Dragoncrest Cliffs my face (worth 1 thousand ships)

blodreina rises early when the darkness of the night still has the wilds in it's grasp. she wrangles a rabbit to tide her over. it's a scrawny thing and she's ok with it: she isn't overly hungry yet. the rabbit was only meant to give her an energy boost if she needed it: to stave off any possible belly rumblings. her patrol will not be short and quick. with a pack — once more, thought with a sigh of exasperation that definitely slipped from betwixt her lips — right on drageda's doorstep the gona will be thorough. painstakingly so.

she makes her way to the cliff and cuts left, heading towards the borders that touch ankyra sound's own. she refreshes the already fresh marking first thing and lets out a discontented huff — a low grumble. she doesn't know who claims the sound ( yet ) but some of the scents strike her as vaguely familiar. blodreina hopes the bear that attacked her still dwells there ( though she suspects not if drageda'd been set to split there ). it strikes her as cruel to realize that she absolutely wishes ill will on the pack — grown like an unwelcome weed — that claimed the sound. but that realization does not change the fact that she does, in fact, feel that way.

of course a woman called the blood queen would be cruel. it is in her very nature.

blodreina moves a few feet along the borders then and kicks up some grass, using the scent markers in her paw pads to aid her. she would be at this patrol for some time and though she is on edge — evidenced by the slight bristle of hairs at her nape and the tenseness of her shoulders — she is glad to be back home. glad to be patrolling and marking borders of her kru.

Is there… like, any point where things become easy? Where one action doesn’t make everything else worse, or more confusing? No? Oh, okay.

Mallaidh struggles to sleep this night and as the first signs of morning as the sky starts to inch into color, she’s up on her feet. Maybe she can make herself useful and fight off some of the weird feelings she’s been carrying around. To her surprise, none of them are really regret but she knows she’s made things a lot more complicated than they should have been. Her search for answers and truth have only come crashing down and she’s long past being honest with anyone, especially herself.

No, no, it’ll be fine, she assures even though she knows it’s a lie.

Caught up in her own thoughts as she meanders to the border, she picks up a scent she hasn’t really noticed. The smell is often ingrained in Drageda to begin with but the thickness of it causes her to search it out. Eske had been gone for a while, long gone since before she came back home. She hadn’t spent a lot of time with her prior to leaving, either, and something tells her to turn tail and leave. She’s gotten past Heda, as far as her abandonment, but something tells her this isn’t going to be any easier.

When the dark, silvery woman comes into view, she slows to a stop and dips her head slightly in the wake of her former mentor.

blodreina is surprised to see furi again, standing before her once more — much older now than she'd been as the child that blodreina remembers her as. at first, the drakru thinks she is hallucinating ...but no the scent that comes from her is very real ( and she's never hallucinated before so why would she start now? ). her surprise is visible on her face as her own steps pause and she watches the girl dip her head. heda has allowed her back into their ranks ...but blodreina's always been notorious for her grudges ( just ask her littermates ).

surprise smooths out to an expression that is clinical: indifferent; hiding. is there any point in hashing out what has already came to pass? furi left. never mind that in the ending months before her abandonment she'd been closer to étoille than blodreina herself ...but that was ok the wanlida is not really the caregiver ( nor motherly ) type. she's always been sharpened knives over downy feathers anyway: her personality as fierce as the way she fights. still, a goodbye would've been nice. would've soothed any prickly feelings blodreina feels towards her return. abandon the kru and you shouldn't be welcomed back.

this has always been blodreina's thoughts on it: regardless of who it was.

so, blodreina starts with, you're back. figuring it was a good place to start. it is not her place to demand answers, she knows...but still answers would be nice.

You’re back.

Mallaidh’s ears tilt back. She remembers asking about Hvitserk, once, and her hatred for her own brother when he’d abandoned them. Antumbra allowed him to come back. Blixen allowed her to come back and, so far, Heda has allowed her to stay. But Eske is her own woman and she has her own way of things. If she hates her own brother for leaving (no matter if his reasoning is justified), then she must hate her so, so much more.

A pin pricks the back of her eyes and she looks down. Those born in Drageda know who they are and where they call home, they really had no use for some lost little girl they found.

Eske doesn’t outright try to hurt her or chase her off or… ignore her. Did she give Hvitserk the same chance to explain himself?

“I didn’t know who I was for a long time,” she starts and pausing, throat constricting around her words. “Not like amnesia or anything, I knew who I was but, you know?” Okay, this isn’t going well. You can’t talk to your former mentor and caretaker like she’s your long lost friend. Mallaidh closes her eyes and shakes her head, trying to straighten up into the proper adult she is. She’s not a lost puppy anymore. “What I mean is I pretended I didn’t know where I came from. I was scared and I didn’t really know where I was. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go home for a long time but I thought… if you guys knew that, or knew who I really was that you’d…” she cuts herself short, biting back the ugly word and swallowing it all together. “That you’d be mad at me.

“And then I found out my mom died and I didn’t know what home was and Drageda was the closest thing to it so I stayed. But I couldn’t be Furi anymore,” she doesn’t mention the fact she’d been scared of Wildfire in the wake of breaking up with Blixen but it all ties together, somehow. Her voice cracks. “I ran away. I know that. But I had to figure out who I was because Furi wasn’t it. I was Mallaidh Fearghal. That’s not who I am now, either.”

(It’s okay.)

“Mallaidh kom Dragedakru.”

furi — though blodreina will soon learn that like her and heda she no longer calls herself that — launches into explanation without the gona needing to tell ( ask? ) her to. which is good. blodreina appreciates getting straight to the point of things. there's less chance of deception that way as far as she's concerned.

furi is honest with her; perhaps to the point of a fault. she admits to pretending to be someone she wasn't. so you lied to us, blodriena states. you lied to me. and that hurt far worse. it cuts into her heart like a fang of the bear that left the scars upon her shoulder and ribcage. it was true, furi'd been a pup when blodreina had found her. scared but tough. blodreina had seen a lot of herself in her second. but she can't empathize with having a lack of identity. blodreina had always known who and what she was. a part of her wants to forgive her. to forgive the actions of an ( understandably ) scared and lost child.

why would we have been mad? blodreina asks furi.

why were you mad that thyri and freyja and hvitserk abandoned you? sometimes anger is warranted and sometimes it's irrational. she obviously felt she had to hide her true identity for some reason or another.

mallaidh fearghal. blodreina doesn't recognize the sirename. if it is supposed to mean something to her ( hermit that she was ) it didn't.

mallaidh kom dragedakru.

blodreina's ears taper back and she lifts her chin studying her once student. maybe the others accept her readily enough as dragedakru but blodreina's always been stubborn. her feelings on abandonment have not changed over the years and it is unlikely that they ever will. but she is the only one that seems to have such a strict view on the matter — and her opinion hardly matters.

maybe the others have forgiven you; call you dragedakru, blodreina does not offer forgiveness so willingly. they'd been close ...a long time ago but she'd been ( somewhat ) close to her siblings too ...at one point. but i will not. blodreina states. not until you earn it in my eyes. and maybe that'll mean nothing in the end. mallaidh is an adult. she doesn't need her once mentor, she doesn't need blodreina's approval, really, but the ex-wanlida feels better being transparent about her feelings even if they are cruel and make her come across as the salty bitch she's always been.

So you lied to us. Mallaidh looks down. Doesn’t Eske realize she understands that it had been wrong? She’s explained herself to Blixen and Artaax and… well, anyone else that might ask (except Ephraim, but he hadn’t been around when she was).

“I was scared,” she repeats. She’d been a child, a few months old, in the hands of warriors. Drageda life had been intimidating and not being born in it paints a different view than those that know what to expect. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t know what would happen but with the war and everything… I was… I was just a scared kid.” Still a scared kid. Being a kid is hardly an excuse for dragon born wolves, but how can they expect the same from her being several months behind?

It’s not going to be an answer good enough for her former mentor, she knows that, but she’s still talking to her, still giving her the chance to earn it. She doesn’t claim to be Drakru but she is loyal to Drageda, to head, to Blixen (in allegiance only, it seems).

“I will earn it,” she says, firmly standing beside her choice. She knows she may never earn it from Eske but the only way to do it is to prove it. All she has left is given to Drageda, she’ll show them.

i was scared.

the truth was it was understandable. if blodreina wasn't so fucking stubborn and cold-hearted she wouldn't be blind to the fact that she actually understood; but blodreina's lived her life pushing wolves away from her so that she exists in a bubble of comfortable isolation. if she doesn't grow attached then it doesn't hurt when they leave.

she is cruel and harsh with her judgements; and perhaps that is what makes her such a good warrior.

i will earn it, mallaidh tells her firmly.

we will see. blodreina sizes up her once-second and thinks that it was better, in the end, that malliadh gravitated towards étoille. he was better suited for taking care of a lost cub than she would ever be and that was a simple fact of life for the once-wanlida.

it is good to see you goes unsaid, tucked firmly in whatever corner of blodreina's heart that still cared despite her best efforts to snuff out affection of any sort. whatever blodreina might feel in regards to malliadh's abandonment, the gona acknowledges that it's good to see her alive. for a while after realization that she was gone sunk in she'd worried. to tell the girl these things now would seem contradicting to blodreina's clinical approach and her strict, personal views on abandonment and the daughter of gyda does not wish to send her once-second any mixed signals.

a lift of blodreina's chin is given and she, hiding her internal conflict with a well-practiced mask of indifference, offers a firm nod ( because they are pack-mates, after all ) and turns to make her departure assuming that with her salty cold bitch-ness that there is nothing left of a conversation to be had.

She doesn’t know if Eske believes her, or understands where she is coming from, but she doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, the ominous we will see leaves a sour pit in her stomach. All the confidence she gained over the last several minutes, explaining her side of the story, washes out from beneath her. Mallaidh scrunches her eyes together as hard as she can, turning her head away as the warrior steps out of her path, and she migrates somewhere further into the redwoods.