Phoenix Maplewood i'll wind up working in the thick of it

@Phoenix. Moved to AW so Maplewoofs can pop in!

she left bearclaw at a brisk walk, shouldering past its sentry without a single word uttered in explanation. she did not glance behind her once to ensure phoenix was following -- she assumed, given how intense he had seemed moments prior, that he would be hot on her heels.

once an appreciable distance had been placed between her and her homeland she slowed her pace, allowing phoenix to catch up if he needed to. they were still a ways from her birth-place -- it was no small journey, and she imagined he might have questions along the way. truthfully, indra had mixed feelings about returning to phoenix maplewood -- what if she remembered? what if she lost her composure and everything she had so painstakingly buried threatened to consume her existence? she swallowed back such choking thoughts and cleared her throat with a heavy, tension-riddled sigh.

talked to Indra's player via PM about entering the thread, edited because i can't read

less and less time did aditya spend on the plains with time, and he was starting to think a conversation with grayday was long past due. after months as one of morningside's top subordinates, and with his growing affection toward the maplewood, perhaps it was time to discuss with dawn the idea of starting a sister pack.

it would be a perfect set-up--close enough to morningside that the two bands could be allies, and they could turn toward each other in times of need. the families would not be separated by any great distance, and resources could be shared. dawn and aditya would need time to grow into leadership roles--she young, he inexperienced--but with grayday's tutelage and with the opportunity to take command, they would learn and improve.

thus, aditya had begun to mark the borders a little more aggressively than he had before, and stalked the edge of the woods now, thinking of the best time to approach his father-in-law about this matter.

The lengthy silence necessary for Indra was something of a torturous experience for Phoenix. He followed her lead with a sweeping stride, his head hanging glumly as he reflected on what bad timing this was. She was in such a bad mood. He wasn't sure how the news would be received; but battling his apprehension was his desire to be forthcoming. Knowing that he would want to know something like this, sooner rather than later, only made it more pressing that he do the right thing.

He found himself alongside her then, as she had slowed, and for one fleeting moment he forgot about his relationship with her and simply remembered what it was like to have another wolf padding at his side. His stomach turned foully, when her disgruntled sigh flung him from of his reverie. He swallowed thickly. "You don't have to talk about what that was all about, but... Indra," her name came out a little seriously, as if the word meant anything at all to him, and he stopped walking. "I need to tell you that I'm a Redleaf, too."

He grimaced and tsked, with a quick shake of his head. Don't cop out. "I mean, actually, I'm more like your brother. Saena's.. my mom... as well."

she could tell something was strangely off, just by the stifled energy that seemed to emanate from the male she hardly knew. occasionally she cast him wary glances from her peripherals, wholly unaware he was about to announce something that would shatter the thin ropes that tethered her world. he caught up to her and his tone suddenly became reflective, almost grim in their inflection -- indra slowed to a halt and looked upon his features with confusion. there was no mistaking the burden in his words, nor the careful way he had deliberately stressed her name -- i'm a redleaf too.

how? indra's jaws worked, but no sound met the air. her pinched expression had fallen in favor of shock. a redleaf -- him? she looked him down from bow to stem again; his youthfully sharp features, the pied russet behind his ears and on his tail.

unmistakable, yet she had overlooked it.

"what?" she half whispered, half cried, her voice hoarse and strangled. her mother, as his mother? how? warbone? someone else? she couldn't fathom it - maybe she didn't have the stomach for the constellation of relationships her parents had fostered. in many ways warbone had been the austere father figure she had always wanted -- and there was luke, also -- how many men had saena captured? who was at fault -- her mother, or her father? she felt her side list and she sat down suddenly, her brow furrowed in deep perplexity.

With the weight of the truth off his chest, Phoenix resumed some semblance of steadiness. He stood quite still and watched her almost dolefully as she absorbed the news of his parentage. "I mean, if you're who you say you are, then yeah, we're definitely related," the wolf shrugged, resolving bit-by-bit to a level temperance, even as his half-sister faced an emotional maelstrom. Indra fit the description as far as he was concerned, although he wondered now why neither Saena or Warbone had ever mentioned her lack of a tail— a detail that maybe would have made him certain of his find from the beginning. He didn't mention it. 

"We only share a mom, though," he expounded. "My father's name is Arkham. He knew you, when you were younger— maybe around my age— but said he never got the chance to meet Laurel."

where phoenix grew more assured in his convictions, indra faltered. her life had been defined by the fractured nature of her family; everything, fro jhala to reek to saena, had been carefully stockpiled, organized, and grossly exhumed over and over each time she had felt morose or defeated. and now this wolf -- this sudden extra addition -- caused indra's carefully constructed fort to topple.

he seemed so sure, so affirmed: indra eyed him somewhat resentfully, though what he said was not met with skepticism. he knew too much to be lying, and she knew neither saena nor reek were architects of great deception. sure, they were fractious -- and sure, they were infidels -- but they were not maligners.

"who the fuck is arkham?" she choked, her ears pulled back in confusion and anger that saena had found someone else after reek, and luke, and warbone. how many men were enough for her insatiable mother? and had she loved phoenix more than her firstborns? indra couldn't grapple with the ugly shade of jealousy that wrenched her. she didn't like it -- at all -- it wasn't her, to be this bitter. she didn't recall an arkham, so how could he have known her and not laurel?

Indra's palpable distress began to chip away at Phoenix's confidence. He held his ground in the face of her confusion, but his ears curved backwards and an expression of worry dampened his young face. "You don't know my father?" He looked like his pet had died. "Arkham Solothurn?" Did the surname help? What about his stupid, pompous home-bred title? He doubted it, so didn't offer his father's known moniker. "But you were at Duskvale, weren't you? They said you were... He was First male there, and our mom was First female," Phoenix threw out these details he knew in mild desperation, attempting to cling to their supposed connections with an ardor similar to that of a child commanding a very sticky lolly.

"Wasn't that Duskvale back there?" he tacked on excessively, motioning back towards the valley of Bearclaw. He only assumed this because he had found Indra there, and though he hadn't seen the valley himself, he thought it resembled the description of a "vale surrounded on all sides by mountains".

the name meant nothing to her, and she watched staunchly as phoenix metaphorically backpedaled. his confidence seemed to fray, sagging the way a tree might lean heavily under the immense weight of snow. indra's brow furrowed in confusion -- solothurn, arkham, nothing made sense -- until first mate.

her ears cupped forward and she looked upon him, seeing then what she had been oblivious to the entire time. "warbone..?" while it was not far-fetched that the two wolves had coupled, suggesting it felt ribald on her tongue and she regretted immediately the utterance of her 'step-father's' name. "... seriously?" was it true?

she supposed it had to be, and a long sigh pressed from her constricted throat. "that wasn't duskvale. i.. i don't.." indra felt her strength leave her in light of such burdensome information. she had a brother. no. she only had one brother, and that was milo. she wrestled over and over and over, trying to reconcile her memories with the cold reality that accosted her right in the face. "do you have siblings?" she tried to hide the sense of abandonment that fringed her voice, and attempted to cloak it by turning the conversation back on him.

Warbone? Phoenix was both relieved and repelled by the mention of his father's banner. He swallowed his aversion, and responded to Indra's dubiousness with a stiff nod and an affirming snort. She seemed to buckle further in her astounded seat, and he felt at a loss for how to assuage her. He supposed this was (currently) turning out better than he had anticipated, but an intense guilt loomed closer. The lonely deserter began to wonder if he had made the right choice...

When she didn't try to finish what she was saying before, Phoenix found himself agonizing. The last thing he wanted to talk about was the tumultuous home he'd abandoned. "I have a sister," he admitted quietly. "She—" Phoenix took a deep breath, and let it out in a surly huff—"Her name's Willow. She chose to stay behind." He was much worse than Indra when it came to hiding feelings. His tone dribbled with salt and contrition; telling a much deeper story than his cliffsnotes version. Most obviously, he resented his sister—the choices she'd made in the heat of the moment—and yet a careful ear could tell that he clearly missed her; that between her betrayal and her absence, he was more deeply hurt by the latter.

He remembered his feet, checking and shifting them numbly before returning his burnished gaze to her. "I'm.. sorry for blindsiding you. Being lonely's made me selfish," Phoenix admitted freely. He had already made the mistake of not being honest with himself until it was too late, and he wasn't keen on repeating these kind of emotional mistakes over and over again. "This is something I wanted. I even justified it by imagining myself in your position. I thought I'd wanna know if I were you... but I'm not you. I didn't think about how you actually might feel about all this." He swallowed thickly, having turned his eyes away in shame, waiting for her to rebuke him.

indra felt  a familiar pain sink her stomach as she heard phoenix reveal the nature of his departure: it was in clipped, few words -- but it was enough that she realized the betrayal he felt. for a moment she thought what might have been if it had been her and laurel instead -- no, she could not think it.

she dared not think it.

he studied his feet as she recollected her wits with cumbersome care. it was true, she had been blindsided -- her world had been toppled and her memory of her mother now questioned. indra sucked in a shaky breath not unlike phoenix's. "you're not the one to blame." she offered, her voice dull in the manner a child's would be after admitting fault. "we'd want to know. i'm.. glad i know." her amber gaze raked from his legs to somewhere ambiguously on the burnished frill of his ears. "so.. now what?"

Phoenix grimly accepted her reassurance with a wan and rueful smile. He wouldn't bring it up again, nor would he would he linger on it, but he had the sense still to seem contrite about it; due in part to his irrational amount of guilt on the matter. The yearling only returned his gaze to the firebrand when she hung a single question in the air like a welcome sign. He looked to her openly, as if he might find his answer there on her face, but he did not defer to her verbally. This was an opportunity to steer their path, and offer a clever suggestion on how to move forward.

Cleverness was beyond him, however, so Phoenix opted for the simple, as he always would. "Wanna run it out?" He offered the phrase casually, as if she'd know it, but he realized without prompting that this wasn't the sister he'd grown up with. "I mean, a good run always helps me get a clear head... if you're interested." As an afterthought he considered it might be polite to offer her his absence instead, but he preferred not to give her the way out if he could help it.

wanna run it out?

indra's ears seemed to fall as she worked out the proposition -- having not took it to mean it's literal implication until phoenix expanded; and then, it made sense. indra had never shied from physical exertion, and with a tuck of her jaw she closed her mouth and nodded, looking towards their eventual destination with new resolve. a run would clear things -- they'd arrive sooner, and perhaps they also would arrive in the hearth of the maplewood with their minds and conscience clear, the way final destinations in runs so often did.

"it's a while yet, but let's go." she said -- and without any further hesitation, the redleaf wolf slipped into an efficiently striding canter.

For a beat, slow and admiring, Phoenix watched Indra go. A hopeful glow of warmth spread like adrenaline through his veins, and the wolf surged after his kin so that he might take up an easy gallop at her slender hip. They went on like this for a while; Phoenix wasn't sure for how long, but he appreciated the physical strain and breathy quiet all the same. Soon he forgot the cold, his past, his hunger grievances, and emotional uncertainties, and he descended more and more into his natural state as the miles fell behind them. 

At some point, he thought he might liven their jaunt; so with a frolicking bound past the lithe Redleaf, he tossed her a challenging grin as he continued to stag-leap ahead.

alongside phoenix, her world narrowed -- running caused the world to slip away until all that was in focus was the raggedness of her breath, and the path that unwound perpetually ahead. trees, leaves, forests -- all passed by in a blur with no sound save for her and phoenix's footsteps.

as the male slipped ahead indra slowed for a moment, unsure -- until she caught the impishness of his grin and the clear pronking of his gait. spurred by playful competitiveness she lengthened into a sprint behind him, doggedly falling in-step behind his hocks with a flurry of nips given in frolicking pursuit.

Later, Phoenix would reflect on how glad he had been in this moment. To be a loner and find this feeling of camaraderie was rare. He'd half expected to go without rejoin, but Indra seemed as partial to the labor of his game as he was. She dodged behind him, and in the absence of red fur in his sights, he felt white teeth on his heels, tugging sportively at his tail-strands.

A growl of a laugh bubbled up his throat, and the banded maverick stretched into a racer's run. He could never outpace the fleet vixen, but his goal became suddenly clear when they had come suddenly upon the low banks of a fogged-over lake. He charged eagerly into the shallows -- a welcome shock of cold taking the burn from his muscles -- as he turned expectantly to face his pursuer. He hoped the water would assail her on his behalf, but he was prepared regardless to meet her playfully with a jawspar.

as she harried him, a blur of red after a wisp brusque agouti, she realized they were getting close -- though anything she thought to say was swiftly discarded as the male staggered down an embankment and into rippling water. he twirled around and laps of liquid frothed behind him -- with a playful growl indra surged in after him, the brace of coldwater taking her by surprise.

her pause was enough that it could be easily taken advantage of -- she rose to meet him in a jawspar, water whipping behind her as she rocked back on her hocks and pressed her front limbs forward to repel him.

Anticipating her stutter, Phoenix was upon the firebird in an instant, capitalizing on her brief weakness with the speed and dexterity of a wolf trained to do so. He dashed the space between them in a quick charge, the water parting for his momentum as if he were Moses' staff, and he stopped short to make a grab for her muzzle as she reared to meet him in kind.

Indra's robustness surprised and delighted the young Redleaf-Solothurn. He had not been raised gently—even in play he would not do so lightly—and to a softer wolf he might have seemed a bit rough and overzealous. But the time spent surviving alone, whether she realized it or not, had hardened her wiry build for such skirmishes, and she made for a good opponent, even to the battle-taught Phoenix.

Besides brute strength, he had no real advantage over his sister's foxish teeth. He decided that simply bowling her over wouldn't be any fun, so he tried instead to find a way around her defenses; but she was quick to meet each of his advances with all manner of feet and muzzle to deflect him. He whined and groaned about their back-and-forth, sounding like a cheerfully frustrated puppy while he pawed and gnawed at her attacks, and at some point, he made to fall on his side and fight her from the ground. Except the ground was water—very cold lakewater—and upon splashdown, he was jolted by the dunk and leaped up, running pell-mell for the steeped bank.

heck stop being so cute phoenix

that momentary lapse was enough for phoenix to sunder her -- indra knew it. she tried to rally, but he was already upon her, only stopping short of her muzzle. she issued a low growl, head held stiffly -- and then they parried and thrust with a refreshing relish indra had not felt for some time.

it was good for the redleaf to engage in such physical activity - she had no outlet for her frustrations otherwise, and found herself unwittingly driving it into each combative maneuver. in every way, phoenix could easily best her -- but she admired his tenacity, his quick thinking -- that was, until he decided to take an icy dip below water.

with a snicker she was hot upon him, harrying his hocks with quick nips meant to drive him forward. at any point he could turn around, and she tried to prepare herself for that -- but at present, she was lost in the purity of play, and had very little circumspect defensiveness about her.

Sopping and chased, Phoenix sprinted up the gelid bank, forging large divots in the earth as he scrambled away. He could feel Indra upon him, but this seemed to be a less pressing issue than the intense cold blazing like wildfire across one side of his body. He threw himself down again, intending to drag his side across the dirt in attempt to rid himself some of the excess water, but again he had forgotten something...

His sister, running recklessly in their riot, crashed into his backside unceremoniously. The two of them toppled over one another in a tangle of wet limbs and giggles, the two of them tussling about until Phoenix had miraculously landed the upperpaw, pinning Indra briefly by her shoulder with the heavy drape of his sodden arm. "Yield, you devil!" he laughed, nosing at her ruff and nibbling back aggressively as he tried to mock-dominate her. "Yield, I say!"

Hope you don't mind the mild pp!

all good!

indra was so caught up in the pursuit, she hardly had time to disengage as the male flung himself into the ground. they wrestled for a moment, two sparring bodies of russet and grey -- until phoenix managed a heavy limb across her shoulder and pinned her into the dirt. with a growl and a snap she tried to nip along his outstretched arm, though the manner in which he had her held prohibited any force (not that she was trying to hurt him anyway) in her counters.

"never." the redleaf growled in rejoinder, taking a moment to look deep into the copper of his gaze -- and then, with an attempt at a lunge (that could be easily curtailed, given her present position), vied for his grinning muzzle with outstretched jaws.

Never.

Their eyes met—only for a moment—and between them the flare of a real challenge was blinked into existence. Phoenix rebelled out of reflex, knowing that he had the advantage, and executed a parry with a flash of his teeth. Though he could now open her up further for his retaliation, the fire-banded wolf realized that his natural drive to dominate did not extend to her in this moment. He did not want to make a show of force here, nor did he feel the need to prove he could thwart her. This win didn't belong to him.

He relinquished his foothold on Indra's shoulder, letting her come at him with all of her given might. He gave a valiant struggle, unwilling to go peacefully or gently, but in the end of things—the two of them panting and dirt-smeared—it was the russet naiad who had put him on his back.

heck you are too nice

she hadn't expected their tousle to turn out the way it had -- he was scrappy, and diligent -- he parried her maneuvers with a practiced, almost subdued strength. indra was not stupid -- she knew in a true battle of strength, whose dominion would come. not hers.

all the same she admired the tempered grace of each snarling rebuff, each carefully placed shoulder -- when she found him nearly underneath her she sprung back, a wide grin on her muzzle. she was about to wait for him to rise and then snake after him with hurried nips, only something instinctively told her to cease fire. a smell.

at first she hardly noticed it, so intermittent the scent was -- but as she looked around them she realized they were on the cusps of the giant, red-dappled maplewood.

her gaze slid to phoenix in silent apprehension, and she sucked in a deep breath. "well, this is it." she said, still troubled by the occasional scent the breeze scantily offered. she wondered what he would think of it -- would he be disappointed to see the trees, stripped bare of their brilliant majesty? or would he recognize the promise nestled among the bark, secluded in the rich loam -- a hidden bosk on the tip of bloom after a desolate and trying winter?

Preparing to take flight from the devil at his heels, he was reined in by her pause, and he turned to face her with a questioning tilt of his terrier skull. He followed her gaze, pitching his ears forward and inhaling sharply so that he might find what had disturbed her. They were alone, as far as he knew...

But it wasn't that. His vision changed suddenly to encompass the woods as a whole. He stopped trying to see around the trunks and boughs obscuring the field, looking at them instead. Now Phoenix could find something to love about even the most pitiful of forests out there, but he was genuinely glad he had been named for this one. It was proud, even in its bareness, with roots deeper than the lakes, and faces older than he could fathom. How many generations of wolves had come through here? How many different wolves had seen this beauty, this promise, and thought to keep it for their own?

What had happened to them?

"Damn," he sighed. "I bet it's even better in bloom." His club-tail wagged heavily, and he looked like a dog that was about to be given his favorite treat. "Well, come on then. Gotta be some good digs around here!" the wolf asserted, charging deeper into the woods with all the reckless abandon his age and inexperience allowed.

Sorry for the horrendous wait! And because I really need to press the reset button right now, I'd like to make this my last post. Lauren, you can wrap up in your next post, if you don't want to outright fade/archive it now, and we can "assume" @Aditya eventually came to chase them out or some such. Part on friendly terms, happily ever after, yada yada <3

emily - hope this PP is okay to conclude - van, no problem - i desperately need to reset too so i get it <3

indra let loose a held breath as phoenix took it in -- no sign of scorn or disappointment on his features. she was relieved, but that relief was tenderly shortlived as he plunged into the forest. she called for him to wait after her, but he was already gone -- and as she pressed deeper, it became more evident that they were not in no-man's land at all --

no, this land was somebody's land.

and that somebody came, and caught the two of them frolicking like adolescent goat-kids -- indra was sheepish as that somebody's presence explained their wrongdoing, and quickly nipped at phoenix's hip and ran quickly out of dodge -- but not before throwing a loud apology to the wind for the poor soul that had come to inform them of their (stupidity) oversight.