Swiftcurrent Creek my whole heart

For @Paarthurnax - keeping it vague because the re-joining thread is in progress! Setting this not long after Bazi came back - like, hours.

Bazi left Saber at the edge of Duck Lake after a short exchange, moving trance-like back towards the heart of Swiftcurrent. She wasn't ready to make new friends yet; especially when she kept imagining herself seeing the ghosts of long departed ones.

Perhaps another golden wolf had joined the ranks, Bazi thought sourly. Nobody could hold a candle to Paarthurnax - or Danica, for that matter, even though the pale queens' mind was now fully invested in demonizing her alienated friend. It still hurt to think that she might never come back, and that her last words to the Duskfire Wolf had been: freeze.

Bazi walked stiffly through the sparse orchard of trees to the east of the river, blue eyes fixed on the black, reaching branches. They looked like they were begging a mightier power for mercy, somewhere up there in the clouds. Nonsense, of course.

But Bazi would finish the day by wondering if such a power did exist after all, or if chance and coincidence really could be so extraordinary. Fifty yards before her, wandering in the same direction, were the rounded hips of a wolf that she knew.

"Paa..Paarthurnax?" she croaked incredulously, slender limbs picking up pace. "Paarthurnax!"

"Paarthurnax!"

Her ears pricked back. She knew that voice.

Pausing at once, the crimson Frostfur swung her head to the side to blink with surprise over a slender shoulder, at the pale figure of a scrawny wolfess. She stared and blinked for long moments before reality dawned on her, and before Paarthurnax knew it she was running full-pelt toward the friend she'd feared she'd lost.

"Bazi!" Paar cried out as she drew nearer, and skidded to a halt to rear upon her hind limbs and wrap her fores around Bazi's neck to grip her in a wolfish hug. The two-toned beauty kissed her companion all over - her muzzle, her brow, her ears - before she slackened her grasp and dropped onto all four paws once more, to beam with sheer unbridled happiness. Her tail wagged furiously at her rear, "it seems we both just can't stay away for too long."

Bazi couldn't quite believe her eyes. She let out a squeal of pure delight, allowing the fitter wolf to close the gap whilst she braced for impact. The force of the hug sent pain shooting down her hind leg, but Bazi was too busy returning kisses and licks to pay it much attention.

When they parted, Bazi was positively buzzing. Her tail wagged so hard that it threatened to knock her on her ass. "Oh, I don't know..." She nearly started telling Paarthurnax about life at the bottom of a crater, and Danuca, and the Duskfire pack... when it occurred to her that there was more to Paar's return than joy. Bazi's smile morphed into a gentle frown. "Paar... what happened?"

Bazi welcomed her to her, returning a flurry of affectionate kisses with equal enthusiasm. The crimson Frostfur crooned fondly for her friend, but the excitement over their reunion seemed short-lived. She examined the pale wolfess, who appeared to be a shell of her former self: scrawny, unkempt and obviously not of good health. Paarthurnax' smile faded, and she stepped forward to reach out to Bazi once more, this time gently as to touch the tip of her noise to her former Alphess' cheek.

The skinny wolf did not read Paar's expression of concern, however, but instead questioned what had happened to her. She withdrew her muzzle then, pulling back just enough to seek Bazi's stormy blue eyes, her own copper irises dim with the weight of her grief. "I left him," Paarthurnax said simply, "you were right all along: we weren't right for each other."

"I left him. You were right all along: we weren't right for each other."

Oh. Normally, Bazi enjoyed being right. Hell, she would have enjoyed being right about Shadow were it not for the bereaved look in Paarthurnax's eyes. The white wolf's tail slowed and she deflated, bum dropping to the ground as the ache in her leg resurfaced.

"Paar.. I'm sorry. I never wished- .. what happened?"

Bazi offered apolologies, and Paar managed a solemn, watery smile for her. She too was sorry for the way things had turned out; while she would forever love Shadow and the way things used to be, the crimson Frostfur had no regrets in leaving him. It would be best for all of them, she told herself time and time again, and she did feel better with the support of Swiftcurrent's wolves - Bazi and Scimitar especially.

"He was not the wolf I thought - or hoped - he was," Paar admitted sadly, afraid to share too much detail for fear of her unpredictable emotions. "There were things he kept from me, and things I could not being myself to accept. I kept things from him too," she swallowed, and looked briefly over a slim shoulder to her subtly swollen abdomen. "I did not inform him of my pregnancy before I left. Does that make me awful?"

Bazi's eyes swelled to the size of two blue saucers. "Oh my freakin' stars - you're pregnant?" She shuffled back to stare at Paarthurnax's frame beneath her thick, glossy winter coat. In her excitement to see her friend, Bazi had scarcely noticed that yes, there was an unusual roundness to the woman's belly and hips. Paarthurnax was pregnant. Super-pregnant and ready to pop, or so Bazi hoped, otherwise.. how big were you expected to get?

Despite the context of the revelation, a huge smile spread across the younger wolf's face. She tip-toed forward again, pressing her nose against the spot just behind Paarthurnax's elbow. "Hello, tiny Swiftcurrent babies!" she whispered, "You've got the best momma in the world, because she sacrificed herself for your sake, and now you'll have a happy family and whole pack to look after you."

Here, the little Arctic girl raised her head to look the desert female straight in the eyes. "You're not awful. If he wasn't good enough for you, he won't be good enough for your babies." She didn't ask for details; Paarthurnax would volunteer them when and if she felt the need. Bazi had simply never taken to Shadow, and she trusted that gut instinct unquestionably.

Truthfully, a part of Paarthurnax had worried that Bazi might feel disheartened by the news of her to-be litter. The yearling came to her several months ago to discuss the changes of one's body that came with pregnancy, and Bazi made no attempts to hide her desire to be a mother. But to see her expression light up at the mere mention of Paar's unborn brood let her shoulders sag in relief, and her feathery tail resumed its content swaying as the younger wolfess moved in to inspect her swelling flank.

What she said made happy tears well in her copper eyes, and she dipped her crown to affectionately brush the tip of her nose to her companion's snout. "When I first realised," she started, her voice laced heavily with emotion, "that I was pregnant, I was devastated that you could not be a part of their lives." She looked Bazi in the eye then, and smiled. "But now I am here, and you are here. And I can't wait for you to meet them."

There was a sisterly bond between them that surpassed biological ties. These were grown women who had found and chosen one another as companions in a world that was anything but kind, not green upstarts with genetic obligations.

Tears clung desperately to the black rim of Bazi's lower eyelid, summoned forth by Paarthurnax's heartfelt words. "Is it awful that I'm happy you're here?" she choked out, struggling to keep the floodgates close - to date, she had spent a significant amount of their time together weeping. "You must stay with me in Tuwawi's old den - or I'll stay with you. Please," she pleaded, tail still fanning.

"Not one bit," she purled, sweeping forward once again to nuzzle close to her young friend, burying her pale snout among the thick fur of Bazi's throat. It felt good to have another familiar face on her side when it had seemed like the whole world turned upside down and against her. Even more so, it was wonderful to pick up where they'd left off, a pair bonded as though the months they'd spend apart had never happened.

The request that they den together caused the desert wolfess' heart to leap in her chest, and she nodded enthusiastically. "I would not have it any other way," Paar said, and her emotion spilled forth as hot tears trailed the length of her ivory cheeks. She'd set up her whelping den in preparation, but she was more than content to have a companion to curl up with until the time came when she needed privacy to deliver her young. Her own little hollow had been expanded and nested, ready to house more than one body; "I think I can squeeze you in, and you are more than welcome."

Conclude? :D I will fling up another!

Bazi managed a little squeak of delight before the dams burst and she started to cry. "This is s-such good news!" she half sobbed, half laughed, managing to make her invariably pretty face look quite ghastly. After a few false starts that each ended in Bazi dipping her head towards the ground to just wail, she had built up enough of a conversation quota to say: "Come on, show me so I know where to drag my furs."

Sounds good to me!

They cried together, a pair of emotionally-beaten friends freshly reunited, weeping with happiness despite the solemness surrounding each of their returns to the place where their irreversible bond began. Swiftcurrent Creek brought them together and, as Paarthurnax moved in to fit herself snugly against her pale companion once more, she vowed never to willingly leave their land and home again.

"Follow me," the tear-stained beauty chirped, reluctantly pulling away from Bazi's embrace to lope awkwardly in the direction of the den she'd prepared to whelp her young in. With her pack-mate joining her, she was certain that although it might be a tight squeeze when the pups were born, they would be comfortable for the time being until the time came for expansion. "I want you to stay for as long as you need to, even if that means forever. You're our family, too." By "our" she meant herself and her unborn litter who, in the absence of their father, would need the closeness of their Swiftcurrent family.