Redtail Rise red

the elks continued to fight.

it's a prolonged battle period, and Avicus notes it, minding her pack while she follows the herd. a pair of male elks at the edge of the Rise—that is the issue, and she watches them keenly. their battle culminates in a crushing blow to one's sternum, knocking the wind out of the boy—

she'd seen it in real time, and now watches the young elk struggle, stumble across the prairie. she prowls and then pounces, howling for @Masquerade and @Redd and @Ashlar and @Mulherin and @Mountain Boulder and @New Snow and @Riley and @Redsky and @Carrion and @Tulimaq and @Saturdays Sunrise and

the sheer length of her call invigorates her

the fact that she has so many wolves at her beck and call is so empowering

and as she draws up alongside the injured elk yearling, she is feeling invincible, and nothing registers but the thrum of his gait and the heartbeat in her chest and—

a sharp-edged hoof against her throat, slashing it from shoulder to shoulder, blood splashing across the prairie

He answers his mother's call with a pace that is loose and enervated. Winter's grasp was beginning to tighten on the Rise, but the boy had little experience as to what a real winter looked like. He never knew scarcity or starvation. There was always someone to shield him from these things. Instinctually he feels the pressure to perform, to provide, however he lacks in any urgency. Urgency was something he always lax about. Maybe until now.

Along the way an elk crosses his path and struts past him, almost triumphantly. He thinks little of it until, in the distance, he sees his mother's form, crumpled on the ground. 

She is still, unmoving.

Oh fuck- The words slip from his mouth and he's off like a bullet.

He rushes to her side breathlessly. There is much more blood than he anticipated, it even stains the grass beneath his feet. The worst part of it all is that he has no clue what to do. For a moment he stands there incredulously, slack-jawed and brimming with concern.

He noses her face, licking her eyelid, looking for a sign of life. All the while his ears swiveling like satellites—footsteps, he hopes for—desperately waiting for someone else to arrive.

A whine. Mom? 

He is returning from a scouting trip north, where he had tracked herds and intended to report back upon his arrival. No sooner had he crossed in to the Rise did he hear the drawn call of Avicus; so Tulimaq moved instead to meet it, and marched through the snow.

He saw one figure from afar, but it was not Avicus, although it followed a ploughed path through the snow. The closer he got the more he could make out: a body of prey, and blood frozen in a swath against the ice. Closer still, and the limp form of Avicus against the haunch.

Tulimaq approaches and has already concluded that she is gone. The blood is plentiful enough to have melted the topmost layer of snow; more is falling, clinging to a face planted in to ice. He holds back to watch and to pay respects, and to keep an eye out for further danger.

Unable to see what has caused the bleeding, Tulimaq is concerned there might be something dangerous here. Avicus was a fighter - as close to an Issumatar as he had seen the Wilds produce - and so he is careful and protective as he paces, studying the land for clues.

Ashlar arrived expecting a hunt. What he found was a scene from a nightmare. He’d known what he might find months ago, but he’d never been forced to face its reality.

The Hælend froze.

For a moment he could almost believe it was a nightmare, with how little he recognized his body around him. He knew that he needed to move. Do something. Do anything. But it was so hard to recognize anything past the silent screaming that filled his mind.

This wasn’t real.

Redd was not long after.  She took in the scene with a silent glance and growled when she saw the healer’s inaction.  He held rank - this was his to handle.  With a snarl she snapped at him, and when this did not work, bit down hard upon his scruff.  She wrenched him sideways and thrust him away, then gave another feral snap at his heels.

Her eyes burned as he finally began to move, and immediately she turned towards the stag.  Ignoring the others entirely, she latched onto the animal by the throat and began to drag it to a distance from Wealda.  She would not risk it injuring anyone further.

Like the others, Masquerade dropped what they were doing and heeded the Wealda’s call, expecting to assist in a hunt. When they crested the rise and saw the scene below, confusion knitted their brow. It appeared a kill had already been made, the others gathered around it to feed. Perhaps their good fortune continued and the young buck had served himself up on a silver platter after succumbing to an injury.

Their body stiffened when they saw Redd grab Ashlar by the scruff. Sometimes, tempers could rise at the supper table, Masque knew. They began to slowly descend, their goldenrod eyes fixed on their sister. Their bewilderment grew when the she-wolf dragged him toward the fallen elk rather than away from it. In doing this, it properly called the Caru’s attention to the carcass, which wasn’t a carcass at all.

And Avicus wasn’t feeding. She was sprawled, motionless, beside the stag. As he righted himself, that put her underneath him. Masque dimly registered Redd leaping toward the elk’s throat as they rushed to the Wealda’s side. Their shoulder bumped Mulherin’s as they ascertained the gash where the Avicus had nearly been decapitated. To their untrained eye, she looked beyond help.

But the quaking Caru screamed the healer’s name even as they lowered their head toward their mother. Some instinct compelled them to lick her wounds to staunch the flow of blood. But there was so much of it, too much. Where was Ashlar? They desperately glanced around for him, catching sight of their pack mates fighting the thrashing stag back to the ground.

Stay with her, Masque sobbed to Mulherin before launching to join the fray, desperate to slay the beast who’d slain their queen.

the blow does daze her for a moment or two, everything going dark. she rouses to find Mulherin at her side, desperately trying to wake her; she sees Masque's face, red as the blood that pools around her, hovering close with concern;

her indigo eyes roll wildly in their sockets, looking for others. Ashlar. her mouth forms the syllables of his name, but she cannot speak. she cannot breathe.

when Moonwoman had taken her tongue, she thought she might drown in her own blood. only the snow had saved her then.

it will not save her now.

her muscles trembling and twitching, Avicus shifts her gaze between her two children assembled, taking in their countenances. and wonders,

is the elk dead? for she cannot die without the knowledge.

She arrives, observing the brutality but not pausing in her approach. It is perhaps the fourth death by preybeast she had witnessed in her lifetime, but this was certainly the most bloody of them. One had been a slow death—an aunt whose jaw had been broken. Another a swift one—a young brother too eager for the killing blow, struck swiftly to the temple. These things come to mind and cause her to whine, but seeing one of the cubs drag away the beast causes New Snow to surge toward them to aid her. It was too big, and had it been that thing to do such to Red Woman? 

She calls to @Mountain Boulder as she strides toward the working daughter of Red Woman. She gives mother and daughter wide berth, but lowers her head and stares with stricken, sad eyes at the grisly scene. 

New Snow could not convey to Red Woman, mother to mother, through words that her family would be looked after by her. But as she moved to aid one, she hoped that there would be peace in the knowing of it. 

Now she gripped the beast alongside the quiet daughter of Red Woman, and pulled mightily.

Lean Carrion sprinted at the call. She did not answer to many summons, except when there was the promise of food. For this, she would always come.

Her gait was simply giddy at the thought of another pack hunt. It meant pounds of meat in her pinched belly (after it was properly prepared, of course) and she skittered towards the scene with images of rotten flesh mounds looming behind excited yellow eyes.

The scent of elk-blood filled her... then, the scent of fear.

Carrion stopped behind those who had gathered. Between their legs, she saw Avicus, downed in a pool of shining red ichor. At first, she thought it was from the prey, until the sharp tang of wolfsblood stung her deep. She saw the gaping wound, her eyes widening in surprise.

Mama? she squeaked, as sorrow tightened its hand around her throat. She began to tremble when the inaction of the others reached her understanding.

A single, horrid thought crossed her mind in that moment.

This was punishment.

red woman.

her blood stained the air. but this time it had not been drawn from her teeth. it was not the scent around her den in childbirth.

it was not war.

blood star billowing in fury, driving blacktail with a haul of her teeth.

red woman.

more of her children crouched nearby. new snow helping to drag the elk back.

the huntlead in this moment was silent; his broad muzzle dropped and his lips found the edges of the terrible rent. her breath was still coming. 

with thorn caller he cleaned the oozing red until he knew there was nothing else that could be done.

a haunted whine reverberated loudly between them as their matriarch's life eked out upon the ground.

The others came but Tulimaq remained focused on what dangers may lay in the area, and it was when the Boulder focused on Avicus that finally the man turned his attention to the elk, to the blood, to the work.

His wife the Snow woman worked at the elk. Tulimaq fell to it also, gnashing teeth and tearing skin; more blood in the air as the wolves did their work. Over the body, Tulimaq glanced Avicus with eyes cracked open and then the healer man, who had yet to do his job.

Everyone struck dumb by death, though it only lingered. Tulimaq released the elk and went to stand over Avicus, elk blood dripping from him; he saw how many hunters and warriors had been born to this woman and yet they were each so squeamish.

it was a swarm, as the vermillion stench of copper stings the air and brings about the feral thrumming of sunrise's heart as she comes to the scene. the red woman is wounded, perhaps mortally, perhaps not, from her view and knowledge, she could not know. she could see how the children flocked to her, to their lifeline, while her mother tirelessly worked with another to keep the elk at bay. sunrise was of no use if she crowded them, and so she comes to join her mother in the fight.

teeth wildly snapping at the elk, hopes of grabbing on to something that may keep it away, keep its breath crushed! she works tirelessly with the silent girl who she had yet to give a name, with her mother, and could feel the flesh and blood rip and tear into snarling pieces. she aims for the neck, fearful of the slashing hooves and antlers, but aware that his windpipe needed to be crushed to bring an end to this flurry of a mess!

she holds tightly, as long as she can, as she can feel herself thrash about wildly.

He didn’t break from his spell until he was thrown. Ashlar stumbled away in a fog, but through his panic, something finally rose to the surface. Stop the bleeding. He could almost hear Gannet’s voice in his ear.

Ashlar cast around desperately until he found a patch of ground that seemed more thawed. He dug furiously until he hit mud and, mechanically, took up a mouthful. He still felt outside of his body, a bystander looking on, but at least he was moving.

He was barely aware of the others as he pushed to Avicus’ side and lifted her, aware somewhere that it might help her to breath as he plastered the mud on the wound. I need more. Someone’s voice… his? His.

He wouldn’t survive this. His heart couldn’t handle being ripped from his chest twice.

You can’t. He wasn’t above begging. If he could slit his own throat and give her the life coursing through his veins, he would, but he didn’t have the skill. Of course he didn’t. Please. He held the mud in place as well as he could, trying his best not to shake and fall to pieces. Gannet could never have prepared him for this.

The Rise descends on the scene, like bees tending to their injured queen.

Ashlar's arrival offers a glimmer of relief, but the man's hesitance quickly destroys it. He's grateful for Redd's swift action, which seemed to do the trick.

In the chaos of it Masque was there too. If he hadn't promised them to stay by their mother's side, he would be out there with the rest of them, assisting with the revenge killing of the elk that had done this.

For now, he stays with Avicus, making room for other bystanders, and continues lapping at her forehead. To comfort her, to keep her awake.

He hears the broken voice of his twin behind him, and turns to offer her a word of solace. She's moving. 

But Ashlar speaks then, as he coats the wound in a casing of mud. Finally—a request, he needed more mud. Got it. He mutters before hustling a few paces away to gather some.

The boy returns hastily, spitting out a mouthful of mud to add to their makeshift cast. He looks to Ashlar, who still seems to be crumbling before his eyes. Fucking keep it together, will you?

She had avoided the stag's dying throes as she dragged it a distance, and as it thrashed in her hold, others came to assist.  At first she welcomed them, but as Saturday's Sunrise moves towards the throat that Redd already holds, she lets out a deep snarl of warning.  She will not be moved.

It is her intention to choke the life from it, and this she will do.  She spills it's blood in the same manner that Avicus's was, tearing the flesh so that blood soaks the snow.  It is a payment, though not a fair trade.  It's blood is not Wealda's equal.

Her mother will live or she will die; Redd can do nothing to change this.  And while the thought pains her, she remains as she is.  There she will only be in the way.

The wolves slew the elk, his blood spreading in the snow as the death throes began. In their distraction, Masque neglected to dodge a blow from one of his thrashing hind legs. A hoof hit them square in the shoulder. The Caru made a noise somewhere between a snarl and a yip of pain, leaping out of range.

Masquerade glanced at Redd near the beast’s head, then muttered a curse and returned to where Avicus still sprawled in the snow. Ashlar was tending to her with Mulherin’s help. The smells of blood and mud mixed together turned the Caru’s stomach.

Moving to Avicus’s other side to avoid getting in the healer’s way, Masque ignored the pain in their bruised shoulder and the blood smearing into their fur as they eased down beside her. They tried to gently wedge their foreleg beneath her neck so she could rest her head somewhere a little softer and warmer than the cold ground.

everything is muffled, as if underwater. words are exchanged, but she cannot parse them; a flurry of activity nearby, but she understands it not.

all she sees is the stricken look on her children's faces, and a bolt of real fear cuts through the pain.

she must not leave them. not again. not for good.

too much terror rests in that knowledge, and she shifts her focus instead to Ashlar, who is trying desperately to mend her tattered throat. the mixed aromas of earthy mud and iron-tang blood are heady in the air, and dark crimson dots his legs and chest in patches.

Ashlar. her most loyal friend. she cannot smile—the effort is too great—but she lets her eyes soften and warm as they lock with his.

he's saved her once, twice, many times over. to fall short today will not be his failing but merely an inevitability, a fitting end to her story.

Avicus had been extraordinary lucky in life—a woman with a cat's nine lives. especially for one who has existed in such turmoil and bloodshed: much of it chosen, self-inflicted.

Icarus, always flying so close to the sun. never burned up completely, just singed.

she was always going to die how she lived.

there's peace in the dying, though, nestled against her daughter's embrace. the feeling in her extremities fades, and soon after, she feels nothing at all. sense by sense shuts down until only hearing is left, and then, not even that.

the darkness is welcoming, almost cozy, and she realizes the last time she'd felt so comforted was at her mother's breast as a small child. certainly it had been just as warm and black as this.

whatever realm lies ahead—perhaps Astara waits for her there.

Avicus lets slip a contented sigh at that thought; a last, shuddering exhale. her body twitches once, then stills, and remains that way. the light slowly fades from the deep blue gaze.

the red woman is gone.

goodbye, my savage girl

There was a lot of information to order. Moon Runner sensed a change in the hierarchy. The scents of White Buffalo Hunter and Wolverine had faded into obscurity. Red Woman’s marks were prominent upon the land. New, adult wolves had joined the Rise… but because of their seamless integration, Moon Runner felt they had some prior connection to the land.

A voice. A warring song.

Red woman calls a hunt, the spirit deciphered.

Though her spirit name was not a note in Avicus’ melody, Moon Runner ran to join them all the same.

But by the time she gathered, it was evident a calamity had taken place.

Some of the wolves had their fangs upon a bloodied stag. Some of the wolves were crouched around the body of Red Woman. A palpable tension is in the air – and blood. Lots of it.

Moon Runner ebbed toward her sister as the last jerks of life left the stag. Her body posture was low, ears splayed and her tail wagging in submissive appeasement: calming signals to help pacify the terrific emotions her spirit sensed.

Despite the efforts of her and several others to pull the beast away from the commotion, its own death throes were powerful enough where it lashed out one final time to strike Blood Spot. She observed the approach of her daughter from the front and released the animal only then to herd her daughter to a place where she would not come to harm in the struggle before she would bear down upon the thing one final time, alongside her daughter who now, she observed in the corner of her eye, was far larger than she! 

New Snow felt pride to see the legacy of herself and of Red Woman converge upon the beast, even in so terrible a time. And the creature stilled, limp; New Snow released and nosed her daughter, observing now the other and Mountain Boulder. 

She wondered about Bobcat, and looked to Red Woman and for the first time in a long while thought of their daughter, Thursday. Gurgling breaths that no dirt could help, bloodspill no snow could stopper. She hoped that her daughter did not die in such a savage way, but her heart ached to think that perhaps she had. The sight before her was a reminder of how ghastly nature could be. 

A whine eked from her throat, but she lingered with her daughters to first let the woman’s son and daughters approach. She peered to her girls, to Mountain Boulder. They two witnessed something necessary to see, but painful all the same—lessons of the Wilderness, a cruel and indiscriminate instructor.

Riley found himself at the border's outermost ring when a distant call rung out. He turned and headed for the Rise's other edge at a loose limbed trot.

Better to conserve his energy, he thought. The elk's rutting season was coming to a close, which mean the time of the wolf was high to cut down any stragglers wounded by the season's rigors.

Riley was not prepared for the scene that met him. Snow was churned underfoot, darkened by the splatter of mud and blood. While most of the pack was milling around an elk in its death throes, Riley's eyes were drawn to the chilling sight on the ground.

Avicus. Her head was propped by a bloodied Masque, while a mudstreaked Ashlar and dark-expressioned Mulherin packed mud to her throat. Blood pulsed into the snow, darkening under each of their paws.

Riley had seen enough of the world to know death when he saw it. He took a step back, ears flat to his skull and tail low. That they'd killed an elk was little comfort, for it came at an ultimate cost.

He nosed Masque's blood-stained shoulder gently before stepping back again. All the tension had left Avicus' frame - now the only sign of life to her was the flame she carried in her pelt.

She died, so that the pack may live another day with warm blood and rich meat in their bellies. This was the way of the wolf, the way of the wild.

With a deep gulp of air, Riley turned his nose to the sky, a jagged howl sounding its keening notes to the clouds above.

For the old man of the north, the scene before him played out as many others had during his lifetime. The fall of the Issumatar could have been avoided; but there was no reason to focus on the what ifs, only on what lay there in the snow—the bloodied, struggling body as Avicus choked on blood and mud—and in the end left them without a matriarch. For the wildborn children of the Wealda, death was not something to be feared; yet Tulimaq saw now as mud was pressed to that sliced throat, a desperation.

He saw softening by these children around their mother and was at once disgusted by it, and only as he looked away did Tulimaq understand that the perceived weakening of her brood was not what he loathed so much, but the display of it, the bare way they exposed themselves to their emotions as each ran through shock, pain, loss, maybe denial despite the evidence. These were sights Tulimaq could not handle.

He still loomed there, dripping elk blood, as some malformed herald while Avicus gave her final breaths. His head bowed chin to sternum. There was a wave of disbelief pulsing through the children in that final moment and Tulimaq, raised to see the merit of bone and blood and teeth and power, accepted that the hunt had claimed one more hunter.

That it was their matriarch was a massive blow but inconsequential. The elder looked to pray there a moment and when he raised his head, it was to stare upon the Boulder, and the Snow woman, and then sweep a calloused look across Ashlar and Mulherin while their pain seeped through them. To anywhere that wasn't the children as they crowded the body.

Someone pitched up their head and sang a dirge. Tulimaq stepped away, finally, and dredged his steps through the bloodied snow, to give these wolves of the Rise the space they would require.

Redsky rushed to his mothers call, but he was too late. He saw his siblings there and the sadness in everyones eyes. NO! He thought and he rushed to her. He looked at her eyes and the blood and knew she was gone. He looked around wildly, trying to find Masq or Mul. He needed someone to be with right now.

Ashlar had been holding her as best he could, but he was grateful when Masquerade moved in to help.  There was only so much he could do as he tried to keep the blood at bay.

He’d known the chances.  He’d known what the outcome would be.

As her final breath released, and his beloved hunter was finally stilled, Ashlar fell to pieces.  He would not register her son at his side, nor Tulimaq’s scornful leaving.  He registered nothing but the memory of a moment in a forest.  A shared meal. The thunder of hooves.  A song.  This one is you.

It rose in his head now, but without its former power, and grief turned the fire to rain.

He did not know if she would accept being rain, but he had always seen sides she kept hidden from the rest.  He had always known she could do more than burn.  Even before she herself saw it.

He knew nothing else for a long time.  He would not leave her side unless he was forced, and when he finally did move, it was with a broken compass guiding.  He would disappear to isolation and, in a short time, depart the rise entirely.

last for him in here

As soon as she’d come back into his life, here, now; she was gone.

He watches as the breath leaves her lungs and the fire seems to die beneath her skin.

All he feels is hollowness. 

It was a distant kind of pain he feels. Once she had disappeared from his life all those months ago, he never truly got her back. Now, he’d never get the chance to know her again. And that was the painful part. The bulk of the mourning was already finished, way back then. 

As he stares at her body, he begins to feel a simmering rage at the dirt marring her features. Avicus would be disappointed in dying looking unpresentable. The boy, his face stoical, begins the work of cleaning the excess away. To restore what had been broken.

Once the job is finished, he regards his mother’s, now pristine, face for the last time. It was the first one he knew,

now, maybe, his was one of the last she’d known too.

Silent, the boy leaves her side, finding and embracing Redsky, Carrion, and Watcher.

He’d never abandon the Rise. 

He wasn’t born a coward.

Watching the life drain out of their mother was the hardest thing Masquerade had ever done. They wanted to run away from the scene or, at the very least, close their eyes against the horror. Instead, they held Avicus’s gaze until it dimmed. They felt the last few shudders and twitches, the final sigh.

Something brushed their shoulder. Masque hunched, covering the Wealda’s face with theirs as they clutched her. They sensed movement, saw flickers of it, but they did not move. They cradled the Wealda until she grew cold in their grasp, began to stiffen.

Finally, they looked up to whoever remained and said, We need to bury her.

The next few hours were a blur. Masquerade would not remember much about them in the days to come. But the queen was laid to rest. The Caru even got one last glimpse of her face—the one thing they would remember—before she was covered in earth and became nothing more than a beloved memory.