Redtail Rise merlot

any are welcome but this can also be read only, or single response, if necessary!

Once decided it could not be dispelled.  When Redd arrived on the borders after her separation from the hunt lead, she sent up a call for @Ruckus.

We will depart.

Her heart felt like lead in her chest.  Her spirit had been left in the woods to run with her family.  Yet her mind was still and calm, finally decided on the outcome that she’d once thought never possible.  She resented that she’d tasted leadership.  She resented that she could not go back.

Not Wealda.  She would become something else.

She ached from a day of traveling game trails and sat as she waited, but the tension she felt would not leave.  It was as if something within her wound tight in anticipation, ready to snap loose and propel her into an unknown future.  She would be alone.  This, more than the rest, frightened her.

She would try to make them proud.  But the Rise would need to look to their own, and Redd would no longer be one of them.  She would not return.

The yearling paced along the borders, his tongue lolling from his mouth as the August sunshine draped across his back like a heavy cloak. Soon he planned to fetch a drink, though a sudden intake of breath waylaid this thought. Cambria sprang into the air with a muffled yip, shaking his forepaw and looking down at the two things he’d incidentally crushed: a clover blossom and the poor honeybee which had been feeding from it.

He plopped his hindquarters in the clover patch and held his paw to his mouth, lips peeled back from his teeth to pick the stinger from the leathery pad. After its successful removal, he ran his tongue over the pricked flesh to soothe it, though it froze between his toes at the sound of a voice rising from someplace behind him.

Cambria peered over his shoulder and saw Redd’s figure perhaps a quarter mile away. As soon as he’d gauged the distance, her message hit him like an electric shock. His jaw and paw simultaneously went slack. His heart dropped. Redd was leaving? More importantly, she was taking Ruckus with her?

Well, of course the pup should go with his mother… but Cambria wanted to shout at her to stop. Hadn’t she just returned? Why was she leaving again? He swept to his feet, only to stand still. He had no business demanding answers from her. And as loath as he was to part with Ruckus—the idea of never seeing him again twisted the yearling’s stomach with surprising ferocity—he didn’t imagine either one wanted him to follow.

He remembered the day his mother had left him on the island. Cambria hadn’t really liked her, much less loved her, yet he’d still felt horrible when she had left him behind. He was startled by how similarly he felt now, the dejection and fear forming a lump in his throat, leaving him standing there feeling just as helpless.

Moon Runner has not spotted Cambria

The red wolf’s call was like a singular sonorous gong of a church bell in the late summer air. Its tone was sombre and low.

The yearling loped through the forest until she spied the vermillion fur against the greenery.

Moon Runner’s kind face became attuned to the red wolf. She knew there was merit and value within every rank of their pack… from Wealda to Blod. Yet, it seemd a card had been displaced in the latest shuffling of their deck.

She is leaving, the spirit thought.

Dispersal was a natural thing, but it was not without risks. The tragedy of Chipmunk’s parents, Blood Spot and Rolling Thunder, was evidence enough. The wilds could be cruel and unforgiving… moreso as the growing season waned. A clan of wolves was stronger together. These facts weighed in Moon Runner’s mind… after all, it was possible she would disperse at the onset of sexual maturity as her mother had when she was young.

Of course, there was much to be gained as well.

Moon Runner would watch the red wolf leave with quiet gratitude. It was her right to persue a new path, and Moon Runner would not forget the important chapter she had written for Redtail Rise.

dark ears perk at the sound of a call, deep somewhere within the weald.

redd's message is not addressed to him, yet ever clear in intention.

his wire-barbed heart is unyielding to sympathy.

they would pave their own futures—in his mind the only thing they paved was their initials upon two tombstones.

and the berserkr continues on his route solemnly.

the last blood on the rise; lonelier now, somehow.

None came to stop her.  She had announced her desire for a claim.  If they had wished her to remain as Wealda she would have.

They did not wish it.  They’d shown this already but the confirmation was needed, if only to quell the disquiet in her own heart. She could not take back these intentions, nor live with this resentment towards those she loved.  The Rise was no longer her home.

She would wait for Ruckus and then depart without ceremony.  A sense of grief hung over her mind, but externally she stood resolute, firm in the renewed knowledge that this was as it should be.

Redd, Wealda, neither were needed here any longer.  She would carry her knowing to a new place and create a legacy of her own.  Those of the rise would be welcome if ever they came, but she would not remain close.  There was no reason to hold on to things now left to the past.

<3

hours after blood star and the pup called chipmunk left the rise, mountain boulder would return to this place.

the ground would be investigated, her steps trailed.

he saw they were together, and did not follow far from the redtail land.

once more a risewolf left the rise.

night eye filled his mind.

Redd called, and Ruckus answered. Deep in their being, they knew they always would. Whatever Redd's bidding was, they would do it. When she decided to leave, they said nothing; they only followed. There was no chaotic event as it had been with Raider and Riley. There was only the silent knowing that they would not be coming back here. Their posture mirrored Redd's: resolute and firm.

They did not look back as they left this place where they had lived for a time. In their short life, Ruckus had known only upheaval and disquiet. For whatever reason, they clung to Redd as stability, and that did end today. And so the child, once a bearn, left their namesake pack and continued life with the only wolf they had truly revered since the death of Raider and Riley.