Dragoncrest Cliffs I finished up my studies and I practiced law

@Furi :3c

The adjustment back to life in Drageda is at once seamless and strangely difficult. He missed this place, his home, but Argent had been an easy mask to wear. Perhaps because it isn't so far removed from him, Argent being his brother. Perhaps he had stayed in Blackfeather too long and learned their worst secret: they are just wolves, no better or worse than any other. With a certain brutality to their way of life, sure, and Cicero's actions remain unexcusable. But they are not the faceless villains Étoille once pictured. 

He is not introspective enough to continue this line of thought, and with a heavy sigh he rises to his feet and makes his way across the territory, not searching for anything in particular. An aimless walk to clear his head, a reminder that he is back where he belongs. And if he keeps a nose out for a certain choupinou, well. He has missed this place and those in it.

It takes a few days to get back on her feet. She doesn’t spend her day obsessing over the war and what happened or didn’t happen. It still remains heavy on her mind most of the time but she can get through a few hours of trying to find something to eat in order to distract herself. Her stomach rumbles over, not having had a proper meal since the return, but she doesn’t want to pull from the cache if she does not have to. The few wolves that remained in their absent hadn’t been able to keep up with the number of wolves reaching in double digits but her luck has proven to come up short as something else gets away from her.
 
Eventually, she comes across a path that leads her to Étoille and she smiles, wags her tails a few times, and quickly closes the distance. She’d given him space since they’d reunited briefly after the war but hopefully he has rested too and she can get their proper greeting out of the way.
 
Furi does not wait for permission, feet nearly barreling her into his chest and breathing in his scent from the fur on his chest.

She appears quickly enough as if summoned from his thoughts, and a lingering knot of anxiety he hadn't realised he carried is loosened. He has not been gone that long and yet she seems so much more grown than last he remembers. For a moment he worries -- perhaps she will be turned off by the mess of his face --- but she barrels into him without pause and he stumbles slightly with an oof before laying his head against hers. "Bonjour," Étoille says softly, the French thick on his tongue after purposely avoiding it for so long, "choupinou. How have you been?"

It is easy to revert back to the little girl she remembers when she’d last seen him. It hadn’t been that long ago but so much has happened, making it feel like months on months have passed since they’d seen one another. None of it matters. He’s here and it makes her feel worlds better.

“I have missed you,” she answers, though it’s probably not what he’s looking for. She inhales a breath and closes her eyes, resting there a moment longer before she forces herself to separate from him. “I’m glad the war is over.” 

Really, there isn’t an easy way to tell him how she truly feels when she doesn’t know so much herself.

He can't help the small smile that finds its way to his mouth fleetingly. She is grown but she is still young. He wonders if this is what it feels like to have a daughter. Before Drageda Étoille had never contemplated having children, too content to drift in his aimless way. Now he still does not know if it is in the cards, but... if in the end, the closest he has is choupinou, it will not be so bad. 

"I missed you as well," the titan confirms, then admits, "there were children at Blackfeather. They made me think of you." Though they had been much younger and much more deformed than his chou. He presses his nose against her forehead briefly. "I'm glad to see you were unharmed," Étoille tells her, and means it.

He does not pull away from her prolonged contact, instead letting herself rest against him for as long as he’ll allow. Her tail swishes behind her a few times when his nose touches her forehead and she closes her eyes, thinking about their time apart of what he must have seen. She only assumed he saw the most brutal of things with how terrible those wolves are, even going as far as expecting him having to do things he doesn’t like, but to hear there were children? Her brows knit together in consideration, not sure what to make of this information. How can wolves so awful care for children? She licks her lips, shakes her head, and slowly pulls away to better see him.
 
“What were they like?” she asks, curious, but glances away. “I feel like I didn’t do anything,” she says through half-mumbled and disappointed words.

In an odd way, he feels similarly. He knows he has accomplished a great deal, successfully living amongst an enemy group for a significant period of time, but he does not feel as if he gleaned much in the way of actual information. He was not able to properly lead heda to victory and she suffered injuries as a result, even if the overall war was won. What had he done at Blackfeather? Fratenized with their children, learned a few tricks from the one who started it all. 

"They were... like us, or anyone else," Étoille says, feeling faintly chagrined. "For the most part. Aware of their reputation, certainly. I did not learn too deeply of their culture. They were tight-lipped to the end." It had been danced around, and had he stayed longer, he could have. Peraps that is for the best, though. There is a fine line between subterfuge and assimilation. "I am sure you did plenty, Furi," he adds gently. He does not know what was asked of her, but she had not been at the forest and for that he is grateful.

Furi doesn’t know what to do with the information that Blackfeather is like any other pack. Teaghlaigh (what she could remember) hadn’t been too much different than Drageda but it’s hard to remember these days as she gets older and finds herself more involved in these wolves than she ever had with her birth family. She misses them. It still hurts. But can she ever go back to them? One ear twitches and she brushes it off, still uncertain.
 
“Can you tell me some of the things you did to spy?” she asks, deciding against more questions about the wolves he was supposed to spy on. Maybe she won’t feel like nothing came of the war in regards to herself and even if she left without a scratch, she can learn for next time.

 Her question surprises him. Then again, he fell into spying sort of on a whim -- training for it would have definitely helped him. He didn't know Furi was interested in spying, but if she wants to be able to offer more for Drageda, who is he to decline? "All right," Étoille murmurs, "though I fear it wasn't very much."

The titan moves to walk, pausing to allow Furi to follow him. It seems easier to explain while moving, though if she doesn't wish to walk, he won't. "I adopted a false name -- Argent -- though I did not construct an elaborate backstory, as I did not have the time." Nor the ability to pull off a very detailed lie, but let's not mention that. He shrugs. "They had no reason to suspect me of being anything other than an outsider to their way of life." He glances at her, wondering if she thinks the same as him: a bit like being in Drageda, despite his affection for the place. Choupinou is, after all, the same as him in this regard.

Furi isn’t prepared for the information her friend gives her, making her realizing she’s already doing what he’s described. Furi is a cover of her real name, she’s covered up and avoided information about her backstory—Furi doesn’t really have one, aside from “not being able to remember”—and so she looks away with a tight jaw. Having overcome one obstacle of whether or not she belongs here, it’s about time for a second one. If she’s been nothing but lying this whole time, who are these wolves to her? Does she feel the way she thinks she does or is it all a cover? She inhales, holding a deep breath and nodding. “What do you think they would have done if they found out?” she asks nervously, torn between wanting to hear and not wanting to hear the answer.

He does not know Furi's turmoil. Their circumstances are so dissimilar it would not occur to him even if he did know that Furi adopted the name for herself. So he considers her question with a small hum, thinking on the wolves of Blackfeather. "Killed me," Étoille says mildly, "and flaunted my body before Drageda, most likely." He could have been a trophy for their corpse-lined borders, an image which strikes him as oddly intriguing. He puts the line of thought aside for now. 

Deep down, Furi knows the answer. She hears it in her mind before he speaks it and hearing it in his voice only confirms it, sending a pang of anxiety through her entire system. Her stomach threatens to spill the last thing she tasted but she looks away in consideration, trying to hide any expression to give away what she’s going through. How does Étoille do it? She feels so strongly of one emotion that it is hard to hold back when she wants to soar through it, no matter what it is. “I’m glad they didn’t,” she decides, nodding her head and trying to smooth out her features before she swings up to look at him.

He remains oblivious to her internal distress, his own interiority lacking. The secret to his success, dear choupinou, lies in his general absence of personality or character. Argent was easy to adopt because it required little effort on his part -- frankly, a little too easy. There had been moments where he'd thought he could live the rest of his life as Argent in the forest, had Drageda not come at all. It is ... disquieting, maybe. If he dwells on it.

So he doesn't.

"I as well," he rumbles in agreement, reaching to nudge her shoulder affectionately. "One of their members -- a rogue himself, I believe -- taught me some stealth. Would you like to see?" He still takes her questioning for innocent curiosity in the art of spying, and figures he can pass along the little he learned from Cicero as well.

He comments on what he did learn while there and her ears swiveled forward. If he suspects anything, he doesn’t make any notion, but what if he is offering to give her tips to help her? Her twitch and she nods. If it is his motive, it is because he cares, and if it is not, she will learn anyway to make it better for her in the long. “I’d like that,” she says and swishes her tail, swallowing the lingering anxiety as much as she can.

fade here?

 He smiles at her assent briefly, and then takes up position, recalling Cicero's example. "Walk lightly on your feet," Étoille explains, working to make his own foot-falls lighter, speedier -- sort of leading that they may walk together as he demonstrates. He has gotten better from his practice despite his natural disadvantages (big). "You have some darkness in your fur, which will help you blend with the shadows," he adds thoughtfully, indicating the contrast between his creamy white coat and hers. The redwood forest is not so shaded as Blackfeather but it provides some cover and so he passes the time with her pretending to sneak through the forest.