Jade Fern Grove If only I had strength to change your mind

@Nanook forward dated to the 18th

The sun was high in the sky and Sia found himself once again watching over his resting family. Everyone was tired, even the pups were wavering their age and lack of stamina showing through. The brute hoped that the journey was almost over, this entire ordeal was overwhelming for the overprotective man. The constant worry was wearing down his mental stamina, preventing him from sleeping or relaxing. Once more he let Takiyok know he was going on patrol before heading out, to antsy to stay still. 

The grove was dark even with the sun beating down on it, every few steps the orb of fire's tendrals would reach the ground but it was rare. Siarut found the heat to be significantly less in amongst the canopy above. The land that his sister had wandered into was full of these dense forest, he was somewhat curious to see what other types of terrain was in the Teekon Wilds. Refocusing on his task, he took a moment to head to a stream for a sip of water. The bubbling creek was small, but held strangely frigid liquid.

Thanks for starting! <3

She had forgotten the warmth of the south. Even in the summer, a particular chill reigned over the northern parts of the world, a coolness she had grown accustomed to. To be back in a land where the sun radiated with the full brunt of its heat... she couldn't help but feel a shiver of pining for the ice fields, where overheating was one less thing to worry about.

But her restless feet had led her here. For what purpose, she didn't probe. She had once been moved by fear, but now her journeys ebbed with a different drive. Nanook ran with the curiosity to learn and discover, to establish. The heightened stress of her youth had finally petered to a calm and, dare she say, excited outlook on what the future held in store for her. Both Desna and the Northerners had taught her the importance of seeking out an giving to lives beyond herself, and maybe, maybe that was what her paws itched to do now.

For the moment she focused on escaping the afternoon sun (another reason she generally travelled at night). Nanook slipped beneath the cover of trees and relished the relief of their shade. The mist of the river cooled her with a chill that made her wonder if the water rushed from some mountain run-off, but her brief investigation cut short when a dissonance of colour pieced between the lower lying leaves. Nanook stopped and ducked her head, flaring for a scent - and soon found her limber legs clipping the underbrush to carry herself toward him. The faintest smile curled her lips curled, but she kept her distance when she tested for recognition - a single call of the moniker she hoped belonged to him. "Ice Bear?"

His snout dripped with water that helped to cool him before he would continue on his patrol, he was just moments away from leaving the cool waters edge when a name called out to him. There was only one who had permission to call him such, but she had vanished many moons ago. Sia turned toward the sound with curiosity gleaming in his gaze. "Nanook?" He caught sight of the pale, grey woman and he smiled upon seeing her. 

"You have returned already? Summer is not yet half over." He had thought of the woman a few times, since her departure, she had been interesting to converse with. Siarut had assumed that she would never return, but instead would find a place to call home in the north, as he heart seemed much more northern than any born here in the south.

He returned the recognition, and a gentle warmth enveloped her chest. Nanook covered the final distance to reach him, her smile having grown a fragment further to touch her eyes in full. "I go where my paws will take me." It might have been wiser to stay in the ice fields, but she'd felt the itch to return here, if even briefly. And with this surprise, enduring the scorch of the sun suddenly didn't seem so bad.

"I'd say I'm surprised to find you this far North - but right now, and with you, I'd say that's the lesser surprise." There was a levity to her voice, and a question - she wished to ask what had led him here to the other side of the great barrier mountains - but she recalled how guarded he had been with her at first, so she simply left her statement open. Nanook reclined to her haunches, comfortable in his presence.

She was a free spirit, and it was one of the things that he found most intriguing about the woman. He too was once a free spirit, when his family was under the protection of his father rather than himself, when he was carefree enough to travel where he wished. Even now he was known to travel far from their base, farther than most pack wolves might. 

"It might be a surprise if I travelled on my own." He too sat, glad to be in friendly company. "My family and I are relocating, we are headed for a climate more fitting to our heavy coats." Siarut had no qualms telling her they were leaving, he was more reserved about the name of the territory itself. The ice bear was worried of her connection to Kove, they shared the name Apaata and Sia had a feeling her northern father was none other than their previous leader. The father of his niece and nephews.

"What do you plan now that you have arrived back in the Wilds?" Sia had no wish to contain her wild spirit, but he had an incling to offer Nanook a place in the pack his family was creating. If only for the opportunity to know her more.

She remembered why Siarut had come to the south - to find his family, having surrendered the familiarity of the north to venture to these new and untested lands for them. And that was something she admired. The Ice Bear had sacrificed what he had known to bind his family with safety and strength - and she wondered how Kove, whose blood had also run with the purity of the north, had let their own family splinter. Yet maybe, the strength of a family had nothing to do with blood.

Siarut himself was Northbound, then - she gathered that much, though he didn't say where. She herself was nowhere-bound, and she had no reason to hide that from him. "For once I haven't thought that far," she said with a sheepish crook to her smile. "Visit my siblings, maybe. See what new life spring has brought them both." She wondered how big her sister's children would be, and if Xan had finally settled down to have kids of his own. The thought of her awkward brother somehow being a mate and a father glinted her eyes with a humoured look. "But after that..." and she shrugged with a look of who knows? though his words had stirred a thought in her, and she caught herself toying at the grass.

"Maybe to the North again." She paused. "Maybe somewhere closer." Dancing around the answer she wanted to give. "I might like to meet your sisters." She risked that much - close enough to where are you going? and she settled there.

Visiting family was important, Siarut was only glad that he didn't have to travel far to see his siblings. They were usually only a few steps away, close enough to always be of comfort. He missed his two missing siblings that still lingered in the north, and although he would never admit it he still miss his parents despite everything that had transpired between all of them. Her smile made him happy, and help to lower his guard even further. "Family is important." He mused, as she continued to explain.

"I'm sure my sisters would welcome you." He thought for a moment, turning his gaze from her, "Especially if you decided to join us. You are not meant for the heat of the south." Siarut was positive of his statement, she deserved to live in the snow of the glacier, but he was still hesitant to reveal their final destination without asking of her father. "Will you not visit your father as well?" He remembered she spoke of the death of her mother, but not of her father. "You never know, you might have family closer than you think." The Apaata name was forever mingled with that of Ateneq, the pups only minutes away proof that two clans were now inseperable.

His invitation rushed her with a strange sort of tingle - it was one thing that the question had been on her mind, another that he had asked her without the prompt from her first. Yet the look he gave her - or rather, stole away from her - pricked along the edge of her nerves and she shifted her weight.

Her want to say yes faltered at his question. "My father?" she hadn't expected that, nor did she notice her tongue slip. Had she ever mentioned her father to Siarut? Other than that he hailed from the North, she couldn't remember, and truly didn't have much to say of him apart from that. "No. I haven't seen him since last summer. I don't know where he is. I grew up without him." For some reason, the acknowledgement made her throat catch, and she swallowed the emotion with a swift and practised ease. They'd exchanged their forgiveness in the forest when the heat of August soaked through the shadows of the land, but that encounter hadn't been planned.

She loved her father, but he was an enigma, and that was what he would always be to her. A memory - but Siarut's words confused her. "I don't understand. Is he here with you?" He brow remained furrowed and she, unconvinced. The ice bear dangled something before her. She just couldn't comprehend what.

Her slip of tongue persuaded Sia to think she had been surprised by his questions, surely it had seemingly been from no where. However with his family so close Siarut could not let Nanook hold her secrets to close to heart. If he could have let her, he would have. Alas he could not. "I may have jumped to conclusions, but your name Apaata is the same that my neice and nephew hold. Is it safe to assume that you are in some way related to Kove Apaata?" He assumed a paternal relation, however it could be something else, perhaps an uncle or cousin. The fact remained the had to be related in some fashion, and Siarut had no intention of revealing their permenant location to the man just yet. 

He seemed it was only fair to explain why he had asked such a question and so continued, "My sister settled in Blackfeather Woods, which is where we have been for a few months. She has given him three children, and now we have decided to leave." Siarut dearly wished Nanook would come with them, but didn't want her to feel conflicted, having to choose between loyalty to her father or committing to the Glacier. "He does not know where we are going." And I would like to keep it that way. He kept this thought to himself, but Nanook was perceptive and could probably understand his dilema.

His niece and nephew? Their father was... Kove? The silence that had long been characteristic of her seemed to grab her tongue again, and she could only press out a strained and simple, "Yes," for she was related to Kove in the same way these new children were - and what did that mean for them? What did that mean for her?

And what did this mean now - that Blackfeather Woods - those heathens and child-killers - her father - that he was one of them? Or so Siarut led her to believe. And what she saw reflected here - Siarut and his sister leaving, towing the children in line. Her chest clutched with the pain of being torn in two - this was all too familiar - and her front legs quivered with the strain of holding down the emotion that suddenly overwhelmed her. She had always blamed herself for her family's separation, until she had blamed no one at all, as much as Kove had tried to shift her blame on him. She had never had a reason to -

And he was one of them. And now, his wife had left him just as Scarlett had left him before. He had always been kind to Nanook -

But she finally found her voice. "My mother left him too," she said and turned her gaze away. His children would again run fatherless, for no fault of their own - and for the first time, she considered that maybe her mother had been right. Maybe there was a reason she had left him, a very good one. For what did Nanook know about her father? The thought unsettled her, and made her want to protest no, no, no - but truly, she knew nothing apart from the ghost of his memory. And if Xan, a good man, had left him too... "Blackfeather Woods killed a child from Easthollow," she swallowed hard. Had Siarut been involved with that? But he was leaving now - perhaps for this - and when she returned her gaze, her eyes steeled with hurt and sorrow and the strength of her conviction. "Any wolf of Blackfeather is no kin of mine. He won't know where we have gone. Not by me."

She seemingly had to force the connection from her jaws, and that seemed to be a good sign. Struggling with a relation meant a limited connection. Siarut felt bad for pulling at her memories so invasively, but found he could not apologize for trying to protect his family. The ice bear was oblivious to the kind of pack they had been apart of and surprise came in full swing at the knowledge Blackfeather had killed a child. He had no notion of Easthollow or what that meant to Nanook however he assumed it was a pack that she knew well. He also understood Ceara's reaction a bit more, learning that Blackfeather was perhaps not the friendliest pack to come across. He was glad they had fled when they did, before getting sucked into the darkness that surrounded the Woods. 

She continued and spoke with such conviction that Siarut's trust increased, and he found he could once again relax in the woman's company. "Thank you." He gave a sigh of relief and looked at the woman fondly, "That gives me great comfort. To know that my family is safe. While they are not my own, I feel as though it is only right for me to protect and care for them as if they were." He had never outright said such things before, not even to Shivali, yet he knew in his bones that he would treat these pups as he would one day treat his own children. "We are headed for Duskfire Glacier, a land of ice and snow. A place for real northerners." He hadn't received a yes or a no if she would join them, but mentioning their final destination was a way for him to gauge her response. Did she want to live the northern life with them? The decision was up to her.

She couldn't shake the quiver in her forelegs, even as she watched Siarut relax - and yet she found comfort in the look he gave her, and even more in the words he spoke. She had grown up without a father - but Easthollow had filled that void for Steph, Ezra, and Clary, and from the sound of his conviction, Siarut would fill that void for her newest brothers and sisters. They would grow up better than she. They would run with family, and live with the strength and the honour of the North.

And as Nanurjuk had taught her, there was reason to the world, why paws fell in line with certain paths and never crossed countless others. She knew what these children would face; she had lived through it once herself. She had helped Valette care for her brood when Ezekiel had stepped away. Her challenges were reflected in what this family faced now, and she had returned with the vaguest notion she might find something here to live for beyond herself. Maybe for this reason, she had been drawn here now. Nanook tipped her head.

"Your home is my home. Your kin is my kin." And she would leave behind the rest - her father, at least - for her brothers and sisters. For this family. For him. "Let me come."

His heart beat loudly in his chest as the silence grew and her mind whirled, Sia was sure the woman could hear the pounding loud and strong. Her answered was everything he had been waiting for, and a bright smile came through to show it. "Welcome to the journey Nanook." The ice bear was giddy with excitement. He could feel it finally coming together, with the wolves he had recruited and the wolves waiting at the glacier they had a strong pack in the making. He was proud of everything that had happened so far, and now they only needed to reach the Glacier and claim it for themselves.

"Would you like to meet your newest siblings?" With the flick of his head he indicated the direction headed back toward the group. He knew Nanook would fit in well with his own siblings, and he couldn't wait for her to meet them. "This way." He started walking in the direction they needed to go.

should we wrap up? and we can start another thread with introductions?