Frostfire Ridge black hole in the sky

Tezcacoatl watched as Nochtli stood, though he made no moves to ...move. Instead, he stood there, bearing down at her like the immovable mountain (of stubbornness) that he'd probably been portrayed as. “Again you're angry at me for making general assumptions based off the information that you refuse to give me, and yet that makes me the idiot.” It was almost too much. It was like the tea pot calling the kettle black. He felt like a scapegoat, and in a bitter irony he supposed that for them that was all he was good for: being their scapegoat. It was all his fault, this further proved by her following words. It was his fault that he left them (maybe, it wasn't like he could remember why he'd left them behind). “How do you even know I abandoned you? Maybe I went out to hunt and something happened! Why is automatically 'oh you abandoned us'? I don't remember what kind of wolf I was back then but if my loyalty is anything to go by now I have proof that I wouldn't have just abandoned you.” He didn't abandon Tuwawi: he lingered in the hopes that she would return and happened to get lucky that she did. Hell, he couldn't even abandon Duskfire Glacier; it was why he claimed the Ridge, because the territories interlinked. He could see the Glacier at all times and it gave him a sense of home, of belonging.

Tezcacoatl listened as Nochtli barreled on, tanking through what she'd obviously been holding back for a long time. He did not listen gracefully, but he listened. She seemed to return to blaming him (the theme he gathered was that everything was his fault, and idly he couldn't help but wonder if he was a woman if everything would have been different); but his ears, previously slicked back perked when she continued on to say about how she didn't believe in the gender inequality that the Amazon's had literally built their pack and traditions on. It was their way of life, and he understood that while he was some of it, he was not all of what was wrong with her. “Because it was how I was raised, Nochtli. I held the title of Prince but I was still looked down upon, perceived as a threat. I remember Quetzalcoatl and her mother nearly fighting because the Old Queen wanted to kill me.” It was a fuzzy memory, and Tezcacoatl had been very young, but he remembered it if only because he'd been afraid. Afraid of his “grandmother” and afraid of his mother, at least for a while. "I remember feeling inferior just as the Gladiators did, why do you think I don't want to return? Where I will never be seen as the King I was born to be?" There were other reasons too, of course, but that was one of the important ones.

“You know how I was raised, how I was taught to think, Nochtli. I didn't know that you...or any other Amazon that might share the sentiments felt that way about the superior, inferior gender hierarchy. We men are good for sport, entertainment, and making strong daughters and that was how it was.” It was hard not to make the generalization, and knowing what he did not (which would have been helpful to know a while ago) he did feel like a jerk. “I never meant to offend you. I know only what I remember, and I'm glad that you are different from them, and there's no shame in that. Not here in Frostfire Ridge.” He was harbinger of the new era for the Amazon's, after all. Quetzalcoatl had set things in motion with her defiance and love for him that simply...couldn't be undone, and those that could not learn to accept the change would die with the fading culture. Perhaps it would live on in the Rise, but in the Ridge he would take it in the direction he'd always been meant to: where each gender is valued the same, and all were strong. “And I'm sorry for assuming it was about Tuwawi, I ...you didn't leave me with much else to think.” He hadn't meant to be selfish. Simply, he was clueless to the inner workings of the complex female mind because it eluded him, he who thought of simple motives and went with primeval instincts alone.