Wapun Meadow The Joyless Luck Club

I'm actually incredibly sad that I won't get to thread with you for a while. <3

The flesh of her cheeks burned a bright shade of red that would have caused her to turn away in shame if he had been able to see it. He warned her, instructing her to be careful about what she thought versus what she knew to be a concrete fact. Still, she was not certain that she had pegged him wrong. Stigmata did not speak of his familial loyalties, and she had never once heard him utter anything about the bond of blood, so her assumption had foundation in this and she had believed it to be suitable enough.

Unwilling to argue, too full of worry to truly combat against the one wolf she felt was truly capable, Piper simply flattened her ears to her skull and shook her head at the smoky figure. Logic and reason would have told her that he was correct in what he was saying. It was foolish of her to venture out on her own to search for her brother. He would have returned if he had wanted to, they all said, but she wanted them to be wrong so badly that she was creating her own reality.

Before she realized, Stigmata was turning away from her to return home. The sharp glint of her champagne gaze seemed to hunger for his presence for only a little while longer, but she did not have the words to tell him not to go. Instead, she gritted her teeth against the farewell that had hitched in the back of her throat and she watched as he trailed back to the valley. Only when he had disappeared from sight did she allow herself to become awash with her own feelings, and even then... she did what she could to smother them.

In another life, Piper would have been smitten by girlish desires for the smoky hound. He would have created a burning in the pit of her chest that she would never really understand at the age she was. Had her life turned out differently, she would have confessed her feelings to her mother in bashful delight before scurrying away. Instead, the young Redleaf had been burdened with a great will.

So, she turned herself away from her home and from all of the love that had surrounded her since birth. She turned and she did not look back as she set out into the wilds in search of the joyful Lucas and his endless smiles. Stigmata was right; she would likely be a woman by the time she returned to them. Time would only tell.