Moonspear your love will always be rooted deeper than any grave, ii

Days were quiet, lately. Typical, made of uneventful patrol and snowy hunts. A pensive sort of silence had come with it all though, the dark Ostrega thought. Maybe because he was hotly anticipating the turn of the springtime, waiting for any true sign from the mountainside that it was really on its way. Jarilo was on a neatly contained edge as the frozen days spanned on, doing his best to help the family carry its new weight--of grief, absence, sorrow, duty. In all of his years, though they were not yet that many, never had it been so much, so very quickly.

But as ever, it taught him to keep close to what he had. He had sprung back from great and awful loss before, after all. Moonspear raised steadfast wolves, and he was very much one of them tried and true, born and bred. For what he did have, and everything that had come before them, he remained strong.. though not without worry as he saw the toll.

After finishing off his work low on the territory that had run late tonight, Jarilo was moving up towards a well-worn path to the ulaq, trotting lightly, and thinking ahead to what may await him--where he went for comfort, to relax, to bask in the warmth and love of his family and share it all with them, too; but a rare misplaced step stumbled him, effectively stalling progress enough to breath deep, and look up as he righted himself. His expression scrunched up, confused... but he couldn't look away. It was getting brighter, steadily, until it began with a sudden burst, and everything around him flashed, shifted. No--worse than that, somehow, impossibly so.

His next realization was suddenly that he was no longer on his feet as the mountain gave a deep, soul-crushing groan. He heard it from above, but felt it best from below, and as it reverberated into his bones, he became a struggle. Forward, up.. but it only let him see more, as his eyes readjusted to the darkness silhouetting the despair. Jarilo balked in horrified awe, and once he found his feet again, he tore frantically down his original route, hopefully to Kukutux, to Sialuk.. Saviguk; they made a stronger man of him, after all. Yet panic soared him along, desperate to find them, anyone--Hydra, Dirge!--as his entire pantehon o shifted, suffered, around him. He felt it more than he saw it, how could he not? The sound of the earth reacting, recoiling, was all-consuming; he had never heard anything like it before.

The path that had been there for all of his days very suddenly was not, but he couldn't stop dead in his tracks now. Instead he changed his course (like a young boy once playing chase with his sisters here), new fear now accompanying the sheer need that burned him up; snow, rocks, no--the entire earth, they fell recklessly, and gravity drug it down the side of the mountain. But he had run these slopes for so long, too long to give in easily. He would simply go, until he could no longer...

It came to him suddenly. Overwhelmed. Suffocating in this new, sudden nightmare that was far worse than even any worry of his, he desperately tried to find his footing just like last time, to take it in, find out where he needed to go--where his loved ones were, but it was too much to ever make sense of, not in this lifetime, let alone as the Spear's  wounds bled so openly. What was he supposed to do? What would his parents have done, besides fall, too?

Jarilo's head rolled back, looking for the moon, and realizing: oh, he had never seen a sky like this.

(can't look at it too long, very big ;__________________;!)

since i did not get a chance to reply to ongoing conversation before the moonspear forum/channel left the building, and wanting to get another word in for the sake of those who have chosen to write here with us at any given point in time: it is not the 100% picture perfect ideal for everyone, everywhere, i get that. in the spirit and story of moonspear right now, i think the fact that "luckily" members do honor our wishes about this when faced with them speaks for itself, so thank you all so very much for making this what it was, and will be.

assume he is missing in the chaos of it. if anyone from moonspear wants to hear antares hollering desperately for you, he has a thread in firefly glen. there is also bronco rallying others from the outer edge of the glen.