Herbalists' Cache homecoming

it's been a long journey from the wilderness she once called home. a march from hrafnvaengr, a trail of tears. it hadn't been the same, after @Faust had left. everything had changed; the forest once so lively with their laughter and antics had fallen with gloom. 

the camps where they'd spent sleepless nights planning their next escapades a ghost of themselves. empty and hollow. @Blackfell had left, too. their losses had sat heavily in her chest, a woman so strong and fierce only to be hindered by grief. to lose not one best friend, but two? 

it made her angry. a seething, festering wound that did not heal with time.

why hadn't they taken her with? why did they leave her there, alone, to shoulder the weight of their absence?

but she was to be strong, as all wildlings were expected to be. and so she shoved it aside, buried it deep, and cursed their names in her prayers. 

hrafn's leadership had been overthrown. killed in the night, their bodies left to rot elsewhere. bodies that would not be recovered for proper burials. the home she promised and vowed and fought to protect? 

it was no more. and so she left, too. 

she'd never been alone, not truly. she'd never felt such an emptiness in her heart that nothing could fill or soothe. she walked aimlessly for miles, without purpose and without friends, family. she was a warrior; but she felt so weak. 

snow crunches beneath her paws. her body blending with the blanket, save for the dark flecks along her back. icy, cold eyes glaring down the valley that carried a whisper of a scent she never thought she'd smell again. 

blackfell. she hadn't forgotten him; how could she? one of two boys she grew up with, one of two boys she'd fought and endured with. 

one of the fucking boys that left her alone. 

she marched after that trail with a torrent of unwelcome emotion raging inside her. relief, excitement, hurt, anger—she wasn't sure if she'd kill him, or if she'd embrace him. but it didn't matter, so long as she found him.

it did not take long to realize he was being followed. at first, it had been nothing more than a scent. one he didn't know, but he merely assumed it was yet another stray come to feast at saatsine. but that scent only grew stronger.

and then he heard footsteps. footsteps, the rustling of brush, and angry breathing. he turned then, readying himself for what was to come—but when he saw white fur parting brush, realization.

svalla.

blackfell sidesteps her charging, crimson eyes sliding after her as she turns on him. he is in disbelief, beyond the point of speaking. searching her face, floored by the giant scar which now mars her. she had once been a pretty girl, unfettered! now she was... a woman grown, reflecting the ferocity of her people. and blackfell was simply a man, and couldn't deny the attraction he felt to her in those few seconds.

it was gone quickly, though, replaced by a sensible mind of morals. he huffs, blowing cold breath, clearly taken aback by her presence. he can only muster:

how?

her footsteps fell heavy and sure. there was no doubt in her mind now, as she bore daggers into the back of the boy now turned man. faster her steps fell until she was sprinting, panting and seething with a ferocity that would match the gods. 

"you," came her wild snarl. voice mature and rough with ire, no longer the gentle and mischievous note she sang as a child. barreling toward him with a speed that surprised even herself, only for him to sidestep the last second. 

claws of ivory carved through the snow as she slid to a stop. wheeling around, her pale lips curled. fury alight in her eyes, fury she wished to harness and use to rip him limb from fucking limb. 

his shock was not lost on her. she'd grown, too, just as he had, into a formidable thing. a huntress, a warrior, a true wildling of the north. he was still larger, but she'd fought men bigger. had killed men bigger. 

she launched again, her svelte form cutting through the air with one true purpose. crashing against his side, in hopes of toppling him over, pinning him to the cold ground. "fucking left! like a coward!" she seethed, saliva flying from her maw. she snapped her jaws wildly, praying to sink her teeth into his flesh.

the muscle she'd trained so hard to obtain solid, coiled. like a viper ready to strike. "and now you fucking hide in this shithole?"

i did not leave. i was never yours to keep. a grating snarl, bouncing about behind the bars of iron teeth.

but she does not care. she was already upon him, slamming into his side, sending him stumbling back a step. she was strong; stronger than the girl he remembered—not strong enough. the herculean male spits and makes to snap his teeth over the scruff she yields to him by seeking to bite at him. he towers above her, raised by height advantage. claws bite into the snow as he braced against her weight, her fury, her desperation to sink her teeth into him.

she wants to hurt him.

he does not let her.

his muscles coil, then spring—her weight used against her, his strength shoving back, twisting, seeking to send her sprawling. his snarl rumbles behind the cage of teeth stained by prey's and wolf's blood.

you fight me for what?

a snort, cruel, almost amused. he steps forward, looming, towering, the ghost of the boy she once knew swallowed beneath the weight of the man he has become. you seek my blood because i did not stay to play chase with you? that i did not abandon my ancestral duties? he scoffs.

bah! his gaze hardens, centering upon her snarling face, her trembling pale frame, past a scarred snout wearing the pride of his own battles. it has been many years, svalla. do not tempt fate. he holds no loyalty to her. he would kill her here, without consequence, should she not contain her battle rage.

i was never yours to keep. 

rage grips her, coursing through her veins like molten lava. had her friendship meant nothing? had all the time they spent together—including Faust—mean fucking nothing? perhaps she was a fool, then, to believe she had a true friend in him. 

"you left without a goodbye. i got nothing—nothing! not from you or from your fucking cousin." she snaps, bites, spews. his teeth finding her scruff was nothing but a bees sting, not with her ire masking the pain and her senses. 

she fought, even as she was thrown to the ground. overpowered by the mountain he'd become, his heft keeping her pinned. keeping her caged, contained. she thrashed and kicked and clawed. her powerful hind legs finding his stomach, where she dug ivory claws into his fur and skin. 

if she couldn't tear the windpipe from his throat, she'd claw the guts from his stomach. 

ancestral duties. "bullshit!" she roared. pupils pin-pointed with rage, her jaws snapping viciously. "you have no duty, no loyalty. not to friends, not to your family!"

he wished to kill her? she'd fucking curse him from the heavens. she would find a way for her ire to live despite her fall. 

her heart ached. she was no longer a child—such easy days spent alongside blackfell and faust had been ripped away from her—but there was a small, tiny part it inside of her. a part that only wanted her friend back; the part that made her so angry, simply because she couldn't get it to go away. 

"where is he?" she snarled. "where?!"

sharp, raking, lancing pain. the threat of disembowelment if not for the thick flesh and hide protecting his underbelly from the dull of her back claws. he shouts in response, not from pain but annoyance. she is fucking annoying! this is fucking annoying! unnecessary! he slams his paws upon her, into her shoulders, upon her chest.

pushing her further into the snow, the ice, like a hammer driving a nail into the wall. red, crimson eyes blazing with fury. and now he sees it. rage like hers—it was his own, mirrored back at him in the wild flash of her eyes, in the raw betrayal lacing her voice. and it should not have mattered. should not have fucking mattered.

fuck the gods for making his heart soft enough to bleed for her. there is temptation to lower his head to hers but he is smart enough to know she would take the chance to press teeth into the flesh of his face. it was scarred, mangled, enough already. so he snarls, snapping his teeth, as he says: what does a fucking wildling know of duty?!

a scoff, sharp, bitter. she demands of him. of faust. he laughs, laughs in her fucking face, blackened lips trembling with the weight of his fury. if i have no duty to my family, and then comes dramatic pause before an inhale of breath, then what makes you think i know where he is? she thrashes, snarls, spits her fury at him, and then—

@Gjalla

A bark rips through the air, sharp. commanding. a call to her hound, maybe, as she barrels away from the treeline to intervene. she had only watched, seen it escalate from bad to worse—gjalla had no interest in explaining if they left blood on their borders, on their land.

she hit blackfell hard—just enough to throw him off balance, just enough to break his hold on svalla. a brutal, no-nonsense shove, her shoulder slamming into his side as a snarl tore from her throat. "Enough."

her tone brooked no argument with him, falling harshly from her tongue with a glare that could kill. the anger in her voice was an avalanche waiting to collapse. her hackles bristled, her sharp, ice-pale gaze flickering between the two like a blade poised to strike.

"have you both lost your fucking minds?" she snapped, breath billowing in the cold like smoke. "tearing each other apart in the snow like starving dogs? like strangers?" they most certainly were not strangers, judging by their screaming-match. her head swung to her lover as she spoke: "we have enough drama here, blackfell. what is the meaning of this?"

he spoke of her people as if they were nothing but the dirt beneath his feet. she laughed, humorless and cruel. "do you forget, blackfell, that those wildlings invited you into our fucking home?" she spat. venomous, biting. "as if you were our own!"

he was allowed to play in their wilds, allowed to convene with their children. allowed to fucking march around as if he owned the place, too. and the sickest part? 

she'd considered him family, once. a brother she'd never had, but always wanted. and now he treats her as if she's a stranger. her stomach coils and churns with bile, with betrayal. she will never forget and she will never fucking forgive, not like this. 

not if he was bull-headed enough, just like his father, to run from what he'd done wrong. from the "friend" he hurt. from the little girl he left alone, wishing for him to return so they could play as kids once again. 

before she could snap at his mangled face once more, his weight from her had been lifted. he was barreled by another woman—strong in her own right, looking as if she'd stepped from a storm cloud. 

svalla doesn't hesitate to spring to her feet, hackles raised, lips curled into an ugly snarl. tail risen and shoulders squared, readying to lunge at his fucking throat. but that woman is what stopped her. she spat, ivory claws digging into the earth. 

they reeked of one another. she knew then, that they were lovers. is that why he'd left? to chase a woman? 

the beast has been muzzled by his lover. she almost laughed at how stern of a chain this woman had on blackfell. 

"tell me where to find him." she snapped again. her patience, practically nonexistent, wearing oh so thin.

blackfell so often allows gjalla to dictate him. so often lets her step in, lets her pull him back, lets her steer him where she deems fit. but this time she had crossed the line. perhaps he had been too soft. too weak, that gjalla thought she had the right. she had interfered, humiliated him, wounded his pride, called his actions into question before svalla of all women!

his fury is immediate, visceral. he whirls on gjalla first, teeth bared, snapping like a tethered wolf, a snarl tearing from his throat. it is a warning growl but all the time, she surely knows he would never lay tooth or claw on her. to do so would call into question any scrap of moral still home to him.

still, rage is laden in his voice. this is none of your fucking business.

it is rare that he speaks to her like this. rarer still that he resents her for her control over him. but he does now, in the heat of his anger, in the weight of svalla’s accusations. she had made him look small. had made him look like a dog that needed to be reined in. he was no fucking dog.

he was a hound. honed for the hunt—and not sated at all. which brings that scorn boiling back towards the white she-wolf wearing scars of her homeland. he turns back to svalla, eyes burning like embers in the snow, and spits at her feet.

you are a woman gone mad. rabid. i am no boy, and you are no child. do not cling to girlish fantasies—men do not make themselves complacent. i was not born a wildling. i was born my father’s son. a shallow breath, and faust? a bastard. perhaps he left to become more than the shadow of his tyrant father. he laughs in her face. you are a woman—it is not your fault you don’t fucking understand. you don’t know what it is to be a son. he steps, and then steps again, cloaking her in his shadow. testing waters. silently daring her to turn teeth on him—and she was so irrational she just might. but no matter how he bluffed, could he truly kill her?

no.

but he will not give her another second of his time. does not let her see anything else that might betray the truth of what he feels. instead, he turns, coldly pushing past his mate. ruby looking to the jutting glacier in the distance, where ice swallows the sky. his jaw tightens. he snaps his teeth at her.

he is there. now get out of my sight.

oh. 

oh. that is funny. 

the world narrows to a seething, white-hot fury behind Gjalla’s ice-pale eyes, her breath steady even as the sheer audacity of him threatens to unravel every ounce of control she has left. none of her business? none of her business that they make a scene for all to see that would only bring them trouble? the nerve. the fucking nerve.

he snarls, bares his teeth, but she doesn’t flinch—doesn’t so much as wilt as so many others might under his fire. who had vouched for him to be here? a scoff, venomous and cold. there’s something ugly in her expression, like salt in some wound that still ached despite the years. she says nothing. she should, she is certainly tempted to, but she would not do so in front of a stranger.

betrayal cuts deeper than anything—she knew this, her mother knew this, his father knew this, morwenna knew this. he knew this too, and it is because of his dismissal of svalla's hurt that she questions him.

but she doesn’t stop him when he turns away, doesn’t stop him from dismissing svalla like she’s nothing, doesn’t stop him from shoving past her, jaw tight with barely leashed aggression. she would deal with him later when she did not want to rip an ear from his body.

when he is gone, she swallows her aggression and lets it simmer to turn her attention to the woman. "who do you look for?"

his words are a knife that twist deep and true. her fury only fumes further, the flames licking higher, ready to consume her whole. she'd never once would have thought, all those years ago, that she'd want to murder her friend. that he would have left her, and that when she would have found him again, that she'd wish to tear that cold fucking heart of his out of his chest and piss on it. 

her anger does not budge for the reality. it does not allow her to recognize that blackfell is right. she's too stubborn, too fucking hurt. "you and your fucking father are a plague. all of you crownores are nothing but a rot that needs cleansed." she seethes, breaths heavy, hot. 

and then he's leaving. again. his woman is the only thing standing between them, the only reason svalla doesn't go after him to finish the job. or perhaps meet her own end, at the blade of her old friend. 

if she were a weaker woman, if she were still a child, tears might have burned her eyes. they might have stained her cheeks and betrayed her. but she does not cry. she snarls and spits. "if only your father could see you now, blackfell. turning your back on another fucking fight, like the true coward you've always been."

she does not want to think about how watching him recede into the thicket makes her heart break again. she does not want to think about how she just lost him, again, and probably for good. 

a paw swiped at the ground, a wild snarl she could not contain. she whips to face his woman, her eyes burning. but she has no quarrel with her. her shoulders finally slump, all that tension inking away. her chest heaves with ire hardly contained.

"faust. that bastards cousin." she growled. there was once a time were even speaking his name made her heart skip. 

now, it only made it turn to stone.

a coward, indeed, she thinks.

“his cousin?” she echoes, her tone clipped, calculating. the name causes a shift in her—subtle, but palpable. she remembers him, loosely, from three days prior—he had began a pack of his own, darukaal.

“he is north, as he said. not far.” gjalla nods, her voice low, controlled, but there’s an edge to it—a promise of something more to come. she knows the game is far from over, and whatever Faust’s cousin is tangled in now, it’s something this woman will finish. "i can take you. "

her tail lashes wildly at her hind. blackfell's well over the bend, sulking like the coward he is, but her rage still boils hot within. the sneer upon her face permanent; it takes self-control that was fraying to keep herself from taking off after him. to finish what she'd started, even if it meant her death. but then gjalla's offering to take her to faust. she exhales sharply through her nose, rolls her shoulders, and lifts her head with a look of determination.

"yes. take me to him." she doesn't mean to demand, but her patience was already paper-thin. blackfell could rot and hide and sulk all he wanted. she turns, looking toward the tundra to the north, her lips set in a thin line.