Hideaway Strath he walks the field at night

as he had every time he's left a pack previously, always disappearing without a word he of many names and masks picks a new one from his growing collection. he collects them like dragons collect gold and thinks for how stagnant he'd allowed his life to become during his stay in moonspear that settling down isn't for him. this time, however, he spent time in the vast beyond outside of teekon wilds. not long. the draw to the teekon wilds is like trying to fight a riptide to the wanna-be warlord. he can resist, he can stay afloat but he won't win; evidenced by the moment as he makes his way through the abandoned hideaway strath. dream lotte had been right, of course. any signs of teaghlaigh's existence here was long gone. it's a ghost town which is fine, wintersbane tells himself. hopefully, it means he can restore his strength from his journey in uninterrupted peace. he's tired and travel weary and makes the mental note that this territory is both bizarrely familiar and foreign to him all at once. he doesn't remember it well enough to navigate with confidence: the last time he stepped foot here had been as a cub, after all. it felt like so long ago. lifetimes.

his steps slow as he recognizes the white flowers that grow in small bunches all over a settled spot at the strath's heart and his throat constricts. hemlock. he doesn't know for sure but he suspect he's found his mother's grave. he's not one to put much stock in dreams or anything outside of what he deems as "real" but there's a deep ache in his bones as he stares at the ground and cannot help but think the placement of hemlock is too precise to have occurred naturally. he stares at it before his attention shifts, glacial gaze searching the landscape around him. he has to think of food, water and shelter if he plans to linger here to recoup from the journey for any measure of time; but he lingers at lotte's grave for a few minutes longer.

since abandoning her homestead, our father's omen had taken up shelter beneath the broad and teeming boughs that flushed the strath in blessed shadow. it was a good place to avoid a bulk of the  oppressing summer rays, and with a pelt as dark as hers she was smart to remain hidden. and yet, as wise as it would be to remain outstretched beneath the protective brambles in a swathe of brushwood, the eerie silence that precedes the appearance of another predator lured her from comfort.

she followed the signs until she was met with the sight of a husky teenager conformed to battle. she drew her red eyes across his taut, stilted frame, and she watched him loom pensively over an anomalous patch of small white flowers. omen knew a grave when she saw one.

she kept her distance, but came within the corner of the young male's view. then softly, with the tenderness of familiarity, she asked him: "how long has it been -- since they've been lost to you?" 

the footfalls of another shatters the silence that lingers over the strath like a hush. the ebony woman's presence in his peripheral draws his attention for the briefest of moments. wintersbane does not react with hostility — it would be wrong to be so disrespectful at this sacred site — and accordingly the woman does not give off any signals that she intends him harm. she remains in his peripheral vision until she speaks and his head lifts from his, tilting away from lotte's grave. the stranger's inquiry makes it sound as if they — he and her — are old friends ... but he doesn't recall her voice, face, nor her ruby red eyes.

"i don't know," the son of the nightingale queen whose grave he looms over answers honestly. tragically. "i was a young boy when i last saw her." that wasn't expressly true but he wasn't about to share his vivid and strange dream of lotte ansbjørn with a stranger. he kept that to himself, coveted close to his chest like the deepest secrets and most meaningful treasures are. he doesn't want to relive his tragic story, made of his own creation and naivety as a child either. a young boy ripped too soon from his mother's embrace and forever left to live with the sorrow of knowing that he will never see her again and make amends with a corporeal version of her. her body lays beneath the earth, nurturing the hemlocks that protect her gave as she'd once nurtured her children.

omen inclined her head to the ice-titan's stare, respectful of his sentimental claim here and mindful to the air of somber thoughts he wore around him like a wreath -- a wolf with always more than one reason to keep her distance. "you're one of the lucky ones then," she mused in a hush, glancing away to the dirt before her as she seemed to remember something she held both with great fondness and regret. even the darkness of her features could not hide the intensity with which she reminisced.

when she returned her eyes to the male, she looked sympathetic. "still, she must have truly been something... leavin' an impression like this on you." Even after all that time he couldn't count.

the ruby eyed female speaks her words in a hush, declaring that he is one of the lucky ones. perhaps that is what she thinks but the tundrian does not agree with her. he'd have rather had the time to spend with lotte even if it meant suffering the pain and grief of watching her die. he does not know the circumstances of her death, of course, and this is easy for him to say in his ignorance of the whole subject. he doesn't know what arturo, hemlock, of his siblings suffered by seeing it. "i would have rather spent her given time with her than spent it away." wintersbane contemplates his words as he speaks them. it's easy for him to say. would he say the same thing if the situation had been different? perhaps if he wouldn't have wandered into the ravine and gotten kidnapped ...perhaps she wouldn't have died at all.

of course she did, he thinks to the woman's statement. granted, the stranger isn't aware that it's his mother's grave he looms over: she only sees a grave. "she was my mother." the tundrian's words were solemn as he speaks them, glacial gaze lifting from the hemlocks that guard lotte's corporeal body to the ebon furred, red eyed woman. "i look like her." wintersbane tells the stranger, without much reason as to why. it hardly mattered, but the rare times he glimpsed himself in the distorted image of a body of water he can see his mother in him. he is the masculine form of lotte ansbjørn and he is proud to carry on the torch of both her legacy and her memory.

As striking and undaunted as the wild stranger appeared -- as terribly deep as his eyes were; as experienced as he looked -- he betrayed his age through his insistence. She realized then that this godly figure was just like everyone else: a product of his upbringing; a lost child chasing things that could not be changed. He looked powerful enough to take on the task, though this would only serve to make him stubborn and restless, and in the end of things he would be unfulfilled.

Unless he found another soul, or a heart-stirring stretch of land, that stole his spirit and cleansed it of everything that had come before it.

Omen, with her ghost-of-a-smile, seeming wistful or teasing, wasn't at all actually glad to whisper-tell him that: "that's what all the lucky ones say." She could have guessed that this was all about his mother -- for who else could leave such lasting scars on a boy? The sable she-wolf nodded mutely, staring at the ground at his feet for a long moment before flitting her oppressive eyes to him dolefully. "Then she was beautiful," she told him, louder this time, and more firm. "Though it's rather hard to imagine a wolf like you," the sibyl admitted further, glancing away as she refused to acknowledge how he received the hooded compliment, if at all.   

whoops, i wrote you a novel. :0 no need to match the length! ♥

her whisper-tell, inadvertently confirming winterbane's own contemplations that saying he'd rather spent the time with lotte than without her was easier said than done. the tundrian has the ability to be able to take a objective step back and see that even if he would have had the time with lotte that it wouldn't have ever been enough. that her untimely death would still be just as unfair as it was to him now ...if not more-so. perhaps, as she says, he is a lucky one. lucky because he'd been incredibly young and he hadn't been present for anything but the aftermath here and now.

wintersbane looks to her once more, glacial gaze assessing but more gentle than they'd been in some time as he contemplates her. she speaks as if from experience and the tundrian is undoubtedly curious. he shifts his weight and draws in a soft breath of air to inquire but catches the words last minute before they can slip from his tongue. asking her would be incredibly invasive and though the tundrian's manners are often misplaced most days he doesn't wish to pry. if she wanted to tell him, she would ...but he reminds himself that they are ultimately strangers despite this moment shared between them.

it takes wintersbane a long moment for her words to truly sink in, and when they do they are processed with a twitch of an ear and a soft furrow of his brow in quiet contemplation. if she calls his mother beautiful based off of his appearance does that mean, by proxy, she is calling him beautiful too? wintersbane has always been a vain beast — strange, he thinks in those rare moments he contemplates it at all, for a warrior whose guaranteed to bear a few scars in his lifetime — and he can't help but preen in acceptance the compliments she offers him.

pride and vanity have always been masters of the tundrian and they control him now like a puppet on a string as he steels his shoulders in an attempt to humbly accept her compliments while the slight puff of his chest gives away that he enjoys hearing them more than he's presently willing to admit ...though her eyes are averted from him ( as to which he's almost glad for ). he contemplates offerings words of gratitude for her compliments but decides that it might sound like something an a-hole might do ( not that he can't be a certified a-hole™ because he definitely can be ) so he accepts them further with a soft noise of gratitude.

on the topic of his mother, however, he offers simply: "she was a queen among men." in a quiet muse. wintersbane'd always held lotte in high regard and her death merely made her something of a patron saint to him. he will tell his children stories of her; of the legendary soturi, the queen of nightingales, matriarch of their family. in this way, she will be immortalized and with any luck she will never be forgotten ...by the children of his loins, at the very least.

whether her gaze returns to him or not, wintersbane offers her a soft smile then, appreciative of her presence. there is an unexplainable sort of kinship he feels towards her. any discomfort he might've felt at the beginning has slowly been ebbed away. of course, caution always remains, to some degree: he's a warrior, after all — and though it's been quite some time since he's brushed up on those skills he was a pretty damn good one, if he said so himself — but he doesn't feel the pin-prickle of hostility that has lingered within him for so long. "i'm called wintersbane." he offers her his name first, a rare occurrence. he had an unspoken rule of thumb that he gave his own name after the other(s) in the conversation gave theirs first ...if he gave it at all.

Involuntarily, Omen's florid eyes returned to the young ghost-chaser, her gaze drawn by the timbre of his voice— by the way it came gently— caressing and reassuring. She took a small breath as she looked at him, her slim breast constricting as she met the intense blues he had set above a long, proud muzzle. Looking at them each time was to be stricken anew by how piercing they were... as if seeing them again for the first time. They were like stars, right here on earth, and the ink-druid couldn't bring herself to not love them.

He smiled at her then, ever-so-softly, and it felt like the earth shifted under her feet.

She wanted desperately to be afraid of him— those eyes! that musculature!— for he looked capable of tearing her asunder, rendering the pitch girl to bloody ribbons. But more than her body quivered to remain wary, it quaked to know him better— to come closer, and let him have her. It had been a long time since she'd wanted to be close to anyone, so she rejected the feeling almost entirely. She was prepared to flee the scene, simply melt away as quickly as she'd come, but then he gave her his name.

Wintersbane. A title, more than a name. A subject she was intimately familiar with. "Our Father's Omen," she said, not unlike the beginning of a prayer. It was an introduction that would have sufficed back in the Draught, but she remembered that wolves elsewhere weren't typically named like her kin. She had found this out fairly quickly after dispersing. "It's the name I was given. Most wolves just call me Omen," the vainglorious creature shrugged, glancing away as if embarrassed. Her name hadn't exactly been given in kindness, after all, and she was too traditional to dispose of it of her volition.

I love how deeply your characters always think and feel -- it's a pleasure to read!

thank you so much! ^-^

our father's omen, she offers him in return for his own name, though the pathfinder wouldn't have been offended if she'd have pulled his long overused trick and didn't speak her's at all. her name sounds less like a name to him than his own chosen one. talvella was 'winterbane's translation in tundrian which could pass more for a name ...he'd take it when he was ready to take something more fluent sounding than the harsh syllables of common tongue for the nickname affectionately given to him by his mother ( alongside spleenbane but he wasn't going to call himself that ). for now, 'wintersbane' did exactly what he needed it to do. but her name? her name sounded more like a curse uttered at the height of the witching hour and it causes a small, subtle frown to tug at the corners of his lips as he contemplates it. he does not look at her and see an omen. not in the slightest.

"is that what you like to be called? omen?" the tundrian asks, with a small bird-like cant of his head. if it's the name she wishes him to use then he will, of course, but he, who changes name as if it is a cobra's skin so easily shed feels strongly that names should be one's own reflection. the young pathfinder draws in a soft breath and lets it out deciding to give voice to his inner contemplations. "talvella is a rough translation of 'wintersbane' in tundrian — my mother's native language," he explains, without prompt. "it flows sweeter off the tongue and someday, when i'm ready, i will take it as my name." which is, technically, the exact same name just in a different language but that wasn't the point he was attempting to make. "ah, my point is, i feel that we should give ourselves names that we like, or names that fit us." and as someone who's been doing that his whole life this doesn't strike him as odd or unorthodox behavior ( though he might be in the minority on that, admittedly ). "besides," wintersbane draws upon a deep breath. "you don't look or seem like an omen to me." he finishes in a soft, hushed tone. if he is hesitant it is only because he does not mean to insult her ...especially if she doesn't mind being called by her given name, or rather, the shorter variation of it; though if the fact that she looked away from him is of any indication he'd wager a bet that she didn't, in fact, like it.

When he asked about her name, as those not born in the Draught were prone to do, Omen could only shrug. Her sheepish didn't come so much from her name but how others reacted when first introduced. It made her feel as if something was wrong with her— an unfortunately intended consequence brought on by the council of her naming ceremony. She couldn't find her voice to answer him at first. She wasn't typically inclined to explain, but for some reason she wanted him to understand; as if she thought not doing so would tarnish her to him.

Soft ears drew forward as he continued. He gave her the word Talvella and told her how important it was to him— how he wasn't yet ready to wear it— and she tucked the name away with the jealous fervor of a dragon. She, who believed in things unseen and concepts like fate, could not imagine that he had given her the translation of Wintersbane in his mother's tongue just for it to be shared with everyone else. She was too self-important, too greedy and needy, to believe that name had been meant for anyone to utter but her...

Omen swallowed thickly. "To me, it's not about what I like to be called," she answered after a while, and it was all she seemed willing to expose, with her mien crestfallen. Her gaze followed a detached greenleaf as it tumbled in light skips near the young warrior's broad paws. "My mother told me," Omen began to relent, after releasing a breath and relaxing the tense set of her shoulders, "that my name came out of spite from bigots who didn't understand the words, and that it didn't have to mean something bad if I didn't want to."

i edited in a quick wrap-up conclusion but if you'd like to continue this feel free to poke me on here or discord and i'll gladly revise the thread and take the conclusion out so it can continue. :-)

she has his rapt attention — though in truth she's had it since she first melted out from the shadows of the strath — as she explains to him the complexities of her name. and it is complex. he struggles to understand, at least in the beginning, if because he changes his so frequently and freely — though the change to wintersbane and it's tundrian variant are more or less permanent given their true significance to him. it doesn't have to mean something bad if i don't want it to, she tells him. though he doubts she meant to he inadvertently feels like a bit of an asshole for giving her his opinions on name changes and telling her that she didn't look like an 'omen'. it's the tundrian's turn to be sheepish then and there's an apology written across the lines of his face and muzzle, heavy in his eyes.

someone, somewhere would always known them by their given name. he tried to go by 'roarke' for a short period of time but the name felt like a heavy, dead weight on him. it'd been a long time since he'd been that carefree boy and it was like a snake trying to fit back into shed skin that it knows is too small for it. he could never truly go back to being 'roarke' and trying to almost felt like he was disrespecting himself and the memories of his lost and scattered family. "omen is a pretty badass name." he says then offering her a slightly mischievous and slightly lopsided grin. she was right, he decided. when it wasn't said like a curse ( and when he didn't associate the word with being a word but a name ) it could easily take on new meaning; and not a bad one.

wintersbane gives a pause and takes a few steps away from his mother's grave. he's found her again. the hemlocks would ensure that no one disturbs her eternal rest without the consequence of poisoning and thus there is no need for him to stand sentry. it was obvious that his father and teaghlaigh'd felt no need to continue on here, either. while he doesn't necessarily want anyone to settle the strath — selfishly he doesn't want to be denied visitation access to lotte's grave even though he knows the likelihood of him visiting it again isn't overly high — he knows he won't stay here. "are you heading anywhere in particular?" the tundrian asks of his companion, thinking that he might like her prolonged company if she accepted his offer to stick together, of course.

she gives an answer and he accepts it with a sage nod and a roll of his shoulders before offering her good luck on her journey and parting ways with her.