wasn’t kidding around. He meant to leave his family and his home behind.

For what? Swordfish felt his deliria sharpen. He was baffled, angry, weak. The redtail was tired of this horrible thing. All of it had been a dreadful experience. This was just another slice to his figure. This was a gash that cut a little too deep.

The threat lay bare on the wind. Swordfish gritted his teeth, trying to suffocate the anger that twisted with mania inside him. How dare he say that he would call Njord and Meerkat. Over his relief of finding the other boy, Swordfish pushed away from him. He shook his head in disbelief.

Call ‘em then! Call ‘em an’ they’ll tell ya yer bein’ an idiot. Maybe they can drag ya back, he snapped, eyes flashing wildly.

he was hurt. wounded. deeper than any marks they bore upon their flesh. to see swordfish so quickly turn upon him!

NOBODY BE DRAGGIN' ME BACK, S'ORD.

he bellowed with all the hurt and sadness in him. a volcano of it all at once. he felt the rawness in his throat and the ache of his lungs — the grief that squeezed around his throat. he choked against it all.

DAT be what i'm tellin' you! go an' ask mir and she be sayin' she already know! go ask yer pa and he be sayin' he know what i feelin'!

and his eyes shone with a million stars in the form of tears. each for every hurt he felt in that moment. some self imposed and some placed there by others. some hurts older than the boys who carried them.

Go ask yer pa and he be sayin' he know what i feelin'!

All the steam was let out of the boy. He visibly sagged before Quennell.

What did he know of Swordfish’s dad? What had he suffered from Njord’s absence? Now it was made to sound like some youthful calling, some need to go and leave behind everything for his righteous cause. Quennell knew nothing about what it was like to be the one left behind.

The redtail turned away from his friend. He wouldn’t let the other boy see him hurt. Quennell had talked to everyone but the redtail across from him. Always the last to know. Swordfish’s heavy-lidded stare was fixed on a distant subject. He just needed to find somewhere dark. He just needed to find somewhere dark where he could hide. 

Swordfish didn’t say another word to Quennell. He fixed his back to the red-naped boy and began to walk. He did not know where his legs would take him.

no amount of grief over the bear had compared to the distress he felt now.

quen had crossed a line, or maybe he had drawn one in the sand between them. something felt broken all at once. more than just his heart.

the silence that spread between them made his ears ring. a deafening sound despite the lack of words.

wait! s'ord, please, i'm sorry!

and he was sobbing now. horrified of being consumed by loneliness in the face of his grief. horrified that he had just pushed away the boy who had been there with him through it all.

Voices rang out on the air. Not snarls and growls, but shouts nonetheless. There was panic in the voices, which she figured must have belonged to young men. She crept closer, still minding her silhouette and keeping herself hidden amongst the brush that lined the ravine, pricking an ear so she might overhear bits of the conversation and suss out what was going on. This scouting business sure had some juicy gossip!

But then- 

No. Really? It couldn't be. 

"Quennell?" She called out. A glimpse of red in the distance, and another, with him, walking away. They disappeared. She began to bound through the bushes, hoping her ears hadn't lied to her. She chimed out again. "Quennellll!"

The instant Meerkat understood Swordfish was missing, not dead, her focus narrowed down to the signs of many feet churning the snow around the roja den. Minding Njord’s frantic request that they stick close together, she exchanged a look with her husband and son, then ran.

As she followed the trail westward, she wondered how she’d missed them on her way back to Sapphique. But it didn’t matter now. Meerkat didn’t care about anyone or anything but Swordfish. In fact, the only other wolves that registered in her mind at all in any meaningful way were, of course, @Njord and @Stingray just behind her.

She retraced her earlier steps, running past the sound, sticking close to the nameless riverside. Somewhere along the way, her husband managed to say the word “bear.” Most of the scents they followed belonged to the pack’s most vulnerable members, Fish included. Meerkat gathered that the bear had raided the cliffs and that they must have evacuated those who could not fight.

Suddenly they were at the edge of the ravine. In her distraught distraction, Meerkat almost went tumbling into it. She dug her toes into the slippery, snowy ground and managed to avoid adding more tragedy to this day. She then turned and threw out an arm to prevent Njord or Ray from pitching into the dark chasm too.

She took a breath, ready to dart west along it, when Meerkat heard a young girl’s voice calling Quennell’s name.

Father, mother, and son run united. Njord’s supply of adrenaline feels unlimited, though the body that pumps it feels no more put together than a haphazard Rube Goldberg machine.

Meerkat leads. Stingray is in his periphery. Suddenly, the group skids to an abrupt halt. His wife’s arm prevents them from nosediving into the ravine.

A call on the wind. His wife hears it too. “Swordfish!” Njord bellows. “Quennell!”

last from me! if somebody wants to catch up (which is easy bc lol injured quen) pm me <3

swordfish walked away.

quen broke further. by his own hands this time! and it was a nightmare come true when voices that he could place names to began to call out to him. heard in between the hitched breaths and the blooming panic in his chest.

he took off. as fast as his injured body could allow, stumbled and fumbling time and time again. noticed the way the air burned harder in his chest than it had moments ago.

a coward.

a good for nothing, never-would-be pirate.

Lilia was a decent tracker, but the ravine was not the best terrain. The winding river that ran through the area was framed by steep inclines, littered with shrubby bushes and alders that grew so close together they choked out daylight. The way was not easy, so she had to pick her path carefully, and also wanted to avoid simply traipsing on the ice and falling through. 

She found the path left behind by the boys, and flicked an ear when she heard more voices calling out. A man and a woman, but they were far away enough she couldn't identify who they might be. She thought Quennell must have heard her...

The voice rang out again- close enough now that she recognized it. She picked her way back up the slope, and began scenting back along her own trail, until she spotted the familiar form of Njord, his face made unfamiliar with worry. There was a woman with him, who looked panicked as well. Her ears flicked back. 

What the hell was going on?!"

"Njord?" She asked, hoping he might explain. Given the harrowed look of the both of them, she assumed something very big was going on.

Her heart froze in her chest. She didn’t dare breathe as she strained her ears. The call didn’t come again, though Njord’s own bellow startled her. She nearly threw her foreleg out again to silence him, though it was too late. She squinted into the distance, lips moving silently as she hoped and prayed for an answer.

They were met with a brief and wrought silence before a young wolf appeared nearby. Meerkat’s heart jumped into her throat before sinking at the sight of a stranger. This must be the girl who had shouted, though why had she said Quennell’s name? And how did she know Njord?

Before she could articulate any of her scattered thoughts, Meerkat swore she caught Swordfish’s scent on the crosswind. It was just a faint hint, his familiar smell and the medicinal odors she had recently come to associate with him. The muscles in her neck nearly creaked as her head snapped upward, muzzle raised in the air to better capture these intimations of her missing son.

He was here, she whispered to no one in particular, nearly certain of it. Quennell too. What…?

If they had been with the group seeking refuge from the bear, why were their trails isolated? But that was the only clue she could pick up on the air, even as she exchanged a look with her mate and scrambled further along the ravine. Had the two injured boys become separated from the others somehow? Though Sapphique had turned its back on the Sveijarn-Corten pair, she could not imagine they would leave their injured sons behind.

We have to track him down, she said to Njord and Ray, returning to them with a frenetic energy, paying no attention to the girl. We have to find him.

She exchanged a look with her mate, silently promising that she would obey his earlier words and stay in his sight. But then Meerkat spun on a heel and ran forth, prepared to plumb the very depths of the ravine if that’s what it took, all the while screaming Swordfish’s name until she grew hoarse.

If I need to make any edits to tweak assumptions and/or continuity, please just tap me. I think this’ll be my last post to segue into this.

The girl’s appearance barely distracted Meerkat, who was hot on Swordfish’s trail the moment a whiff of scent hit her nose. “Here?” Njord echoed as his snout twitched. His wife attempted to decipher the two boys’ cryptic pattern. Njord and Meerkat could not understand why their son and his friend had managed to wander from Dragoncrest, only to disappear.

In a flash, Meerkat took the steep bank down into the ravine. Njord turned to Lilia.

“Lass, a bear attacked Sapphique… s’no safe ‘ere,” he warned her seriously. The man felt his heart bleed, thinking of his packmates who now fought the bear tooth and nail. “We cannae find our son Swordfish or Quennell. They’re both injured. They’re no fit tae travel.” A deep frown pulled at the corners of his mouth. If one tallied up these pieces of information it was easy to imagine the harrowing path the two young men now faced.

“Ye best be headin’ back tae tha Rise. Warn yer people. This bear’s a wolf killer.” Njord’s voice was dark, expression gaunt. He was a man who knew death. “If ye see tha lads, can ye tell ‘em we’re desperate tae find ‘em?” the father pleaded.

The echo of Meerkat’s calls bounced off the walls of the gully. Njord felt he could not linger much longer. “Ye must go,” Njord pushed, “but dinnae cross tha Tangle.” An ominous warning.

As if in a daze, the woman blundered past and off into the ravine. Lilia raised a brow and frowned; how rude, she thought. But she wasn't completely apathetic to their situation, and gave her a pass when Njord started to explain what had happened. She was shocked into silence. Her mouth opened slightly when she learned that Quennell had been injured, and that he hadn't been fit to travel. She immediately came up with questions but found them sticking in her throat. 

The urgency in Njord's voice stifled what would have been an oppositional response. She clamped her mouth shut, and nodded. She'd let them know, if she found them, even though she had no idea who Swordfish was. But she still had questions. And the one burning at the forefront of her mind was why are they running away from you?

They hadn't been far off- they should have heard Meerkat and Njord shouting out for them. And yet they continued on. Fleeing the bear, perhaps? Sickened by pain and malaise? Or were they pirates on the run, as Quennell had always intended?

"I heawd him shout. That way, I think," She said, gesturing. She pointed off, toward the mountains- across the Ravine. She could have been wrong. Perhaps she was being intentionally wrong- but now she had a warning to deliver to her leader, and like the others, she would not waste a minute.

Last from me! Sorry its a shorty :D

Lila’s bright eyes appeared to follow with rapt attention. She took the seafarer’s warning seriously and offered what information she knew – which Njord assumed was genuine.

“I thank ye lass,” there was no smile to embellish these words. There was nary a sliver of happiness in his heart for it.

With a swift motion to Stingray, the man followed his wife down. They would circle back towards the mountains urgently.