Duck Lake The sound won't carry

any + all welcome!

---

At the lake there were no others around. Tauris, mid-shed in her tangled spring coat, ambles down to the shore, her paws making light tread she thought none would hear. She dallies along the place where the tranquil wade laps at river stones. One dark paw tests the coolness. She poises, sinking into her legs, then plunges out into the deep green wake. 

Quickly, the lake heals itself, smoothing over the wound left by her dive, ripples subsiding outwards to the shore. Tauris shivers, skirls against the chill, then lets her body and thick threads of gray undercoat scatter in residual quake.

An exhale, then all is still.

bjarna returned.

for the boy. for reverie. for any other souls she may come to collect, it seemed.

yet the woman at the lake today did not look like one who needed help. no, she seemed lovely. beautiful. a tranquil kelpie prepared to lure bjarna into the depths of the water. a girl who had never learned how to swim. a girl who suddenly feared the depths if something so beautiful could live in them.

the water was not a place for girls like bjarna.

but she realized far too late that she only stood there and stared openly. awkwardly, and suddenly, she tried to make herself look busy.

a task which she would fail.

It stands at the shore, cut bright as the moon yet carved like smoke, billowing, shapeless. Head closed, teeth and eyes concealed, entirely and eerily impassive. Not wolf, not goat; a nameless creature of the lake.

The dark girl retreats to her cold refuge, an hermitage of green sea-stalks and sailing undercoat. Her dark face crests the water, fierce with equal worry and wonder, and gray eyes finds the pale shape through a tangle of cattails.

“What do you want?” The hiss from a swift curve of lip and nose, a thrusting jaw that aimed to mimic a soldier’s confidence, but which quivered with unease.

the sun did not need to be out for bjarna to burn.

her cheeks rose with a fevered temperature as the kelpie woman spoke to her. what was not so odd a word. nor was you.

bjarna actually found that for once none of these words seemed that odd or beyond her grasp.

and for once she wished they had been. that she could have pranced off as a confused icelandic child with no grasp of a common tongue — for most times she felt that way. instead she stood with a new understanding and a nearly gobsmacked look on her face.

ah, uh... her voice quivered just as her legs threatened to. this was not kvarsheim, she did not hold a strong claim here. see. look.

and her face burned hotter.

A response in a heavily-accented garble of wolf-language carried timidly over the haze. And distinctly female, she’d realize, with a baffled twist of muzzle. Curiosity piqued. Her neck craned to see clearer.

But she did not. Only, an amorphous collection of pale folds. Did she have teeth? Or eyes?

“What are you?”

A rude ask. But no more so than this voyeurism, she would reason. She eyed the talking glob with more suspicion, perhaps, than was owed the sentient being.

a shamed look may have gone missing in the scrunched, wrinkled features of her face but it was there all the same.

bjarna...

an oversized paw that she would never grow into raised. tentative. touched her chest and then settled back on the ground again.

‘Berna’. What is it, a name, or a thing?

Berna does not move, and Tauris wants to know more. She dares to edge closer, face parting through the reeds, nose doing what it will to dissect and make sense of it, while her prickly alpine edges stand in caution.

She smells the pulp of her body, the strangest odor of wolf-kind, and gathers herself, muscles clutching, pelt dibbling, to move nearer, wrenching through cattails.

In the shallows with only a few paces between them, she studies the disfigured half-girl, wanting desperately to ask what happened but tongue stilling in kinder judgment.

She could go now, if she had wanted. Something told her this berna would not give chase. But for vigilance or fascination, she did not turn away.

“Is this berna’s lake?” She would ask, proper pronunciation lost on her foreign tongue. 

she held a lump in her throat now.

horrified of beautiful women. what was new? she had felt this nearly every time she had gazed upon one and now it came with a smacking force upon her chest.

a dark blue tongue swept out with nerves rattled.

what had been asked?

she had missed it in all of her mental fumbling over the woman. yet bjarna had mapped every conversation before in usually the same pattern.

a name, followed by a place. this was the way of those who could not talk well.

kvarsheim. she uttered weakly.

nervously her head turned to gesture with a stout muzzle back towards where she had come from. even if the glade stood between them and her home now.

Berna was quiet with assumed contemplation, long enough for Tauris to register they had scarcely a native tongue between them.

But she did know the name voiced next. Her body gives a little tilt of recognition and the water turns in acknowledgement to push up the stony embankment towards the half-breed. The mahpiya.

“Karsheen,” She repeated (badly). “You are friend to Reverie?”

Karsheen had been home to the gilded girl for a time. Or maybe Karsheen was the Creek, Tauris was fuzzy about that part and knew little of the valley's packs, as she took great lengths to skirt their borders.

Only, she’d done a piss-poor job here, because, as she now gathered, this lake belonged to pack Karsheen.

reverie?

reverie!

how did this woman know! suddenly bjarna's features twisted and contorted. confusion, relief, a sinking feeling. she did not know whether to be joyed or jarred!

systir.

perhaps the first word she had spoken with certainty.

who you?

her confidence was only lifted by the need to make sure this was not a bad one. not a source of sadness for her systir.

Even Tauris, with apprehension thickly veiled, was charmed by the way the halfling brightened, and she gave nod to answer with a crack of smile that ripples, like the lake, over her face.

Yes, “Yes!” Sister?

…Certainly, there could be no relation between the two girls. One lean and feminine and kissed by sunlight….the other kissed by naught. But, emblematic, of a shared pack, and affection.

“Tauris,” she’d introduce simply, paw to chest, just as Berna had initiated, and allowed herself a small, but friendly tick of tail.

the name was given and it sparked nothing. reverie had not said this one to her.

were they good or bad?

bjarna knew she must be the one to decide this and that alone felt like a burden. everything felt like a sudden burden these days. yet she continued to grab and reach for more like struggle was a birthright. in a way, it had been.

tow-riss.

she tested it along the thick of her tongue. not nearly as fluid as the woman had spoken it. still she had tried and still she hoped the effort was not looked down upon.

tow-riss travel?

both words clunky and unorganized, but it was better than simply asking go? like she once had. progress in little stretches.

‘Tow-riss’ Berna would utter. Eh, close enough.

“Yes, I’ve traveled. Far.” And upon understanding Berna’s implication, “What… travel now?”

“Umm..” would trail a hum, and over her shoulder she’d look back into the lake. Into the known. There, Tauris would intend to bathe and dry, scratch her fleas then hunt a rat or two. And when night falls she’d curl into a fitful slumber, and tomorrow the day would repeat. The same one she’d been living since she came to the valley. Days passing in petty pace with little import, but of guarantee.

And yet, with curiosity that befits her still-tender age, Tauris could not help to wonder at the creature with a snub-nose.

The two thoughts took turns, the oscillation of a great debate shown only in her dark-tipped tail as it continued to tick behind her. Until with a crumbling resolve, but newly-born interest, the silver girl steps from her shallows onto the embankment, to stand tall before the bear cub.

“Berna lead, Tauris will follow.”

happy to do a follow-up exploring thread, timeskip in this one or fade entirely! whatever works best in ur mind <3

oh!

bjarna did lead! how did she know? she had...well, she had not felt like much of a lead out here.

even if she had come to the lake once again and had accidentally scooped somebody up — again. one might think she had developed a sort of personality problem with this continued trend.

bjarna fell silent now. inclined to lead as tow-riss had said. to show her the glade that kept them from kvarsheim and then show her the edge of kvarsheim.

a thing that might take the day to do, but she felt inclined to do such.

I'd love another thread when you are free <3

---

She followed at the flank, not ready altogether to be moved into strange land. But the sight of the cloud-girl was some relief, and her customary tread pulled her forward;

and the feeling that there was something that she would come away with having learned.