Whitewater Gorge which i cannot touch because they are too near

✹☾❂

 

Eleuthera honestly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The things Mali was saying were so nonsensical to her she wondered if he had emotionally matured at all since their wiley teenage years. Sure, he had a ‘new family’ (she did too, but she wasn’t going to brag about it) but it didn’t take a great wolf to lead a pack — just an inflated sense of ego, which apparently the spotted man had in droves. Eleuthera sneered inwardly (and outwardly), disgusted at the light that he cast innocent wolves into. She knew the nature of the wolves in question well, and she knew that Mali’s perception was wrong and offensive to her core.

“Solomon and Brilliance?" she scoffed. “Are you kidding me? We were in the same pack, you know. Our parents were mates." Her voice hovered somewhere between condescension and disbelief. They were not strangers, as much as Mali wanted to believe. It also didn’t seem fair to place the expectation of looking for a wayward child upon the shoulders of another child — she had only been what, a few months old when the Sanctuary moved from Broken Boulder to the Hushed Willows? These were several of the things that led Eleuthera to believe that Mali was, well, illogical and beyond help. All she could do was speak at him, and with bitterness and vitriol.  “We were all right there. We were all strangers, family for the making — and we all made it work. I was even friends with Brill. You were the one who chose to be on the outside." 

As she spoke, the faerie woman realized that she no longer entertained hopes of being civil with this person. She simply wanted to cut him down, and hurt him, and show him the error of his thinking. “Elysium was a sanctuary of love and fairness for all, except for Mali? You’re deluded." Eleuthera dramatically rolled her lavender eyes, feeling the incensed energy course through her veins — and loving it, despite the lies that poured from Mali’s mouth. It was nice to be able to experience an emotion other than sadness about all of this, for once. 

“Now you're a big man in a pack right next door? " she stamped the ground with a diminutive, grey paw. “Why, so you can finally be at the center of everyone’s universe?" It wasn’t her fault that Mali hadn’t been everyone’s primary interest — that’s simply what happened when one went around being awful and morose all the time, if one was even around at all. “Or so that you could look on and laugh as everyone in the willows died?" That’s the part she simply couldn’t get past. Why did he make these stories? Why didn’t he help Elysium? Why didn’t he care? Only psychopaths lacked that much empathy.