Sun Mote Copse Brave as a noun

OMG Have you seen this?
Just...On the topic of Towhee making a noise of  deflating baloon that Niamh interpreted as possibly a  fart XD

SO CUTE. Children can be SO CUTE sometimes.

She could see that she'd struck a nerve, and winced. Niamh hadn't considered the fact that a comment she might feel fine to make- intended purely as a joke- to Towhee, might not be an actual joke when spoken to her brother. It might not have even made Towhee laugh, had she been in on it. Part of her mind assured her that it was fine, and that Phox was just being over-sensitive because he was surely looking for even more reasons to find her unattractive and unsuitable- but that was the part of her that she was trying to grow out of. Towhee had made jokes about practically everything, hadn't she? She'd offered her at-the-time injured and numb leg as a chewtoy for Niamh's unborn children. She'd made jokes about...Well, what else had she made jokes out of? Did Towhee even make jokes about herself, or was Niamh just imagining it now? Regardless, she felt ashamed- still mildly defiant, because she thought she knew Towhee well enough to assume that making that comment about her shouting was fine- and embarassed. She wished Towhee'd been there to get a chuckle about it- or that Towhee had been the one to catch the joke, only Towhee, so that she could be put straight by the source, not by her brother. Life, it seemed, was only getting more and more complicated and for a relatively simple wolf like Niamh, it was like wading into the ocean after only having learned to doggy-paddle in a kiddy pool. 

She would've laughed. Insisted part of her mind. He's just being a sissy-boy. Trying to be the protective big brother. She'd probably laugh at him too and kick his ass for being so sensitive.

The words wound their way through her mind and she struggled against them. In her mind, she had the idea that it was her and Towhee against the world- that they were invincible, and truth be told, she didn't consider Towhee's deafness to be a handicap whatsoever. It simply meant that sure, she had to be facing her to speak, and that they had their own language so they could communicate things in secret, or if there were words that were harder to read, but...That didn't make her any different. Niamh didn't see Towhee as having a disability. And wasn't that the way Towhee wanted to be seen? Then again...

...Maybe she didn't check in enough to see how being deaf made Towhee feel. Niamh had simply taken that realization in stride, and had done everything she could to learn as much ptero as quickly as possible. She didn't use Towhee's deafness to her advantage in any way- and had she realized that her son had done that more than once, now, she would've given him a thorough talking-to. Niamh assured herself she was doing the right thing...But what she didn't realize was that disabilities or differences of any sort meant that there were a whole universe of other facets to take into consideration. Towhee's hearing loss effected her life, and had forced her to adapt. In Niamh's opinion, she thrived better than most other wolves she'd met. Hell- Towhee had pretty damn near been through hell and back, physically, several times, but had never given up. Towhee's strength and resilience seemed to have no end- so it was easier for her to overlook, completely, the fact that her friend could not hear. 

What she didn't see were the things that happened, likely, when she wasn't around Towhee. She'd never experienced a world without sound, and while as far as she knew, Towhee had never experienced a world with sound, at least that she could remember (another question she'd never asked) she couldn't possibly imagine what it was like to grow up in Towhee's place. Sound meant so much to Niamh, who detested silence so much that she often said things that got her in trouble just to avoid being uncomfortable. Hunting, guarding, fighting...She relied on her sense of hearing for all of those. But Towhee...Towhee managed despite not having one of her key senses, but Niamh never really saw how she did it. She couldn't feel how Towhee felt when she was surprised by a presence she didn't detect from either sight or smell, or some sixth sense she may have developed. She couldn't feel how Towhee felt whenever she had to try and decipher how someone was really feeling despite the words they were using, as she couldn't hear tone- and if a wolf was trying hard enough, they could hide the expression on their face...But emotions were tangible. Even if a wolf was blind and deaf, emotions were still tangible. She failed to realize all the amazing things that her friend accomplished not just aside from having a hearing disability, but in spite of it. Thus came the issue from being a wolf born with a certain amount of privilege. She couldn't put herself in Towhee's place, not completely. And even in the moments where she felt proud of herself for doing everything she could to make everything normal (while loathing the word) for her interactions with Towhee, she could never really feel things the same way Towhee did. 

The bottom line through all of it, though, that Niamh did still love Towhee dearly. She loved speaking to her in ptero. She loved speaking with her in Ptero just because they could, and she loved it when they did because they wanted to communicate without an outsider knowing what they were saying. It was special. She loved Towhee's stubbornness and her strength, and the way she would open up and reveal something deeply personal- but none of it mattered to Niamh. Maybe she 'd never been terribly sensitive about Towhee's feelings about her deafness, or when she'd been injured...But she'd started to listen now, especially with reference to the fact that Towhee wanted to have children of her own. She'd had the sense not to simply shrug it off and say the dreaded 'you can always adopt' but the horrible thing, is that the only reason she probably didn't say that was because Towhee already had non-biological children. The circumstances worked out in Niamh's favour; she avoided speaking from a position of privilege and for once, had actually heard her friend's desire, and had interpreted it correctly. 

But that still didn't mean she knew Towhee completely. 

Clearly, she didn't know Phox completely, either. Part of her was offended that he was offended. Didn't he know how close she and Towhee were? Towhee was her Person. And she'd been Towhee's Person- she'd been told that, several times. They'd been through so much- so much trauma, so much angst, so much trouble- and she had followed Towhee faithfully. She'd even helped Towhee warm up to the idea of letting Phox back into her life- so shouldn't he see, then, that she knew Towhee? Maybe, she thought, he was offended because she'd made a remark behind Towhee's back. She'd meant simply to joke that perhaps Phox had never gotten used to yelling, because there'd been absolutely no reason for him to put such a thing into practice because his sister would never hear him...Because his sister would never hear him. The thought echoed in her mind for a moment. That was a heavy truth. She shook it off, arrogantly. Phox should have known that she and Towhee were tight enough to make jokes. They were tight enough to make jokes...Right?

Then again...He had been there when Niamh had deserted the two of them so that she could go off and have kids with Colt. It seemed that over time, Towhee had forgiven her- at least to a certain extent...And maybe more, now, since she realized that she yearned to have children herself, which was definitely something very new. Maybe she hadn't ammended things. Maybe Towhee didn't consider her to be her Person anymore- she hadn't said it to her, yet. Not since...Not since she'd ore or less banished Niamh from the pack when she'd said she was moving to the Copse. She felt a heavy feeling in her throat, pulling down toward her chest. Simultaneously, it pulled the corners of her lips down. Maybe Towhee just didn't feel the same way about her, that she felt about Towhee. And maybe Phox knew it. 

That realization made her feel a slight weakness in her knees, and a slackness in her jaw, but the feeling was fleeting. He mentioned having already apologized- but she couldn't exactly what he'd apologized for...And she had a feeling that he hadn't apologized exactly for what she'd wanted him to apologize for. He hadn't said distinctly that he'd been wrong, and that he'd made a mistake, and that....Well, he just hadn't told her in black and white what she'd wanted to hear, so the apology was more or less forgotten, blurred into the background. She liked to fixate on the very particular things she wanted and what she needed and she felt unsatisfied with his apology. He seemed to think that just because things worked out alright, that everything should just go back to normal, and she shook her head. 

"It doesn't change how I felt for three months." She said, even though it was somewhat off-topic. He hadn't said anything about her disappearance not mattering. But Niamh tended to pick and choose what she'd heard, and how to interpret them. In her mind, Phox was inferring that nothing mattered now that she was back. "But...How would you have felt, Phox?" She asked, finally saying something in earnest, without a tone of accusation. "Had one of your children just...Disappeared. I know you've been separated from them...And you've lost your mate too," She said, her voice becoming quieter and quieter. Yeah, he'd been through this too. "But...If Fig disappeared, and he was only 5 months old...And had been gone for more than three months....If you found out that I knew he was alive, but didn't tell you...Wouldn't you be angry with me?" She asked. Of course, Phox was a different wolf. But she wanted to see how he saw things- how he might have reacted. She wasn't telling him to see how she felt in that situation- she was asking him how he might have reacted, so that she might understand, better, why he defended his decision. 

Her focus on the topic had put blinders on her- and in the stillness corrupted by the buzzing of thoughts inside her head, she hadn't noticed the dark form of Towhee standing not far away, appearing more like an artist's deft but beautiful scrape of tricoloured paint against the white snow, her tall form and direct posture made her very much one of the trees that grew up as a tall, straight line like barcode strips against the snow. She felt sheepish, having been caught in the middle of a fairly personal conversation. As far as she knew, Towhee hadn't heard about the confrontation she and Phox had had the other day. As far as she knew, Towhee still wanted to try and convince her that she and Phox ought to get together. And as far as she could presume, Towhee was now possibly witnessing a conversation that was one shared between three- but not all three simultaneously. Ashamed as she was, it didn't surprise her that the reigning emotion she felt, when she realized Towhee was there, was disappointment, knowing that Towhee had hoped Niamh and Phox would make a good match- and that she was potentially ruining her best friend's hopes of their possible engagement.