Like an unwinding cable car

Moments before, he'd been tearing toward the borderline. Now, Malachi's feet led him back to Duskfire's heart. He trusted Scarlett would keep Adlartok safe - he had to, for she was their hope for the boy's survival. His heart still hadn't accepted that @Tuwawi could have dealt the child such lethal blows. Adlartok must have been mistaken, deluded by fever. There had to be another explanation, a different queen with fire fur. Yet try as he might, his attempts to think his way to another solution only ran his thoughts to a dead end time and time again, and as the minutes passed he felt his vain hope slowly crumble to the ground.

The boy could see the mountain through the trees, the barren field of lupines that had once turned their faces toward the pack in the warmer months. There was nothing left of them now, and the meeting place brought an eerie chill to the boy. Soft tendrils of fog curled around the trunks, creating an even haze throughout the land, and Malachi drew to the place where they'd first claimed the Glacier as their own. Or rather, where the Sveijarns had. Even though he stood as leader, Duskfire had never truly been his.

His tongue felt dry behind his lips as he canted his head toward the sky. He did not know where Tuwawi was, so he would draw her to himself. Dread pierced him, a reluctance to confront the queen, but another thought toward the stricken Adlartok made his howl light the night. Whatever claim he felt he lacked over this place didn't matter. To bring justice to the child drove him: this was what he had to do.

Julian Casablancas + The Voidz - Xerox

Twilight faded as a haze of gossamer fog enshrouded the the territory. The ominous weather suited its grim atmosphere; the wake of Adlartok's maiming still fresh. Even so, Duskfire's all-seeing glacier was ever silent and without comment. Tuwawi had snaked her way towards the sleeping giant after she had trailed the child past the borders, determined to see him out. Now, back at Duskfire's heart, the ember found an old evergreen and slumped against its trunk, emotionally spent.

Despite her spirit's fatigue, Tuwawi continued to burn with scorn. Her body quaked with new-found suffering provoked by the young insurgent. A silver eye traced her sanguine front - fur soiled by her quarry's blood - as a shiver of complete disdain crawled down her spine. The shallow cuts Adlartok had managed to inflict upon her ankles stung, and Tuwawi slowly nursed them with a twisted grimace, the hate practically palpable.

Suddenly, an urgent summons rang in the air. Malachi was howling for her - the subject obvious. Reluctantly, the Svejarn heeded his call. She marched through the wood with a stiff limp, still painted a gruesome red with the child's drying blood.

It wasn't long before Malachi's scent hung in the air, his patchwork figure a few yards beyond the trees. Tuwawi attempted to approach him with a level demeanor, but her tenuous composure quickly fractured. "How dare you," she hissed at Malachi, expression seething. "How dare you let another child in!"

The echoes of his call subsided into the delicate fog, the beckoning note branching through the territory on the mist's searching tendrils. There was no way Tuwawi could have missed his summon, and sure enough she came in due time, the crunching of snow alerting him to the ember's approach.

If any hope had found room within his doubting heart that Tuwawi had not been the wolf who had torn into the child's flesh, it diminished to a twisting knot when Malachi's gaze fell upon the incensed queen. Her steel eyes pierced him, her words cut him to the quick, but he stood his ground despite the chill that wound gripping fingers around his heart.

"He came seeking a home, and I gave him one." He said in short, controlling his voice through his nerves quivers within. His convictions would not let him turn the boy away. Scrappy and unpromising as Adlartok had appeared, Malachi gave the child a chance, and in return the boy had proven himself a worthy a member of the Glacier pack. But Tuwawi's inflection, another child, rattled the boy, and his spirit burned with the guilt of what his actions had suggested to the grieving queen. "I wasn't trying to replace the ones you lost."

Oh man I looked at Mal's profile and I am TOTALLY getting hiccup vibes from him!

The ember's jaw clenched, practically boiling over with contempt for Malachi. Her dear friend had been more akin to family, a part of Duskfire's claim since the beginning. How utterly wronged she felt now -- betrayed by someone who mattered most. Any other wouldn't have batted an eyelash at how the new king had tried to grow the waning pack -- permitting a promising youth in -- but Tuwawi deeply blamed the alpha for Adlartok's derelict presence in their sanctuary. In her mind, this was Maera's home... the glacier would be her singular claim to which all contributed. Any other youth threatened that, as well as disturbed the matriarch's desolate pathos.

Despite her biting accusations, Malachi remained boldly fixed in place and urged that his actions were well intentioned. However, Tuwawi wanted to hear nothing of his soft-hearted wishes. "Wrong!" she snapped, pressing into his personal space without a lick of tact. Tuwawi was quick to point out his transgression and reveal that she had been personally affronted. "Duskfire was made for my children and you... you!" her words became jumbled among her ire. "I told him to leave. I told him to get out!" The ember's voice rose to a shrill pitch, leering silver eyes boring holes into Malachi's outwardly calm demeanor. "Stupid child! He fought me!" Any trace of the once compassionate mother dissolved into a purely visceral animal -- heated by Adlartok's insurgency. "And you let him in!"

Haha! I know, right? Totally unintentional, but I'm not complaining xD

Outwardly calm, but inside, his blood swirled with dread for the raging queen. He had done this all for her, and yet in the end, all his efforts had been for her destruction. The guilt that had begun to boil in his heart reached the organ's brim, and he pressed his ears flat against his skull and staggered back at her advance against him. Just days before he had longed for her kind touch - now, he recoiled at the slightest brush of her fur against his own. Her stare was an arrow, shot to pierce him to the quick. It did not miss its target.

"I didn't - I wouldn't - " His words came fumbled as Tuwawi's own, his thoughts no more coherent and his emotions as vulnerable. He couldn't escape her stare, an accusation in itself, heaped upon every word she spurned against him. This was his fault, and his alone, and the heaviness that dawned on him churned his stomach with deep distress. Yet the child was an innocent, and to leave him to die stood against all Malachi had been raised to believe. "I know I've wronged you, but I couldn't just let him starve," his voice shook, but he regained himself, willing himself to stand erect despite his desire to crumble to his knees. His ears still pressed tight against his skull. Was there any compassion left in the queen? Any empathy at all? He lifted his voice in a quiet hush, aware of the danger in the question he posed to follow, but all too desperate to know: "What made you take in Arabella when she was more lost than him?"

Malachi's reasoning deeply grated the afflicted mother and his query pointed out the obvious flaws in her rationality — for there was none. There were no answers or rhyme that could objectify her emotions. Passion fueled the ember and her deep loyalty to all that was Sveijarn and Duskfire. Anything which attempted to revise that vision was nothing less than a slight to the incensed monarch. She cared for Malachi like family — possessive of him, even — but the way he had erred affected her personally and the bottom line had been drawn. Malachi had allowed a young wolf, the same age as her own, into Duskfire after Tuwawi's children had been ripped from her breast and nothing, no matter the rationale, could repent for his judgement.

A quiet lulled over the pair as Malachi's voice waned. For a moment, Tuwawi's face went slack while the cogs turned in her head, partially floored that he dared draw any parallel's between Adlartok and Arabella. To her, it seemed like he couldn't get it — the gravity of his decision — and his scrutiny, though he tried to break the riddle that was Tuwawi, simply made him appear traitorous.

Suddenly and savagely the queen lunged, fire tended anew. Her sinew coiled, stained maw parting as her paws slapped the ground, attempting to snatch Malachi's muzzle betwixt her parted jaw in a display of dominance.

I don't know how this will change what happens at the meeting, since this technically happens in the past... so... :D Here we go!

Adlartok had come to him at a time Tuwawi had been gone. There had been no sign of her return, and he had done what had seemed best. Whatever Tuwawi told him could not change his resolve that in moral he had done right, for Adlartok's life was as sacred as the queen's. But it had been Malachi's mistake to think the queen would take to him once she had returned - or rather, to not think of what she would do at all - and now the child's blood fell on his head. Malachi had not taken in the boy to replace her children, but the fire queen would have none of it.

Malachi could not read what ran through the ember's mind in the quiet that followed. For a passing second his breath caught in his throat and he met her with a cautious gaze. Yet that his words had broken through her stricken shell was a misguided wish, and all too soon the err in his ways came to full light as Tuwawi turned, fangs bared and body barreling toward him.

With a jerk he pulled his head from the range of her sharpened fangs, but a sting across his muzzle told of their intention. Blood dripped into his mouth and he stumbled, a beat passing in a daze before he recoiled and pushed toward her. He aimed at her the same blow, attempting to buckle her into submission despite the burning opposition of every muscle within. He did not want to hurt Tuwawi, but Adlartok's life was in his paws, and words had not worked. He had to fight for him.

Despite the violence welled in the ember's breast, and the betrayal she felt Malachi committed, Tuwawi had never meant to draw the young man's blood as she had Adlartok's; and so when ruby red glistened upon the bridge of his nose and its saline taste spattered on her palette, the matriarch faltered. With one move he jerked towards the stumbling queen and grasped her slim maw, pressing earthbound. A shock wave rippled through the firebrand, her face aghast and blank as his pointed fangs applied their pressure to secure his position over the untamed flame. For a moment she was still -- her mind slow to process how her hand had been so easily forced -- but soon a shrill growl hissed between her fangs as her head twisted and bucked to undo Malachi's hold. "Let go of me!" she shrieked indignantly as her hair stood on end, muscles tense in preparation to counter his challenge.