Sunspire Mountains oh, he hops with the hippest of them

@Stigmata

Well, fuck. 

She had been traveling a while and things hadn’t really gotten a whole lot brighter. At least, not in the grand scheme of things. There hadn’t been anyone who had crossed paths with her brother. If there had, they had done well to hide the fact that they’d seen the boy. Piper had started to lose hope, and she was regretting the great adventure that she’d put herself on. All the while, she thought of how much she had probably hurt her mother and of all the things that he had said to her. 

Piper Redleaf wasn’t the type to admit that she had been wrong, but shit she was feeling her trekking in the marrow of her bones. For all of her independence, she had started to realize that she was still too young to be out jaunting on her own. The shape of her had thinned and there was an age to her that hadn’t been there before. Still, she pushed on until she’d winded herself by scaling the mountain. It was there that she was faced with further disappointment. 

Below, she had scented other wolves. Piper had imagined that she would have happened upon a pack. She expected that she would receive the same sad answer that she’d gotten from everyone else, but there had been a portion of her that had prayed they would grant her solace for a night or two. Instead, she was faced with glittering stars and the haunting cry of a passing owl. The weight of the world had never felt quite so heavy before.

here! take this terribly rushed post and LOVE MEEEEEE *lobs it at you and runs away sobbing*

down in the belly of rising sun, stigmata had grown overused to living, more or less, at sea level. he felt this in the way his muscles protested the arduous climb he was making, and the labored way that he had started to breath. he cursed whatever enchantments had kept him so low to the ground for long - in more ways than one - and he climbed higher and higher until he stood as tall as his lungs would allow.

extending his muzzle, the smokewraith cast his stormsilver gaze over the views his vantage point afforded him, and he nearly threw himself from the cliffs when he spotted a bit of red along the more navigable mountain paths just below him.

though he had come to expect by this point that not every swathe of scarlet in this region belonged to the redleaf clan, stigmata was still reasonably suspicious and for good reason.

he descended quietly; gaining on the figure until he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who it was he was watching. the wolf held back suddenly - an intense awareness of his own body befalling him in that moment. his heart was beating too fast; his jaw had tightened and he felt like his mouth was welling up with dirt. piper redleaf was there, a waterfall below him, and indecision struck the hound and left him ringing like a bell.

hate coiled within him like a snaking bed of coals that settled on his stomach and made him nauseous, but he thought the feeling illogical. he had no reason to feel such vitriol towards all redleafs... did he?

in an effort to overcome his own lunacy - or as someone who didn't like to acknowledge his own feelings - stigmata tipped his head back and howled a short, swooning note that went from low to high, to low again, to capture her attention.

u could literally sit on ur keyboard for five minutes and i would think it was a masterpiece <3

Were it not for the melody of his voice, Piper was sure to have lost her mind there.

The mountain had been formidable from the base, and she had not expected that when she would arrive at the top, there would have been no one. The sheer level of disappointment that had swallowed her had been enough to send her tumbling back down. She didn't want to move any further; she didn't want to keep searching for her brother if it meant that she would have to face the rest of the world on her own. It had been more than she had anticipated, and she held only regret in her heart.

The sound of his voice filled her with fire.

The young Redleaf drew her crown upward and stared into the darkening territory with cupped ears and a rigid frame. The pale yellow of her gaze seemed to sweep from side to side, praying that she would see his prowling figure. The chill of winter nipped against her thin coat and she shuddered against the touch of it. Perhaps, in her madness, she had imagined the sound of him.

With a few feeble steps, Piper began to race toward the sound without stopping to think of her actions. She moved swiftly, and before the crippling doubt was able to swallow her, she saw the glimmer of his silver sights just beyond a large stone. The shape of him was familiar enough that she could have imagined it, but his scent had changed and she knew that her active imagination could not have conjured such a thing.

“Stigmata,” Piper breathed, stepping toward him with rapid little movements. Her eyes were wide and her heart thrummed in her chest.

artifice! i missed writing them and it's only been a couple times and a little while!!

he waited until she saw him before pulling back from the mountain lip and starting a descent to greet her; his gait stiff, and measured, but no less eager by comparison. they met halfway, his name nothing but a breath on weary lips as she came to him, nearly crumpling as they met.

she felt soft - too soft, he thought with alarm - and though she did look older, it was not in the way he had imagined or would have preferred. there were lines in her face now; where sleeplessness had settled and left deep grooves of fear and uncertainty and, most prominently, hunger etched across her bony expression. stigmata would have cried at the sight of her if he were capable. instead, he only held her, letting the small, soiled flame take shelter against him for as long as she dared to crave.

he licked the top of her crown: tender, slow, and rhythmic. until both their heartbeats had settled, and stigmata could find his voice through the well of emotions he felt at the sight of her now. he felt no need to chastise, or remind her otherwise of the plight she had just endured. he wanted only to make it better, for now. "come. the best thing for us to do now is find some shelter and something for you to eat," he told her, but would wait until she was ready to move, to start her journey anew.

The fiery girl did not wait, or think that embracing him would have been a foolish mistake to have made. She trusted him far more than she should have, and she knew nothing of the arguments he had shared with her mother and aunt. Had she known, there was a chance that she would not have cared. As it was, the firefly of a child had not yet returned to their abandoned home; she had not found that she had been left behind. In time, she would feel the burn of such a discovery. Until then, she clung to his frame with her thin body like she needed it.

She was a moth; her heart fluttered on paper-thin wings. And he was a flame – incendiary, scorching her soul. She breathed in the heat of him in choking, desperate gasps.

The gentle drawing of his tongue against her soul was like no comfort she had ever known before. The gruff tone of his voice was both familiar and foreign to her, as he instructed her to find somewhere sheltered and something to strengthen the meat on her bones. It was in that moment that the firefly could not help but to turn her crown upward and gaze into the cool silver of his eyes. She swallowed the heavy lump that had nestled in the back of her throat and nodded her head meekly.

Perhaps she was not a moth...

She was Icarus, and she had flown into the garish light of the sun.

stigmata wasted not a single moment and whisking piper away into the mountain shelves; eager to shield her from whatever lone horrors had befallen her in his absence. he wondered what had happened to her escort, but found not need to dredge up such negativity in that moment. it was the same reason he refrained from telling her what had become of bearclaw and his personal status with her family, but after she had gotten some rest, it would be among the first topics he breached. their relationship wouldn't be fair or based on honesty if he didn't reveal and explain these things, but there was a time and place for everything.

he absconded with and housed the dimmed redleaf tightly at his side, finding a slender pocket on the cliffside in which to tuck her in - a small cave adequate for both warmth and security - and he was carefully quiet all the while. he lay by her side until both of their bodies had ceased their respective anxious shivering, and it was with great effort that he peeled himself from around her, like the curling skin of an orange, and he nibbled the back of her neck in a silent, reassuring message.

stay.

he moved so that he could meet her eyes - a shade of worried champagne - and his gaze did many things at once, in the slow, fathomless moment they locked eyes: he asked, commanded, begged, demanded, wanted her to stay. wait for me, he conveyed without daring to use his voice and potentially lie. he would do everything in his power to return to her, but fate was a tricky mistress and he dared not promise her to return. the ironwraith turned and melted away into the cold dark

---

dawn was breaking before he returned to the very cave he had left her in; his jaws in a vice around the carcass of a thin raccoon. the blood practically in his nostrils prevented him from being able to tell if piper had remained or not, but he dropped the catch worriedly, and whined into the jagged entrance in a hopeful call for a resting young she-wolf.

i pray for a very long and dramatic future between these two. THE IDEAS I HAVE!!

u may use and abuse me with every idea that you have

The firefly was tucked beneath his stony wing and whisked away from their meeting point. She did not remember climbing the mountain, or finding the secluded cave where she was urged inside. The dwindling ember did not remember much at all of the time that she spent at his side, shivering against the burly stone of his form. Time seemed to flutter past them with all the urgency that it had to afford, until she felt him stir at her back and she grimaced against the cold that washed through the opening of the cave... their cave.

Stigmata moved around her and she was faced with the indomitable stare of his ghostly gaze. The expressions that were chiseled into his features were clear enough. Even if she willed herself, the firefly did not believe that she would have the strength to venture back down the mountain and away from his side – not yet. So, she waited as long as she could.

Before she saw him back, Piper was drowned in the dark shadows of seemingly endless dreams. She dreamed of the valley, of Lucas, and the days when the sun seemed to shine down on them in endless streams of gold. The further her mind wandered through all of her pleasant thoughts, the faster it arrived to the days of darkness. Without warning, her sweet dreams shifted to images of shadow and fear.

When her eyes fluttered open fearfully and she inhaled a cool gasp of winter air, she saw him standing against the backdrop of light. The sound of his voice struck her ears and cupped them forward eagerly. For a brief moment in time, she thought him to be one of her returning dreams – there to lull her back into a false sense of comfort. It was the scent of blood that pulled her out of her exhausted state. She lifted her torso up and yipped softly to call him in. It had been cold without him there.

as he heard her stir inside - followed by a tired, wilted voice calling back to him - stigmata's spine trembled excitedly, and his tail whooshed back and forth as the ember shuffled nearer. "eat," he told her softly, nudging the dead bandit towards the denmouth with an encouraging huff. "when you are more comfortable, we must speak." he looked her over, needing only a passing glance with his well-trained eyes to see the things he had missed of her present form in the black shadows of night.

and even in the incredibly grey lowlight of dawn, she looked worse in the light. a dull campfire on its last burning dregs; and stigmata would see her returned to her former flame if he had anything to say about it.

the wolf circled behind her, reclining into the shrouded cavemouth as he watched her hunch beneath tall, thin shoulderblades to presumably eat. stigmata had been up all night, so he was fairly exhausted, but the furthest he dared to relax was on his stomach, propped on his elbows. for now, his head remained up and on a swivel, peering past piper to tactfully watch their surroundings.

The girl did not wait to be instructed again – she lunged for the food with snapping teeth and tore into the tender flesh of the meat until her muzzle was coated in thick blood and remnants of the morsel. Part of her wished that there had been more, that she hadn’t been so selfish in her devouring of the meal, but he had brought it for her, and she had needed it more than she’d needed the air in her lungs.
 
When she had cleaned the remnants from her face and breathed a contented sigh of relief, the wildfire of a girl fixed her gaze on him and narrowed her brows. There had been so many questions that had fluttered around inside of her skull when she had seen him – when she had known him to be corporeal. She had been unable to ask them in the moment, but that time had passed, and he had done well to tend to her needs. Her head was clearer than it had been before. She peered at him and imagined that he knew what she would ask before she asked it. That didn’t stop her; it never would.  
 
“Why are you out here? You don’t smell of the pack anymore.”
 
The tone was not accusatory but filled with curiosity. There had to have been something that had transpired in the valley pack to have cast him so far from it. She worried for the safety of her mother and her aunt, but she forced herself to remain calm until he was able to conjure a response. In spite of the confusion that swam around inside her like a hungry shark, Piper could not express how happy she was to see him there.

as he expected, the spitfire - with her kindling refreshed and flame gathering - turned to him almost immediately with questions and (softened) accusations falling freely from her eyes and lips. stigmata blinked once, long and slow, as the breath of a sigh left him. "i belong to the mountains now," he said to her first query; "this is my domain." a delivery that for once came without its typical grandiosity. because in the face of his enemy's progeny, he was painfully reminded of the fact that he must make this claim without the ones he had intended to make it for. "your family and i have parted ways, and not amicably, i regret to inform you." stigmata was clinical, but necessarily so.

piper didn't need the color of his emotions on the situation.

"shortly after you left, i suggested that winter would be unkind to us in bearclaw. the single entrance would mean less prey coming in, and high snows could have killed us. i had found a lake nearby, in the mountains, just across the meadow - close enough to the valley to reclaim it at will. however, before i could be sure of the location, your mother, and indra, announced that they and their children were going to lost creek hollow, and that everyone else was on their own. i was given the choice to either follow them and bow to wolves i did not know, or leave. no compromise. so i chose to leave."

he sighed again, this time more deeply; hedged with relief. after a moment he added, "as far as i know, your entire bearclaw family are still safe and with the creek pack. they lie past your birthplace, just beyond the wolves of stone circle... but my place is here. my legacy will be here."

Hmm, well that was a great pile of shit to dump down her gullet when she wasn’t expecting it. Of course, he had to present it in the stoic and stalwart Stigmata way. It didn’t really matter how pretty he made it sound, though. Piper was that kid who chewed through the bullshit. She didn’t want to fuck around with the frilly words. She wanted to cut to the chase, blow her top, and move on. God, things could never just be simple, could they? Everything had to blow up and get fucked before straightening itself out.
 
Out of all of what Stigmata had reverently shared with her, Piper really only clung to one big thing: her family had fucking deserted her and decided to make a new home somewhere else. Nevermind that his recounting of the tale was all very one-sided, and that she wasn’t sure she could have seen her aunt tell anyone to put-up and shut-up. Mostly, she was wounded that her own family had decided to pack their bags and kick it with some new folks in her absence.
 
Did they not think that she might return to an empty valley?
 
“What the fuck….?”
 
Use your words, Piper; you’re really good with those. She furrowed her brow and rose up onto her unsteady limbs far too quickly to make any sort of impression. Without much warning, the wildfire began to pace inside of their hideaway. Her ears flattened to her skull and her hackles danced along her back as though they were fighting her to rise upward and declare her indignation. There really was nothing like a good meal and the shocking abandonment by one’s own family to get the blood going again.
 
“Well, fine. If they’re going to just make a new home without me and Lucas, then… I’m staying with you,” she informed him.

the brows of the warhound rose dramatically at her exclamation, though his expression reverted to impassiveness once getting over his initial shock. outbursts of emotion weren't common in the military, and stigmata would always be unsettled by losing his composure or the lack of it in someone else. this particular incident could be attributed to her age, as much as to her upbringing. laurel certainly seemed unwilling (or incapable) of withholding, so it would stand to reason her daughter would be prone to the same level of loud impertinence.

he watched her pace; posture languid and eyes trained on her with feline intent. when she turned to him with her acrimonious eyes, and a posture all wolves should bow to, stigmata inclined his noble head in a slow bow and turned his eyes away from her ire. a yield to her righteous provocation. "they did not make a new home without you," he corrected quietly - yet the entire ice cavern seemed to fill hotly with his voice. "they gave up their home because they had to, not because they simply wanted to be somewhere else."

a piercing silver iris targeted her from the corner his eye. "what remained of your family could not stay in bearclaw valley - risk being trapped there by the snow, without food coming in - but they chose to live under someone else's rule out of desperation instead of settling nearer to the valley, and i thought we did not need the another pack's help at all. but your mother told me that what i thought did not matter, and that i was not family to them if i left." he felt no need to repeat again that he had chosen redleaf banishment as the price for his lonely throne in the mountains; he only turned his head to look fully towards her once more, steeling himself to further outbursts should they come.

god please forgive me for how fuckin late this is <33

“Sure, they did,” she snapped back. See, it wasn’t just that Piper was prone to speaking out; she was destined for it. It was as though the gods had gathered together to create the one thing that would surely speak out against anything she didn’t believe to be right. In her mind, Laurel and Indra had decided that she and Lucas would surely never make it back to them and had gone off to seek greener pastures in an attempt to cope. Surely, it wouldn’t have been right for them to have abandoned the only home that any of the kids had ever known without notifying maybe one of them. Send a messenger pigeon or something, right?
 
“They basically told you to go and fuck yourself and you’re going to stand there and act all righteous and stoic and tell me that they were forced out of their home. The snow hasn’t been all that bad until just a few days ago, so I’m calling bullshit on your spiel,” she returned to him with a defiant stare. There was more, so don’t get comfortable, it seemed to say to him. The wild expression on her features was a true reflection of the roaring fire that she felt within. Whether or not he wanted to endure it, whether or not he believed it was proper or right, or whatever garbage went through his head when she spoke, she was going to do what she felt she had to.
 
A snort passed from flared nostrils and she shook her head. “You think it’s dandy for them to skip off when two of their three kids are out here believing that they’re back in the valley? Didn’t want to send a messenger, or… just didn’t think we’d come back?” Piper then inquired with a sarcastic tilting of her crown. That really didn’t settle well with her. She almost felt violent in response to the idea that this was the first she was hearing of anything of this. There hadn’t even been talk of leaving the valley when she had been there. A couple of flurries and suddenly the whole world’s ending for the Redleaf brigade.
 
“Listen, I still haven’t found anything out about Lucas and I’m not going anywhere until I do. I’ll be back when I’ve got something. You enjoy your delusion,” she finally breathed after a moment of long quiet and thoughtful contemplation. Her tone had broken a bit. There was something in her voice that was broken that hadn’t been before. Nothing he could say in that moment was going to fix it.

same! Dx gonna go ahead and fade here <3 COME BACK NOW OKTHANX

her point of view, regardless of whether or not he agreed with it, was something to be expected, and more importantly, understood. stigmata could not convince a wolf as young as she that her family leaving bearclaw had not been a slight directed at her. that they had not abandoned her, in the same way she had not abandoned them by going off to look for her brother. that just as she felt she could not survive without her brother, they had not felt as if they could survive in that valley - and it was not that bit of history that he felt the redleafs must atone for.

he didn't answer any of piper's questions. largely because she was fired up, but also because he wasn't in the mood to amend the young wolf's feelings about her family. he didn't see a point to now argue that it would have been as easy to deliver a message to her as it would have been to get one to the missing lucas, because such remarks would only serve to piss her off. more than anything he wanted piper to know the truth of the matter and see it all from a perspective that was not that of a wounded and homeless child, but this was no such time. not when the angsty pot was calling the kettle black.

"i do not enjoy seeing you suffer," stigmata said flatly, his eyes menacing her coldly from his lounge. he was quiet through a short interlude, then blinked. "you have a place with me, until you refuse it... and if i can help it, i would have you returned to me when this is all over." because piper was his, and he was piper's, in some ways or another. he fell silent again, before rising to his feet and inviting her with a flick of his tail to join him once more in the warmer mountain breach.

later, when it was dark again and their bodies had relaxed beside one another's, he would try again. try to explain to her that some events could not be helped, that it would have happened if she had been there or not, and that everyone's vision is clearest in hindsight. he would try to use her own journey as an example, and ask her if she regretted any of it, but who knows if any of it ever got through her fiery head. for now... for now he just murmured her name once, nibbled behind her ear a bit to soothe her nerves, and then sighed deeply into a melted pile of flesh and bones.

he worried already about when she would leave, and felt a heavy, unspoken reluctance to see that day come.