Dragoncrest Cliffs ai na drein au bukajus-de

Going by the threadlog, Silkie has only known Mallaidh as Mallaidh. I’m acting as though he’s been very withdrawn and inwardly focused since coming home, so the particulars of Mallaidh and Blixen’s relationship are unbeknownst to him. ♥

There is a lump in his throat that is hard to swallow down or speak through, but after a strangled first attempt, “Mallaidh is gona,” Silkie answers. He offers a brief description of her appearance — misty green eyes and a striking pelt that sets her apart from every other wolf Silkie has known — and gulps audibly when Antumbra opens her mouth to speak. “There is nothing for you to be ashamed of,” she tells him, and before he can think of anything to say or do, she closes the distance and lifts his chin with a sweep of her muzzle. “You’ve learned. And you’re here.”

It’s the physical contact that shatters his resolve.

He’s been so good about keeping everything tightly contained, letting out his emotions in cool, controlled bursts — but behind the fiercely stoic façade, far beneath the steely framework of muscle and bone, there’s a worried young wolf who desperately wants to please his nomi and doesn’t understand why Wildfire left him. He takes his biological mother’s bid for freedom personally — how can he not? The wayward Redhawk may have believed her hastily sketched farewell was justifiable, even compassionate, but to Silkie, it had come across as the wild canid equivalent of, “I’m getting the hell out of Dodge, and I’m doing it with or without you.”

Silkie hadn’t cried the day Wildfire turned her back on her sons, her daughter, her wife, and her kru. He hadn’t cried when he was lost and hurt and afraid in the wilderness, far from his home. Now, though, with nomi’s scent in his lungs and her whiskers prickling ticklishly against his cheek; with that painful, yawning emptiness ripping a wide hole in his chest… “I am taller,” he observes brokenly, and this is the last straw: the sudden, irrevocable realization that he didn’t have to tiptoe to achieve this kind of closeness. Can he even call her nomi at this age? He’s ashamed at the burning, prickling feeling that stings his bourbon brown eyes. He feels like the period of leniency for open grief is long past, but his body just won’t listen.

“Nomi,” he forces between his tightly clenched teeth. “Ai hod yu in.”