Greatwater Lake Milk-colored eye

She had not seen what her face looked like after...the accident. Her eye was not removed from the socket, thank Sithis, but it was blind nonetheless. A scar trailed across her face, from the orange-eyed monster, from her cheek, through her eye, to her forehead. That, she knew - she could feel it throbbing sometimes - but she had never seen it before.

Potema was not (that) vain, but she knew she was pretty, like her mother. A gently pointed nose, symmetrical ears, eyes slanted in a bewitching way, with a light sapphire color that glittered like a jewel. But she often wondered if her beauty was marred now, by this face.

Does the look of one's face truly matter? A voice inside her head smirked. Her voice. She had come along with the scar, with the blinded eye.

A woman can easily seduce a man with words and the sway of the hips, with pheromones from her heat. A scar on your face won't change much.

"But a missing eye does." She whispered back, seeing the glittering mirror that was the Greatwater Lake. She should not have been so far from Blackfeather with her injury, but the lake was the best place to get a clear view. "I just want a peek, that's all." She walked closer to the lake, then paused close to its shore, steeling herself for the reveal. First she saw her ears...then the top of her head...then her eyes...

Despite the heavy affairs that pressured the Bay -- Ragnar's death, Gunnar's subsequent departure, the fact that they were low on numbers to start with -- Charon was feeling pleased with how his life was going, beyond the factors he could not control. He was to be made leader when he turned nine months of age, and besides Aesop, whose departure from the Bay was hard on Charon, he hadn't gotten along that well with most of the other adults that'd left, anyway. Feeling his confidence building, Charon made his way deeper into the land, deciding to explore some other regions.

While Charon took a drink at a lake, he noticed a white wolf along the edge of the lake from the corner of his eye. She was on his right side, and he instantly noticed why she hadn't noticed him yet: there was an ugly scar where her eye had once been. She looked young, probably around his age or maybe a bit younger than that, which instantly piqued Charon's curiosity; he didn't often meet other youths.

Charon watched as she slowly inched towards the water, feeling the urge to push her in, if not only because she was really asking for it with the way she stood there, all focussed on what she was seeing -- or about to see -- in the water. However, he controlled himself, because he was curious for her and wanted to have a chat. "Hey!" he called out to the girl, hoping she would be equally curious. Or at least equally up for a chat.

Potema slid forward, inch by inch, until she finally saw it. The scars were dark on her skin, with her fur refusing to grow back there. Her eye was a white orb, and she swore she could see some hints of blue hidden underneath, but the film covered all of it. To her surprise she didn't cry, she simply stood and looked at her reflection, drinking it in. This was her face now.

On your left.

Potema turned towards the wolf long before he called to her. Her single eye observed him as he bounded forward. He was not yet a yearling by his size, but older than her regardless. His fur was white like hers, but freckled with gray, similar to the ash sprinkled lightly across her back. The princess watched him warily, though his body language radiated playfulness. Outside of her brothers, she did not know any other pup. "Hey."  

Charon stayed at a distance until she noticed him, because he did not want to startle her. He was coming up on her bad side, after all. Charon stared at her face when she turned to face him, at her one good eye and her one mutilated eye. It looked white, and Charon wondered if it was because of an injury. The scars at the edges of her eyesocket told him it was. She looked like something out of his imagination, a demon, with that eye, but he did not judge or think she was scary, considering she just greeted him calmly. She'd probably just got hurt or something.

But still, it made her look pretty... well, it was hard to say. 'Ugly' was perhaps too harsh a word to describe it, especially considering Charon mostly thought it was... "Wow, your eye looks so cool!" Charon stared at it in awe, feeling like a little child again. Recently he had become more mature, and mostly had tried to be more mature, but this pulled him right back into childhood. "What'd you do with it? Did you get into a fight? Wow, I wish I had an eye like that!" Well, maybe not really, but it was the first thing that popped into Charon's mind when he observed the white eye. Not for a moment did he consider the feelings of the mostly white girl.

His reaction took Potema off guard. It literally broke through whatever defenses she had to insults or pity. She had never had her eye complimented before. Did it look cool? She couldn't tell. Not to her, not at all. She thought she was marred. The white princess tilted her head questioningly. "Really?" She asked, slightly confused at his comment. 


"I was attacked." She said simply, not sure how to react. Most confusing to her of all was the fact that he wanted an eye like hers. "Why would you?" She asked. "Why would you want to be half blind?"

When the girl asked for confirmation, Charon was quick to nod. ”Uh-huh! It says like, ‘someone tried to mess with me once and it ended badly for him’, or like, ‘you should’ve seen the other guy!’ You know, ‘cause the other guy was a lot worse off. Scars are bad-ass.” Charon nodded, as though to say ‘that’s a fact!’. He did think that scars looked pretty bad-ass, really. Then the girl went on to say she had been attacked, which probably made it a less joyous occasion for her. But still, scars were bad-ass.

When she mentioned being blind, Charon looked confused for a moment, before realizing she must not be able to see through her white, scarred eye. He hadn’t even considered that at all. ”Well, I didn’t know you were attacked,” he said, although it wouldn’t have been a difficult equation to make. ”I just thought your eye looked, y’know… cool.” Charon couldn’t tell whether the girl was upset with him that she asked why he’d want to be attacked, or if she was just curious because she, being attacked and all, didn’t understand.

Deciding to try and break the ice, Charon suggested, ”Hey, I was attacked once. Wanna see my scar? It’s a lot more hidden though, so not really that cool.”  Charon moved closer to the girl and scratched his neck with his paw, hoping to expose what was left from the attack by the monstrous dog in Dawnlark Plains many months ago. It wasn’t a very big scar and it didn’t show unless you’d look closely, but if she felt bad about being attacked, Charon hoped that she’d feel better if he showed her that even cool guys like himself got attacked.

A sudden, familiar voice cooed in her head as the freckled male spoke.

He's from a warrior pack. They treat scars differently than others. Potema faintly recalled being taught something like that by her mother, but it must have been a long time ago. Regardless, the younger pup was still shocked by the fact that her scar was seen as something other than tragic. It was like a prize to this wolf, something that said: "you're awesome". She hadn't thought of it like that before, nor did her mother. It was simply how she was raised.

A brief silence filled the gap in their conversation, both suddenly awkward and unsure how to react before the freckled male decided to show off a scar of his own from his own attack. It took Potema a moment to find it, but there it was, a small raised bump on his neck. Not as impressive as her own, to be sure. "How'd it happen?" She asked, genuinely curious.

There were many things in life that Charon thought were cool and others might frown upon; he was a rough-housing boy that liked all the cool violent things, and surely Levi would have laughed at him, perhaps even apologised on his behalf, if he was here with Charon and Potema now. After showing his scar, Potema asked how it happened. He hadn't expected any compliments, but felt a pang of disappointment at not getting any regardless. Maybe they'd come after the story.

"Well, I met this monster in a place called Dawnlark Plains. I'd travelled real far and was just taking a break at sunset when suddenly... POW!" Charon widened his eyes when he loudly screamed 'POW!' to try and make the story more exciting. "There was this monster who looked sort of like a wolf, but wasn't really a wolf. I think I heard someone call it a dog or something. Whatever, anyway, the monster came right at me! It was too late to react 'cause coward snuck up on me, so before I knew it, he had me grabbed at the neck." So far, it was all sort of true, but Charon decided to tell the alternate ending to the story that he told everyone. He'd never tell them that he had in fact been rescued by another wolf; he liked his ending better: "So then I managed to break free, and I was like, bit him all over the place and he was all bleeding, and my neck hurt but I just kept going, it was like I was a beast!" Charon waited briefly to see if Potema looked impressed yet before continuing with the story. "So then after I scratched out his eyes, the beast decided to retreat, and I was like, 'yeah, you better run, coward!' and watched as he ran away."

Charon looked genuinely proud of the deceitful ending to his story; perhaps because a big part of him wanted to believe it, and another part of him actually was beginning to believe that that was how the story went (more or less). Without him wetting himself, without the other wolf intervening... Just Charon beating the shit out of the monstrous dog.

Potema was enraptured by the boy's story. She had seen the body of the dog her brother and Ohen had killed, and it was a foreign, yet familiar beast. They were bold, monstrous and willing to eat young wolves; the stuff of fairy tale monsters. And like how Damien managed to kill a dog, Potema was equally impressed by the white wolf's feat, though he did not kill the dog. She provided the "ooh's" and "ah's" the boy searched for, even though she felt a bit of skepticism at the ending. Even Damien didn't kill the dog on his own. "Was it black and had a bunny tail?" She asked, wondering if the dog he chased off was the same her brother had killed. 

Charon was pleased that his story was well received by the one-eyed girl. Maybe she understood now why he thought having scars could be kinda cool. Scars always had a story to tell. He could see why she didn't like hers that much, though; her story was that she got attacked, so Charon could imagine the girl didn't like telling about it much. He didn't know much about young girls, or girls in general, so it did not even occur to Charon she might not like it because it marred how she looked; Charon was very self-centered and did not care much for his own appearance nor was he vain, so he did not understand some other wolves might care about how they looked.

Her question caught him somewhat off-guard, and he considered it a moment; he'd only really seen it in a flash, after all, since it had caught him from behind. "Yeah, it was black," said Charon, and then he shook his head. "Don't remember about the tail though." He hadn't seen much of the monster's behind, after all, just a lot of the front, really.

"Hey, what's your name, anyway? I'm Charon. I'm Stavanger Bay's Beta," he proudly introduced. Well, he wasn't its Beta yet, but he would be, in not too long, when he hit the nine month marker. He was sure of it.

There must be more than one dog, there were many different coyotes and foxes, there had to be dogs too. It was possible that this dog was different than the one Damien killed. Very much so. Potema shrugged, since it didn't really matter to her whether or not it was the same dog.

"Potema, princess of Blackfeather Woods." She was impressed that someone barely older than her had the position of Beta. But that didn't beat princess at all, not one bit. A princess meant you were royalty, more than just a leader. "How'd you become a Beta? You're so young." She wasn't jealous. She was princess after all.

Charon wasn't envious of Potema's title when she introduced herself. In a way, he was sort of like a prince too, since he was Ragnar and Thistle's sort-of somewhat-adopted kid. He considered Thistle and Ragnar's pups his siblings, so in a way considered himself their kid. Atreyu'd said he was the 'heir'. Charon liked to consider himself that, too, and so he thought he fully deserved to be Beta.

When Potema asked, he was glad to explain. Charon would never tire talking about his own awesomeness. "Well, I'm sorta like the heir to the pack, 'cause my parents are the pack's leaders." He conveniently neglected to mention that they were not his actual parents; whatever, it didn't matter much. "And my father died and my mom had pups, so I told her I'd help her out with running the pack. And I've already got three official trades, too, and did lots of impressive things, so it dudn't matter that I'm young." Charon proudly puffed his chest forward as he spoke of his achievement; he was quit proud that he would become Beta soon. "So your parents are Alphas too?" he asked, referencing to the princess-part.

Potema had to admit she was jealous. While she was a princess, she did not know much about leading a pack. Her mother and Burke had done that, but neither had the time to teach them what it meant to be a ruler. Perhaps they were worried about developing their skills before they did, to get them to a year old first. When she returned to Blackfeather, she would have to ask.

"My mother is a Queen of her own right," She said, just as proudly as he did. "Her mate is King-Consort. He isn't my real dad, my real dad disappeared when I was young," She did not say dead, as she had no way of knowing if Bane was alive, wandering about, causing mischief, or dead in a shallow grave. "But he acts like a real dad all the same. He's a good Beta too."

Charon listened with interest to Potema's story. He felt a pang of jealousy when she mentioned her real, live, biological mother still alive. Charon was grateful to have Ragnar and Thistle in his life, but he had to admit he still often dreamed and thought of his real parents, only to wonder what they would be like, and if they'd still recognise him from when he was just a tiny blob of pup. The main reason Charon could step up to be a leader was because he had lost so many wolves in his life, and someone needed to step up to the plate in Stavanger Bay and stand beside Thistle Cloud.

'Queen' seemed familiar, and Charon figured it was a title, like Jarl was, for a particular Alpha. A self-given title. He didn't mention it though, and just said, "That's pretty cool. Do you got a big family?"


Then Charon began to tell about his own, the real family, anyway: "My real parents are both dead, as are two of my siblings," Charon said when Potema finished speaking. He didn't look sad, although he felt it, when he continued with a grim frown on his face: "My mother was ripped apart by a bear in front of my own eyes. It was very gruesome." He narrowed his eyes grimly at the last bit. Well, maybe that wasn't the whole truth; he hadn't actually been there, he'd only heard that she had been killed by a bear. But whatever, this version of the story tended to draw a few more wet eyes and attention, anyway. "I was small though, so I was pretty much raised by Thistle 'n Ragnar though. Just me and my lil' bro survived in our real family. He's kinda soft, so I look out for him a lot." Levi wasn't really his little brother, but it often felt like that, since Charon was always busy trying to look cool and do cool things, and Levi was just always kinda daydreaming and taking care of the pups. Sure, he did important stuff, but he did sometimes need looking after. He was so naive sometimes.

"Not really," She wondered what constituted as a big family. It wasn't like she wanted any other brothers and sisters at the moment; Damien and Cicero were enough, for both her and her mother. And the pack, too. They were quite the hand- pawfull for them, and caused enough trouble. "I have my two brothers, my mom and dad. And the pack." Did they count too? She was born and raised around them.

Potema went silent when Charon talked about his family. "That's horrible..." She was being honest, though she had not seen a bear before. All she knew that it was big and dangerous. To be killed by one...that must have been a terrible sight. Especially if it was his own mother. "No wonder you're Beta," She unintentionally flattering him. "You would have to grow up very fast if something like that happened, and take care of your siblings..."

Charon felt envious of Potema as she told him of her two brothers and her mom and dad, and her pack. It was just him and Levi against the rest of the world, or so it often felt. He was grateful for all that Thistle and Ragnar had given him, but Charon felt like an orphan a lot of the time all the same, no matter how much Thistle told him he was just like her real kids to her. Perhaps it was that which prompted his sad story and some of the lies he added in for extra dramatic effect.

They found their purchase; Potema looked stricken by the story, empathic towards him, and said she could understand why he was Beta, if he had to care for his brother from young age. It felt good to be acknowledged. Charon said, "We do what we gotta do to survive." Mostly because he thought it sounded kind of cool, as if he had not only taken upon him the difficult task of caring for his brother and becoming the pack's Beta, but he did it because he was a dutiful loyal sort of wolf.

"Where's Blackfeather Woods at? I might visit you sometime." Charon smiled at Potema as he asked this before there was chance for silences to fall between them. He looked over his shoulder and pointed his nose in the general direction of the Bay while he added: "Stavanger Bay's that way, at the ocean side. You're welcome to visit sometime if you wanna."

Potema nodded in agreement. The Dark Brotherhood had formed under those principles, weaker than the other wolves, but faster and stealthier. What it took to survive was different for everyone; for Charon it seemed to lead him to becoming the youngest Beta she had ever encountered. She wondered if she would ever become a leader one day, like her mother, a High Priestess of a pack.

"It's east of here." She said, turning in the direction of the forest. It was a clear dark stain on the eastern horizon. To some it would be a frightening sight, especially as one got closer to the dark forest. But to her, it was home. The only one she had. "I've never been to the ocean before. What's it like?"

Charon squinted his eyes and looked in eastern direction. He couldn't really see the pack though; just saw something dark in the distance. That probably wasn't it; why would any wolf pack stay in a super dark place? Instead of saying all that he just nodded though, as though he acknowledged that he saw it. It was probably somewhere beyond that dark stain on the horizon, Charon figured.

When Potema asked about the ocean, Charon grinned. "The ocean smells all salty, and you can't drink the water. And it's like this giant space of water. It's pretty cool, but it can be dangerous too. There's this current that can pull you right out into the water, so if y'ever get there without me, be careful when swimming." Of course, Charon hoped that if she were ever to visit the ocean, she'd do it to see him. Then she'd be safe when swimming, too.

She hoped that, if Charon ever came this far east again, that he would do it in neutral grounds. Being older than her, he would be considered an adult, and if her brothers, her father, or any other wolf in Blackfeather Woods would have seen him, he would be dead or crippled in an instant. She had come to like the speckled wolf, to the point where imagining him being harmed was almost painful to her.

Potema's eyes widened for a moment, before she shut them in a wince of pain. Her eye had not yet healed from her incident, so that opening them far wider than normal, or shutting them tight, was painful. She recovered quickly, explaining her look of shock. "I can't swim." There was no clean body of water in Blackfeather other than the underground river, which was too dangerous for wolves to swim in. She had ventured to the lake before, but had never done anything than gotten her feet wet. She had never thought of ever swimming in water before.

Charon noticed that Potema seemed hurt by something, but before he had a chance to say anything about it she mentioned being unable to swim. He remembered the day he'd asked Atreyu to teach him to swim, but it had been quite a while ago. In time, he'd learned and now he was pretty good at it, if he said so himself.

Without thinking, Charon offered: "I'll teach you to swim when you visit!" He grinned eagerly at Potema, hoping she'd say yes.

"Anyway, I should probably get back home now to see if my young siblings're okay." Charon didn't leave just yet; perhaps because he was really enjoying the company of another young wolf like himself, and would've stayed a bit longer if time would've let him.

Potema smirked at the thought of being taught by someone only a few months older. It would be a bit...surreal, when she thought about it. But she needed to learn, didn't she? Swimming might be a good skill to learn. "Sure thing!" She smiled, excited to learn.

"Alright, I guess you should go then." She was just as reluctant as him to leave, but it did sound like he had more important things to do besides talk to a girl he just met. Her mother would be missing her as well, especially with her recent injury. It was beginning to itch and throb a little, probably from her opening her eyes too wide. "I need to get back too." She sat up. "See you later then?"

Potema said she needed to go too, and Charon beamed a smile at her when she said she'd see him later. "Yup, see you around!" he said cheerily. Then the adolescent turned around and started on home in a brisk trot. He looked over his shoulder once as he trotted off, casting his new friend one last look.

Only once out of her sight, Charon quickened his pace and started to make his way home.

last post, feel free to archive this as is or post again :)