Jade Fern Grove a lion born of things you cannot be

The coverage that the morning's clouds offered brought with it a relief upon Jorunn's monochromacy though he was so used to now that the impairment of day did not bother him as badly as it once had. He still couldn't see as well as someone that could see in colors but it was apart of him and he had adapted to it because he had no other choice. He liked nighttime the best because it was the time in which he could see without having to squint several times until he was able to discern gray-scale shapes that eventually would come to form faces or objects. Night was when Scimitar and Bazi's family slept, however, and he didn't relish in the idea of sneaking out — as he once would have done without a bat of an eyelash in hesitation previously. He didn't want Bazi to give him to the bear. The thought of coming face to face with another bear was enough to send Jorunn into a flashback that he didn't want to relive. It was bad enough he dreamed about it — and his dreams were vivid; the only thing that he could see what he didn't know to be colors in (or some faint semblance of them anyway). There was always one wolf that frequented it: tall, large, burly, silver like him but he was missing an eye and was horrendously scarred on the side of his head. The empty eye socket burned an eternal flame. He called himself Valthognir the “slain reciever”. He didn't talk much but Jorunn got the deep impression that he was important, nevertheless. There were others, too, but it was this Valthognir that frequented Jorunn's dreams the most.

He blinked slowly, glimpsing left and right as if he were momentarily disoriented though he was a tiny bit confused as to why he'd ceased his (careful) exploration of Jade Fern Grove. So caught up in his thoughts he must have subconsciously stopped walking as to avoid slamming into a tree. His brow furrowed for a few moments before he continued forth, shrugging past ferns and expertly sliding around the trunk of one of the thin, tall trees that inhabited this place. The crickets didn't seem to ever cease their song, but Jorunn didn't mind it. It wasn't the lulling roar of the ocean in the distance — a lullaby he would likely never hear again — but it served the purpose, nevertheless. Jorunn was an expert at adapting to abrupt and hard changes at this point and adapting lullaby-akin sounds was easier then anything else, by and far.

"Running away?"

A low, calm voice interrupted Jorunn's thoughts. The most formative moments of their relationship so far had happened at night, and when the boy disappeared into the night to explore, Bazi had followed. She stood behind him now, ghostly night in the dim light, eyeing him with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity.

She couldn't explain why she was messing with him. It was cruel, and pointless - what good would it do the pack when he grew up and realized that his adopted mother had stoked the fire of his worst fears? Bazi solved the problem by not thinking about it too much. She was seeding future drama, like an unusually forward-thinking crack addict.

Bazi's cold eyes scanned fell on the trees that surrounded them. "Have you see it yet?" The bear, of course.

Jorunn's steps paused, ceasing automatically and instinctively his ears slunk down when he heard his adopted mother call out to him, inquiring if he was running away. “No,” Jorunn responded to Bazi. He had no reason, and frankly, no motivation to lie to her. He hasn't been running away. “I'm just exploring.” There was no sense in not exploring their new home. Knowing it's layout in full, now that he was older and growing bigger by the day would help him in becoming one of it's wardens. Beyond knowing in the marrow of his bones that he was meant to be a warrior and warden he was still left with a blank space when he tried to think about what trade he wanted to be his tertiary; though he figured knowing two of three was a good step in the right direction and it would give him time to focus upon and earn them, first. “I want to be a warden and warrior,” He declared, having withheld these ambitions to his adoptive family for quite some time. “Learning the land, knowing it's secrets that would help.” Because while Jorunn was the kind of man that would fight like a demon unafraid of death on the battlefield — they would know he was coming — he was not above deception, admittedly. If he knew the layout of the land like the back of his paw it would give him numerous tactical advantages ...or at least so he thought. 

She inquired about “it”, asking Jorunn if he'd seen it yet. Despite her vagueness there was no need to be specific — Jorunn was intelligent and grasped at what she was subtly hinting at. It was their secret, he guessed. The bear. In some ways, knowing that it was out there, that Bazi shared the information with him made the Lodbrok feel important but at the same time it scared him. Especially knowing that if he didn't do what she and Scimitar asked she would throw him to the Bear. That their protection was all that stood between it and him. A shiver rippled down the length of Jorunn's spine as he thought about it. “No,” He breathed, voice barely more than a whisper, in case anyone else was listening in. “Not yet.” But as innocent and naive as any child was, he did not question her or the fact that it could have very well followed them.

The lie was holding up to scrutiny. Based on how articulate Jorunn was now, how fast he was growing, Bazi doubted it would be long before the whole thing came crashing down. A wave of worry washed over her. One day, he would realize that she had lied - and what then? Would he leave? Or seek retribution? What would her husband say? The thought scared her as much as it thrilled her.

"I was a warden," she shared, accepting his reports about their bear stalker with a sage nod, "Am a warden. You can join me on my rounds."

For such a large creature, Morran was surprisingly good at hiding. When it became clear that the wolves were here to stay, she did just that.

Certain scents were impossible to mask, of course. The one with the unsightly white fur had happened upon a patch of cooling piss - it was too late to take back the evidence, and she could only hope that the pack wasn't stupid enough to go running after a fully grown bear. For all they knew, she could have cubs - and everyone know that mother bears had superpowers.

She had hoped they would just leave. The tornado had robbed Morran of two children, and even though she had not been the warmest of mothers, the loss had pushed her to the very edge of sound mind. The swarm of intruding pests did little to help bring her back from that state.

The unmistakable sound of wolves roused her. Twice now, the pack's exploration of 'their' new territory had forced Morran to move, pushing her further and further north. Soon, she would run out of forest.

With a dampened growl, the great bear lumbered slowly out of sight.

One-off post.. :) Feel free to have Jorunn spot her.

For reasons that weren't entirely certain to Jorunn it did not surprise him that Bazi had been — no, was — he corrected himself mentally soon after she'd corrected herself a Warden. Surely one so knowledgeable on the going-on's (namely with bears) of her pack could be anything less than a vigilant warden. “Really?” Jorunn's interest was instantly piqued when Bazi offered for him to join her upon her rounds, ears perking atop his skull as physical evidence to his interest. “Lets go!” An over-eagerness had gripped the Lothbrok boy, swept away in the moment and the offer that he could actually join Bazi on her rounds that he forgot for a moment all about the bear. That forgetfulness sunk rapidly into a dark abyss as Jorunn turned eager eyes to the path that he assumed was the Glen's borders only to catch a large shadow, lumbering — not unlike the bear in Stavanger Bay — move in the distance. It's movements struck him with a sickening and icy blow, as intensely familiar but it'd been a shadow against more shades of gray and he couldn't be entirely certain that he'd actually seen it. 

It was this uncertainty that kept Jorunn quiet on it. What if he told her he thought he saw the bear and she went and checked and it ended up being a deer or something? Although Jorunn thought with a small measure of sarcasm and chagrin that there was no mistaking the movements of a deer for a bear, let alone a shadow. Still, it'd been only a brief glimpse and he was hopeful to the fact that he'd imagined it; though doubt weighted heavily upon the vain hope.

The offer seemed to excite him, and it quelled any feelings of regret Bazi might have had about leading him astray. She offered the child a firm nod. For all she knew, there were still bears in the woods; the alpha pair had tracked a relatively fresh trail only days prior. A thorough search of the area had revealed nothing - no den, no tracks, no droppings.

Whatever Jorunn saw, Bazi missed completely. She let him lead the way, and was focusing her frown on the uneven path beneath their paws when Morran lumbered into and out of sight in the same split second, melting into the trees like the shifting light. But the pup doubted himself, and without a second pair of eyes to corroborate his story, no alarm was raised. In the next instant, Bazi was distracting his mind with questions as the pair strode swiftly in the direction of the forest's border. "What do you do if you spot someone close to the edge of the forest?" she asked, keen to find out if he was the 'meet and greet' sort. Neither Bazi nor Scimitar was particularly well-suited to that kind of interaction, lacking the natural charm required to entice new joiners.