Lost Creek Hollow Nemo Sine Vitio Est

It was a warm afternoon in early spring and Sarah had just returned from a hunt to see, whether Osprey needed assistance in managing the three grey-pelted little sharks. With the birth of Jupiter, Janus and Junona her mother had resigned from leading duties entirely and spent her days, entertaining and educating the kids. More of the former than the latter, even though the bunch was almost three months old now. 

"Let me gooooo!" Sarah was greeted with Jupiter's loud protests, as her mom had grasped the biggest girl of the litter by the scruff and pinned her down. The playful glint in her eyes told that this was for play purposes only, because the other two were watching the show gleefully. "And this is, how you slay a dragon," Osprey said, after she had let her daughter go, who walked away with an air of insulted princess, followed by the merry laughter of her siblings.

She smiled at Sarah and came to greet her affectionatelly, then sat down next to her, watching the trio chase each other for a while and then said: "You know, your father is a greedy rascal." Sarah, who was used to her mother's whimsical ways turned to look at her: "Why so?" "Out of you nine only two resemble me, the rest of you take after him. And I thought that we were supposed to share everything equally..." she chuckled and leaned against Sarah...

Mere moments after waking from the dream, Sarah could still feel the warmth of the sunlight against her skin, her mother's touch and the jolly voices of her youngest siblings. She tried to keep hold of the dream just a while longer, but as the cold and snow reality of a night in January seeped more and more in, the images grew transparent and disappeared altogether. She opened her eyes and looked at the dark earthen walls of her den and knowing well that it would be a while now, before she would be able to fall asleep again, she crawled outside.

It was like this every night, ever since Terance had let her stay with his group. She would fall into a restless sleep, have nightmares about smoke, fire and dead people haunting her and would wake up soon after. Scared and with immense sadness filling her heart and every fibre of her body. She had lost her home for many months now and she had not been able to give up on it. To move on and accept that "before" was gone and done for and "after" was something to live with. 

Perhaps, having a happy dream, a memory really for a change, was a good thing. Sarah inhaled and exhaled deeply, listened to the silence of the night with closed eyes, recalling and memorizing every detail, hoping that this was not going to be the last one. After this, while deep in thought she set out for a walk through the hollow.

Gannet didn't really have much of a regular sleep schedule when it came to things. Often he would settle in, only to wake up a few hours later to wander gently around, enjoying the peace that the dead of the night brought. Midday was another good time for sleeping, after all, when the sun was highest and you could enjoy the warmth (relative this time of year).

And sometimes, like tonight, others were up as well. Gannet almost didn't see her in the moonlight, her pelt blending in where his probably stood out starkly. But when he did, he gave a soft bark of greeting, smiling. He hadn't met her yet, but if she was here, he presumed that meant she was one of the Hollow wolves.

Sarah did not really wish company, after such a long time spent on her own, she found it difficult to blend among new people. The Lost Creek hollow was a big pack, which was a curse and a blessing at the same time. Sooner or later she would have to break out of her shell and talk to them, get to know them and get used to them always being around - she did not feel ready for any of this. Did not really wish to do so. And here came the good part - everyone was so wrapped up in themselves that they did not notice the shadow of a wolf during her night-time prowls or when they happened to encounter her during the day. 

But this night would be different, because the memory of her mother and family being well and happy just, what seemed such a short while a go, and the knowledge of, how badly it had ended, in part due to her own fault, was too heavy burden. Therefore, when someone's quite greeting broke through the thick and thundering cloud of oppressing thoughts, Sarah was grateful for the distraction. She stopped few feet away from the white spectre and said: "Good evening."

She came up to him at his greeting and gave one of her own, though hers had words to it. Hello. I'm Gannet. The Redhawk hadn't rolled off his tongue in years, and today was no exception. He at least had the name part of meetings done.

Why are you up? He asked, curious. It wasn't unusual for anyone to be about, but she had seemed... quiet. And so it felt like she might have a reason, maybe, if anyone would.

"Sarah," she introduced herself and similarly to him, it felt as if the art of conversation was something she had not exercised much in very long time an the sound of her voice seemed foreign to her. Empty, emotionless, a mere echo of what it had been. 

"I could not sleep," Sarah replied a moment of awkward silence lasted until she realized that it would be polite to show some interest in Gannet's nightly outings too. "Why are you out?" Even if that information was of no value to her.

His reasons were cheerfully simple. I like to be out. He glanced around, taking in the trees with clear appreciation. It's quiet. Gannet loved birds, but their absence and the slow silent sounds of the night had a special kind of calm beauty.

Gannet could tell, on some level, something wasn't right. But he had a hard time putting it into words, and he had to think a moment on it. You seem... missing. That wasn't exactly right. But he didn't know how else to describe the lack of emotional connection. He'd met wolves with it before, and as always, his habit of upfront cheer brought mixed results.

"I guess that works for me too. Being out," Sarah replied, casting a glance around the snow-covered landscape, void of other living creatures tonight except for her and Gannet. She had enjoyed being outside, liked it even still, though happiness was a concept she rememberd as existing, but was incapable of feeling herself. She could feign it with all the expressions and tones, and the right words at right places, but it was like playing with toys, when you were an adult. It just did not feel the same as it were, when you were a kid. 

"Missing..." somehow he had hit the point. She was there and was not at the same time. "No, I am here," she said slowly and carefully, more to convince herself than contradict Gannet. Then a swift half-truth came to her aid and she added: "I have been on my own for a very long time. It takes a while to... get used to company."

Oh, yeah. He remembered that. He was fairly friendly, but especially after his disappearance, coming back to the Redhawks had been hard. Doubly so because Liffey, his parents, his brothers, and everyone he'd been close to had already been gone.

It helps to find someone and practice. He said, remembering his time at Moonspear. Liffey had been his go-to, and then Hydra. Whip had been for a time while traveling, and now that he was here again, he wondered if he needed one. Perhaps not.

I can help. If you want. He wasn't great at conversation but if she felt out of the pack, he could at least solve that by giving her someone to talk to.

If Sarah had hoped that this would make Gannet back off, she had been wrong. He was acting nice to her, offered help, was trying to be a good packmate and... she hated him for that. It was a bright spark in her emotionless darkness, it found no resistence and therefore grew and spread, filling every fiber of her body. The empty gaze was exchanged for an intense glare, her body tensed, claws dug in the snow and she clenched her teeth, restraining herself from attacking the white wolf, who was standing before her. Hate urged her on - do it, do it, do it, it will make you feel better - but she did not.

It was great to feel something powerful like this, have a third choice, where there had been just either sadness or nothing before. Yet her rational mind told her that, if she harmed Gannet now, the feeling would dwindle. Weren't it not better to keep him around, keep the conversation going and hate him as long as he was in her company? After all her hate was not personal, just something he had kindled unknowingly. That would be help, even if he did not know that. 

Therefore with some effort she changed her attire and hid behind a calmer mantle. She looked away, not wanting him to see, the intesity and aggressiveness of her gaze, and accepted his offer: "We can practice. What do you want me to do?"

The look she gave him made him think she might refuse, which was fine by him. He didn't know if it would help her, just that he felt like it had helped him. He was blissfully unaware of the violent hatred she felt, and continued to sit there peacefully, enjoying the cool night breeze.

But she agreed, seeming to settle into a more friendly area. Ah, good! Gannet wasn't the type to take much of anything personally if he didn't know a wolf, but he was still glad she was willing to test out his idea.

Now he just had to figure out how this worked. He'd never been the talker, only the talkee, and for a minute he regretted offering because he wasn't sure he was up to the task. What did he talk about? We talk. He started, then realized he knew a thing. What's the best place you've been? She traveled, and he traveled. He could find something to say about that at least.

Honestly, this practice could do him some good too. Mine was east. There was a canyon that looked like a sunset.

This is such a terrible idea. God, this is stupid. Sarah was dismayed at Gannet's choice of question, but, what did he know really. And since she wanted to hate him just a while longer she put an effort and thought hard. Apart from travelling in early youth and her brief run with Terance after they had become a year old, she had not seen much of the world. She had lost her brother in a severe storm and returned home and had been surprised not feel disappointed. Glad actually. She had tried, she had failed only to realize that she was not much of an adventurer in her heart after all. She had felt best at her home, surrounded by her family. And then everything had been taken away and she had not cared about any place. Had hardly noticed the territories she had crossed, until the day Terance had found her by the riverside. 

Gannet shared his experience readily, she drew the silence between them longer, searching for an answer still, though it was already there on the tip of her tongue. "Home," she let it slip away and, as it happened the watery substance that sadness consisted of began to quench the raging fire of hate inside her. No, no, no... she protested feebly against this change, knowing the fabric of this emotion all too well.

Gannet was so blithely unaware of how terrible the question he'd just asked was, at least until she answered. The way she said home made him question, and while there was no way for him to entirely put the pieces together, he could infer enough. Home was her favorite place, but she was here. That meant she could no longer be there.

Home where? He asked, his manner as calm as usual. He'd committed to helping her to talk, and this single word had brought up a slew of new things. Gannet had once known a home too, and it was a place he considered gone now as well. It had been gone, for him, the moment his parents died (though he didn't know that at the time). He didn't know how she'd lost hers, but he was interested in hearing about what it had been like.

Gannet did not know, where and when to stop, did he? Sarah remained silent, her eyes tracing his features and wondering, if truly had life spared him all of it's devastations and hardships, that he would not understand her unwillingness to elaborate on the topic. Or he possessed empathy, but aimed it at all of the wrong points. She should not blame him for prodding at her still raw wounds, for, how could he know, what had happened then and what was going on inside her head ever since. 

"Far away. It does not exist anymore," she replied, her tone sharper than it should have been. In order to prohibit him from asking more unwelcome questions, she threw one of her own at him: "You did not appear out of thin air here either, did you?"

For Gannet, it was a little bit of both. He was unaware of her probing the way he was unaware of most things. He wore every feeling he felt openly and always assumed others did the same; this meant that he plowed ahead, and if another didn't like something, they would put an end to it themselves. It was a simple view of the world and one that had gotten him into trouble a few times, but it was something he hadn't quite been able to outgrow.

Fortunately, her tone and her follow up question were enough to clue him in that the conversation needed a shift. Gannet wasn't great at telling stories but fortunately for both of them, he also didn't mind talking about things. I came from Redhawk Caldera. After my parents died and my brothers left I was... How did he describe it, that feeling of not belonging? extra. I left, and traveled. One of my brothers was in trouble, and I tried to help. Moonspear captured me. He stood, showing her his rear right leg, with the clear awkward set of the badly healed break. I stayed there, but I was extra there too. So I came here. It was seriously abridged... he'd left out entire portions of getting lost in blizzards, and traveling with Whip. But he tended to speak as he thought, and he didn't have the attention to detail to tell a story in full first time through.

"An Extra-man," Sarah summed up, what Gannet had told about his life so far, and smiled wryly. There was the next question on the tip of her tongue, matching her current mood very much, all in it's cruel and malicious glory: What makes you think that you won't be an extra here? But she did not, because for the same question her answer was one she did not iike. Maybe they could be broken (her mentally, him physically) and forgotten toys at the bottom of the rank table together... There was some consolation in fact that she was not the only person in the world, who had a difficult time to find a place, where they were needed. 

Since she was at a loss, what to say next, she did nothing to cease the awkward silence between them.

He nodded, because she had it. He didn't mind that he hadn't really felt useful anywhere else - it wasn't his fault or theirs. It was just kind of something that happened. Already here he was starting to land on the place he wanted to fill, and it was a role that he felt would ensure he at least was useful here.

I'm going to heal, he said softly, unknowingly answering the question she had silently withheld. It made him smile thinking about it. More than anything he'd ever said, this felt right.

He was going to heal... There was something in the way he said this that caught on and resonated inside Sarah's mind. She had rarely considered her self-loathing spikes, the emotionless darkness, the jumbled up emotions, when they were there, and occasional lack of willingness to live as a disease. That this was not a punishment for her past mistakes, rather that this was something that had taken over her and plagued her, given the right circumstances.

And if only she could admit that there was a hope even for her to heal and get better, to stop suffering, she would also be just like Gannet. Serene. It was probably a question of will - it was easier to hang on to the past with pain reminding her that it was real still at some point. Sadly, she had to admit that she was not yet ready to will the disease away. 

"Tell me a story," she asked, thinking that not helping to move the conversation on twice (or thrice) was not entirely polite. And that she should give just a little effort to help Gannet help her. "Anything, any kind."

Tell her a story. Gannet had never been good at finding stories, let alone telling them. He didn't know what made one good or bad, or what details needed included and what left out. Oftentimes he would forget the one he was telling was not in his head to know what had happened. It had always been an uncomfortable thing, but it helped that she asked for any story. It did not need to be good.

He did not have the ability to make up tales, but he could tell something that had happened. Maybe a story of home.

Okay. He said quietly, then thought for a minute. He knew the one he could give. When I was young, we were outside the den. Whip and Ferret dad and mom and I, in Redhawk Caldera. A huge cloud of bugs came, probably the loudest thing I've ever heard. I was scared, but Ferret and dad weren't. Eventually they went away, but after, things were hungry. He looked at the grass they stood on, remembering how the insects had eaten most of the green away. They didn't taste so good, but we ate them. It was a bit of a downer story, mainly because he had left out a slew of packmates and the fact that they'd played with the bugs for a time as well. But it was real and it happened, and it was one of the clearest memories he had of his parents. Especially his dad, standing guard, firm against the hoppers and ready with a laugh. He missed that.

Sarah had never been as fond of the fictional world as Osprey or her sister Wraen had been. She had listened to the stories as a kid, but as soon her age allowed to deal with the more practical stuff, she had busied herself with learning the trade and growing up. Mother had used to jokingly say that they needed people, who stood firmly on the ground, to level out the air-head proportion in the family. 

Time had passed and one day Sarah had realized that she was not totally averse to story-telling as such and that there was a particular kind she enjoyed the most. The one, which dealt with real events, real people. No magic, no gods, no unicorns or rainbows, the stuff you encountered in every day life. That could also happen to you. As she listened to Gannet's story, she found some details of his story familiar. It was not the first time she heard about the hungry bugs, who had stripped the valley off greenery and been the reason to the famine that had followed afterwards. 

"I was born somewhere here amidst famine. I was too small remember hunger, but my mom did," she told the facts. "We left afterwards, but she and dad did a meticulous job to teach us, how to survive, when prey is scarce," Sarah said with a hint of pride in her voice. She had devoured every lesson the same way Wraen had breathed in stories their mother had told them. This was such a pleasant memory that it shone like a bright star in the night and made the hate retreat in the darkness. "You traveled - where did you go?" she asked then, this time the question came easier.

Gannet was hugely interested to hear she had been born here apparently around the same time as he, and he waved his tail at the connection. That also meant she'd enjoyed the story, and he liked that more.

After the snow. He replied, nodding. The snow had in reality been a blizzard, one that had forced the pack into shelter and separated him, lost in a world of white. I got lost, and went somewhere. Met some packs that were nice. I saw sand and cliffs and big rivers. The mesas and canyons had been his favorites. But it was lonely.

Traveling with Whip had been better. But even that... it wasn't like a pack. Packs were safety and company and never feeling alone.

Oh, Sarah knew loneliness inside out, it had been her constant companion for the last four or five months and she recognized all and every miniscule detail of it's dark face. Her heart ached for company, for people, for purpose and for a wolf with her skill-set and background, she would have easily found a new home were she inclined for a fresh start. But she was not. Her flow of time had stopped on that fateful day, when she had turned her back on her siblings and found her parents dead. She was unable, unwilling, really, to move on. Painful as the memories were, they were the only reminders that her home had once been real and her heart whole. Without them she would be even more lost than she was already.

"Are you lonely still?" she asked out of mere curiousity. Sarah had no inclination to fill the void in Gannet's world, but knowledge that someone else felt likewise her would be comforting.

Gannet didn't even need to think long on her question because the answer was obvious and true. Yes. Sometimes. Certain things were a mystery to the boy and likely always would be - a good deal of bonding was in that category. In Gannet's simple mind, bonds came down to a binary. Either a wolf was a friend, or they were not. Either he was wanted, or he was not. And once a wolf was established in one of these categories, there they stayed until they indicated it should be otherwise. The distinction between family and friend, friend and aquaintance, even friend and stranger were not things he saw or understood. And this meant that in a good many situations he had been made to feel unwanted simply because he was wanted less.

Luckily, though, he had reached a point where this loneliness didn't bother him overly much, because he had come to realize there was a world full of potential possibilities out there. Even if one place he was not needed, the next he may be, and so on. So there wasn't a lot of sadness in the answer; just thoughtfulness.

I don't think I can not be, he added, wondering at it.

Maybe not being lonely was just an illusion. They all came into this world alone and they would all leave it that way. Plain and simple. Sarah accepted his answer with a silent nod and kept on walking in Gannet's company for a long time after, without saying a word. In some ways having a comfortable, easy silence between two people was just as good as filling it with words.

Fading this out and archiving! Thank you!