Stone Circle Homesick

If you have time <3

Skáld had begun to find his role in the pack, caring for his newest siblings who grew more and more each day. Their mobility astounded him as they went from crawling to tottering around to full-on bounding alongside him- simply a smaller version of a wolf but capable nonetheless. As they grew, so did his responsibility and he became so swept up in taking care of them that he'd begun to haunt the threshold of Tauris and Figment less and less. 

He had yet to see the children, and that reality weighed on him. He felt guilty having both avoided them, and having not made the time to check in and see how Tauris was doing. He feared meeting the man who had claimed the place at Tauris' side, but felt relieved to have only ever seen him in passing. So far as Skáld could tell, Figment was being a dutiful father- constantly out on errand. It made him easier to avoid. 

He waited until he saw the man leave, before he approached @Tauris' keep, uttering a low, soft whine as a plea for an audience.

always got time for you <3

She’d crooned for him that night. Had he heard her? She’d wanted him there. But he wasn’t ready to be, and she was forced to accept it. She was not mobile enough to hunt him down, her body ached and her senses were dulled. She couldn’t know that he was just outside; with her in his own way.

So finally his voice in that soft place was heart-wrenching. Utter relief. But disappointment. His absence hurt. She was scared and she’d wanted him- and she felt he put his dislike of Figment over his love for her.

She would not show him her edges. She felt a great deal of her own guilt when it came to Skáld, and the only thing she wanted to do now that he had come was hold him and smell his scent.

“Skáld,” she whispers.

Cautiously, he sidled forward, and immediately he regretted not bringing something for her. Something to eat, or perhaps something pretty...Maybe a flower, or another piece of quartz if he could somehow manage to find one. His doleful gaze only flicked to her expression for a moment or two, a mark of his guilt. Splayed ears spoke well enough of the regret he felt, as well as the reluctance he felt stepping into the hearth that belonged at least in part to another man. One who was now well established in the pack, and as a tradesman. He made Skáld feel so inadequate in comparison. 

He moped, lightly, in an attempt to bury his own guilt. Selfishly, he uttered a soft sigh. "Waited for you to call," He said, and shrugged. "Not want intrude." He wasn't pleased he'd not heard a summons come for him, but this was her family, and it was her choice...But she had other family too- and as part of it, he felt left behind.

He’s wounded too and in the wake of the past few weeks there is only a dim grasp of why it must be this way. She felt her heart too full of love to withhold it.

“You’re here now.” That’s the only thing that mattered. She folds towards her belly to brush her lips over her nursing son’s head.

“Swiftlet,” she murmurs, glancing up at Skáld. Then a second crown is kissed, “Katla.” She looks into his face, searching to see if he would accept them. Slowly she shifts her arm, creating a space for him beside her where he belongs.

He expected an apology, and to be fawned over- but nothing of the like happened and just like that, he began to see that he was not Tauris' little boy anymore. She had babied him,  clutched him close like a child when she had found him at the borders and for the time that had followed, but now she had children of her own- tiny, and truly helpless. He had spent so much of his life being willfully helpless himself that the arrival of new children came as a shock. He wasn't the pack's littlest boy anymore, physically, but he still felt the same in his heart. 

And so it broke him to see children, at first, to know he would have to shed his comforts and privileges and step up into a role that pinched like ill-fitted metal armour. He reflected for a moment on how it had been easier  to accept Gunnar and Taktuq's children, realizing how reluctant he suddenly felt to see Tauris and Figment's children. But he couldn't simply pretend they didn't exist. And he couldn't pretend they weren't Figment's, either. 

There was no doubting it, either, when he saw the two children, perfect and snuggled together- one earthy and with a hint of their mother's fever-coat, and the other charcoal and silver like his father. It pained him to see children who looked so much like their parents, when he found that there wasn't a single other wolf in existence who looked at all like him. He envied them, as he recognized within their truly beautiful, normal looks a perfection he would never see in his own reflection. 

And in spite of the sadness in his eyes, his lips chose to smile. In spite of himself, he couldn't look upon the two little babies, hear their names, and hate them. He despised how they made him feel, but the emerging paternal instinct in him told him that he would do absolutely everything for them, just as he did for his younger siblings. 

A tear surprised him as it splattered onto his foot. He laughed, and wiped his cheek, smearing his dark cheeks with tears from both eyes that came unbidden, an unexpected rainfall. Rubbing his cheeks loosened the tension in his face, allowing the smile to spread from his lips to his eyes which now danced with mirth. 

"Perfect," He said, forgetting the word in the common tongue. He moved in alongside her, tentative and yet relieved to be welcomed. He brought his muzzle closer to them, to know their scents, and he uttered a soothing croon before he looked to Tauris again. 

Motherhood had changed her- but she looked all the more radiant for the effort it had taken to create two beautiful children. "Little Tatanka, one and two." He said softly, remembering the word he had learned from her, and creating his own nickname for the children.

The distance between them was only the reach of their arms. Her throat with heaviness burns only for a moment before yielding to tears and a breadth of pride for the wolf who was no longer a child. Not only in stature, or words, but in his humility. She draws his chest against her own full, joining the four of them until all shadows meld to only one.

Through the tears breaks a laugh and into his cheek she nods and presses her third kiss, “and three.” A year ago there was no home. Now it cradles her up in its arms, she will not part from it. Home started with Skáld.

“I’ve missed you. Have you been keeping busy?” She grooms the salt from his cheeks and bridge of nose as the cubs tickle her belly. And then riding on a deep elation, “I want to move soon, Skáld. To Tréheim, so we can be together. All of us.”

He tilted his head back and thumped his curly tail against the ground when she kissed his head. He chuckled softly, and shook his head as he looked down at the two little children. "No, I am not Tatanka," He said softly. "I am...Uhm," He looked down and pulled at a couple curly strands of fur. They sprang back as soon as they were released, a unique trait that he saw in no others, save for- "Sheep. Saudur," He said with a guilty little laugh. He felt certain that Tauris' children would grow up to be magnificent wolves, but as for him...He was beginning to notice now that he'd come to stop growing that he did not look quite as wolfish as all the others. 

He nodded. "With children, very busy," He said, with a happy sigh. Gunnar and Taktuq's children specifically had begun to grow so fast, he was beginning to see them less as children and more as small wolves. His ears flicked forward when she mentioned moving and for a moment, he tensed. He hung on her words, and sighed silently when she mentioned Treheim. "Oh, good," He said. For a moment, he'd thought that she might want to move somewhere further away.

The thought of living with Tauris and her children in their beautiful, verdant home pleased him, though he felt lightly uncomfortable with the idea of living there with the man he hardly knew. Selfishly, he wanted to keep that away from Figment, as it was something he considered almost sacred. He felt that connection he'd made with Tauris was beginning to come divided, and while she simply wanted for it to be shared among more wolves, he wasn't sure if he was ready for it. But it wasn't about him- it was about their family. 

"Fig?" He asked, before he continued. "Fig allow, me?" 

After all, Figment might have his own idea of how he wanted his family to be as well- and sharing it with a yearling who didn't belong to him might not be what he wanted.

She mouths at his curls in the diluted light, “Ok,” she agrees, “Saudur. Saudur is a good brother to his little siblings.” Her eyes follow at the heels of his transitions: pleased to tense to a dithering hesitation.

“Skáld, if you want more time that’s ok. I will speak with him.” She is eager to renounce this provisional warren that they have sorely outgrown, the bedding gone musty with the constant comings and goings of four bodies, but she will not push Skáld for fear he may only be led further away from her. But he is altogether not so dismissive of the idea so she clings to the notion of hope.

“Maybe we can help expand Tréheim in the meantime. Dig it out a bit more, decorate. Could be fun?” In weariness she had resigned her attempts at bringing Fig and Skáld together but now that the pups were weaning it was time to try again, and even if a fantasy of the five of them living peacefully together was only ever that- it was still worth reaching for; a way to keep them all in her life. “Just imagine how very impressed the kids will be with the quartz.”

“There’s something else I want to ask of you,” she noses at a bronze coil along his cheek.

More time? He wasn't sure that he needed it, but he had no idea what Figment felt about having to share his hearth with a wolf who wasn't one of his children. He considered how he might feel, if he had just found someone he loved, and started a family with them...Only to find that there was another young man hanging about. While he wanted to be as close to Tauris and the children as possible, he felt it wrong to wedge himself into their family when it was something they should have been enjoying together. 

"I prepare Tréheim, for you. No worry," He assured her, kissing her forehead. "Then...You, Fig and two Tatanka live there. I be happy Saudur in pasture, just beside?" He proposed. It felt almost right to remove himself slightly, and give the family a proper place to grow. They might do better without him hovering, and it would give the children some more space to grow into. 

His ears lift as she proposes another question without leading directly into it. He tilted his head, and regarded her with curious eyes.

Her heart jilts.

His despondency has gone, now it is him reassuring her, and he is no longer a child- is this the point when she’s supposed to let him go? After all, she left home at the age of one. But Skáld is not like her, he has always clung to her side. She simply has always believed he would be with her; that he doesn’t want independence because he needs her. It is this repeating narrative that prevents her from seeing that the truth is actually the other way around.

She looks deeply into his emerald stare, her own eyes glazing. She knows they are selfish tears, and that her words are also, but she utters them regardless, “Is there no way for me to keep you?”

She wants what is best for him, to see his world expand and with it his confidence, so why does this hurt so much?

She didn’t want a home if Skáld wasn’t in it.

She seemed to have forgotten all about whatever it was that she was going to ask of him, and her features went pale and almost fearful. Her eyes glistened, and she seemed upset that he had offered to allow Tauris and Figment to share Tréheim without him. He nosed her cheek, his tail thumping softly against the ground, hoping he could cheer her up. 

"You keep Skáld," he reassured her, a light tremble of polite, endearing laughter in his high voice. "I make den, just outside," He wouldn't be far- only a stone's throw away, but...Far enough still that he could have his space, and they could have theirs. Allowing Figment to fill the space as the father figure, he felt, was important, and it would also save him from seeing the way that Figment and Tauris would inevitably look at each other, until he was ready to see it. 

He nudged her chin. "Can be spot for Tauris to nap, too. Any time." He offered with a light smile. While he didn't want to suggest that she would need a vacation from her babies, he felt that having a private nap spot might be valuable as well- a room next-door where she could be up and present in an instant, but also a space to go whenever she needed a moment to be a Mom who needed to recharge.

“The final night we had together in Tréheim. I wish I’d known it was going to be our last,” she whispers into her feet. It would not have made a difference. She could not put a pin in Skáld’s aging. She could not stop time. Thus far, the only thing she knew to be true about life is that it goes on.

And she was growing increasingly paranoid that Skáld’s life would lead him away from her- and she will be forced to go on.

“Just- I would have hugged you tighter, is all,” her glossy eyes lift back to his.

He could feel her regret, and it made him sad to know that she might feel bad about what changes had come into her life. It would not be just the two of them anymore, not like they'd promised- and while he was still wary of Figment, and worried that he might cause more harm than good, he had less fears about there being more children when he considered it. If Tauris had children here, then the children would have to be here at least for a while- and Tauris would have to be here for them as well. 

It was an insurance policy that would make certain that she wouldn't walk out of his life as so many others had. 

He wondered if she was perhaps frightened of the change having the kids would bring- and if the idea of staying tethered made her anxious, but he chose not to ask those questions for fear he might get an answer that he wouldn't want to hear. Instead, he nosed his muzzle beneath her jaw and thumped his tail against her side. 

"You can always hug Skáld."

And so she does, arms encircling, brushing a kiss to his forehead and bringing him to her chest carefully so as not to jostle the newborns nursing at her belly.

She knows she has no right to feel it, but she cannot stifle a sense of defeat.

For Skáld, she tries. She lets herself admire him in the ways he is growing, even if the possessive part of her loathed any change that set distance between them.

But she realizes something else, stronger and that eclipses even her most selfish grasp for the way things had been:

“I’m so proud of you.”