Horizon Ridge insuring body parts isn't just for celebrities

@Wintersbane

After searching for Artaax, and discovering his scent leads out of the northeastern border of Drageda, she ends her purpose. If he’d left the territory, something she remembers him not doing very often or willingly, then he clearly doesn’t want to talk to her. Is he not ready? Does he hate her? Blixen had mentioned anything and she hadn’t asked, but maybe she should?
 
It weighs heavily on her for a few days and she doesn’t look for him, isn’t sure if he’s come back to the territory, but if he wants to see her, he’d find her. Right? With a deep sigh, Mallaidh slips from the southern borders into the fields and eventually all the way to the broken ridge. She doesn’t really know where she’s going, or for how long, but she needs a little time to clear her mind. Just when she’s gotten a good grasp on things, something pops up and sets her back a few steps. Most days, she feels she’s in a new place, but sometimes she feels right back where she was last time and no more certain of herself as she’d been back then.
 
Seagulls caw overhead and she glances up, watching them soar to and fro. One dips and flies up the length of the fallen ridge before disappearing into the brush. Mallaidh turns her head and pays no more attention to the birds as she slips along the edges of the fallen rubble. She’d gotten used to the place for spending a while here with the other girls but she does not follow along familiar paths and instead continues about her way with no purpose in her step.

*insert nervous emoji here*

horizon ridge is further away from blackfeather woods than the tundrian had initially planned to go. he tends to stay away from the coast if for no particular reason other than because he has a deep and vain dislike of sand; and in truth he does not have much reason to venture that way. blackfeather woods has many enemies — not that it's fear that keeps him cautious wintersbane always enjoyed a good fight, after all — but he's older now. the naivety of youth has long since worn off and there are other thoughts that occupy his mind these days. thoughts challenging himself to rise to the ranks of the dark brotherhood, of the future and what it might hold for him. wintersbane's life no longer revolved around proving himself to be the biggest and the baddest and thus nurtured the general caution. the reputation of it's leaders before proceeded blackfeather woods ...and yet none of them were present to take responsibility for the chaos they created.

tucking his thoughts away, wintersbane focuses back upon his steps as he explores the rubble of the collapsed ridge, pausing only when he sees a figure ahead. wintersbane lets out a low chuff to announce his presence, just in case she was not already aware of him. recognition does not yet come to the tundrian — from the rear she is but a stranger. she is anyone. another explorer picking their way through the rubble and wintersbane thinks nothing of it.

One ear turns back when she hears rock scrape against rock and pebbles drift down a slight incline. Paws bring her to a stop a few seconds before the chuff travels the distance and, slowly, she turns her head to see what’s behind her. It’s been a few weeks since she’s been on the ridge and anything could have moved in during that time but as she glances up to a familiar face, she stares blankly across the way.
 
She can’t help but wonder if she hadn’t reunited with Eirlys and Ceallach, she might not know who stands upon the rubble. Mallaidh blinks a few times but doesn’t make a sound, slowly turning her form to face him head on but without closing the distance. Something doesn’t settle the pit of her stomach enough to keep from churning and she tightens her jaw, looking him over. He isn’t the same pale brother she remembers from long ago but all four of them changed and she can see the tundra in the brute ahead just as she could in their mother and sister, a fur pattern that hints at a similarity as hers.
 
Youthful features hardened by time, having been lost from their family even longer than her. She remembers the boy in the copse, if only briefly. It is Roarke that stands ahead of her, she knows it in her bones, but she always knows she doesn’t have a clue who he is after all this time.

For the first time since she's been lingering in the back of her head, she can't feel the presence of her mother and a vacant, cold emptiness hovers in its place.

she turns to face him and for a long moment he does not recognize her. the last they'd seen one another they'd been children and wintersbane, rebellious and suppressing any memories of his family had made a mess of their first and previous reunion ( if one could even call it that ). dream lotte had resuscitated those memories, pulling them from whatever corner of his mind that wintersbane's attempted to drown them. to protect them, he'd claimed but he wonders now in hindsight if all along it was to protect himself. she looks different now than she had back then but there is something within him ...a feral call of flesh and bone to it's kin that tells him he knows her. that aches to call her sister.

he is weary. because he remembers their last meeting, because he knows she has every right to be angry at him, if she recognizes him at all. "hello." he offers simply, perhaps even tentatively; hindering on that precipice of uncertainty as he attempts to judge the situation from the distance of safety that remains between the two of them.

I uh, wasn't entirely sober when I did this so IDK what's happening.

A long pause of silence goes by and Mallaidh watches him fade from ignorance into awareness and she feels the moment recognition crosses his gaze. Her head pulls back slightly and he regards him, yearning to know what he’s feeling. Her own turmoil swings back and forth. It’s been so long since she’s last seen him, knowing in her bones then it was him but the denial turning her away. She’d been looking for him, like their family had, and she’d found him and he refused and she’d gotten lost.
 
She never saw her mother again.
 
She does not understand the sudden influx of emotion, certain she’d been okay up until this point. Carrying Lotte with her has been a burden but just as helpful and she is nowhere to be found. Her heart beats heavily in her chest. Harder, harder. So hard it bursts right through her ribcage and out onto the ground. She swallows it and closes her eyes, trying to calm her erratic breathing.
 
Hello, he says, as if he does not know her. Hello.
 
The single word repeats in her head, over and over. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.
 
The first thing her brother says to her in who knows how long? Hello.
 
Hello. Hel—.
 
“Roarke,” she says, desperately needing to hear her own voice, hear any other word. Practice keeps her voice confident, stern, a nose held slightly higher. Her feet do not carry her to close the distance between them, she does not fall into his breast as she had with Eirlys.

she stares at him and it silently confirms what he'd already known: that she was his sister. mallaidh. for a brief time after his talk with lotte he'd went by roarke again but it hadn't felt right. he was roarke and yet ...he wasn't. he shed names like cobras shed skin but since lotte'd appeared to him in that dream she'd opened pandora's box within him and he could no longer act like he didn't remember. wintersbane'd been chosen out of adoration and in the honor of his late mother. it felt right. better than roarke at any rate. roarke was too holy of a name for him, the name of the boy. a boy that he was no longer and would never be again. it doesn't belong to the tundrian. it belongs to the boy that had never gotten to live his life the way it'd been meant to be lived. it did not belong to the war-bred and raptorial tundrian that he's grown into.

yet, roarke is the name she knows him by and thus it is the name that breaches the uneasy silence between them following his tentative hello. he does not know how to communicate that to her without igniting her ire at him. "mallaidh." her name slips from betwixt his lips as a confirmation. that it is him. that he remembers now. that their chance at reconciliation will not be ruined by his suppression of whose son he was this time. but he does not know what else to say: there is much he wants to, and more that he wants to inquire about but bids his tongue still for the moment, watching for further reaction.

With Eirlys, it had taken some time to recognize one another. After that, it was obvious. Mallaidh missed her family over the months of being gone and having her world shaken by the news sent her crumbling. Finding Ceallach had been a struggle, some work to get him to know that it’s her but after that they were family again. Even with Reed, they’d tentatively call one another family and maybe, one day, sisters. Mallaidh had no pack or location to her name when they’d met and they wouldn’t know where to find her. Blixen’s blessing makes it a bit easier. 

But Roarke? His silence answers most of her questions. He isn’t the same boy she’d tasseled and fought with. A rivalry meant for great things in the eyes of Teaghlaigh is lost. 

What is she supposed to say to someone that was once her brother, and not anymore? 

“Did you try to come home?” she asks after a long moment, not knowing what to ask. How much is his fault? As a child, not very much, but he’d gotten bigger. He’d been so close, once. He could have come home then. Lotte might not be dead and their father might not have died with her. Teaghlaigh would still be standing and everything would be... right. They could’ve had a relationship with their younger siblings instead of strewn about the whole world, lost from one another. 

A thick lump develops in her throat and she grinds her teeth together, trying to swallow the stray emotion building there.

in wintersbane's mind he'd been trying to protect teaghlaigh. he'd been trying to protect his family. the very tenants they'd lived and breathed had been the family comes before all else and protect the family. words drilled into his head by cennasach until they were like a second heartbeat. he took them to heart even as a frightened, malnourished little boy crying out for his mother. he remembers that, too, despite how fiercely he tries not to. that moment of pure vulnerability and fear has manifested itself in wintersbane. he does not immediately make the connection himself but it's the driving force of why his relationships have been nothing more than superficial at best. he's discovering himself, slowly, and with his re-settlement into blackfeather woods he realizes there are things he want than just power and control. things he wants more. he doesn't want to shut everyone out. it's a lonely existence. he wants to start a family. he wants to get it right. he knows he's failed the fearghals. lotte doesn't hold it against him ( at least, dream lotte didn't ) but that doesn't mean that the others don't. that he isn't more than just winter's bane. that he wasn't the ruination of a whole pack and family.

he swallows the guilt suddenly heavy on his shoulders, ears slicking back to rest at half mast atop his skull as she presents him with a question. he feels as if there are sharp daggers of teeth pressed against the tender flesh of his maned throat. like some invisible beast of truth and justice has placed him on trial. "no," he says but lets it open so he could explain. "i thought i was protecting teaghlaigh, protecting the family." wintersbane realizes now as an adult what roarke hadn't as a child: that he might've misinterpreted the creeds. that he caused his family unnecessary pain by thinking he had to pretend he was someone else from somewhere else. he'd pretended it so much to the point he'd begun to believe it himself.

No.
 
Her jaw tightens and she watches him, ears droop back against her head. Their distance is still great and she wonders if it will close, but who will make the first move? She does not realize the similarities in their journey along the way and she’s carried the blame for so long, she finally has a face to throw it back into.
 
“Everything fell apart after you left,” she says, her tense jaw snapping her teeth back together. Her shoulder rolls a bit and she watches him, unable to look away from him but she doesn’t want to see him in the ghastly memory she still holds. “You could have—should of—come home. You were there!” she tells him. She remembers. Seeing his face brings it searing back, fresh and hot like the day it happened. He’d looked a little different, and so did she, but they’d been family. They’d known, deep down, and as the hurt comes building back up she doesn’t know what to do with it and suddenly she does the only thing she knows how to: cut, and cut deep. “Mama died looking for you.”

this hurts my heart. T-T

the accusation of everything falling apart when he left? he could handle. he'd already wondered as much on plenty of occasions without her confirmation. to have it now did not really faze him. teaghlaigh was gone and that was in the past; and truthfully ( if not cruelly ) it didn't bother him. he'd never had the opportunity to get to know his pack-mates all that well and arturo was never his favorite parent anyway.

mama died looking for you.

for a moment wintersbane stopped breathing as if her words are a wall of arrows that hit their mark: piercing his lungs and splicing through his heart. they cut and they sting. deep and painfully to the marrow of his bones, into his soul. he draws in a ragged breath as his lungs ache for the oxygen he'd momentarily deprived them of. his chest puffs with indignation and burning ire as his pain lashes outward and onto his expression in the hard gleam of his glacial eyes, in the curl of his lip over sharp canines.

that. fucking. hurt.

wintersbane'd wondered that too. if he was the reason lotte had died. dream lotte had said that he wasn't but had that really been his mother? or had that been his subconscious trying to assuage his guilt and tell him what he wanted to hear? he wasn't blameless. he knows this. but he did not want to carry around the burden of knowledge that he was the catalyst for the death of the nightingale queen. he was a mama's boy, always had been; beyond that he absolutely worshipped her. though he welcomes the deities of the dark woods into his life they shared their ascension to godhood in his mind with lotte ansbjørn.

his body feels like stone. he wants to hurt her back. he wants her to feel the pain she has inflicted upon him too. forever, as he will have to feel the wound she's torn open. for how does a wound like that ever heal? it doesn't. how easy would it be to allow sithis and mephala into his heart? he can feel them: the daedric prince and the dread father. malliadh is flesh and blood. and yet ...and yet she hurt him first. that he is her flesh and blood had not appeared to have hindered her own attack despite that it had not been physical.

"kuinka sinä kehtaat!" he bellows at her in an inferno of rage and a tsunami of pain that threatens to burn and drown him all at once. he embraces the dark gods fully in his heart as he charges at his sister with teeth bared aiming to hit. anywhere. so long as he made contact. so long as she felt pain.

The burning arrow flies through the air and burns right through him. It does what her teeth desires. Pale gaze hardens, watching him as he sorts through the words. Eirlys would have been gentle with Roarke, would have welcomed him with open arms as she had with her, but Mallaidh knows all too well he does not deserve it. If he hadn’t left, everything would be fine. She wouldn’t have gotten lost, mama wouldn’t have died—
 
(Suloinen tyttö…)
 
Not now.
 
Her chest tightens. Just as quickly as she’d come back, she’s gone, her focus once more zeroing in on her… on Roarke. The weight over her words come down hard and she embraces for impact the moment he shouts at her, a language she’s lost long ago (because of him). There are few words she knows, now, her mother’s tongue barely in memory and no one to practice with. The one wolf that might have been a help is charging at her with teeth and brute force anger. Her tail lashed behind her, her muscles clenched in place as her posture lowers only slightly.
 
This time, she’s not going to run. This time, she will win once and for all. Their rivalry buries here.
 
“Petturi,” she growls low when he’s close, one final clench of every inch as he barrels into her. Teeth pierce low between where her chest, neck, and shoulder meet. A snarl ripples from her lips and she pushes back with all her force and aims for the back of his neck in battle born frenzy.

it has been a long time since he has craved the fight. with age came the ability to temper the worst of his thirst for battle. molly's words have gutted him and he will feel their pain like a lash of wicked teeth, like atlas' burden of shouldering the weight of the sky until the day of his death in the far away future. they are both warriors. blood of blood, blood of the ansbjørn's. as he remembers lotte telling it, a fierce warrior clan.

it will occur to wintersbane later that seeing them fight would break their mother's heart. that they, responsible for carrying on her legacy, are making it nothing but a war of siblings.

traitor, she calls him.

maybe he is. to arturo. to teaghlaigh. to moonspear and the countless others. but never to lotte. a wordless snarl tears from between bared teeth in response, moments before his teeth make contact with her flesh. there is a rise of satisfaction at her snarl of pain that answers the splice of her flesh beneath his teeth. there should be sorrow. there should be regret; but he is caught in a tempest of pain and rage. there is nothing else.

she pushes him back with her weight and wintersbane side-steps her quickly, her teeth missing the back of his neck by a hairsbreadth. he aims for a headbutt at her ribcage — far from hard enough to break anything if it does hit. as much as he's angry at her ...he does not hate her nor does he particularly want to cause her lasting physical damage. he only seeks to knock the breath from her to give himself an advantage.

Even if she does not connect teeth to bone, the attack is enough to repel him. The punctures are deep but don’t tear her skin. He does not waist time going back in and she sneers, showing off her teeth as he gets closer and as before, she does not move out of the way. Whatever he has to deliver, she takes. She proves herself over and over, that she can do this, that she’s better than him. A strangled gasp forces its way up her throat as she stumbles back, only one legs caving in to break her fall.
 
Nails dig into the ground to keep her upright, legs bending only and using his shove as momentum to spring herself back at him, teeth ajar for his face.

their desires are similar though neither of them are privy to that fact. he seeks to prove that she is wrong, that he is better than her. an age old sibling thing to fight over — two dominant personalities always struggling to force the other into submission. except this time, it wasn't as harmless. not entirely. her words hurt him and he wants her to pay. he wants her to feel the pain she'd inflicted on him. he does not know words he could tell her that would cut her as deeply as her words had cut him and so he attacks. for the first time in a long time he reacts without forethought.

wintersbane watches as her leg threatens to give out but she remains balanced, much to his dismay. she lunges for his face then, teeth bared and he side steps her again, dodging her attack, using his momentum to launch himself at the hind leg that threatened to give out on her mere moments ago, seeking to use it — if she did not dodge him — to force her down to the ground.

She doesn’t know whether she’s overestimated her fighting ability or underestimated his. Drageda raised her, taught her battle, taken her to war, but where has Roarke been all this time? He knows where to throw his weight, where to hit to insurance she doesn’t get a bite. Her teeth haven’t touched an ounce of flesh and yet she bleeds for him, struggles to breathe for him, and now he knocks all her weight to the ground. Any breathe she had left is wiped clean from her lungs and she offers only an ugly wheeze, trying to right herself but struggling too much, and peering up at him from the ground. 

He could likely kill her now, if he wanted and she wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight. The rivalry between them is still strong and though her gaze threatens him to attack while she’s down, she hopes deep down their shared blood will spare her. Teeth reveal as her lips pull back, daring his next move while she remains cemented to the ridge floor.

his aim hits it's mark. he watches with satisfaction malliadh falls to the ground at his feet, her breath leaving her body in a wheeze. wintersbane has the advantage. she stares up at him and he stares back. are they siblings? or strangers? he could kill her, if he wanted to. he doesn't know the woman at his feet any more than she knows him. his lips curl back from his teeth and his muscles tense beneath his pelage. he thinks about it. and yet, something stills his teeth. "veren verta" wintersbane mutters with a soft snort. if she cared she would not blame him for lotte's death. if she cared she would not have left him to live with that gaping wound that would never heal, never close.

so why should he care?

because this fight would break lotte's heart. "seeing us like this would break mother's heart." wintersbane speaks and with his words took steps back, away from his sister; giving her space and time to catch her breath and regain her footing. wintersbane will take the victory ...if his sister yields. "i've hurt her enough already." he concludes, offering a tentative truce to mallaidh with those words of tired resignation, glacial gaze trained upon her.

Her heart breaks from her chest, beating so hard against her ribcage, as Roarke’s lips curl back, threatening her. She does not tear her eyes away from him, either. Just slightly, she lifts her chin, holding his stare despite his words. Can he kill a second wolf of his family? She doubts it, her eyes daring him to try.
 
It is not her brother that stands above her, and instead some stranger she doesn’t want to know. A low rumble vibrates her chest but does not become audible when he speaks of their mother. Fur bristles around her mane, watching him for movement and keeping still while her lungs struggle to reflate. He made the choice to fight with teeth, to blind her in attack and as she lay against the ground, unwavering.

seemed like a natural place for wintersbane to make his exit. feel free to either post once more or archive as is. :-)

he draws in a deep breath; a sound of heavy resignation. they may always be blood but family? no. he doesn't think mallaidh and him would ever be family. not anymore. not when she continues to fight him, to be angry at him because he isn't who she wants, who she thinks he should be. wintersbane thinks he doesn't have to tell her that that's almost never how life works. "goodbye molly." he tells her; and he hopes for their sakes, for the sake of their mother's spirit where ever it may be ( be it heaven or the void ) that they do not meet again. not when all they do is fight. not when the next time might be the time that one of them takes it too far. wintersbane makes to leave, pausing for a small moment to glimpse over his shoulder at her one last time before he disappears, hoping that he never has to taste the blood of a sibling ever again.

Goodbye.
 
She stares up at him, unspeaking, unwavering. She does not even move when he turns to leave, watching as he turns back to look at her. Her gaze never leaves his, not until it’s completely out of sight, and she doesn’t move until he’s gone from view. Finally, she scoffs. Goodbye.
 
“No brother of mine,” she half mutters, half spits.
 
She stands, slowly, and considers each ache she now carries. Silvery olive eyes turns back the way Roarke had gone before shaking the dust off. For not having gotten a single hit in, she feels okay. Roarke has changed into some violent wolf she does not know and she checks him off somewhere she’s put Arturo and the wolf he has become and she thinks, maybe, it runs in her family but doesn’t give it anymore thought for now. Goodbye.
 
Stop, she demands of herself, inhaling a deep breath and holding it. Slowly, she turns the way she’d been coming and her lights up. A figure stands in the distance for a few seconds, jerky movements and translucent, and gone the next second.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodb—.
 
My girl, are the only words she hears, soft and gentle.
 
“Mama,” she croaks and pushes herself toward the former mirage.