Bearclaw Valley here without you

hoping for a selection of @Piper @Nunataq @Marten, tags are for reference so y'all know how Laurel's been <3

Laurel had been visibly broken the past weeks. She'd often left the territory to go look for Lucas, but she never found her beautiful baby boy. How would she live on without him? Her world had been bleak before the birth of her children, and then Lucas had shone a light on it. As well as Piper and Wyatt, of course. She adored her children so much, but now the favourite of the bunch was gone. Her shining ray of light. She had looked everywhere but what faint scents she found of him were overshadowed and grew fainter by the day, until they eventually disappeared.

Now she had nothing left of him, no reminder but the bright rays of the sunlight that shone on her fur and the creek at the rendezvous site that he loved to play at. Every time she saw a shiny rock or pretty feather she'd think of Lucas and how he loved looking for treasure.

Piper was doted upon the most in Lucas' absence; oh, her beautiful little girl, which reminded Laurel the most of herself and Indra. How she must be hurting without her brother there. Nunataq and Marten were largely ignored except when they would seek her attention or do something naughty, and even then her attention was clearly diluted compared to the love she gave to Piper. @Merrick was doted upon too, for he was more so @Indra's child than Nunataq and Marten, in Laurel's eyes and, being her only one, Laurel imagined he must hold a special place in Indra's heart just like Lucas held in Laurel's.

Perhaps it was not as notable in the issues of the day, but for an onlooker it might be painfully clear that there was a strict hierarchy with Piper on top. One that had always been there but was now emphasised because of the love for Lucas that she could bring nowhere, the grief over her lost son that filled her heart and squeezed out what love was left in there, meagre amounts, mere scraps, that needed to be divided among the survivors.

@Wyatt was a special case. He was defiant and seemed to have grown more so since Lucas went away and he got less attention. Before it was easy to deal with what tantrums and 'jokes' he would do but it was notable on him most of all of them that things were different now. Now that there was not a lot of attention to go around Wyatt was the one who would get his attention one way or the other and resorted to negative attention-seeking. Laurel was quick to lash out, tired and unable to deal with the shit now that Lucas -- the mediator, the cheerful one -- was gone, and she did not know what to do with the boy who started to look like her deadbeat father more and more each day.

Presently Laurel returned from a search that had given no new information in the meadow and she returned home tired physically and mentally both. With a tired huff Laurel lay down by the creek that Lucas loved so and leaned her head on her front legs with a heavy sigh.

Lucas’ disappearance had stricken Piper with a certain kind of sadness that could not be explained through words. Every day, the child would wake up with an eager smile and rush outside with every expectation of seeing her brother. Every day she was disappointed. Her love for her brother had been consuming; she had been the closest to Lucas out of all of her siblings. Not having him there felt as though a piece of her had been removed with him. She spent a great deal of her time locked away, unable to formulate the appropriate response to the many queries of ‘are you okay?’

No, Piper was not okay without her brother.

On that particular day, the Redleaf girl had decided to go down to where Lucas would stay by the creek. There was still this naive part of her that believed she would trot down there and find him smiling beside a group of stray flowers. Piper had grown a lot in the last few months, and it was likely that her brother had grown drastically too. Still, there were lingering memories of him as a pudgy child with twinkling eyes that she could not erase.

It was not Lucas that she found by the creek, but Laurel. Piper paused in her steps for a moment, one paw lingering toward her chest. She felt her sadness deepen, but she forced herself to approach. Gently, the russet girl moved to nudge against her mother’s flank. “Hi ma,” she offered in a soft tone.

An ear turned back towards her child as she approached, and a meagre smile was forced to Laurel's face. It was hard to look upon Piper, not because she did not like her daughter but because the look on Piper's face mirrored in so many ways the heart-wrenching feelings that terrorised Laurel's own mind. She forced those feelings away for a moment to broaden her smile, but it felt artificial and fake. Laurel had often used fake feelings to try and manipulate others in the past, but now that she had real, genuine, own feelings she was once more confronted with the fact that she could not hide those as easily as she could make up non-existent ones.

"Hey, sweetie," said Laurel and she arched her neck to gently nose Piper's cheek. She wasn't one to ask 'are you okay' to any of the children in regards to Lucas' disappearance, because she knew that the answer would be a variety of 'no, of course not' or a lie. She wasn't ready to face either. She was so muchly not ready to face either that if anyone else would ask such questions Laurel would casually happen to be somewhere else. Even when they would ask Laurel how she was holding up she would find some sort of distraction -- "oh look, there's still some flowers left" or "wow, the leaves are falling already, look at that pile over there" -- to avert the question.

Instead she lingered in silence for a moment, her face betraying her every emotion. "Do you want to look for shiny rocks in the water?" asked Laurel. A favourite activity of her own when she was little. A favourite activity she had passed down to Lucas, to adventure and treasure hunt.

A warm feeling flooded through the young girl’s stomach and managed to reach her limbs. No matter what she felt for the loss of Lucas, she could always count on the sweetness of her mother’s voice to bring her back to reality. She lingered against the cold touch of Laurel’s nose against her cheek and breathed outward, trying to release the pent-up emotions that bubbled and threatened to spill.

There was a part of the young girl that was grateful her mother never asked her if she was okay. It was the part of her that wanted to drive down all of the negative emotions and pretend they didn’t exist. There was another part of her that wanted to scream how she felt from the highest peak she could find. The world deserved to know just what was happening beneath the surface of the firebrand’s flesh. Most days, Piper teetered between the two; one misstep from going over the edge.

The question that was asked had sparked a familiar glint in her eyes. She looked from the water to her mother and nodded softly. “I’ve been collecting some of the nicest ones for when Lucas comes back,” she remarked in an offhand sort of way. Once she’d said it, she felt a wave of regret wash over her and she stiffened her frame. It wasn’t something that she wanted to remind her mom about.

It was still something that they were all thinking.

The smile that Laurel had forced onto her face she didn't need to upkeep when Piper mentioned saving rocks for when Lucas returned. There was a short moment of warmth in that smile, a short moment that showed a genuine fondness, before it fell off her face, broken like porcelain that had fallen from the table and shattered upon the floor. Of course Laurel wanted him to come back, hoped for him to come back, for her to find him like she had found Indra back, too... But these were simply hopes, for she knew that usually, when wolves disappeared, especially young wolves like Lucas who had a loving home and no reason to leave by themselves, they were just gone forever. Maybe even dead.

Laurel swallowed difficultly and said: "That's nice, sweetie." Laurel nudged Piper's face again and started to move slowly towards the water, hoping Piper to take the lead on the operation. Maybe it wouldn't bring Lucas back to gather things for his return, but it would be a reminder of him and one that Piper could, perhaps, find solace in.

Piper wouldn't have liked the thoughts that passed through her mother's mind. She would have fought against them, outraged at the very thought that Lucas – sweet little Lucas – was dead. Granted, if she put her emotions aside and focused on the logic behind it, it made perfect sense. There weren't truly many things that pulled happy children from their loving homes and required them to stay away for as long as he had. It was for the best that the young girl didn't know the thoughts that played through her mother's mind. In her naive state, she still had hope.

Smiling softly, Piper moved to bump against Laurel's frame with her own. She had grown considerably in the last month or so. She was no longer a puppy in size and shape. The length of her limbs afforded her great speed and her age provided her with seemingly endless endurance. The young Redleaf moved toward the water and lowered her head to search for anything that would prove to be particularly shiny. She wondered if there were any better stones on the beach, or if that was something Lucas would have liked at all.

There were so many fond memories of youth where Laurel and Indra would barge around the creeks. Laurel always up front, telling Indra where to go, telling Indra to join, telling Indra what rocks to pick up and bring home with them. She smiled at the memory as she went down to the water, but soon felt sad as every little piece of this creek reminded her of Lucas, her poor lost boy.

In silence Laurel started to search for pretty things in the water, not sure how and what kind of conversation to make with her remaining child -- wanting so badly to find solace and give solace with Piper, but she just had nothing left to give.

This took forever... I'm sorry. This month was moving month but I'm finally in my new place so replies should be much more prompt.

The young Redleaf girl did what she could to keep her mother's mind off of Lucas. It didn't help that she was mentioning him all the time. To Piper, Lucas wasn't gone... he just wasn't there with them anymore. It might have been that she was too young to understand the premise of death, and the thoughts of what had happened to her brother, but she still imagined that there would come a time when he would trot over the hill and greet them with twinkling eyes and a crinkly smile.

A bright stone caught her attention, and Piper dove her head beneath the water and snatched at it with her teeth, taking in a small mouthful of sand. Once she pulled her crown back up, she looked toward where her mother was and smiled brightly. The young girl's tail flagged behind her as she moved toward the shore and placed the bright blue rock on the edge of the water.

“This one's pretty, ma,” she said softly, making sure that it did not get close enough to get swept away again.

no problem <3

Laurel idly watched her child as she was searching for rocks. More rocks for Lucas, rocks that he would unlikely ever get to accept from them. Laurel had prepared herself to never leave her children the way that her parents had left her, but she had not been prepared for her children being the ones who left -- or died, because surely Lucas would never just leave her.

She sighed softly but recomposed herself when Piper came up to the shore, forcing a tired smile onto her face. It was better to pretend to be okay, most of the time, but sometimes it was really hard to. Laurel closed in on the shore a little and glanced at the stone, blue like Lucas' eyes. "That's beautiful," Laurel praised with a smile. "You're so good at this." Laurel saw some of herself in Piper in that sense; she had always tugged Indra down to the river to look for shiny rocks. There just wasn't a Lucas -- Piper's Indra -- to tug along now.

She missed him, but she did not want to admit that she did. Piper often thought of the goofy smile that had turned his features upward, and the easy sway of his body. She hated how vivid her memories seemed in some moments, and how faded they were in others. The more she tried, the more his voice seemed to drift out of her mind. All of it was frustrating to her, but she wasn't capable of putting that into words. So, the young Redleaf did what she could to keep herself hopeful and busy while she waited for word on where her jovial brother had gotten off to. Surely, he would have had plenty of stories to share when he got back.

“Maybe I can find one for you!” she exclaimed with a happy smile and a swift wag of her tail that was forceful enough to wiggle her back end. “What's your favorite color?” Piper then inquired with a canting of her skull. Her bright gold gaze roamed the tired features of her mother with concern. She wished she could carry all of the pain that was nestled between the shoulders of her parent; she wished she could use her youth to release the burden. Life wasn't that simple, though.

Laurel wondered at times how she had deserved such wonderful children. She smiled softly at Piper as she suggested finding Laurel something shiny, too, and asked for her favourite colour subsequently. Laurel's favourite colour admittedly lay pretty close to the shiny blue of the gem that Piper had just found, but since that gem was for Lucas, obviously, she couldn't exactly ask for that one or mark that as her favourite colour.

"Red," she said instead; Laurel had always envied the fierce ruddiness of Indra's coat, and had often contemplated why she must look so dull and boring in colouration herself in comparison, with a lack of such bright fiery contrasts.

If the girl had known, she would have told her mother that she was beautiful. She would have whispered it to her every day that she was alive, just so that Laurel could know how much her daughter thought of her. As it was, Piper did knot know of the thoughts that plagued her single parent. She was wise enough to see the toll that Lucas' disappearance had caused, but not intuitive enough to gather the insecurities that were underneath. Perhaps, this was what was meant for the child; living blissfully unaware of the internal conflicts that waged war inside of her mother.

Red was the color, and Piper turned to Laurel with a smile that crinkled near her eyes. It made her feel special, but she wasn't sure why. With that task in mind, she turned her head back to the waters and wondered if she had ever happened upon a red stone when she had been hunting for shiny rocks for her brother. “I don't know if I've ever seen a red one in the water. You'd have the most special rock in the world if I could find one,” she mused out loud.

To see her child smile made Laurel smile, even though she was far from happy in the wake of Lucas' disappearance. At least she still had Piper. The mother figured that any reddish stone would do, but Piper seemed determined to try and find one that was actually red, judging by her words. Laurel sat down again at the side of the water and she watched as Piper searched for rocks, simply observing for now. It didn't really matter much to the mother whether or not her daughter found her a perfect rock, a mediocre rock, a crappy rock, or no rock at all -- it mattered to her that her daughter tried, and put effort in for her. That was the best gift she could get.

Maybe we can wrap this here? <3

It was difficult to pull Piper away from a task once she'd fixated on it. Though it was simple, the young girl had set her sights on getting her mother a stone that glittered the brightest shade of red they'd ever seen. She felt as though it would have helped Laurel to receive a gift like that. Though she did not expect that she would find one so close to home, the young Redleaf girl trekked down to the water again and began to search the edges for stones crafted from fire.

After some time had passed and she had not found one that was suitable, Piper returned to shore and dipped her head down low. She'd approached her mother with a sullen expression that did not lack the determination she had felt before. “I couldn't find one that was good enough for you, so I'm going to look outside the pack, I think,” she informed Laurel with a confident bob of her head. Then, she nudged against her mother's cheek with a smile. The air had gotten colder and her limbs were tired of standing in the water.

yes, that's fine with me!

Such a good girl. Laurel watched as Piper diligently sought but found nothing, so far. A watery smile was on her face as she watched, both sad for the lack of Lucas as well as happy to still have her ruddy lil' girl with her. As Piper stopped the search and informed her mother she'd look outside of the pack, Laurel said: "Don't go too far out, alright sweetie?" She nuzzled the top of Piper's head and gave her ear a lick, then allowed her daughter to leave.

"Such a good girl," Laurel murmured to herself as she stared at the soft bubbling water after Piper had gone, a soft but sad and bitter smile on her face.