Dragoncrest Cliffs oh nostalgia, i don't need you anymore

He has been avoiding @Silkie, but with the departure of his mother and siblings, his frosty heart (and shoulder) are more willing to forgive.  Silkie had the same chance that Wildfire had given him — to leave alongside their sister, their mother, their friend — and had chosen the same as Tux.  Perhaps being lost for so long had taught him a lesson: that Drageda was to come before anything and anyone else.  

Curious to see how well his brother is handling things, he departs from the edge of the cliffs where he so often watches the stars (and where once, he had watched the stars with Silkie, who had suggested they squint to see the stars better) to find the brown-masked young man.

[tumbles in recklessly and probably breaks things]

Since returning to Drageda — or, more accurately, being returned to Drageda — Silkie has lingered at the proverbial periphery of pack society. Everything is different. He’s reeling from the shock of Wildfire, Kiwi, and Sequoia’s abrupt departure, and he can’t help but wonder whether part of it is his fault. Feverish, half-mad with fear and loneliness, he’d snapped at his sister, and now she’s…gone. He can’t even say whether he misses her or not; the one thing he knows for sure is that he’s angry. He’s angry at himself for getting lost. He’s angry at Wildfire for breaking the family apart, leaving nomi with two sullen sons and no loving wife. He’s angry at nomi for not coming back in time to stop that from happening. He’s angry at Tux because…well, it’s convenient. Tux is his only remaining littermate, and growing pains have pushed them apart.

He can’t soften his expression when he turns to glance over his left shoulder, right cheek facing the open sea. He works valiantly to school his scowl into a more stoic expression. There’s Tux, good, reliable Tux, who hasn’t (to Silkie’s knowledge) ever set a foot wrong. “Hei,” he offers cautiously, his voice rusty and his guard up.

A younger, more impressionable Tux would have shrank beneath his brother's calculative, stoic stare.  But he's grown since then, and he's angry about all of the things Silkie is angry about, too.  As much as he loves nomi, she is not infalliable in his eyes anymore.  She has been gone too long for that.  Whatever nostalgia had plagued him upon her return was still there, it just came and went in waves.  He bit it back as much as he could.  He was a soldier, a kru, and he wouldn't let anything, not even his dedication to nomi, get in the way.  As much as he loved his mama, she'd torn his world in two.  As much as he loved his sister and his friend, they had left him behind.

And well, out of all of the siblings that Wildfire could have left him with, did it have to be Silkie?  Hei, he rejoins, and this time there is no Étoille to size him up.  It's just Tux and Silkie, and whatever tension is between them.  You stayed, he says, forcing the tenderness that threatens to creep up back into the deep-dark of his chest.

Silkie can’t even rent what Tux already owns. He’s been home for nearly a month, but he still feels like he’s walking a fine, invisible line between brana and kru. “This time,” he retorts, and his low rumble is derision made solid in the fog that washes from his umber-smudged muzzle. “I should never have left in the first place.” The wounds on his face have healed over, and the scars are barely visible beneath the cream-and-caramel velveteen, but he still feels like everyone can see them. All it’ll take is one close look, and they’ll know how weak and afraid he was.

No, he retorts derisively, You shouldn't have.  Silkie had likely only been forgiven so easily because they were still young, or maybe because they were heda's offspring.  Now they were kru more than they were children.  With their mother and sister branded natrona, a thought that frightened him (as a son, a brother) and infuriated him (as a young man loyal to Drageda) at the same time, he was sure in his belief that any future incidents of unapproved ... youthful wanderlust ... will be met with a much heavier hand. 

It is hard for Tux to say that he doesn't blame Silkie on some level.  But at the end of the day, Silkie was here and his momma was not.  Kiwi was not.  And he supposed that was what mattered.  But you stayed, he mutters.  Maybe that's enough.

speech is trigedasleng, phone post

Oddly enough, Tux’s veritable side-eye makes Silkie feel…better? It’s as though being judged and subsequently being forgiven is one step toward healing. Self-flagellation only goes so far, especially when everyone’s been so goddamn nice to him since Mallaidh brought him home. “Enough is an illusion,” he murmurs quietly. “We have to be better — we have to be Drakru, and better than them.” He pushes to all fours and turns to face his brother, his expression solemn and his eyes troubled. The emotions that roil through him — he attributes them to his inferior, impetuous Redhawk blood, but he’s still too young to really keep them from spilling over. “Redhawks run, but Drakru stay.”

A quaver at the end of his sentence betrays just how close he is to the edge of his composure, but this time he doesn’t back away or push Tux away. “We are kru,” he says, testing the waters, meeting his brother’s eyes with a fair amount of trepidation. Will his darker sibling turn him away? “We are brothers.”

Tux's unreadable face suddenly becomes hard, and something vengeful lights aflame in his solemn brassy eyes.  We are better than them, he says, curating his hurt and grief into something infinitely more productive — fury.  He is too young and inexperienced to understand the depth of Wildfire's hardships; it wouldn't matter to him anyway.  She is natrona now and as much as it hurts, she has made herself dead to him.  It was an insult to him that she thought he might come with her — it was an insult to him that Kiwi and Sequoia had.

Brothers, he says, clutching the metaphorical olive branch with tentative, wary fingers.  Drageda was stronger if they weren't at odds, and through their continued loyalty and hard work, they would become the next generation of Dragedakru.  He steps forward to look at his kin through fresh eyes, having looked through him for so long.  We should do something.  Here,  He lifts a paw and rends his teeth through the top side, drawing blood which spills on the rock at his feet.

The pale dragon is still young and green enough that he can’t hide his confusion; he cocks his head sharply to the side when Tux’s brassy gaze takes on a new intensity. “What.” He is the physical yang to his brother’s yin, but they’ve got some growing to do. Right now, the metaphor is merely skin-deep. He watches fixedly as Tux’s fangs flash, splashing crimson across the slate-gray stone. Comprehension glimmers in his bourbon eyes, and a slow, cautious smile draws his dark lips into a thin line.

It never occurs to Silkie to ask Tux why he has ripped open his paw, and this is largely because Tux’s reason for doing so doesn’t matter. The solidarity is in the gesture itself; the significance lies in their different truths. For Silkie, spilling his blood is a coping mechanism. It’s childish and fanatic, but he longs to drain the bukajus from his veins. Snake-swift, he dips his muzzle and tears an identical laceration across the same paw, and as the blood pools and spills over, he sets it beside his brother’s. He can’t help but smile — look at all those toes! — but his expression sobers as their mingled blood binds to the stone upon which they stand.

“Jus drein jus daun,” he thinks to himself, but aloud, he murmurs quietly, “Ge smak daun, gyon op nodotaim.” He and Tux have experienced their fair share of hard knocks, but he’s ready to move on from them if his brother is.

The same thought had echoed within Tux's own mind as he slid his teeth across the back of his paw — jus drein jus daun, blood must have blood.  To watch theirs drain together upon the rock in which they stand is symbolic to him in the way that things often are to children.  He lifts his gaze to Silkie, and adorns a half-cocked smile.  Are you ready to stand up?

“That depends. Are you ready for me to take you down?” Silkie shoots back, playfully now. Tux is just a little taller than him, just a little more heavily muscled, but the pale dragon is pleased to note that neither of them are tiny like Wildfire was. They’re both already bloody, angry, and maybe this is why the pale dragon rises and shakes out his fur, then wordlessly entreats his brother to play with him. Playing for the young wolf is synonymous with training. He is a rather dour fellow despite his youth, serious, self-absorbed, and incredibly introverted, and all his actions seem to possess some kind of underlying purpose. It probably makes him an insufferable ass in some most all? circumstances, but it’s worked for him so far.

After a vigorous spar, both brothers flop down in the grass that overlooks Ankyra Sound to catch their breath. Tux makes mention of a coming storm and Silkie tries his best to see and feel what his brother instinctively knows, but the winds and stars do not speak to him. Antumbra’s boys turn the subject to more understandable topics — things that had gone poorly or well in the spar, methods of improvement, wolves they admire, and a little bit of friendly trash talk. Both of them are the best kind of tired when finally they wind down and head back to Hougeda to sleep side by side.